Church Of England, ECUSA Panels

Reach Out To Continuers

Efforts to begin and maintain a dialogue with Continuing Anglicans have been initiated by panels within the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church (ECUSA).

The efforts stem from 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution IV.11, calling for dialogue with Continuing Church bodies “with a view to the reconciliation of all who own the Anglican tradition.”

It was the first time Anglican leaders had endorsed an outreach toward those displaced from “official” Anglican provinces by changes in order and faith over the previous 30 years. Though many of these "separated" traditionalists declared through the 1977 Affirmation of St. Louis that they remained in communion with all faithful parts of the Anglican Communion, Continuing Anglican bodies have never been recognized as part of the Communion.

But now, it appears that several of those bodies have been contacted by C of E and/or ECUSA panels.

In its overture, the English working party, noting that “your witness has no doubt been costly,” reportedly asks Continuing leaders to advise it on any links their churches already share with those in the Anglican Communion.

While TCC was not able to learn which bodies had been contacted, a C of E spokesman confirmed that “a working party of the [C of E’s] Faith and Order Advisory Group (FOAG) has been looking at the relationship between Continuing Anglican churches and the Anglican mainstream.” He said the panel was due to report its preliminary findings on May 7, at which time more could be learned about the group’s work.

However, the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the largest international Continuing Church fellowship, provided (in TAC’s newspaper, The Messenger) a helpful report of the working party’s communication, and of the reply made Archbishop Louis Falk detailing a number of TAC links to the Communion, TAC’s stand on women's ordination, and problems in relations with the Communion.

In his response, backed by a TAC College of Bishops meeting in St. Louis last fall, Falk noted that the TAC has a concordat of communion with the all three branches of the Forward in Faith (FIF) organization (U.K., North America and Australia).

He added that two Communion bishops (John Hazlewood of Ballarat, Australia, and Mark Pae of Taejon, Korea) have participated in the consecration of TAC bishops and engaged in other sacramental acts that included Eucharistic concelebration and confirmations of TAC adherents.

The TAC has and would like to deepen contacts with the Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea and Sudan, “where Catholics and Evangelicals continue to practice the Faith as they have always done,” Falk wrote.

Interestingly, in light of frequent calls for alternative episcopal oversight, Falk also stated the willingness of TAC’s bishops to minister, where needed, to orthodox Anglicans in the Communion who are at theological odds with their bishops.

On women’s ordination, Falk wrote that the TAC’s understanding is that the international Eames Commission “doctrine”—that the orders of women priests and bishops in the Communion are provisional while they are tested in a “period of reception” (discernment)—“is still in effect.” (This was confirmed by Lambeth ‘98, which also supported Anglicans on both sides of the issue, and repeated the call for visiting bishops where there are differences over the matter.)

“Accordingly,” Falk wrote, “we believe it to be entirely acceptable for Anglicans to hold as we do that we cannot recognize such ordinations and to make such arrangements as we in the TAC have...for the practice of our faith...

“We have done no more than this,” Falk pointed out. “We have not anathematized or excommunicated anybody, yet letters have been sent from Canterbury to such places as Guatemala, Colombia, Chile and India, denying [that] TAC clergy and laity [in those places] are ‘Anglicans’ and even denying...the validity of holy orders in the TAC. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury’s episcopal representative at the Vatican has represented there that we in the TAC ‘are not Anglicans.’”

Falk said that “we seek from Canterbury a spirit of reconciliation," and recognition that the TAC’s position is actually quite parallel to that of FIF within the C of E. TAC’s “level of impaired communion with Canterbury,” Falk noted, “is not qualifiedly different” from that between FIF-UK parishes which have opted (under an Act of Synod) to bar women clergy and (in some cases) to ask for a “flying bishop.”

ECUSA, REC, APA Reps Meet

In an initiative “concurrent but not coordinated” with the C of E’s, ECUSA also has begun efforts to establish dialogue with Continuing or other “separated” Anglican bodies, based on a 2000 General Convention resolution (D047) inspired by and similar to that of Lambeth ‘98.

