Part III of The Constitutional Crisis in ECUSA: "If You Want Our Voice, Then We're Giving It to You"

The constitutional crisis in ECUSA continues to worsen. Many people observing the events in South Carolina have drawn a parallel to the shelling of Fort Sumter which started the Civil War, but I believe that to be an inappropriate analogy. There is, after all, no ECUSA "enclave" within the Diocese of South Carolina which could have any parallel to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter before the War Between the States. If a parallel must be drawn, then a closer one would be the situation just before the start of the Revolutionary War, when a distant sovereign was claiming the right to impose duties on the colonies without their having any mechanism to object to such tyranny.

That is not to say that there are no "federalist sympathizers" (sc. "815 loyalists") within the Diocese of South Carolina. There are a few, and as is typical of such misguided federalists, they want to uphold the power of the "national government" over the local one. The problem is that the Episcopal Church is in the United States of America, and is not of the United States of America

To read the complete article, click here.
To read "The Constitutional Crisis in ECUSA (Part II): Unconstitutional Acts in High Places," click here.

A number of points that Haley makes in both articles are applicable to the Anglican Church in North America, in particular his comments regarding the misue of the canons and the authority of metropolitan bishops. The ACNA constitution and canons do not recognize the ACNA Archbishop and Primate to be the metropolitan of that body. However, the canons do require that the other bishops take an oath of canonical obedience to the Archbishop and they give the Archbishop authority in a number of areas, especially church discipline, that none of the provincial constitutions and canons that I have examined give the primate of the province or a metropolitan in the province.Where a primate or archbishop has metropolitical authority, these documents recognize the primate or archbishop as a metropolitan and delineate his jurisdiction as a chief bishop. Metropolitcal authority does not come automatically with the title and designation of primate or archbishop.