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Our ancestry goes back to the early seventies and the Coalition for the Apostolic Ministry, which was organized in response to the campaign to allow women's ordination in The Episcopal Church. As it became evident that the challenge to the Church's faith and order involved more than just the ordination question, the Evangelical and Catholic Mission was founded in 1976 with the purpose of teaching the Episcopal Church back into the biblical and traditional Anglican Way.
In 1988, the bishops of the ECM called a special Synod, which met in Fort Worth, Texas in June of 1989. More than 2,000 Episcopalians from all over the country then organized the Episcopal Synod of America "to be the Church within The Episcopal Church" by preserving and extending the historic Apostolic Faith during a time of change and confrontation, in opposition to the prevailing revisionism in the structures of The Episcopal Church. We are a network of bishops, clergy and laity with a common commitment to fulfilling the church's mission. We are building relationships that will make ways for clergy to equip laity to mobilize in implementation of the orthodox teachings of bishops.
The American Anglican Council will also forge relationships between AAC parishes and Anglicans around the globe who affirm the Lambeth Quadrilateral, which affirms the essentials of the Christian faith as Holy Scripture, the Nicene Creed, the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion, and the Historic Episcopate (BCP p. 887). This will be accomplished through our affiliation with the Ekklesia Society.
We will celebrate the common faith and tradition we share by promoting correspondence and personal visits with bishops and evangelists from other provinces. In places where proclaiming the Christian faith puts one's life and family at risk, Anglicans have had to make hard and careful choices that lend great authority to their teaching. About a year and a half ago Bishop Bill Wantland of the Diocese of Eau Claire suggested there might be a way of creating a structure within the Church that would preserve its faithfulness to the scriptures, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Faith we have received. It would not be a matter of creating a new organization, but simply incorporating as who we are: the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. I was surprised to learn such a corporation did not already exist; but in fact, the only corporate structure of the Church was the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Bishop Wantland's thought was that if at some point the General Convention should take actions that were truly unacceptable, actions that represented a departure from "the faith once entrusted to the saints," there would then be a kind of safety zone within the Church where orthodox believers could remain. We could ensure, by adopting a clear statement of faith, and creating a Board of Trustees that there will always exist in the United States a Church that remains in the Anglican Communion that upholds and propagates the historic Faith, and remains true to the heritage we have received. --Bishop John Howe of Florida in a letter to his diocese, 19 December 1997 We believe that this church must repent for its failure to fully obey the Great Commission of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ (Mt 28:18ff), and that we must submit ourselves to God's reforming judgment upon us all.
We believe that the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, headquartered at 815 Second Avenue in New York City, and the present structures of the General Convention have departed from "the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them," and we declare their authority to be fundamentally impaired, and that they are not upholding the truth of the gospel. It has become increasingly clear to us that the Episcopal Synod of America must more fully and thoroughly continue in its mission to 'be the Church’, proclaiming the Gospel and shepherding the faithful. We see our faithful pursuit of this mission as an essential element in the emergence of an orthodox Province of the Anglican Communion in America. We are delighted that many others share this vision.
We are not leaving anything or going anywhere. While praying and working for the revival of the Episcopal Church, we have planned for a number of years for a new Province, a structure which would proclaim true doctrine and allow us to go forward with the work God has given each go us. We have said from the beginning that we intend to be the Church. We will continue to be who we are. We have waited patiently for the right moment, and now is the acceptable time.
In working to establish this Province:
* We have diocesan bishops who have declared with whom they are in communion. Their dioceses constitute the centrepiece of our community of faith. When faced with canons which violate their informed consciences, they will obey their consciences. Those dioceses will continue to be the Church; in effect, to function as the core of the Province we have wanted to be.
* We invite parishes outside the geographic boundaries of those dioceses to apply for episcopal oversight, as their situation requires. Bishops of the Synod and of the American Anglican Council have stated their readiness to respond to such requests. Should action be taken by a local ordinary against a Synod parish for requesting oversight, this community will consider that action to be of no force and effect. We acknowledge that some parishes find it necessary to seek corporate separation from the institutional Church, and pledge our solidarity with them. "The only way we can get absolutely everyone's attention is to destabilize 815 by a sharp cut off in money. That's it folks, 'money'. If the flow of diocesan assessments go to the new Episcopal oversight, then the AAC and Co. would receive a flow of funds that could have gone to 815. The AAC would use those funds from our dioceses for mission, programs (by another name), and operations. It would get everyone's attention to the extent we might be actually able to reform the church from within. That might be possible because our affiliation with word wide Anglicans would become quite obvious for all to see, and 815 would look like it was from another planet. When one steps back and looks at the big picture, this whole scenario really is a semi-friendly separation without any change in the assets: property, pension plans, insurance, and so on? I believe that we would have the best chance of bringing many more to our side by a semi-friendly separation first." -- Frank Hood Trane, AAC trustee, in memoo to fellow board members, 8 May 2000. A Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes . . . There will be whole dioceses standing, as there have been in recent weeks, dioceses like Albany and Central Florida and Fort Worth and Pittsburgh and South Carolina and Springfield. More dioceses will join these six in the weeks and months ahead. These dioceses will deepen their level of cooperation and interdependence. Structures of the AAC will also help them to redistribute the world mission funds that used to pass through "815", and in many other ways, as the needs emerge. Congregations in "hostile" or "confused" dioceses will also be emboldened. They will start to see their allegiance as chiefly within this Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes, and their funding will start to flow in this direction, just as the provision of episcopal ministry will start to come from that Network. The Primates will not approve a second or parallel province – nor should they – but they will see this ecclesiola in ecclesia as the Episcopal Church with which they have Communion and common cause, the remnant as an Episcopal Church under judgment. Nothing will be all that clear to any of us, as we seek to understand or describe what is actually happening. This is the part that will seem most definitely "muddled," but we can rest assured that our God will be in it and on the other side of it. Like Jesus' description of how the kingdom of God grows, we 'will know not how" and yet, as the months pass and various "fiery trials" are endured, we will see the Network grow and strengthen. --What Would Intervention Look Like? - Adddress by Bishop Duncan to Plano Source: AAC News, 8 October, 2003 Prepared by Joan R. Gundersen, 2005 - color added for emphasis |