AmericanPapist Comments
Interesting. Mildly anyway. Usually, a schism from a schism tends to be a move away from orthodoxy. This one seems to move toward it. A little.
Apt description, Ed. If Anglicanism moved West of the Church, this new schism doesn't so much move back East, as it does North (or maybe NNE).
It's my understanding, from admittedly casual observance, that these African "conservative" Anglicans are far more evangelical than they are Catholic. This as opposed to TAC and other "conservative" High Church Anglo-Catholics in the West.
Let's pray this schism leads them all a step closer home!
I guess "Bishop" Schori and "Archbishop Rowan" are not very persuasive. What loons. Tom
At the same time the Traditional Anglicans are nearly back in the fold of Holy Mother Church. Lead by Arch Hepworth it is a case of when not if.
Thomas - Your observation is correct about the conservative African Anglicans (and their various counterparts in the US, such as Rwanda's AMIA, Nigeria's CANA, etc). Most Anglo-Catholics in the sense you describe have severed ties with Canterbury-centered Anglicans, some by going to Rome (directly or via Anglican-use parishes) or (fewer) Constantinople, others by joining continuing churches (which are numerous) which split in the wake of women's ordination and/or various prayer book mutilations. The largest of these continuing churches in the US is called the Anglican Church in America (ACA); it's worldwide umbrella is the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) that is currently in play for full communion with Rome. Some of these continuing bodies have inter-communion (for example, the Anglican Catholic Church, the United Episcopal Church of North America [which, oddly, is low-church], and the Anglican Province of Christ the King). The Anglican Church in America (ACA, the local TAC franchise) was itself the product of a merger of sorts between the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Catholic Church, though only a minority of the Anglican Catholic Church entered the merger. The leftover majority in the Anglican Catholic Church subsequently had a schism of their own, which led to the creation of the Anglican Province of America or APA. This APA is part of the Common Cause Partnership, which includes several Episcopal (official US Anglican franchise holders, at least for now) dioceses, the African mission dioceses based in the US, and the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). If you include it among the continuing churches, REC would be the largest by parish count, but its origin is much older (by a century) than most of the continuing churches, and it split because the 19th century Episcopal Church was viewed as becoming too Catholic. Unlike the Anglo-Catholic continuers, REC is more aligned with the 1662 Prayer Book and 39 articles (which are very reformed in theology). I'm not sure how APA (which usually self-describes as traditional anglican of a catholic and liturgical stripe) will feel as a part of whatever emerges as a governing structure for conservative Anglicans, and tensions are already in play over (you guessed it) women's ordination, which some Common Cause Partners members endorse. With some exceptions, the conservative folks left battling inside the Anglican Communion are of a similar stripe - reformed, evangelical, etc. There are a few exceptions at the diosecan and parish level (eg, San Joanquin and some parishes in Philly and Baltimore, respectively), but most Anglo-Catholics in the US were long gone by the time the most recent battles over same-sex blessings came to a head. The same is true in England, where the ordination of women (supported by some evangelicals who saw its opposition as too much Romeward leaning) scraped off most of those who saw themselves as the heirs of Pusey and Newman. Today, Anglo-Catholic usually me
sorry - got truncated - Today, Anglo-Catholic usually means someone has high church aesthetics, unitarian theology, and sectarian liberal politics.
For full disclosure, I was confirmed Roman Catholic but followed the typical lapsed path, married in and eventually joined the Episcopal Church (PECUSA), then left PECUSA when my parish reaffiliated with the Church of Nigeria. I am in the process of reconciling with Mother Church, attending weekly Mass without receiving. I am grateful for the heartfelt witness I saw among conservative Anglicans, but in the final analysis I think the via media is an illusion.
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