While little progress has been made so far with some 25 other Anglican jurisdictions contacted, two bodies have responded to the initiative in a way that surprised some observers.

In an historic meeting “that took important first steps to dispel years of ignorance and suspicion,” delegations from the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), the Anglican Province of America (APA), and ECUSA met at St. Paul’s College in Washington, D.C. January 15-16.

The APA is an eight-year-old body which has its roots in the American Episcopal Church (AEC). (The AEC was formed in 1968, largely in response to ECUSA’s failure to discipline Bishop James Pike, and merged in 1991 with a part of the Anglican Catholic Church to become the Anglican Church in America, a TAC province.)

The REC is a “separated” Anglican body which—since it was formed by an Episcopal bishop in 1873 over liturgical and ecumenical issues and is historically Evangelical—does not place itself among Continuing Anglican groups formed in recent decades to “continue” the historic faith and order modified by ECUSA and some other Anglican provinces.

However, in recent years the REC has itself undergone changes bringing it more into the Anglican mainstream—one result of that being that the REC and APA are in full communion and on a path toward organic merger.

ECUSA’s interest in that process was one reason that the REC and APA were invited to participate together, and apart from other Anglican groups. But another significant reason was that both churches have previously engaged in ecumenical talks with ECUSA—the REC most recently in 1993, the APA most recently in 1987 (when many of its current members were part of the AEC).

Representing ECUSA in the dialogue were South Carolina Bishop Edward Salmon, chairman; the Rev. Stephen White, chaplain at Princeton University; the Rev. Thomas Rightmyer, retired executive secretary of the General Board of Examining Chaplains; Diane Knippers, member of the Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations; and staff from ECUSA’s Office of Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations.

The Associate Deputy in that office, Thomas Ferguson, said that panelists other than Mrs. Knippers and related church staff were chosen by ECUSA’s Deputy for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, Bishop C. Christopher Epting, in consultation with the Standing Commission.

“This is the usual procedure for our dialogues; a bishop serves as [chairperson], there is a liaison from the Standing Commission, and other members are appointed in consultation with the...Commission,” Ferguson told TCC. He noted that ECUSA’s aim in ecumenical talks is to achieve communion with the other body, but not to absorb it.

Participants from REC included Presiding Bishop Leonard Riches; Mid-America Bishop Royal Grote, vice-president of the General Council; Mid-America Suffragan Bishop Ray Sutton, chairman of REC’s Inter-Church Relations Committee; and the Rev. David Hicks, canon to the ordinary of the Diocese of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.

The APA delegation included Presiding Bishop Walter Grundorf; the Rev. Mark Clavier, chairman of APA’s Ecumenical Committee; and two members of that committee, the Rev. Paul Blankinship and Frank Warren.

The first meeting of this dialogue team was described as warmly cordial.

The dialogue heard a presentation from Sutton on recent developments within the REC. He noted that it had revised its Prayer Book to be more in line with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (which has shaped liturgy throughout much of the Anglican world); adopted the three-year lectionary of the Australian Prayer Book; returned the word “regeneration” to the baptismal rite (thus resolving one of the contentious issues from the 1873 split); and engaged in a vigorous program of church growth.

The team also had an initial discussion of the REC’s orders. They noted the 1938 House of Bishops report which determined that, though irregularities existed in the succession of REC bishops, they were not enough to invalidate that church's historic succession. The report was to be put before the Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations for further study.

Fr. Clavier (the son of a longtime Continuing Church bishop now serving as an ECUSA priest) discussed the development of Continuing Anglican bodies, defined as those churches which emerged from the 1977 Congress of St. Louis. He asserted that the APA is not strictly a Continuing Church, since its precursor body (AEC) predated that Congress and did not officially participate.

While acknowledging disagreement over women's ordination, it was noted that ECUSA remains in communion with other provinces of the Anglican Communion that do not ordain women.

THAT FACT—that ECUSA, though heavily liberal, could be a conduit to a relationship with faithful Anglican provinces—seems to have figured into the reasoning of the APA and REC for engaging in discussions that some observers found startling. How could either traditionalist body not be compromised by any formal relationship with ECUSA?

