The American Anglican Council is a newly chartered organization of conservative dioceses within the Episcopal Church, organizing in mutual support against the actions of the General Convention and its approval of the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson.
On the one hand, there’s not too much to argue with their charter or broader mission statements. They both acknowledge differences with ECUSA and stand faithfully with it.
On the other hand there are a lot of angry exclamation points in the less formal links and documents, and a lot of more blunt rhetoric in various press releases.
Interesting times.
(via Rich)
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What this new arrangement does not address is how conservative parishes live in liberal dioceses and vice versa. As long as the association is on a parish by parish basis then it is OK but if the association is at the diocese level then there are problems.
Whatever the outcome there will not be a single episcopal church. Either it won’t be single or it won’t be episcopal. The latter would be the case because there will be some variant of the idea of “alternative oversight” or “local option”. This moves your church polity away from episcopal polity and towards either presbyterian or congregational polity.
I’ve just updated my blog entry with a statement by Bishop Stanton. In essence, he said look at the formal, more moderate, statements rather than the informal ones. He addressed the Washington Post article on a leaked memo concerning “adequate episcopal oversight” and disavowed it.