Northern California Parish Chooses to Leave Us Also

Another Nor Cal Parish Splits From Episcopal Church Over Gays
12.30.06

By Anthony Cuesta



An Episcopal church near San Francisco has become the latest parish to break away from the national church over gay marriage.
According to the Associated Press, members of St. John's Episcopal Church in Petaluma voted to formalize the congregation's split from the Episcopal Church - the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member Anglican family - on Dec. 17.

"The Bible has already spoken regarding homosexuality, and it says it is sinful behavior," said the Rev. David Miller, rector of the congregation some 40 miles north of San Francisco, reports the AP.

Miller’s feelings are largely based on the 2003 ordination of a gay priest -- Gene Robinson -- as the bishop of New Hampshire. The decision to ordain Robinson, who lives with his partner, sent tremors throughout the 77 million-member Anglican Communion, of which the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church is a part.

Miller called the vote for separation "overwhelming," but did not say what percentage of the church's 240 members approved the break, reports the AP.

The Presiding Bishop of the 2.3 million-member U.S. denomination, Katharine Jefferts Schori, supports progressive views on women priests and same-sex marriage.

But the Petaluma Rosa parish is one of numerous churches seeking to circumvent the U.S. branch in favor of direct representation in England or another more traditional national church abroad.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the 240-member Petaluma church also has officially changed its name to St. John's Anglican Church, a reflection of its intent to align with Anglican Communion churches outside the United States.

Earlier this month, the conservative Diocese of San Joaquin took what Bishop John-David Schofield called a first step toward a formal break with the national church in voting to affirm its membership in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Matthew Lawrence, rector of an Episcopal congregation in nearby Santa Rosa, said he was saddened by the parish's decision.

"Jesus had nothing to say about homosexuality," Lawrence told the AP.

Episcopalians Fighting Against Equality

Episcopalians against equality
By Harold Meyerson
Special to The Washington Post

Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:12/20/2006 07:57:27 PM MST

WASHINGTON - Don't look now, but Virginia is seceding again.
On Sunday nine Episcopal parishes in Virginia, including the one where George Washington served as a vestryman, announced that they had voted to up and leave the U.S. Episcopal Church to protest its increasingly equal treatment of homosexuals.
In 2003 an overwhelming majority of the nation's Episcopal bishops ratified the selection of a gay bishop by the New Hampshire diocese. This past June the church's general convention elevated Nevada Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to the post of presiding U.S. bishop. Jefferts Schori is the first woman to head a national branch of the Anglican Church. Worse yet, she has allowed the blessing of same-sex couples within her diocese (which includes the ever theologically innovative Las Vegas).
Whether it was the thought of a woman presiding over God's own country club or of gays snuggling under its eaves, it was all too much for a distinct minority of Episcopalians. The dissident parishes in the Virginia diocese contain only about 5 percent of the state's parishioners. But it's the church the defectors have latched on to that makes this schism news.
In slamming the door on their American co-religionists, the two largest parishes, which are in Fairfax City and Falls Church, also announced their affiliation with the Episcopal Church of Nigeria. The presiding Nigerian archbishop, Peter Akinola, promotes legislation in his country that would forbid gays and lesbians to form organizations or to eat together in restaurants and that would send them to jail for indulging in same-gender sexual activity. Akinola's agenda so touched the hearts of the Northern Virginia faithful that they anointed him, rather than Jefferts Schori, as their bishop.
Peer pressure played a role, too. Explaining the decision to leave the American church, Vicki Robb, a Fairfax parishioner and Alexandria public relations exec, said that the church's leftward drift has made it "kind of embarrassing when you tell people that you're Episcopal." It must be a relief to finally have an archbishop who doesn't pussyfoot around when gays threaten to dine in public.
The alliance of the Fairfax Phobics with Archbishop Restaurant Monitor is just the latest chapter in the global revolt against modernity and equality and, more specifically, in the formation of the Orthodox International. The OI unites frequently fundamentalist believers of often opposed faiths in common fear and loathing of challenges to ancient tribal norms. It has featured such moving tableaus as the coming together in the spring of 2005 of Israel's chief rabbis, the deputy mufti of Jerusalem, and leaders of Catholic and Armenian churches, burying ancient enmities to jointly condemn a gay pride festival. The OI's founding father was none other than Pope John Paul II, who spent much time and energy endeavoring to reconcile various orthodox Christian religions and whose ecumenism prompted him to warn the Anglicans not to ordain gay priests.
John Paul also sought to build his church in nations of the developing world where traditional morality and bigotry, most especially on matters sexual, were in greater supply than in secular Europe and the increasingly egalitarian United States, and more in sync with the Catholic Church's inimitable backwardness. Now America's schismatic Episcopalians are following in his footsteps - traditionalists of the two great Western hierarchical Christian churches searching the globe for sufficiently benighted bishops.
In recent years Anglican churches have experienced their greatest growth in the developing world, which could tilt the entire global Anglican Communion toward more traditionalist norms. Only 13 of the 38 national churches within the communion ordain women as priests; only three - the United States, New Zealand and Canada - ordain women as bishops.
The American church, by contrast, has largely paralleled the transformation of Rockefeller Republicans into liberal, Democratic secularists. The old joke of New York politicos was that Jews had the incomes of Episcopalians but voted like Puerto Ricans. Now it's the Episcopal prelates who are voting like Puerto Ricans, or, more precisely, like liberal Jews. Some traditionalists fear the church isn't really theistic anymore. The comforting middle ground of the church of yore - affirming the equality of some, not discussing the equality of others - has eroded as the demands of women and gays and lesbians could no longer be dismissed.
The irony is that the Episcopal Church owes its existence directly to the American Revolution; it broke away from the Church of England during the war and was reborn as a distinctly American entity between 1784 and 1789. Fully two-thirds of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were active or (like Washington) nominal Anglicans, and, having repudiated the political authority of the king of England, they could scarcely have gone on affirming his ecclesiastical authority.
The founders of the church believed, within the context of their time, that all men were created equal. Today's defectors have thought it over in the context of our own time, and decided that they're not. ---
Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly.

