Friday, July 25, 2008

A New North American Province ?

As Ann notes below,
[T]he Common Cause Partnership has chosen to announce its intention to petition the FOCA Primates Council for the formation of a "North American province of Gafcon"
The intention of the CCP Executive Committee is to petition the Primates Council for recognition of the CCP as the North American Province of GAFCON on the basis of the Common Cause Partnership Articles, Theological Statement, and Covenant Declaration, and to ask that the CCP Moderator be seated in the Primates Council.

You can read the entire entry on the Episcopal Café in Petition for a North American province of Gafcon.

As a comment to that entry, reader Phillip Cato rather keenly observes:
As they assemble themselves to become something new, and powerful, and "orthodox," they might want to brush up on the history of previous purist movements. A good, hard look at the Cathari, the ideological descendants of the Manichaeans, would be a good place to start. They are, I think, their progeny, whether they realize it or not.

11 comments:

David said...

Hmmm...so +Bob Pittsburgh wants to be a Primate, eh ? Who woulda thunk it ?! ;)

PseudoPiskie said...

Primate seems such an appropriate appellation for many of them.

Anonymous said...

Now now, PseudoPiskie. I've always admired chimpanzees, guerillas, and other members of the primate family. I'd hate to tarnish their reputations by associating these GAFCONites with them.

Anonymous said...

And how many breakaways have there been before
and what has become of them?

David said...

IT,

Basically, they become small sects ("small" as compared to TEC). The largest that I know of, the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), was founded in 1873. It is a very Protestant/Calvinist off-shoot of TEC and has been a member of the National Association of Evangelicals since 1990. It currently has about 100 parishes and approx 13,000 on its membership roles.

IMHO, these "purity" sects quickly dwindle, or vanish entirely, as they are primarily founded on the idea of objecting to something (The Episcopal Church), rather than on any, positive attributes of their own (The REC is somewhat of an exception to this). Combine that with the inevitable squabbles over "purity" and well...

Anonymous said...

And exactly how many are the Foca alias Gaffecon Primates?

6 or 7 ???

Do they beleive themselves in this?

PseudoPiskie said...

Once Duncan is deposed and has no real power, how many scared clergy will stay with TEC? It will be interesting to see the results in San Joaquin too.

Anonymous said...

Bob Duncan, #1 FOCA in North America! (has a certain ring of truth to it, does it not? ;-/)

Elizabeth said...

What amazes me is that this group apparently think they automatically are part of the Anglican Communion. They want to replace ABC with their council. They want to change the "rules of the game" to their approach to Anglicanism. They want to ignore inconviences like TEC and the Church of Canada... and they still expect to be called Anglicans.

RudigerVT said...

If they decide to have an event where we get a chance to get to know them all, they could title that special day....

wait for it.

Meet the FOCAs!

:>
LPR

Anonymous said...

More reports that the Sky is Falling (on GLBTs, and TEC): Homosexual bishops face Anglican Church ban

Liberals will be warned that they face being expelled from the heart of Anglicanism unless they respect the ban ... It is set to start the first real clash of the conference, with liberal bishops expected to fight any attempt to restrict their autonomy.

However, Dr Williams is determined to impose tighter governance of the Anglican Communion to try and hold it together.

... the American and Canadian churches must refrain from consecrating more homosexual bishops and carrying out blessing services for same-sex couples, the paper says.

If they do not, they will face being pushed to the margins of the communion and find themselves excluded from the councils that are central to the governance of the Church.


...however, this is all in the "Tell-a-Lie" (Telegraph), so take it w/ a grain of salt.