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From The Living Church-
Yet the persistence of Christian faith within the Episcopal Church, and especially the persistence of the witness of the Communion Partners, shows that the formation of ACNA was not necessary, and therefore not justified, because there is no justification for breaking fellowship with other Christians. Christ is not divided; his people are still in the Episcopal Church; even his people who hold to the very priorities that ACNA and GAFCON claim (viz., on human sexuality) remain in the Episcopal Church. If ACNA deems a commitment to traditional conceptions of sexuality and marriage necessary, it cannot claim that leaving the Episcopal Church was necessary to hold those commitments.[6]
My theological vocation has demanded that if I am to be an Anglican in the United States, I need to be an Episcopalian. The Anglican Communion actually is something; there is a given-ness to its life and structures, and a part of this given-ness is that the Anglican Communion is a communion of churches in communion with the See of Canterbury. In the United States, the Anglican province is the Episcopal Church. I found that in my theological research and writing, when I was engaged in Anglican ecclesiology, I could only write with reference to the Episcopal Church. I know no other way to do ecclesiology. In order to exercise this vocation with integrity, and in order to work for the flourishing of the Anglican Communion, and in order to seek the highest degree of communion possible with the greatest number of Christians possible, I have stepped away from the ACNA for the Episcopal Church. I am not suggesting that others in the ACNA come over into the Episcopal Church;[7] I’m simply explaining my route.
More here-
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2017/11/15/how-the-acna-helped-me-become-an-episcopalian/
From ACNS-
Anglicans and Roman Catholics should see in each other “a community in which the Holy Spirit is alive and active,” the latest communiqué from the official ecumenical dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church says.
Members of the third-phase of the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic) met in the central German city of Erfurt early this month for their seventh meeting. They chose to meet in the city to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation – it is here that Martin Luther was ordained and lived as a monk.
During their meeting, the members of Arcic agreed the text of a new statement looking at Anglican and Roman Catholic ecclesiology. Walking Together on the Way: Learning to be Church – Local, Regional, Universal, to be known as The Erfurt Document, will be published next year.
More here-
http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2017/05/anglicans-and-roman-catholics-agree-statement-on-ecclesiology.aspx
From Plough-
Ulrich Stadler, a mining official from the Tyrol, became part of the nascent Anabaptist movement in the early 1520s. He led fellow believers under persecution and founded several communal settlements. Together with one of these groups, he eventually joined the Hutterite church. Stadler’s writings demonstrate deep spiritual insight and have been valued by Anabaptists up to the present day. In this teaching, he examines the metaphor of the body of believers used by the apostle Paul in Romans 12.
There is one communion (gmain) of all the faithful in Christ and one community (gmainschaft) of the holy children called of God. They have one Father in heaven, one Lord Christ; all are baptized and sealed in their hearts with one Spirit. They have one mind, opinion, heart, and soul as having all drunk from the same Fountain, and alike await one and the same struggle, cross, trial, and, at length, one and the same hope in glory. But it, that is, such a community (gmain) must move about in this world, poor, miserable, small, and rejected of the world, of whom, however, the world is not worthy.
More here-
http://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/anabaptists/what-is-the-true-church
From Dan Martins-
After breakfast in the hotel restaurant with our friends Bishop Marty and Donna Field of West Missouri, the work day for bishops began at 9am with Morning Prayer at our meeting room tables, while the spouses headed out for a field trip to Thistle Farms.
We then got into our morning session, which featured four presentations followed by a panel discussion around the themes of justice and reconciliation. The presenters and panelists were Bishop Suheil Dawani of the Diocese of Jerusalem and the Middle East, Hisham Nassar, MD, also of that diocese; Rabbi Steven Gutow, Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs; and Canon David Porter, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Director of Reconciliation. The Diocese of Jerusalem is in fund-raising mode, mostly to help fund their expansive educational and medical social ministry in four countries, mostly among non-Christians, and the presentations were aimed at supporting that project.
I was particularly struck by one of Bishop Dawani's slides that quantified the decline of Christian numbers in the Holy Land over the past century. As recently as the end of World War II, Syria was one-third Christian and the city of Bethlehem has a solid Christian majority. Now, for a combination of reasons, there is a danger that Christianity will disappear from the land where Christianity was born. Rabbi Gutow was a compelling advocate for a fearless tenacity in the struggle for reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians, and a two-state solution. Canon Porter, who is Scots-Irish from Belfast, brings impressive credentials to his new position on the Archbishop's staff. He ended with the sobering reminder that peace and reconciliation are usual quite costly. Usually, somebody who deserves justice doesn't get it. But embracing that difficult truth is preferable to perpetuating the cycle of violence, and lies at the very heart of gospel ministry.
More here-
http://www.cariocaconfessions.blogspot.com/2013/09/house-of-bishops-day-2-fall-2013.html
From The Living Church-
It is arguably true that there has never been a time in the history of what we now call Anglicanism that was essentially stable and free from serious conflict. Yet, it certainly does seem as though the last ten to 12 years have been particularly fraught with crisis — crisis of the sort that threatens not just to alter the course of Anglicanism’s evolution, but to radically redefine how we think and talk about it.In casual conversation, sexuality is often presumed to lie at the heart of our travails. Indeed, it is undeniably the presenting issue. But many have also realized that if it had not been sexuality, it would inevitably have been something else, that forces at work within Anglican life at least since the 16th century would have brought about the same sort of crisis. The sexuality squabble is like the tremor of a quake on the surface of the earth. Yet, it is underneath the surface, in the shifting of tectonic plates, where the source of the tremor lies. These shifting tectonic plates beneath the surface of Anglicanism have to do with ecclesiology: What is the Church? What is the relation of Anglican “churches” to “the Church”? When conflict arises, how should churches, and church members, behave? How can their action be most consistent with the Church’s identity and mission, and what it means to live as a network of Christian communities? Are we accountable to one another? If so, how?Conflict in any organization that includes human beings is necessarily political in nature, and politics invariably produces winners and losers. Within global Anglicanism, the Lambeth Conference of 1998 overwhelmingly passed resolution 1.10, which “reject[ed] homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.” This political process made “losers” out of those who advocate reassessing the Church’s traditional position on sexual ethics. But in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, those who argue for such reassessment hold majorities in the councils of the Church.More here-
http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2010/6/25/guest-column-soundings-in-anglican-ecclesiology
From The Living Church-
