MORE ANGLICAN REALIGNMENT
St. Luke's of the Mountains Church in La Crescenta, California has left the Episcopal Church USA and aligned itself with another province of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Bishop J Jon Bruno, of the Episcopal Church Diocese of Los Angeles, has issued an order of "inhibition" against the clergy who serve at St Luke's. This bars them from all of the functions of the ordained ministry. Among those under inhibition is Eddie Gibbs, the respected Donald A McGavran Professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Of course, the leadership of the parish will simply ignore Bruno, having preemptively sought episcopal oversight from the Anglican Church of the Province of Uganda. Many of the more orthodox Anglican bishops in Africa, Asia, and South America have been providing temporary refuge for the American and Canadian parishes which have disaffiliated themselves from, or have been forced out of, the liberal-controlled Anglican bodies in those countries.

The strategy articulated by many of the leaders in the breakaway movement is to eventually bring all of these orthodox parishes currently under international bishops together to form a new North American Anglican Province. Already there is a Network of the parishes temporarily under the bishops from Uganda, Kenya, Central Africa, and the Southern Cone, which allows them to function together. But they hope to expand their structure as it evolves to include earlier breakaway groups such as the Anglican Province of America, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), and perhaps even the Charismatic Episcopal Church (CEC -- which is technically not a break-off of the Episcopal Church).

If you had asked me two years ago I wouldn't have seen much reality in their goal. All of these breakaway groups were each moving independently in their own direction -- and even sniping at each other. But there is now a growing recognition that their future is together and that they have to get serious about working it out. They can't afford infighting. So I suspect that it will eventually work out in some form.

The question in my mind now is whether there will be a worldwide Anglican Communion left to receive the new North American Province. It seems likely that the communion itself will split, with the larger powerful church bodies of the Global South initiating a new more orthodox fellowship that will leave the Church of England, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Episcopal Church USA to fend for themselves.