Christmas Present for the Rogue Episcopalians: Bishop Should Lock and Chain the Doors

Give rogue Episcopal churches a present: Padlocks and chains

Date published: 12/23/2006

IS IT REALLY so upsetting that a few intolerant people are leaving the Episcopal Church in Virginia? Do those of us who love our church and its inclusion of humanity's most vulnerable in our focus of faith really want to waste time on those who take a "holier than thou" stance like the Pharisees whom Jesus condemned? Is it not the case that whatever you do for the least of humanity, you do for Him?

Do we want to give any credence to people who wave the Bible, citing Leviticus' prohibitions on male homosexuality while ignoring the Leviticus passage that permits slave owning and slave trading?

Here we sit in Virginia where the ground is soaked with blood over slavery, whose proponents cited biblical law, but we evidently didn't learn a thing. Apparently, in Virginia, the will of God is still whatever fulfills your political agenda.

Just as Americans came to understand that human slavery was evil as we developed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, some people, like the old Pharisees, cannot come to understand that homosexuals are the way they are because of a biological imperative. The term relating to this imperative is "androgen insufficiency." Homosexual practices have been documented in some 1,500 species in the natural world. Nature is chock-full of homosexuality. While homosexuality is not the "norm" in nature, it is normal in nature.

Next, I imagine, these Pharisaic holy ones are going to tell us that God did not create the homosexual part of the natural world--the devil did.

During a public ministry of sorts to protect gay people from being victimized because of their sexuality, I came to see them as human just like me--just with a different sexual orientation. I also found some aspects of gay behavior troublesome. The promiscuity of many gay men clearly is not good for them or for our culture. Promiscuity spreads disease, and in today's world of jet travel, disease flies at nearly the speed of sound.

No one in the Episcopal Church is saying, "Be promiscuous." Just the opposite: We are saying that a long-term, monogamous union is better for you and better for our culture regardless of your sexual orientation.

And bang that Bible all you want, but it does not specifically prohibit female homosexuality unless you want to twist the words of Saint Paul's "soft ones" to mean lesbians.

So Bishop Peter Lee of the Diocese of Virginia faces a dilemma regarding the church property of the apostate congregations. As a layperson who loves the church and especially its tolerance in the spirit of Jesus, as well as a security professional, my recommendation to him is this: Padlock the doors and hire security people to keep them locked.

The ground on which the breakaway churches sits is contaminated spiritually, so close those churches for good. Sell the property and use the funds to build new churches and consecrate the new ground.

Exactly Who is Peter J. Akinola?

Who is Archbishop Akinola?

Please read this analysis of the man who purports to speak for Anglicans in the United States. For a slightly different point of view, I also suggest that you read this report, as well.

By JOEY DiGUGLIELMO

Archbishop Peter Akinola, head of the Anglican Church in Africa, is considered by many to be a controversial, anti-gay figure. But who is he and are leaders of the Virginia churches now aligned with him downplaying Akinola’s gay views to make the religious leader more palatable to U.S. critics of the split?

