Updated Friday evening
CANA announces: 4 New Bishops Elected to Serve CANA:
September 13, 2007
(Herndon, VA) — The House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) met in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria, on the 12th day of September 2007. They received a report from the Rt. Rev’d Martyn Minns, Missionary Bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a missionary initiative of the Church of Nigeria in the USA. Acknowledging the significant growth of CANA that is taking place in the USA, the House of Bishops considered a request for additional bishops to further the work of CANA and the extension of God’s Kingdom.
After the meeting, the Primate, the Most Rev’d Peter J. Akinola, announced the election of four suffragan bishops and appointed them to serve in the USA. The bishops-elect are the Rev’d Canon Roger Ames (Akron, OH), the Rev’d Canon David Anderson (Atlanta, GA), the Ven. Amos Fagbamiye (Indianapolis, IN), and the Rev’d Canon Nathan Kanu (Oklahoma City, OK). The consecrations will take place in the USA before the end of 2007, at a date and place yet to be determined. These four bishops-elect will join Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns and Suffragan Bishop David Bena in providing an indigenous ecclesiastical structure for faithful Anglicans in this country.
CANA currently consists of approximately 60 congregations and 80 clergy in 20 states. About a quarter of the congregations are primarily expatriate Nigerians. CANA was established in 2005 to provide a means by which Anglicans living in the USA, who were alienated by the actions and decisions of The Episcopal Church, could continue to live out their faith without compromising their core convictions. CANA is part of the Common Cause partnership that includes representatives of more than 250 Anglican congregations that are connected to the rest of the Anglican Communion, a worldwide fellowship of some 70 million, through various pastoral and missionary initiatives.
Update
The Living Church has a report which explains at least in part how the new number of 60 CANA congregations mentioned above now arises: in the report AAC’s Anderson Among Four New CANA Bishops by George Conger and Steve Waring it says:
In an interview with The Living Church, Fr. Ames said all of the parish leadership and the congregation of St. Luke’s left The Episcopal Church about two years ago for the Diocese of Bolivia in the Province of the Southern Cone, but because the Diocese of Ohio has not to date included the departure in its parochial report filings with the national church, he and the congregation continue officially to be designated members in good standing of The Episcopal Church.
Fr. Ames said there are currently about 50 former Episcopal congregations affiliated with the Diocese of Bolivia. These are in the process of being transferred to CANA by mutual agreement of Bishop Minns and the Rt. Rev. Frank Lyons, Bishop of Bolivia. According to a press release published on CANA’s website, the convocation now has 60 congregations and 80 clergy in 20 states.
At this rate, CANA is going to be all chiefs and no indians.
The best comment on this development by a poster a Mark Harris’s site:
“Why settle for a mere priesthood of all believers when you can have an episcopate of all believers?”
Which one of them gets to Archbishop?
As someone aptly observed on Preludium, “Why settle for a mere priesthood of all believers when you can have an episcopate of all believers?”
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10326675&postID=6362997680176633439 (coment no. 7, by nlnh)
Clearly, they hope to out-episcopal The Episcopal Church! 😉
Awknowledged “significant” competition amongst bandito Bishops…I’ll raise ya four, if ya promise to gimmie some more of what I think I must have!
They’ll need all those bishops in a few years when they split along some other issue, like women or divorce or candles on the altar.
hmm, doesnt that make 17 bishops?
I have a mitre, but it doesnt fit, shall I buy a new one to match my best cope?
I am a liberal clergyman in England, and don’t like my bishop much – can I join please?
ps do you pay my pension contributions if I leave the Cof E to join the Episcopal Church of Akinola?
The “purple shirt” is fast becoming the hallmark of dementia. I am so happy to know that ++Rowan Cantuar wears a black shirt to dissociate himself from the Anglican primatial circus headed by the carpenter-bishop of Abuja.
It’s all a great plot by Almy’s and Wippel’s. I mean, how many purple shirts and pointy hats would they be selling otherwise? Tch tch.
This is terrific news. CANA is growing by leaps and bounds, doubling in size in less than a year. +Minns and +Bena certainly need the help providing proper support to the many congregations and parishioners seeking episcopal oversight from the Church of Nigeria.
Totally disproportionate to the number of congregations that have left TEC, and the others who have joined.
If Doctor Williams will not discipline the sponsering provinces there is no sense at all in disciplining TEC.
Six bishops for 60 congregations.
Wow,
It’s nice to know they take such care over the selection of bishops. Lots of discernment here.
“OK, everyone who wants to be a bishop take one step forward. First one wins. Oh, what the hell, we’ll take all four of you…”
I mean, really, who thinks these guys are real bishops? Or cares?
John Bassett asks “which one of them gets to Archbishop?” Good question. It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the time to decide that issue ever comes around. No question that there’s a fine field of egos to chose from, particularly if the choice is for supreme leader of a number of the emerging cuckoo-in-the-nest “provinces”. Difficult to envisage, for example, two members of the trio of Duncan, Minns and Iker, bowing to the authority – and you may be sure that “authority” is what we will be talking here – of the third. Serious future fragmentations would be… Read more »
“Six bishops for 60 congregations.”
I understand in the early church, dioceses were much smaller, and clergihood wasn’t a paying job. Paul was a tent maker, I believe? The pattern still exists in the Greek Church, I understand, where dioceses are small, and some clergy support themselves with secular work. Perhaps these bishops are emulating that Godly practice. I wonder what kind of work they will do to support themselves. I need a nice tent.
Iker and Duncan and Minns, oh my.
Strange Rabbit wonders about the prospects of these three ertwhile primates in waiting submitting to each other.
The “reasserters” wil splinter sixteen ways from Sunday within a few short years – as is always the way with schismatics. Already these three view each other as suspect over divisive issues of churchmanship, the ordination of women and cetera.