Friday, November 21, 2008

Episcopal Church dissidents aim for new church


The Washington Post's report on the proposed new "province". They confirm that two thirds of the Primates need to check off on it and Martin Minns says they will have a "majority".


In recent months four dioceses out of 110 have split from the church in California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Illinois. The church says that fewer than 100 out of 7,100 congregations had either left or voted to leave before that.

RECOGNITION AS A PROVINCE

Robert Lundy, spokesman for the conservative American Anglican Council, estimates that the recent splits have pushed the number higher.

The next step, he said, is for those and like-minded others to create a church that can be recognized as a province. Provinces, such as the Episcopal Church, are divisions of the Anglican Communion, each headed by a presiding bishop called a primate.

The global church is a federation of such provinces with no strong hierarchical authority as exists in the Roman Catholic Church.

Minns, a former Episcopalian elevated to bishop by the Church of Nigeria and leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said the new province could count on 100,000 people as its average weekly attendance. The Episcopal Church says its average weekly attendance is about 727,000.

Becoming a province would require approval from two-thirds of the primates and recognition from the Anglican Consultative Council, another church body.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/20/AR2008112002287.html

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