Akinola has raised international eyebrows for his uber-conservative views of homosexuality. When the Church of England proposed ordaining a gay bishop, Akinola called it “an attack on the church of God — a Satanic attack on God’s church.”

And during the buildup to the Episcopal Church USA’s ordination of Gene Robinson, Akinola said, “I cannot think of how a man in his senses would be having a sexual relationship with another man. Even in the world of animals, dogs, cows, lions, we don’t hear of such things.”

He supports a proposed anti-gay bill in Nigeria that would make it illegal for gays to assemble publicly or to petition the government. The measure would also make it illegal to join gay organizations, read gay-themed literature, watch gay TV shows or films and visit gay web sites. The bill would even bar gays from dining together in restaurants. Homosexual sex is already illegal in Nigeria, punishable by jail in the south, which is predominantly Christian. In the mostly Muslim northern region, gay sex is punishable by death.

Akinola was ordained a priest in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, in 1979. He became a bishop in 1989 and an archbishop in 1997. He was made a primate of the Nigerian Anglican Church in 2000 and was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential Personalities of the World” this year. He also is chair of the 37 million-member Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa.

His harsh denunciation of all things gay is striking in its contrast to the views of Rev. Martyn Minns, the priest in charge of Truro Church in Virginia and a bishop now serving under Akinola through the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA).

The big question, then, is why the U.S. churches disenchanted with the Episcopal Church USA would want to align with Akinola and his Nigerian branch of Anglicanism.

Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University, said it’s important to consider Akinola’s cultural context and church history.

Though Akinola’s anti-gay edicts may sound harsh to Western ears, Jenkins says they’re not unusual.

“The majority of African and even Asian bishops are pretty much on the same page with him on that,” Jenkins said. “They might disagree about a lot of other things, but on the issue of homosexuality, they’re very much in agreement.”

Apart from homosexuality, Akinola’s church appeals to disenchanted Episcopal churches for two basic reasons, Jenkins said: the astounding success of his evangelical efforts (which has tripled membership to about 18 million in Nigeria from the late 1970s until now) and the historical church ties the worldwide Anglican church claims.

Evangelical Christianity is certainly alive and well in America in various denominations but CANA is appealing because it claims its ancestry back to Christ’s apostles, something U.S. evangelical churches can’t do.

“They look at it as going from being on a dying branch to going back to the trunk,” Jenkins says of the disenchanted Episcopalians.

And while Minns couches his traditional biblical views on gays in gentler ways than Akinola, they essentially share the same theology, that homosexual sex is biblically forbidden and thus sinful.


Elizabeth Perry contributed to this report.

Episcopalians in Virginia Feel Abandoned, Sorrowful

'Large, viable remnant' wants to continue as Episcopal congregation
Determination to move forward outweighs sadness

By Mary Frances Schjonberg
Tuesday, December 19, 2006


St. Stephens Church Heathsville


[Episcopal News Service] The 30 or so members of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Heathsville, Virginia, who opposed a recent vote by the majority of the congregation and the rector to join the Anglican Church of Nigeria say they want to continue as the Episcopal presence in their community.
"We are prepared to continue to operate St. Stephen's as an Episcopal Church, and I think we have people who will agree to accept leadership positions and to continue to carry on the work of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church," said Dawn Mahaffey, one of the people who voted against what some members are calling "the secession."

Sandra Kirkpatrick referred to that slowly organizing group as a "large, viable remnant."

Their determination comes not without some pain.

"Two of the speakers who wished to secede from the Episcopal Church told those of us sitting in the congregation that if we voted 'no' we were imperiling our immortal souls, and that was hard to hear," said Kirkpatrick, describing a discussion held during the week before the voting began. "This was said lovingly by people who have been my friends – dear friends – for over 10 years but they are very, very, very convinced that they are dong the right thing in leaving the Episcopal Church and they are acting genuinely worried about those of us who are not."

Mahaffey said she does "truly love" the family she has at St. Stephen's.

"This is not personal. These people have been my family, and I, and I don't think any of the others that have come to me, would harbor any evil feelings toward our fellow parishioners," she said. "This has been an issue around leadership and it's just been the way in which it has been handled. I don't think it's been done in a kind and equitable and fair way."

She called the actions of the vestry and the rector, the Rev. Jeffrey Cerar, "divisive, irresponsible and manipulative."

At that meeting to discuss the resolutions, Margaret Cox, a St. Stephen's member whose husband was rector from 1967 to 1972, said that a resolution to take possession of the St. Stephen's property "sounds like taking something that does not belong to you." She reiterated a number of the bequests and gifts given to the parish through the years, adding that "none of us owns this property; we only hold it in trust."

