Conservative Anglican's Visit Upsets Episcopal Leaders

An orthodox Anglican group in the United States will this week officially install its missionary bishop who will provide oversight to breakaway Anglicans. But Episcopal Church leaders feel more threatened by a visit from an Anglican leader from overseas who will be attending the ceremony.

|PIC1|Archbishop Peter Akinola of the Church of Nigeria - the largest province in the worldwide Anglican Communion - plans to install the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns as missionary bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) - a splinter group and offshoot of the Church of Nigeria.

The visit, Episcopal Church leaders say, threatens to further strain the "fragile" relations between their church body and the rest of the worldwide Anglican Communion, according to International Herald Tribune.

The Rev. Mark Harris, a member of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, said Akinola "is making clear that he considers the church in Nigeria is not in communion with the Episcopal Church."

Akinola was one of seven Global South Primates (Anglican leaders) who declared a "severely impaired" relationship with the Episcopal Church and did not participate in the Holy Eucharist with Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori during the global Primates meeting in February.

The Episcopal Church had widened rifts within the Anglican Communion when it consecrated an openly gay bishop in 2003, which the majority of Anglican leaders called a departure from Anglican tradition and a violation of Scripture.

Responding to Akinola's planned visit, Jefferts Schori said Akinola's acceptance of "an invitation to Episcopal ministry here without any notice or prior invitation" was not keeping with "the ancient practice in most of the church" that bishops minister only within their own jurisdictions, according to International Herald Tribune.

"This action would only serve to heighten current tensions and would be regrettable if it does indeed occur," she said in her statement.

During the February Primates meeting, the Episcopal Church had called for an end to interventions from bishops such as Akinola, who started a conservative parish network in the United States for congregations that disagree with the US wing of the Anglican Communion. Those who intervened, however, said it would be inappropriate to pull out until "there is change in the Episcopal Church," according to the February communiqué.

Primates recommended that the Episcopal Church consent to appoint a "Primatial Vicar" and special committee that would oversee US dioceses that reject the authority of Jefferts Schori. In return, the Anglicans said they would stop Anglican bishops from coming on their own into the United States to take oversight of dissenting Episcopalians.

In March, however, the Episcopal House of Bishops rejected the demand for leaders outside the US denomination to oversee the conservative American dioceses that disagree.

Akinola is now scheduled to preside over Saturday's ceremony in Woodbridge, Va., to install Minns, former rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Va., which was one of the largest churches in the state to leave the Episcopal Church last December.

"The reality is that there is a broken relationship between the Episcopal Church and the rest of the communion," Minns said, according to IHT. "We want to give people a freedom of choice to remain Anglican but not under the Episcopal Church as it is currently led."

CANA, founded in spring of 2005, currently consists of about 35 congregations and is growing.