HOUSE OF CARDS

The Anglican Church in North America is a house of cards that may well be teetering on the verge of collapse. Scepiscopalians brought this up recently in its November 14 posting, "The ACNA Braces for Battle over Female Clergy." Find it here .

The basic issue dividing the ACNA is whether women should be allowed into holy orders. 

One should recall that, while homosexuality was the primary driving issue leading to the votes of five dioceses to leave the Episcopal Church, there was another important topic propelling these same dioceses, equality for and inclusion of women into the leadership of the church. It did not get the attention homosexuality got, but it was a powerful driving force nevertheless. It is now coming to the surface to fracture the fragile alliance. All of ACNA agreed that homosexuals should be excluded and that the Episcopal Church was in error, if not in apostasy. They did not agree on women. This issue is now threatening to pull down the house of cards called the ACNA.

Of the five dioceses voting to leave TEC, three had steadfastly refused to ordain women to the priesthood, San Joaquin, Ft. Worth, and Quincy (TEC established ordination of women to the priesthood in 1976). In fact, Bishop Iker of Ft. Worth, stood on the floor of the House of Bishops to demand alternate primatial oversight immediately after Katharine Jefferts Schori's election as presiding bishop in 2006. Shortly thereafter, four dioceses voted to leave TEC (to transfer to the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone). In Ft. Worth there was a movement to join the diocese with the local Roman Catholic diocese. A delegation went to the RC bishop for talks. Nothing came of this. My guess is that the RC bishop sensibly refused to get entangled with the legal issues bound to arise.

GAFCON and the four "disaffiliated" dioceses created the ACNA in 2010 to be the replacement province for the Episcopal Church in the Anglican Communion. Two major factors brought this about: hatred of the Episcopal Church, and opposition to equality for and inclusion of non-celibate homosexuals in the life of the church. Both of these were negatives, that is, they were against something. There was no positive force that bound this disparate group of malcontents together. Thus, having established the ACNA as the non-TEC and settling opposition to rights for homosexuals, the ACNA had nowhere to go. It has been repeatedly banned from the Anglican Communion. It is not now and almost certainly never be a province of the Anglican Communion.

With that, the internal contradictions in ACNA inevitably began to arise, now to the edge of disintegration. Enter Bishop Iker. In his address to his diocesan convention on November 4 (find it here  and here), Iker declared, "We [his diocese of Ft. Worth] are in a state of impaired communion because of this issue." In other words, Ft. Worth has broken off from the Diocese of South Carolina and every other diocese in ACNA that dares to ordain women. Iker continued: "I informed the College of Bishops that I will no longer give consent to the election of any bishop who intends to ordain female priests...I have informed the Archbishop of my resignation from all the committees to which I have been assigned...Bishops who continue to ordain women priests in spite of the received tradition are signs of disunity and division."

The "disaffiliated" Diocese of South Carolina has women priests and deacons. Bishop Lawrence has ordained one woman to the priesthood and is about to ordain another, Mary Ellen Doran at Our Saviour, on Johns Island, on November 30. This means the "disassociated" diocese of Ft. Worth is no longer in communion with DSC. This also means that Iker, and the other like-minded bishops in ACNA will refuse to consent to the election of any new bishop in DSC who accepts women clergy. This raises a serious problem for the future of DSC. ACNA requires that two-thirds of the bishops (there are now 51 bishops) must consent to the election of a new bishop of any diocese in ACNA. If Iker and his friends round up one-third plus one they can control the choice of the next bishop of DSC. This gives them the power to force DSC to reject the ordination of women.

My guess is that Iker's ploy is to force the ACNA to agree to ban the ordination of women. It was only this year that the ACNA bishops argued over this issue and finally agreed to keep what they had, local option. Obviously Iker did not like this arrangement. He is adamant that women should not be allowed ordination in the church. Apparently he is willing to break up the ACNA for this. The anti-women's ordination faction in ACNA appears to be ready to pull out of ACNA if they do not get their way.

History shows that schism only begets schism, more and more. ACNA is doomed to disintegration. It may well be that ACNA will soon divide into two churches, one without women clergy, and one with. After all, Iker and Lawrence have divided. Iker has announced that he is no longer in communion with Lawrence. Lawrence is set to go right ahead and ordain a woman this month. Lawrence knows very well what this means to Iker and his cohorts. This surely looks like division to me.

What this illustrates is that, in the big picture, the Anglican Realignment has failed. This is a two-decades long attempt to destroy or diminish the Episcopal Church and replace it in the Anglican Communion with a socially conservative entity dedicated to the exclusion of non-celibate homosexuals, and to a lesser degree women clergy. The "disassociated" DSC joined ACNA in 2017 basically because it had no other viable choice outside of TEC. It joined only after five years' of wandering in the wilderness. This means both ACNA and DSC are outside of the Anglican Communion where they will remain in perpetuity. 

The South Carolina schism of 2012 has been a failure in almost every measurable way. The Anglican Realignment has failed. The ACNA is dissolving on its own. Membership and income in DSC have fallen off a cliff. DSC has lost big-time in the state court with little hope of changing that. Mediation is on, but it remains to be seen what DSC could possibly gain that would leave it a viable force. In the present picture, it will have six parishes, none in Charleston. In short, DSC has a dismal future, to say the least. For years before and after the shcism we heard a lot of boasting from DSC's leaders about God's will. Interesting that we have heard none of this lately.

I think it all but certain that the Episcopal Church diocese will resume control over the 29 parishes the state supreme court has awarded to it. The next step then is for the Church diocese to move towards a reconciliation with the 13,000 communicants now inhabiting these parishes. It will be very hard for these people to accept the fact that their leadership took them down the wrong path. No one likes to admit he or she made bad choices. Thus, these good Christians must be treated with the utmost of love and welcomed home. Home is where you go and they take you in, no questions asked. The ancestral home of the Diocese of South Carolina is the Episcopal Church.