Meade Kilduff, who was baptized at St. Stephen's on December 28, 1918, told the same meeting that she liked the liturgy, the Episcopal Church's history and tradition and the ways the Bible is emphasized "again and again."

"Last but not least I like the inclusiveness of our church. It is our gem," she said. "I want to assure you, there is at St. Stephen's a loyal and substantial group of communicants committed to staying at St. Stephen's as an Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia."

Cox and Kilduff were part of a contingent that re-built St. Stephen's congregation after it dwindled to about 24 communicants in the 1970s, following a dispute with the diocese about vestry elections, Kirkpatrick said.

"Now these ladies, they're ready to do it again," she said. "There is a very staunch core of older people who don't want this to happen."

St. Stephen's is one of eight Diocese of Virginia congregations in which a majority of members announced December 17 that they were severing ties with the Episcopal Church and aligning themselves with Anglicans in either Nigeria or Uganda. More information about the Virginia votes is available here.

Heathsville is the county seat of Northumberland County in what is known as the Northern Neck of Virginia, a peninsula that borders the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. While the jurisdiction known as the Parish of St. Stephen's dates to the 1650s, the congregation of St. Stephen's was formed in the 1880s and, according to the church's website, "struggled for decades to keep the church open."

Mahaffey said there will be a meeting later this week to determine who is involved and what exactly they want to do.

The Diocese of Virginia issued a statement December 18 saying it plans to offer "every encouragement to establish structures necessary for their continuity as the Episcopal Church." Meanwhile, the statement said, the departing and remaining members of all eight congregations have agreed to a 30-day "standstill" during which no actions will be taken concerning church property.

A 40-day discernment period that led up to the vote felt like a "force-feeding" on the part of the vestry, Kirkpatrick said. However, the effort backfired in one small group as the members "managed to get into a serious discussion of what we wanted as Episcopalians, what we felt about our church and where our spiritual journeys had led us."

"At the end of this 40-day discernment period we had discovered each other," she said "We had found that there were enough of us that really cared to remain Episcopalians and really cared about being an Episcopal Church presence in Heathsville that we were ready to go to the consider expense of time, money and emotion to try and do this, as opposed to just going elsewhere, which would be very, very easy to do."

Both Mahaffey and Kirkpatrick said that the decision at the 2003 General Convention to consent to the election of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire prompted a change in the attitude of St. Stephen's leadership, which only got more determined with time.

Mahaffey said that Cerar initially said at a congregational meeting late in 2003 that he would try to work within the framework of the Episcopal Church to make changes but that he would leave if he felt he could not continue in the church. He said at that meeting that if he left and if others joined him, they would not attempt to take over St. Stephen's property, she said.

In December 2003, Kirkpatrick said, a vestry survey showed that the majority of St. Stephen's members wanted to remain in the Episcopal Church.

However, Mahaffey recalled, the perceived failings of the Episcopal Church "became the topic of his sermons from that point forward. It did not matter what the liturgy was for any given Sunday or what the Gospel was, there was always a way to bring the topic around to that issue. We very often got the message that the Episcopal Church had sinned and needed to be repentant."

"It got to the point that our needs for pastoral oversight and ministry were not being met because of the single-minded focus on this issue. We were not hearing the Word and how that was applicable in our daily lives. I don't think we were being ministered to in all of our needs."

There was a "steady outgo of people who found this message intolerable," Kirkpatrick said, and a "steady influx" of people who approved of the leadership's position.

"Everyone down here knew that St. Stephen's was taking this stance," she said.

Mahaffey said the growing disaffection with the Episcopal Church "has been very well staged."

"I think it has been sold to the congregation," she said. "Three years of hearing it week after week after week."

The issue of homosexuality was the "precipitating event but it has gone so far beyond that that I haven't even heard that mentioned in probably the last year," Kirkpatrick said. "The first year it was an issue, but not since. It has been: 'We know the truth and we are telling it to you. If you don't accept this truth then you really don't belong here."

"It is biblical inerrancy – taking the Bible seriously as a primary source, taking the Bible literally in a lot of cases. There's very much been from the pulpit and from everyone connected with the leaving-the-Episcopal-Church-side that there is one way, there is one truth and that they know what that one way and that one truth is… that anyone [who] believes, says, [or] accepts the idea that anyone could find truth in a religious life any way except through Jesus Christ in this particular narrow revelation of him is not a Christian."

Because many members left St. Stephen's or didn't attend frequently, some of them were declared ineligible to vote on either December 10 or December 17, including Mahaffey's 21-year-old son.

