From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-
In a Texas cathedral where the liturgical nuances of Anglo-Catholicism mingled with the joyous shouts of Pentecostalism, Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh called together a body representing 100,000 people who had left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.
Yesterday they adopted the constitution of the new Anglican Church in North America, which they hope will eventually be recognized as a province of the 80 million-member global Anglican Communion. The 2.1 million-member Episcopal Church is the U.S. province of the communion.
"There is a great reformation of the Christian Church under way. We North American Anglicans are in the midst of it," their new archbishop told a standing-room only crowd gathered in St. Vincent Cathedral in Bedford, Texas. It was the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth which, like the Diocese of Pittsburgh, had broken with the Episcopal Church, taking the majority of its parishes with it.
The new body unites four such dioceses, many additional parishes that had been under the protection of Anglican bishops on other continents, and some older splinter groups. About 900 people are at the four-day meeting, including 300 voting delegates.
They believe the Episcopal Church has failed to uphold biblical authority and traditional Christian doctrine on matters ranging from the divinity of Christ to sexual ethics.
"While much of mainline Protestantism is finding itself adrift from its origins of submission to the word, there is an ever-growing stream of North American Protestantism that has re-embraced scriptural authority just as we have," the archbishop-elect said. This includes people in evangelical and Pentecostal churches seeking a deeper connection with ancient Christian practices, he said.
His ratification as archbishop-elect had taken place hours earlier in a closed meeting of bishops, but the delegates cheered and applauded when he briefly mentioned it.
More here-
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09174/979224-455.stm
No comments:
Post a Comment