Disintegration Can Be Good

CHARLESTON, SC: New Post-Colonial Anglican Communion is Emerging, says Bishop Duncan

By David W. Virtue in Charleston, SC

www.virtueonline.org

February 1, 2008

Common Cause Partnership, Anglican Communion Moderator and Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told a gathering of bishops, clergy and laity at the annual Mere Anglican conference that a new post-colonial Anglican Communion is emerging in the Communion even as The Episcopal Church is disintegrating.

"The Church moves from consensus through disintegration to consensus. We are in the period of disintegration. A new Elizabethan Settlement is required, between consensus and the horrendous disintegration we are seeing," he said. "As the book of Hebrews, chapter 11 tells us we have no lasting city, but there is a city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God. We know how the book ends, and we have a lasting city. God wins again."

Drawing on the long history of the Anglican Communion, Duncan said the old Elizabethan Settlement is dead and a new reformation with a new consensus is emerging as Mere Anglicanism, which will have new systems and structures.

Observing developments since the Sept. 30 HOB meeting in New Orleans, Duncan noted that there are implications for Anglicanism. "I am still the bishop (applause and laughter). I am my old uninhibited self. We learn by suffering that is my family motto."

Duncan said that, since the threat of inhibition, each visitation he has made on Sunday has been met with responses that have blown his mind. "I had a Baptist minister in a local congregation come to express his solidarity with me for my stand for God's word. Recently, an Assemblies of God leader came to express to me that her whole congregation was praying for me. There is a Christian convergence going on as we all stand for the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

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GJ - The Lutheran Church is disintegrating. Oddly, the Episcopalians are leagues ahead of the Lutherans in fixing the problem. Episcopalian bishops have the spine to stand up to the Presiding Bishop, the Lavender Mafia, and the apostate priests. The Lutheran leaders do not. The Episcopalians think the answer is to find their traditions again. The Lutheran dissenters want to bail out to Rome or Constantinople.
The Lutherans do not want to bring back Luther's doctrine: they want to bring back Mary!