Acknowledging that the pressures of college and work also kept him away, Mahaffey said her son asked her a year ago: "Why would I want to sit there and have to listen to being indoctrinated into leaving something that I believe in?"

It is painful, she said, to have this example set for him.

Some have also questioned the ability of the parish's leadership to hold the vote on two different days. Kirkpatrick said that many people pushed to have the ballot boxes secured during the intervening days and they were in fact held in the evidence room of the county courthouse. A local paper featured a picture of the boxes being brought back to the church on December 17.

After the vote was announced that day, Kirkpatrick said the rector told the meeting that "he hoped that we continue as a congregation, and that he wanted very much to be a pastor to everyone, whether they voted yes or no, but that those of us who voted no should submit to the will of the majority who had decided to leave the church."

Mahaffey said she's disappointed that the dispute came down to the vote, which was 132-33 in favor of severing ties and 94-37 in favor of trying to retain the church property. Those who opposed either motion are not unanimous in their opinions about the Episcopal Church, she said.

"The bottom line of all of us that we can agree on is that it's not worth what's going on here," she said.

When she moved to the area, Kirkpatrick, who has been an Episcopalian for about 55 years, said she knew she was "more liberal in my theology" than many of the friends she made.

"But we have all this time been a wonderful church where we might not agree about things but we could talk about them, and grow and learn from each other," she said. "I have grown a great deal here and I am very, very grateful for the spiritual experience that I had at St. Stephen's before all this happened."

Mahaffey agreed that St. Stephen's has "good, loving people."

"In many ways I feel that the back of St. Stephen's has been broken and that neither side is going to be whole. We are now a broken church. We are a broken parish. We are a broken family," she said. "It could have all been prevented had what was promised to us in 2003 come to fruition: that we work within the framework of the church to affect change with things that we disagree . . . Now we're all going to have to find a way to heal – both sides. But there is a loyal following of Episcopalians at St. Stephen's and we don't want to be forgotten."

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service

Peter Akinola, Archbishop in Nigeria - Bigot or Savior?

Profile: Archbishop Peter Akinola

Archbishop Akinola says God chose him to protect the scriptures
Peter Akinola, 63, leads 37 million Anglicans as chair of the Anglican Church in Africa.
As head of the fastest growing part of the Anglican communion, he is becoming an increasingly important figure.

His growing influence is largely due to his conservative stance on gay marriage, a position that appeals to his African congregation.

Recently, two of the oldest and largest church congregations in the US voted to bring themselves under his authority.

On Sunday, 90% of members of Truro Church and Falls Church in Northern Virginia voted to leave the American Episcopal church, amid a row over the ordination of gay priests.

'Creeping in'

Archbishop Akinola - a man known for his outspoken views on homosexuality - says he is thankful to God over the decision.

The Church of Nigeria has a well known position on this matter

Archbishop Peter Akinola

"Once there's a crack in the wall, you are likely to have all sorts creeping in" he told the BBC News website in Abuja.

"When we began to notice these cracks a few years back, we did try as much as humanly possible under God to patch up these cracks," he added.

But, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (Ecusa) refused to back down.

"Since the leadership of the church in America keeps doing everything we thought they would not do, those who don't agree with them have chosen to go where they want to go and I thank God," he said.

New template

A father of six, he describes himself as "an ordinary pastor in the church of God" but chosen by God to protect the scriptures.

Never the one to shy away from controversy, Bishop Akinola's strong views and public criticism of government policies quickly made him popular among Nigerian Christians and led to his election as head of the powerful Christian Association of Nigeria, an umbrella organisation for all Nigerian christian groups.

Born in Abeaokuta in south-western Nigeria in 1944, Mr Akinola is popular for his unique understanding of African cultures which he always related with parallels from the Bible's Old Testament.

Abeokuta was the birth place of another promient Anglican cleric, Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a former slave who became Nigeria's first indigenous Anglican bishop. Loved and respected by his Anglican congregation and other Christian bodies in the country, Mr Akinola is a staunch supporter of Nigeria's anti-graft agency which has been criticised for its alleged "selective" fight against corruption.

However, some within the Anglican Church say he is backed by conservative bishops and theologians who seek to dominate the Anglican Church in America.

"I object to that very strongly and I condemn with every nerve in my body such insinuations," the archbishop told the BBC angrily.

"The Church of Nigeria has a well known position on this matter," he added, while accusing Ecusa of denying the authority and supremacy of the scripture.

He said the American church was trying to create a new religious template and expecting everybody to log on to that template.

