Updated again Friday
Not enough bishops in America it seems: Anglican Mainstream reports that the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda has just elected three more. Original announcement on AMiA site is here.
Rwanda elects three further Bishops for the USA
A Communiqué FROM THE HOUSE OF BISHOPS OF THE PROVINCE OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF RWANDA
The House of Bishops of the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda (PEER) met in Kigali, Rwanda on the 4th day of September 2007. Acknowledging the significant growth of the missionary outreach initiated by PEER in the USA, the House of Bishops considered nominations for additional missionary Bishops to further the work of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA). The House of Bishops elected three bishops and appointed them to serve in PEER’s missionary jurisdiction in North America committed to extending God’s kingdom. The bishops-elect are the Rev. Terrell Glenn, the Rev. Philip Jones and the Rev. John Miller. The date for the consecrations has been set for the 26th day of January in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 2008 following the Anglican Mission’s Winter Conference (January 23 – 26, 2008) in Dallas, Texas.
Provincial Secretary
PROVINCE OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF RWANDA
In the AM comment and listing of all the “American Bishops from other jurisdictions”, there is still no mention of the Southern Cone and Bishop Bill Cox.
Update
George Conger has some additional information at Religious Intelligence in Rwanda appoints more bishops for USA.
Almost half of the Church of Rwanda’s bishops will be former priests of the American Episcopal Church by the year’s end, the church announced today.
Three more American bishops will be added to the roster of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA), the Church of Rwanda announced on Sept 5; increasing the size of the Rwanda House of Bishops to 16: seven missionary American bishops and nine Rwandan diocesan bishops…
Read his article for some biographical information about the candidates.
Updated Friday
Episcopal News Service has this: RWANDA: Three former Episcopal priests elected missionary bishops for North America.
Clearly, as I’ve said before, a rush to reverse colonise by every province in the GS. Shades of an earlier colonisation. Yet Canterbury remains silent.
Davis – the ABC “remains silent” because he sees a response from African Archbishops to requests for help from US Anglicans….and he knows all too well that it is TEC’s actions in 2003 which have caused all this……he has seen TEC reject Lambeth 1.10, Dromantine, TWR, BO33, and the Tanzania Communique…….you expect him to be batting for TEC now??
Soon infants will be recieving bapstism, confirmation and consecration to the episcopate all in one go !
It was the Primates of the Anglican Communion who said at Dromantine: ‘We also wish to make it quite clear that in our discussion and assessment of the moral appropriateness of specific human behaviours, we continue unreservedly to be committed to the pastoral support and care of homosexual people. The victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us. We assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship… Read more »
Now David … AMiA been around for seven to eight years, depending on where but the start date, so not quite a rush.
NP – You present what may be merely your opinion as fact – I see no concept of what the ABC MAY or MAY NOT be thinking in your comment but rather certainty regarding his thoughts and actions- since you speak with such authority may we therefore assume you really ARE the ABC? Has your mask slipped? Or, are you taking liberties and presenting your assumptions as certainties? This is not meant to be an attack on your deeply held beliefs but rather concern regarding your manner of presenting them. However if you are the ABC and if I send… Read more »
This is getting ridiculous.
“help” Help with what? Conservative Anglicans can get up every day and go to work, earn a living, never feel that they must hide their nature for fear of losing job, family, friends, even their lives. They can worship every Sunday freely. They might have to receive certain sacraments from a bishop with whom they do not agree on gay issues, yet this is no problem: “on the unworthiness of ministers which hindereth not the effect of a sacrament”. It’s the last that is the problem, though, isn’t it? Well, fine, they can’t remain in Communion with a bishop who… Read more »
Davis D’Ambly and NP will be, respectively, relieved and disappointed since neither is correct about Archbishop Williams. I would contend that the ABC is now playing a careful waiting game, allowing the putsch-proponents to put more and more of their respective feet in their respective mouths. They are indeed providing the metaphorical ropes by which they will be metaphorically hung, and rejected by a majority of the Primates, as well as publicly by the ABC himself. As to what Canterbury had done, or rather not done, in prior years, NP, as one poster to another thread noted, even Chamberlain ultimately… Read more »
So just what is it, about being extremely anti-gay – and tilting towards being anti-intellectual and anti-science and often repeating false witness about queer folks or progressive-alt believers or about unbelievers or other obviously targeted people – that is so shaky or in such danger that con-evo realignment folks in USA cannot continue to live out their rather nasty beliefs about all of these other people without Anglican institutional reinforcements? Why aren’t such realignment Anglican folks satisfied – with avoiding being gay themselves, with shutting down inquiry or investigation or science in inconvenient domains that make them uncomfortable because of… Read more »
I am curious to know how many clergy there are in the assorted overseas jurisdictions in the US (and Canada). Seems to be that with something like 16ish bishops, the ratio of bishops to priests must be quite . . . skewed.
