10 October 2014 A.D. PUSHBACK to, at, upon and against the 105th Canterbury: “ACNA is Anglican”
10
October 2014 A.D. PUSHBACK
to 105th Canterbury: “ACNA is
Anglican”
Conger, George. “ACNA
is Anglican.” Anglican Ink. 10 Oct
2014. http://anglicanink.com/article/acna-anglican. Accessed 11 Oct 2014. ACNA is Anglican
10 Oct 2014
Author:
George Conger
[Atlanta, GA} The Anglican Church in North America is
Anglican and its primate is an archbishop of the Anglican Communion, declared
seven archbishops last night.
At the close of the prayer of investitute of the Most
Rev. Foley Beach at the Church of the Apostles on 9 Oct 2014, the primates of
Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Myanmar, Jerusalem and the Middle East and
South America, and bishops representing the primates of the Congo, Sudan and
South East Asia laid hands on Archbishop Beach. Giving him their primatial
blessing, they also acknowledged him by word and through laying on of hands to
be a fellow primate of the Anglican Communion.
The archbishops' act comes one week after the Archbishop
of Canterbury Justin Welby told the Church
of Ireland Gazette the ACNA was an ecumenical partner of the Anglican
Communion and was not Anglican.
In their formal statements of greeting delivered to the
1500 people attending the service at the Anglican megachurch led by Dr. Michael
Youseff in suburban Atlanta, the primates offered greetings and congratulations
to the new archbishop and expressed the fellowship of their churches with the
ACNA, but declined to press home their statement that Archbishop Foley was a
primate of the Anglican Communion.
After the service, those primates approached by Anglican
Ink declined to be drawn on this issue. A leader of the ACNA familiar with the
deliberations of the primates said the manner in which their endorsement of
Archbishop Beach was given had been formulated to express their views on his
status, while avoiding a direct confrontation with Archbishop Welby at this
time.
Since 2008 the GAFCON primates have affirmed their
fellowship with the ACNA. Last night saw primates of the Global South Coalition
-- conservative church leaders outside the Gafcon movement and seen as closer
to Canterbury -- join their African colleagues in validating publically the
ACNA's Anglican credentials.
The signficance of the statement, said one highly placed
source who asked not to be identified as he was not authorized to speak for his
peers, was that the 10 churches had made their positions quite clear to
Archbishop Welby. If, as he told the BBC last Sunday, he would be guided by the
mind of the primates in deciding issues of Anglican ecclesiology (such as the
time of the primates meeting and structure and timing of the Lambeth
Conferences), then he must now know that archbishops representing the majority
of Anglicans worshipping today were in solidarity with the ACNA -- and
citing Daniel 6:15 said there was no turning back. {“Know, O king, that it is a law of the Medes and Persians
that no injunction or ordinance that the king establishes can be changed.”)
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