"The liturgy of the church and the scripture on which we base our practices and beliefs do not agree with gay marriage and we cannot accept it," he stated categorically.

Growing power

Called a bigot by some in the Anglican Church, his attitudes nonetheless represent a deep-rooted conservative tradition in African Christianity that is flourishing and growing.

Contrast that with declining congregations in the West and you begin to see why he is such an important figure, says the BBC's religious affairs reporter, Rahul Tandon.

Initially he proposed that Nigerians in America who oppose what they see as the Episcopal Church's liberal attitude could join a branch of his church in the US.

Now it seems some US congregations are keen to do the same.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will be watching with some concern, our correspondent says.

Peter Akinola's growing power could well lead to a schism within the Anglican communion, he says.

An Innocents' Guide to Things Anglican in USA

Jonathan has done an excellent story in the Daily Telegraph, a follow to the other Jonathan's offering in the Sunday. I mentioned this story to my newsdesk this week, who groaned. "Schism mark 27? No thank you. Can't you give us more on the Bishop of Southwark?" One problem I believe is that people might be confused by who is who, which covenant is which, what separates the AAC from the ACC (quite a lot), Nigeria from the US. (Ok, well maybe people are not confused about that last one.) In any case, the latest schism with all its ramifications can be followed with links on Thinking Anglicans. The response from Inclusive Church is up there too.

What this latest story does perhaps reflect is that the obsession with TEC is something of a diversion. Schism, if it happens, will happen here first, in the CofE. Even so, I don't believe it will be a full-blooded schism, although it might well be full-bloodied. But this could be one unexpected consequence of the opposition to women priests that led to the Act of Synod. A precedent of alternative oversight has been set which it will be difficult for the Archbishop of Canterbury to ignore. Another thing that cannot be ignored is that the evangelical constituency is large and getting bigger all the time. It has grown beyond what the liberals of the last century ever imagined it could. Analysis by Peter Brierley of his English Church Census shows that in the Church of England, evangelical churches make up 26 per cent of the total, actual worshippers make up 34 per cent and of the largest churches with a membership of more than 350, 83 per cent are evangelical.

Anyway, if you are not confused by the whole scene, I certainly am. So I asked a friend to compile an "idiot's guide" to the conservative scene in the US for me. He politely sent back what he called an "innocent's guide". So here it is.

The innocent's guide to US orthodox Anglicans.

The Episcopal Church – TEC. This was formerly known as ECUSA, the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. The name change this year was because it has members and dioceses in 18 nations in the Americas, and even a jurisdiction in Europe which overlaps with the Church of England Diocese of Europe. Some see wider ambitions in the name change.

The Anglican Communion Network. This is a coalition of eight dioceses within TEC, whose bishops and conventions have rejected the direction that ECUSA is taking, and claim to be the ones who are faithful to the title deeds of ECUSA. They have appealed to the Primates of the Anglican Communion for alternative oversight to that of TEC. They have not left TEC because if they do they fear law suits for their property.

Overseas Jurisdictions. Parishes outside these eight dioceses have appealed to archbishops and bishops in Africa and Latin America to give them oversight. They have left ECUSA, and in many cases their property, salaries and pension arrangements. They receive oversight from overseas. They form a convocation linked with the ACN. They have no bishop in America.

The Anglican Mission in America. This began in 1992 when Charles Murphy and John Rodgers were consecrated bishop in Singapore by the Archbishop of South East Asia, Moses Tay, and the Archbishop of Rwanda, Emmanuel Kolini. They sit in the House of Bishops of the Church of Rwanda. They oversee churches which have decided they cannot in conscience be identified with ECUSA. These churches have left their buildings. The priests have left their salaries and their pension arrangements behind. "They express joy at being free of the church arguments over homosexuality in order to get on with the task of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ," says my source. About 100 churches belong to the Mission. They hold an annual conference in January, attended by a number of Anglican Primates.

Convocation of Anglicans in North America. This is under the jurisdiction of Peter Akinola's Church of Nigeria which consecrated Bishop Martyn Minns to be a bishop in America for them. Their initial constituency is congregations of Nigerian Anglicans in North America. But other large churches outside the Anglican Communion Network dioceses are voting on whether to join them. (Truro, The Fall’s Church, All Saints' in the Diocese of Virginia).

All these four groups have formed a movement called Common Cause, to work together on issues which they hold in common.

The Common Cause movement also includes some older continuing Anglican churches such as The Reformed Episcopal Church, formed in the 1870s, which are Anglican Churches not currently in formal communion with Canterbury.

All the above are churches which have bishops and a formal ecclesiastical structure. There are also movements which embrace people who belong in one or other of these structures.

