A conservative Anglican has resigned from a group of dissidents saying its head made judgments regarding divisions in the Anglican Communion that are "far too sweeping".
The Rev Dr Ephraim Radner, one of the founders of the Anglican Communion Network, announced with deep disappointment his resignation earlier this week over disagreements with recent statements by network moderator the Rt Rev Robert Duncan that "contradict my sense of calling within this part of Christ's Body, the Anglican Communion."
"Bishop Duncan has now declared the See of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference - two of the four Instruments of Communion within our tradition - to be 'lost'. He has said that God is 'doing a new thing' in allowing these elements to founder and be let go," stated Dr Radner.
"I find this judgment to be dangerously precipitous and unfair under circumstances when current, faithful, and hard work is being done by many to bolster these Instruments as servants of our common life in Christ," he added.
Bishop Duncan, of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, recently emerged from the Anglican Communion Network Annual Council meeting in Bedford, Texas, expressing little hope that The Episcopal Church - the US branch of Anglicanism - would turn around from its departure from Christian orthodoxy and Anglican tradition.
He told over 80 Anglican traditionalists that "the American province is lost and something will have to replace it".
He further expressed disappointment that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Dr Rowan Williams, has not backed the network as he had hoped.
"Never, ever has he spoken publicly in defense of the orthodox in the United States," said Bishop Duncan, adding that "the cost is his office".
"To lose that historic office is a cost of such magnitude that God must be doing a new thing," he said.
Such a declaration that the key instruments of the Anglican Communion are "lost" implies that the entire communion is lost, Dr Radner noted.
"The judgment is far too sweeping."
