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Home > 2006 > JanuaryChristianity Today, January, 2006  |   |  
Global Anglicans Flex Muscle
Conservative bishops join forces to counter potent revisionist wing.




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"We're in the midst of a reformation of the whole of Christianity, not just Anglicanism," Duncan said. "What's finally happening for the Anglicans? All of the groups that have been put out or forced out are beginning to come together. We may disagree on critical things. Our issue is the authority and supremacy of Scripture. We're absolutely rock solid and united on that one."

Thomas Oden, a Methodist scholar and author of The Rebirth of Orthodoxy, told CT that he labels this new conservative dynamic a "coalescence" of the confessing movement (doctrinal) and renewal movement (church-focused).

At the Pittsburgh meeting, Rick Warren, the Southern Baptist pastor of Southern California's Saddleback Church, put this new, broadly based movement into a sound bite, saying, "I have more in common with a conservative Anglican than a Baptist who's a liberal."

During Warren's plenary address, he urged conservatives conflicted about their future to remember, "What's more important is your faith, not your facilities. The church is the people, not the steeple. They might get the building, but you'll get the blessing."

In like fashion, speakers Anne Graham Lotz, Baroness Caroline Cox, and Joni Eareckson Tada rallied conservatives to refocus on outreach, their relationship with Jesus, and care for the poor, disabled, suffering, and persecuted.

William Haley, one of the three deacons whom Bishop Lyons ordained, told CT, "I hope I am the new face of integrating orthodox theology and social action." He will serve at St. Brendan's Church, a conservative start-up congregation in poverty-stricken northeast Washington, D.C. Haley, a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, expects to be ordained as an Anglican priest this year. The liberal Episcopal diocese in Washington turned Haley down for ordination. Bishop Lyons told CT that his own application for ordination was rejected in that same diocese about 25 years earlier.

Eventually, Lyons was ordained in Ecuador and consecrated as bishop of Bolivia in 2001. Now, he's sending a conservative missionary priest back into the liberal diocese that once rejected him.

Reflecting the frustration of many conservatives, Lyons said, "Why can't we just ordain people who want to serve the Lord, preach the gospel, and honor him? The [Episcopal] Church is known for running like a 10-ton truck over people."

Through weblogs and internet reports, news of the Pittsburgh ordinations spread quickly.

One of the four, Eliot Winks, an Episcopal deacon, was ordained to the priesthood for service in the diocese of Maryland. Bishop Robert Ihloff of Maryland blasted the ordinations, saying, according to a local press account, "This is a violation of the Windsor Report, which called on bishops in various other parts of the Anglican Communion not to interfere in local matters. This is clearly an indication of an interference."

After the Robinson consecration, top Anglicans met for months before issuing the Windsor Report. They called for Robinson's backers to "express regret" for consecrating Robinson. The report also called for a ban on homosexual ordinations, same-sex unions, and bishops' interfering in each other's territories. But since the report was issued in late 2004, both Left and Right have alleged the other side is in violation of Windsor "moratoria."

Two weeks before the Pittsburgh event, 103 top Anglican conservatives gathered in Egypt at a remote Red Sea coastal resort for the third Global South to South Encounter. After meeting six days, they issued an eight-page communiqué, Trumpet III, saying:

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