These are Forward in Faith, and the AAC. These act as advocacy and activist groups advising and supporting parishes and persons who are seeking to be biblically orthodox. They are not formal ecclesiastical structures.

Best blog sites representing the debates around these groups are on the Classical Anglican site. They include Lord Carey's son Andrew, and Kendall Harmon's widely-read TitusOneNine. Another must read for this constituency is Matt Kennedy's exhaustive StandFirm, always with interesting comments. And then there is the distinctively personal but well-informed blog of Peter Ould, whose vidcast on Katharine Schori, below, will give you a good idea of how things stand between her and the US conservatives at present. Anglican Mainstream also documents events worldwide, including the US. And AAC also has a terrific blog.

If anyone can send me a similar guide to the other side, I'll post that too. And the same goes for the conservative and liberal scenes in the UK.

Trinity Church Choir and Handel's Messiah

In our video on demand section (see right column about half way down page) I have installed a most interesting video of the choir and orchestra of Trinity Church Wall Street, New York performing some excerpts of Messiah by George Frederic Handel in its December 2005 performance. I hope you will enjoy the choir and orchestra, and the commentary by the director. You know, its really great to be involved with the Episcopal Church because of its tradition of great music.

PAT

Virginia Episcopalians Joining San Joaquin in Leaving Us

There may be some big changes ahead for two Virginia Episcopalian churches. In response to openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson's 2003 ascension in New Hampshire, officals in Virginia are considering breaking away from the American branch of the Anglican Church. Rather than associating with what they feel to be too liberal a church, leaders from The Falls Church, in the City of Falls Church, and Truro Church, in Fairfax City are looking to affiliate themselves with the religion's Nigerian branch.

The Washington Post reports:


If the votes at The Falls Church and Truro succeed, as their leaders predict, the 3,000 active members of the two churches would join a new, Fairfax-based organization that answers to Nigerian Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, leader of the 17 million-member Nigerian church and an advocate of jailing gays. The new group hopes to become a U.S.-based denomination for orthodox Episcopalians.

You may remember that Akinola's a virulently outspoken opponent of gays, spouting some of pretty vile anti-gay rhetoric, such as called queers "a cancerous lump in the body [which] should be excised if it has defied every known cure." (That is just plain crude and rude. But we always knew many of the people in Africa were sort of backward anyway ... )

Worth a combined $25 million, the churches risk losing everything if they split. It's also worth noting that our first President, Mr. George Washington, practiced at the Fairfax church. Upon hearing of the vote, Washington promptly turned over in his grave.

Let's pray for them and pray for our PB as she attempts to put it all back together again.

PAT

San Joaquin Diocese Decides to Abandon Us

This very sad report from California reached me earlier today ... how can a Bishop simply walk away with an entire diocese from our church? I do not know about others of our faith, but I intend to REMAIN EPISCOPAL as the majority of the church members in San Joaquin, California apparently intend to do. Please join me in prayer for this errant bishop and those who chose to walk with him. PAT


San Joaquin convention seeks to sever diocese from Episcopal Church
Presiding Bishop, deputies' president respond to 'extracanonical' actions

By Mary Frances Schjonberg
Monday, December 04, 2006

[Episcopal News Service] The Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop and the President of its House of Deputies both said on December 4 they deplore the action taken two days earlier by the Diocese of San Joaquin, effectively repudiating its membership in the Episcopal Church.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said in a statement that she "laments" the move and is working with others to respond to "these extracanonical actions."

"Our task as the Episcopal Church is God's mission of reconciling the world, and actions such as this distract and detract from that mission," she said.

Jefferts Schori said in her statement that she also "deeply" laments the "pain, confusion, and suffering visited on loyal members of the Episcopal Church within the Diocese of San Joaquin," and wants them "to know of my prayers and the prayers of many, many others."

House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson expressed similar concerns.

"I am saddened by the actions of the bishop and the convention in the Diocese of San Joaquin," she said. "In my mind's eye, I can see the faces of the deputies from the diocese and I wonder how they must be feeling. In the diocese there must be a mix of emotions present. Surely the people are not all of one mind."

Anderson -- elected in 2006 to lead the church's clergy and lay deputies representing each of the Episcopal Church's 110 dioceses -- said that those who claim "I have no need of you" bear "a huge burden."

"I pray that Episcopalians in the Diocese of San Joaquin know they are held closely in prayer by me and many of their brothers and sisters across the Episcopal Church," she said.

