The fourth annual council meeting of the Anglican Communion Network began July 30 with a somber address in which the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Network, stressed that reforming The Episcopal Church is a lost cause. Later, during a question-and-answer session, he criticized the Archbishop of Canterbury for not intervening more forcefully.
“The American province is lost and something will have to replace it,” said Bishop Duncan, who has served as the Network’s elected moderator for three and a half years.
That message also took a visual form as Bishop Duncan showed portions of a video. The video, backed by discordant piano music, depicted The Episcopal Church as a large blue circle. Several smaller blue circles, labeled Common Cause Partnership, emerged from the large circle. The Episcopal Church’s circle faded, and the Common Cause circles formed into one new and equally large circle.
Bishop Duncan expressed his disappointment that the Archbishop of Canterbury has not supported Network members in ways that he and other Network leaders had hoped.
“Never, ever has he spoken publicly in defense of the orthodox in the United States,” Bishop Duncan said of the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, adding that “the cost is his office.
“To lose that historic office is a cost of such magnitude that God must be doing a new thing,” he said.
A reporter for The Living Church asked Bishop Duncan to expand on his remarks about the cost of the archbishop’s office. “I was actually expanding on a remark that the Archbishop of Sydney made during a breakfast I had with him two weeks ago,” Bishop Duncan said, explaining that both the See of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference have been lost as instruments of communion.
“The fact is that the Archbishop of Canterbury has not led in a way that might have saved his office and might have saved Lambeth,” Bishop Duncan said.
He cited the willingness of presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt to go further than the law allowed during times of national crisis.
“In this crisis, we’ve had no leader to lead,” he said. Asked if he thought that being in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury was essential to being Anglican, Bishop Duncan said that being obedient to scripture is of greater importance than being recognized by Canterbury.
Bishop Duncan was asked earlier in the day whether he would be willing to stand again for nomination as moderator of the Network. He said he was willing to stand for nomination again unless the council refused to ratify the theological statement and articles of the Common Cause Partnership.
After Bishop Duncan’s address, delegates to the council discussed a theological statement in support of the Common Cause Partnership, which they ratified. They also began discussing articles of incorporation for Common Cause Partnership. At the request of the Rt. Rev. James Stanton, Bishop of Dallas, the council delayed a ratification vote on the articles until voting on any proposed revisions to the Network’s charter.
Bishop Stanton stressed that Common Cause’s articles would commit the Network to actions that violate the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church. On Tuesday, the council is scheduled to discuss a proposal to delete from its charter a reference to operating within the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church.
Douglas LeBlanc
01 August 2007 at 12:48 pm
Bishop Duncan and others at the Network Annual Conference have spoken the truth about TEC. The realignment that we have heard spoken of for 3+ years is coming to fruition.
01 August 2007 at 5:01 pm
It would appear that Bishop Duncan and his cohorts at the recent meeting of the so-called ‘Anglican Communion Network’ are acting without the authority of the Church of which they claim to be members. Surely, to be able to call one’s organisation by such a title should indicate some sort of official standing within the Anglican Communion.
One can only suppose that ACN, like the plethora of other newly-constituted bodies which presume to speak for the entire Communion, but are content to resile from the constitutional authority of the Anglican Church which is vested (by common consent of the constituent Churches,)
in the historic Canterbury Primacy, is working towards the Global South agenda of seeking to overturn the leadership of that See.
Such a move would certainly render their (ACN’s & Global South’s) membership of the world-wide Anglican Communion no longer tenable.
01 August 2007 at 8:18 pm
Ron Smith states: “It would appear that Bishop Duncan and his cohorts at the recent meeting of the so-called ‘Anglican Communion Network’ are acting without the authority of the Church of which they claim to be members.”
These so-called cohorts are acting with the authority of God-his Laws and Commandments.
“the Church” does not dictate to, or come before God.
02 August 2007 at 2:42 am
What is the meaning of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference ‘being lost’, according to Bob Duncan and Peter Jensen? Does this mean to them: (a) ‘lost to our cause’ or (b) ‘we have given up on the present holder of the office and next year’s Lambeth Conference’ or (c) we no longer believe at all in the office of Canterbury itself as a pivotal role for the Anglican Communion nor in the Lambeth Conference as a 10 yearly meeting of Anglican bishops.
It seems to me that (a) and (b) are meant. Now if (c) is also meant, then that is very serious indeed, and needs stating clearly. Then the irony would be that for Peter Jensen and Bob Duncan there would be no longer four instruments of unity, but only two - and one of those they have already given up on, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the other, the Primates’ Meeting, is presided over by one the instruments of unity they don’t believe in, Canterbury. This would make it plain that they would be emphatically against the Windsor Report and the Covenant process. It is that serious.
02 August 2007 at 10:20 am
The Four Instruments of Unity are man made guidelines. As Anglicanism is a branch of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, Anglicans share in the heritage of the Church’s 7 ecumenical councils, the writings of the Church Fathers, in the witness of all the saints and in the true reading of Scripture. Anglicans have many tools of discernment. These tools of discernment are the Church’s only authority when seeking God’s leading in times of chaos.