Rather like those little online sects where virtually everyone is ordained, and most of them bishops, archbishops, primates, patriarchs &c.
Jerry – the “putsch” in the AC was attempted in 2003…….the ABC has had to spend 4 years dealing with the ramifications of that attempted “putsch”
“bullies”
The problem is that, for people like NP, it is TEC who are the bullies, “forcing” everyone to do as they do. It is an odd perversion of reality that people who never tried to force anyone outside their jurisdiction to comply with THEIR behaviour and who have never tried to force anyone out of the Communion should be accused of being bullies by those who actually ARE guilty of just that.
Malcolm+, What concerns me about the pace of miter issuance is how we put all this back together at some point in the future. Ideally, the extra-provincial districts reconcile w/ TEC (assuming TEC is willing to make any course changes) and we get back to one Anglican church in one geography. But even if there is no way to reconcile conservative Anglicans and TEC, how do we get to a unified conservative Anglican church? Hierarchies and bureaucracies are self-sustaining and self-replicating no matter how godly the people who occupy the offices are. Then there’s the bishop:clergy ratio you point out.… Read more »
“Jerry – the “putsch” in the AC was attempted in 2003…….the ABC has had to spend 4 years dealing with the ramifications of that attempted “putsch””
See?
“I am curious to know how many clergy there are in the assorted overseas jurisdictions in the US (and Canada). Seems to be that with something like 16ish bishops, the ratio of bishops to priests must be quite . . . skewed. “Rather like those little online sects where virtually everyone is ordained, and most of them bishops, archbishops, primates, patriarchs &c.” Father Malcolm, staunch “reappraiser” though I be, I think it’s a slippery slope to start casting these particular stones. TEC itself has a bishop-to-communicant ratio that exceeds those of most other Communion members; for example, even with the… Read more »
“I am curious to know how many clergy there are in the assorted overseas jurisdictions in the US (and Canada). Seems to be that with something like 16ish bishops, the ratio of bishops to priests must be quite . . . skewed.”
Malcolm, everyone gets a pretty hat and cape at this party. Don’t tell anyone, but did you notice no women and no people of color (that i know of?). Odd, don’t you think?
Deacon Mark said,
“…no people of color (that i know of?). Odd, don’t you think?”
Umm, have you noticed who’s leading the consecrations? You raise a good point w/ respect to women, but the second item seems a bit silly.
In Canada, our last General Synod had some discussion about reducing the number of dioceses. I have no idea what an ideal bishop per communicant ratio is – and indeed it is likely to vary depending on the circumstances. The fact that the Diocese of the Arctic has a very high ratio makes sense, given the geography. But the Akinolist ratio seems to be more that a trifle skewed towards “everyone who wants a mitre gets a mitre.” In any event, I suspect that this new group of whatever we want to call them will eventually regularize their numbers and… Read more »
Nothing silly at all, Chris. “16ish bishops” by Deacon Mark’s calculation, every single one of them a lily-white (OK, a bit red-faced in some cases) male. Four different African provinces flouting Lambeth ’98 and the Windsor Report to irregularly consecrate bishops for essentially non-existent North American dioceses, and not a single one of those bishops of African origin or descent. And not a single one of them, you can be sure, subject in any meaningful sense to the discipline of his “home province”. There is more than a little evidence, frequently aired on these pages, for North American money being… Read more »
Oh, Ford, thank you for helping me to understand why NP must be right about a Province, TEC, that did something solely within that Province, consent to the consecration of a monogamous gay partnered man as Bishop of New Hampshire, after he was selected for the episcopate by that Diocese. Of course, now it’s clear. That very action had to mean, as NP has so wisely taught us, that the US Episcopal Church was taking over the Anglican Communion. The fact that they did not ask any other Province to follow their lead, much less attempt to persuade others to… Read more »
Pretty soon you’ll be able to get your own episcopate with ten Cornflakes box tops.
