An American priest who spearheaded a display of defiance against the hierarchy of his church—the Episcopal Church—has said the action was not intended to prompt a schism within the denomination.

On November 26, several conservative bishops from abroad took part in a confirmation service organized at David Moyer's parish church in a suburb of Philadelphia. The very presence of the bishops at the service was a challenge to the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church, since the bishops had been initially invited by Moyer without the permission of the local bishop, Charles Bennison of Pennsylvania, and officiated in a service outside of their dioceses—a violation of church law. (Bennison eventually did invite bishops.)

Moyer told ENI that the confirmation service was a "signal event of bigger and better things" yet to come by conservatives within the church. "It was a symbolic act that demonstrated the solidarity of Anglicans around the world" in the cause of traditional church teaching.

Moyer is president of Forward in Faith, a traditionalist Anglican group, and as a parish priest has refused to accept Charles Bennison's authority as bishop, saying he is a false teacher whose liberal theological positions are "contrary to the teachings of the Anglican Communion."

The service was rooted in church tradition and on one level was hardly confrontational. Though the foreign bishops had described their visit as a response to a pastoral emergency in the U.S. church, there was little mention of the occasion's significance during what was a formal occasion of evensong and confirmation for adults and young people in Moyer's parish, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, Pennsylvania.

Officiating at the service were Archbishop Maurice Sinclair of the Southern Cone (South America), Archbishop Patrice Byanka Njojo of the Province of the Congo, and Auxiliary Bishop Raymond G. Smith, representing the Archbishop of Sydney, Australia. They were joined by Bishop Peter Njenga of Kenya, Bishop Samuel Ssekkade of Uganda, and retired bishop Edward H. MacBurney, an American, and Herbert M. Groce, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Anglican Rite Synod in the Americas, a jurisdiction of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church (PICC).

Bishop Bennison called the event a canonical crisis, though he decided in the name of diocesan unity not to stop it, and attended the service himself, dressed in his vestments. He also extended an invitation to the visiting prelates after Moyer had invited them, an action Moyer described as a "shrewd move" designed to "co-opt the event."

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Though Moyer said there were no immediate plans for other protests, he told ENI that he and other church conservatives had no intention of letting up in a battle against liberal church hierarchy. "When people ask me why I don't leave the church, I reply: 'No, they have left the church,'" he said of the liberals. "We're trying to be good stewards of our heritage."

The service was the latest in a series of actions by conservatives in recent months. They are challenging the national church by enlisting the help of Anglican prelates outside the U.S. who oppose the ordination of gay clergy.

In January two American Episcopal priests were consecrated as bishops in Singapore by archbishops from Rwanda and southeast Asia. The pair have since launched missionary work in the U.S .to strengthen another traditionalist Anglican network—the Anglican Mission in America (AMIA).

American conservatives now see churches and prelates in Africa and Asia, where Anglicanism is growing rapidly, as allies in their fight against the Episcopal Church's liberalism.

Moyer told ENI he respected the efforts of the AMIA, which he said were a way to create a parallel structure for disenchanted conservatives within the Episcopal Church. He said his approach was different because he wanted to actually reclaim the church on behalf of conservative teaching and to develop a method of doctrinal accountability for prelates.

Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, has not commented directly on the Rosemont service, but has described the AMIA as a distraction from the primary work of the church. Jan Nunley, a spokeswoman for the Episcopal Church, told ENI that those generating much of the controversy within the church were a small minority. "It's the vast majority of the Episcopal Church which is doing the vast majority of the work that Jesus called us to do, in more than 7,000 parishes across the country," Nunley said.

"For the most part these battles don't represent what Episcopal churches usually do. We've come to expect them to do the miraculous every day—feed the hungry, clothe and shelter those in need, lift the spirits of the desperate—and so it becomes sadly noteworthy when churches and Christians act just like the rest of the world: contentious and litigious."

Cedric Pulford reports from London that the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, has written to Bennison about the visit of the overseas bishops to Rosemount. Carey's chief press spokesman, Arun Kataria, told ENI that the correspondence was private, but "nothing in it reflects a change in his views about activities of bishops in another province." Any such activities required the agreement of the diocesan bishop, Kataria said. Asked whether Bennison's presence at the service represented agreement, he referred ENI to Bennison, but added: "If it was that straightforward, there wouldn't have been correspondence." The Church of England Newspaper had earlier reported that Carey wrote to Griswold advising that the Episcopal Church needed to reform or face schism. However, Carey's office issued a statement on November 8 underlining the independence of provinces within the Anglican Communion.

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Related Elsewhere

Visit the homepage of the Episcopal Church.

The closest thing the Anglican Mission in America has to an official Web site are the Forward in Faith and FirstPromise.org pages.

Read some of the testimonies of people who decided to leave the U.S. Episcopal Church.

In October Alabama's oldest Protestant congregation, Christ Church in Mobile, voted to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Mission in America.

Previous Christianity Today articles on this topic include:

Conservative Anglicans Defy Episcopal Church | Anglican bishops from abroad launch U.S. ministry for Episcopal reform. (Oct. 5, 2000)
Intercontinental Ballistic Bishops? | Maverick conservatives gain a toehold among Episcopalians. (April 25, 2000)
Episcopal Church on Brink of Ecclesiastical Civil War Over Consecrations | (Feb. 2, 2000)0
One Church, Two Faiths | Will the Episcopal Church survive the fight over homosexuality? (July 12, 1999)
Dying Church Bequeaths Sanctuary to Anglicans | (Sept. 7, 1998)

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