Grundorf conceded that the dialogue had troubled some members of his flock, and said “it’s hard to say” where it will lead, and whether it will be anything more than talk.

“My point is, we’re living in isolation, and unrecognized by any legitimate Catholic body. That’s always been my concern about the Continuing Church; we've all sought to get that connection,” he said.

But why go through a revisionist body like ECUSA?

“They are the ones that made the overture,” said Grundorf. And it appears that any official link to the wider Communion may have to be garnered through its U.S. province, even though ECUSA is out of sync with most of worldwide Anglicanism.

Intercommunion, rather than merger, would be the objective, Grundorf confirmed, though he said that this would be the type of “impaired communion” already extant between official Anglican provinces over women’s ordination (and increasingly homosexuality). Such impairment exists even within revisionist provinces, as evidenced by such groups as Forward in Faith, with which APA and REC would like to be linked as well.

“To be really in communion with people that you agree with that are still in the Anglican Communion—I see this as a possibility of making that a reality,” Grundorf said. “Probably more than half the...Communion believes as we do, yet we’re not in communion with them. So how do you do that?”

Grundorf thinks the talks also might better position APA and REC for a domestic or international realignment in the Communion.

“Everybody’s talking about this separate [orthodox] province. How does that happen? You gotta start somewhere...Nothing’s going to happen unless you're willing to break out of the box.”

ASKED ABOUT THE TALKS with ECUSA, Archbishop Falk also said it may be the only way for U.S. groups to respond to the Lambeth-based outreach to Continuers. But, he added: “There’s no harm in going to find out what you do or don’t have in common.”

Falk himself was among those asked to join Epting and members of the Standing Commission at another meeting near Dallas in December, but who subsequently had to send his regrets due to a conflict, he said.

The response of other Continuing Church leaders to the liberal denomination’s overture has so far been less felicitous, however. Representatives of a dozen Continuing Church bodies reportedly responded favorably to some kind of dialogue. Of those, five (all of them bishops of tiny Continuing groups) agreed to come to the Dallas meeting as well, but failed to appear at the appointed time, or send regrets, Bishop Epting said. (In attempting to check out this seeming incidence of rude behavior, TCC was able to learn that miscommunication was the cause of one no-show; the rest remain a mystery.)

“We have since written to all 26 of the original recipients of our letter reporting our disappointment and asking for any suggestions as to how we might proceed, if at all,” Epting said.

THE ECUSA/REC/APA TEAM, meanwhile, seemed to have reached agreement on several points during its first meeting.

According to Fr. Clavier, participants concurred that their goal would be “recognition of each body as an expression of Anglicanism and full communion within the parameters of the doctrine and discipline of each body.”

To that end, he said it was decided (inter alia) that “as soon as possible, both REC and APA military chaplains will be permitted to conduct services for Episcopalians in the Armed Forces”—a probably-unprecedented step.

Further, delegates from the three bodies are to attend major meetings in each other’s churches, and provide more information about their churches in published articles.

Also, Clavier said, the Standing Committee and Bishop Salmon will encourage Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to start a dialogue with APA/REC.

He stressed, however, that this process will not lead to any changes in APA’s worship, practices or beliefs.

The next meeting of the dialogue team, set in July, will focus on the implications of holding divergent opinions on women’s ordination. In addition, the three churches agreed that ECUSA would add an ordained woman to the dialogue.

*TALKS ALSO RECENTLY GOT UNDERWAY in Dallas between TAC, APA and REC leaders, in an apparent response to the recent 25th anniversary celebration of the ‘77 St. Louis Congress. The talks represent a particularly hopeful step toward healing a breach between Falk and Grundorf and their churches; the APA was formed by those who parted from TAC’s Anglican Church in America eight years ago. “We had a good meeting. It was cordial, and we got a lot of stuff out on the table,” Falk said. “Everyone came away encouraged, and thought we should meet again.”

Sources included Episcopal News Service