And they don’t even have to go to Rwanda to get consecrated? For shame. Just book your ticket to DFW and run over to some tacky convention center to get your mitre.
Jerry, I agree with you entirely. My comment to you was tongue in cheek, and when NP so neatly proved my point, my joy was full. I irritates me no end that the “reasserters” so loudly claim to be put down in the Church while so busily trying to keep everyone else down, and I’ll explain that to them as soon as they take their boot off my face.
Ford – the answer to your question is very simple. It is not the efficacy of sacraments administered by an “unfit” bishop that is at issue, at least not for me. I don’t want his pastoral oversight. I don’t want to support his ministry, financially or otherwise. I don’t want to support RCRR, or lobby for same sex marriages or listen to him teach that the church wrote the Bible and can change it, or that the Resurrection is a myth. In short, I don’t want to be a member of his club. If I can remain an Anglican in… Read more »
What is RCRR? “the church wrote the Bible and can change it” A statement by one bishop that may be taken to mean that the Bible is to be interpreted by the Church under the guidance of the SPirit, and is not to be taken literally. Not contentious unless one is a fundamentalist. Anglicans are not fundamentalists. I don’t know if you are or not. “the Resurrection is a myth” Some wingnut says this somewhere, another chimes in, and then suddenly the whole Church is unAnglican? Would it surprise you to know that the reality of the Resurrection is central… Read more »
Ford RCRR is the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights, a/k/a abortion on demand advocates. I do indeed reject the statements attributed to Bp. Orama. Peter Akinola is a signatory to numerous reports and communiques in which he commits himself to dealing pastorally with persons who perceive their sexuality as same-sex oriented. I support those statements as well as Lambeth 1.10. I don’t want the ministry of a shepherd who is himself an apostate or who refuses to speak out when his colleagues spew heresy. So I am not in TEC any longer. Haven’t taken anything with me except my faith.… Read more »
Jerry said:
The fact that they did not ask any other Province to follow their lead, much less attempt to persuade others to adopt the “practice,” meant nothing.
The fact that they were operating solely within their own Province, in accordance with the canons of the Episcopal Church, meant nothing.
Malcolm+ observes:
Not “nothing,” Jerry. On the contrary, these things are solid evidence of how devious and perfidious the Episcopal Church has been.
Unlike the other side, who ensured the Chapman memo was widely available for all to see.
er . . . wait . . . um
You will need a new whipping boy. The Bishop denies making the statements attributed to him and the reporter is planning a retraction.
Ford,
A myth isn’t a made up fairytale. Do I really have to believe in a literal Resurrection to be allowed to call myself Anglican?
Surely, the point about challenging those concepts is to ask people to examine the core of their faith. I can be happily agnostic about the literal truth of the virgin birth, the mireacles, the resurrection and a number of other Christian concepts.
Whether they’re literally true or whether they use words to express a truth that cannot otherwise be expressed, they surely point to the same thing?
“On the other hand, maybe NP has learned that Bishop Robinson was secretly consecrated as the planted TEC Bishop of Rochester, or TEC Bishop of Lagos, or TEC Bishop of Singapore, or some other hotbed of neo-Puritanism, and that is the takeover action identified by NP which began in 2003.”
Of course, once The Split is official, I look forward to seeing those very bishoprics established, albeit not at all in secret.
And one or two of them *absolutely* deserve an openly LGBT bishop.
Lord, Thy will be done.
George wrote: “Peter Akinola is a signatory to numerous reports and communiques in which he commits himself to dealing pastorally with persons who perceive their sexuality as same-sex oriented. I support those statements as well as Lambeth 1.10.”
Surely, you know that these statements are not for real?
Erika said,
“Whether they’re literally true or whether they use words to express a truth that cannot otherwise be expressed, they surely point to the same thing?”
Absolutely not!!!
If Christ is still dead in the ground why should we trust we have been justified before God? The reality of the resurrection is a powerful demonstration of God’s authority over sin and death.
Is it central? Not sure, but the logical order of the Christian faith tends to crumble without it. At the very least it is a rejection of one of God’s greatest acts of power, majesty… and love.