Meeting during its 47th annual Convention December 1-2, the diocese approved the first reading of four constitutional amendments which would remove references to the Episcopal Church, make the Standing Committee the ecclesiastical authority in the absence of any sitting bishops, put all diocesan trust funds under the control of the bishop, and permit the diocese unilaterally to extend itself beyond its current geographic boundaries.

The constitutional amendments will not take effect until a second vote is taken at another annual convention meeting, scheduled for October 2007. The second reading will require a two-thirds majority in order for the amendments to pass, according to the release.

Jefferts Schori noted in her statement that if the amendments pass their second reading, they effectively violate the requirements of the Episcopal Church's Constitution and Canons. Article V, Section 1 says that a diocese's constitution must include "an unqualified accession" to the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church.

The convention also passed a resolution directing the bishop, council, and standing committee "to assess the means of our affiliation with a recognized Ecclesiastical structure of the Anglican Communion," and bring the next convention a "detailed plan for the preservation of our relationship with the Anglican Communion."

The only constitutional amendment described in a diocesan news release issued December 2 and posted on the diocese's website was a change to Article II of its constitution. The change would identify the diocese specifically as a "constituent member of the Anglican Communion and in full communion with the See of Canterbury."

In a vote by orders, 68 of the clergy voted in favor of the amendment, while 16 were opposed. The lay delegates voted 108 in favor, with 12 opposed to the amendment to Article II, according to the news release.

The other three proposed amendments passed by similar margins.

"Official observers" were present from dissident congregations in other California dioceses, including St. John's Anglican Church, Fallbrook; St. Anne's Church, Oceanside; St. James' Church, Newport Beach; St. Luke's of the Mountains Anglican Church in La Crescenta; St. Jude's Church, Burbank; and the Western Convocation of the Anglican Communion Network, based in Long Beach. The observers stood applauding when the constitutional amendment expanding the boundaries of the diocese passed.

"This amending process is the first step in the removal from our Constitution of any reference to the Episcopal Church because – in our opinion – they have decided to walk apart from the Anglican Communion," Schofield said in his convention address.

Schofield said that since the 1974 irregular ordinations of 11 women deacons as Episcopal priests, "many voices familiar to you [have] withstood the erosion of faith, the lowering of the standards of morality, and the unilateral action of the Episcopal Church." Schofield is one of only three remaining diocesan bishops who oppose the ordination of women as priests and bishops in the Episcopal Church. He also opposes the 2003 election of a gay bishop in New Hampshire.

But not all agreed with the convention's action. In a written message to the gathering, Maria Rivera, daughter of the late Bishop Victor M. Rivera, third bishop of San Joaquin, told the convention that "wrenching this Diocese from its mother church accomplishes no spiritual goal that cannot be achieved in less violent and more Christian ways."

The Rev. Rick Matters, rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Lodi, California, said that members of the diocese who disagree with the convention's choices are "optimistic and prayerful and wearied by the spiritual violence, and the spiritual battle we've undertaken."

"We are remaining faithful to Jesus Christ from within the Episcopal expression of the faith," Matters said. "The posturing out here is a false choice: you choose Jesus or you choose the Episcopal Church, you choose scriptural witness or you abandon that and go with the Presiding Bishop and the House of Bishops. We deny that false dichotomy."

The group Remain Episcopal is making plans as well, he said. "We're going to have a plan of how to maintain this diocese – those of us who want to continue in the Episcopal Church," Matters said.

Matters said that in pre-convention meetings Schofield told the diocese's deaneries that in November he signed a "pledge of allegiance" to six Anglican Communion bishops, including Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola and Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone (South America), who addressed the convention Eucharist by an internet downlink.

"He is now taking orders from them in terms of how to leave and separate from the Episcopal Church and how to realign," Matters said, adding that Schofield told the meetings that those bishops were setting the timetable for such a move and determining who would be involved.

The convention's actions occurred just after an exchange of letters between Jefferts Schori and Schofield. On November 20, the Presiding Bishop sent Schofield a letter, telling him that if he disagrees with the policy of the church "the more honorable course would be to renounce your orders in this Church and seek a home elsewhere."

She warned in the letter that his public assertion that he must violate his vows "puts many, many people at hazard of profound spiritual violence."

On November 28, Schofield replied that, because she had not issued him an ultimatum but instead offered "further discussion which could possibly lead to some degree of reconciliation," he would not move up the date of the 2007—unless she or anyone else charges him with violating his ordination vows to uphold the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, he told Jefferts Schori, he believes "the Episcopal Church, as an institution, is walking a path of apostasy and those faithful to God's Word are forced to make painful choices."

The Diocese of San Joaquin comprises about 10,000 Episcopalians worshipping in 48 congregations.