Conservative Episcopalians to Meet in Lone Star State

by Jim Brown
January 16, 2004

(AgapePress) - A new network of conservative Episcopal dioceses and congregations will be gathering in Texas on Monday to approve a charter.

In protest of the Episcopal Church USA's ordination of an openly homosexual bishop, traditionalist Episcopalians recently formed the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes. The group hopes to realign itself with the worldwide Anglican Communion without separating from the Episcopal Church.

Pittsburgh bishop Bob Duncan, who serves as the Network's moderator, says the two-day charter meeting in Plano will be a historic event.

"We're going to have representatives of the thirteen dioceses whose bishops have committed to try to build this [group]," Duncan explains. "Those representatives will come together and work on a practical structure for how we organize ourselves, how we choose our leadership, [and] how we put together an executive committee that can make decisions in interims between meetings of the representatives of the dioceses."

Duncan says the Network will also adopt a theological statement that has been "produced in preparation for this Network" and that is "thoroughly biblical and thoroughly recognizable by our Christian brothers and sisters."

The bishop says dioceses in the Caribbean and Latin America are expected to join the Network in the future, along with several orthodox Canadian dioceses. Three-thousand conservative Episcopalians met last weekend in Virginia to consider their place in the denomination in the wake of the decision by ECUSA's leadership to consecrate New Hampshire Bishop Vicki Gene Robinson, an open homosexual.