“… the logical order of the Christian fait…”
Might that be “the logical order” of the Pietist faith, Chris?
“At the very least it is a rejection of one of God’s greatest acts of power, majesty… and love.”
I should have known. Say something a literalist doesn’t agree with, and immediately you’re rejecting God’s love.
What a way to have a conversation!
There’s a “Traditional Anglican” church just down the road from my Via Media-practicing Episcopal Church and has been for the nearly fifteen years I’ve lived here. What I want to know is: If people are leaving TEC in such droves, why hasn’t that Anglican church had its parking lot paved yet?
Chris points out that Jesus crucifixion and resurrection forms a cornerstone of most Christians faith. I concur. (For the record, I am literalist and believe that all those things really happened). I was pleased to see Chris wrote “…one of God’s greatest acts…” I think that Jesus and everything that Jesus did was absolutely stunning and unique. But I also know that Jesus has moved and done some pretty major things at other times e.g. Moses or Noah. I also think that God created all of the universe, and thus all of humanity, and that therefore God can and would… Read more »
Cheryl, I have never had a conversation with you which you started by questioning or worse, negating my faith because of what I say. I respect your literal beliefs, I just don’t happen to share them. If Chris had really wanted a conversation he would not have started his reply to my post with an “absolutely not – three exclamation marks”. He would have said something along the lines of: Where does your faith in God’s saving love come from if you don’t believe in a literally risen Christ? Or: Your way of looking at this would make it impossible… Read more »
Please stick to the subject of yet more (Rwandan) bishops.
I’ve had enough of being insulted on this site by people who don’t understand the meaning of an equal debate of views. I’m taking a break. Bye everyone.
When Erika is driven off the site by conservative bullies, perhaps there is need for closer editing of conservative views – which are more than well catered for elsewhere.
Erika Sorry if this came across as an affront to you. I was trying to demonstrate that while you and I might advocate on behalf of GLBTs, that doesn’t mean our theology is exactly the same. One of the problems is that they try to pigeon hole us and our thinking and claim that we all think the same way. They state we believe such and such and therefore we have done so and so and therefore we are in error because… In trying to demonstrate a different perspective, I might have inadvertently been seen as being dismissive or yours.… Read more »
Merseymike might have a point.
I’ve removed one previously published comment from this thread and have decided not to publish several others received.
Please comment here on Rwandan bishops or not at all.
“Peter Akinola is a signatory to numerous reports and communiques in which he commits himself to dealing pastorally with persons who perceive their sexuality as same-sex oriented. I support those statements as well as Lambeth 1.10.” Sorry, but this is naive. Sure, he makes pious statements about ministering to gay people. But he has also used language that dehumanises us, ominous since it can be the first step on the path to genocide, he has also supported a law that would jail us, in situations that would probably lead to our deaths. Can you seriously see anything believable in his… Read more »
I understand your concern that Peter Akinola’s words “dehumanize” gays. I don’t happen to agree with his choice of language although I aqree 100% with his understanding of what God’s calling is regarding sexual intimacy. I stand a better chance of seeing his language moderated than I do of seeing TEC revert to a Biblically centered moral theology. Moreover, having spent time personally with him and having gotten to know the man behind the mitre, I don’t doubt his honesty or sincerity. His ways may seem rough around the edges, but I trust him to do what he says. I… Read more »
“I aqree 100% with his understanding of what God’s calling is regarding sexual intimacy.” I responded yesterday, either too verbosely or too hotheadedly, so here goes, terser and less inflammatory. I respect your belief about sexual intimacy. But, the Right has used some very unChristian tactics in this battle, including the quoting of anti-gay propaganda as scientific fact. In the interests of brevity, I won’t go further. The question is then, how much dishonesty and scheming are you willing to accept in the service of what you believe to be God’s truth? For me, the behaviour of the Right is… Read more »
Am I the only one to be peeved at the abuse of the idea of the “Kingdom of God” nestling as a bogus justification in this parasitic behaviour?
Tim, probably not, but I’m not sure what you’re getting at. For me, as I have said, the hypocrisy of accusing others of sins when one is guilty of those same sins, or of other equal sins weakens their position. The funny thing is that this is always taken to be some sort of justification for the actions of the “other side”!