AMA (ask me anything) about ACNA Assembly 2017

Discussion in 'Navigating Through Church Life' started by anglican74, Jul 3, 2017.

  1. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    So I was in the Chicago/Wheaton, IL area last week, and dropped in on the ACNA Assembly 2017. While I obviously didn't attend every single workshop I did attend the ones I could, as well as the liturgies, eucharists, the choral mattins, and the business sessions. I was also at the closing Eucharist witnessing the consecration of Rev. Andy Lines as the Missionary Bishop to Scotland (!).

    Ask me anything!
     
  2. Lowly Layman

    Lowly Layman Well-Known Member

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    What was your sense of the events?
     
  3. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Overall very impressive. Huge numbers of people (around 1400 in total). Saturated in God and faithfulness. Several highly strident and militant statements on rejecting the errors of the world and being strong in fidelity to the Lord, especially from the bishops.

    The liturgies were very reverential, even more so than in the years past. It's getting more and more reverential as the years go by. Although contemporary stuff was present and was a distraction from the highly reverent traditional music/ceremony, effort was put into making them as reverent as possible. They even had a reverential contemporary setting for the Sanctus.

    And although a few of the old Vineyard-type stuff were still present, it was less than in previous years. Again it seems to be getting less and less traction over time. I was told that although there is still the "three streams" nonsense it is basically dying on the vine (no pun intended), because the charismatic-type adherents are all in their 60s/70s. Nobody young is interested in that anymore, so just on its own it will die out. Certainly none of the youth were exposed to it (although they were over-saturated in contemporary stuff which I thought was the one shortcoming).

    The business session in particular was interesting as they tightened the screws on all existing canons and made everything even stricter than before. To be a member in good standing you no longer have to accept the teachings of the Church, but personally agree with the teachings of the Church. This raised some murmur among the liberal dioceses, like Pittsburgh who wanted to leave room for the laity to inwardly reject the Teachings (eg. against gay marriage). But the canon theologians and the archbishop were having none of it and all the motions passed.

    All these things have been filmed in the livestream which is posted on FB, so I highly encourage everyone to watch.
     
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  4. alphaomega

    alphaomega Active Member

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    Seems like they are moving in the right direction.
     
  5. Aidan

    Aidan Well-Known Member

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    Does ACNA have female ordination?
     
  6. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

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    Yes. Not in all constituent dioceses but in some. Look at the photos from the gathering. The archbishop even had a female deacon at the table with him and there was a female Gospeler.
     
  7. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Yes, five bishops agree with ordaining women and 41 bishops refuse to ordain women. The Archbishop is one of those who rejects women's ordination.
     
  8. Ide

    Ide Well-Known Member

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    I am looking in ACNA more closely, so I am happy to hear this. Do you have any names of the bishops or links to their statements?

    Could you explain this a bit more? I'm not familiar with "Vineyard" and what that means. Was this a big influence in the ACNA intially?
     
  9. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    A lot of it was 'you had to be there' kind of stuff, the substance and content of the breakout sessions, the comments people were making at lunches and suchlike intangible stuff. As for names, it's pretty much all of them. Any one who spoke. It would be easier to name the bishops that didn't carry this strident attitude. From Archbishop Foley Beach himself to Michael Nazir Ali, Benjamin Kwashi, Stewart Ruch, John Guernsey, Mark Lawrence, and now Andy Lines of England.

    Of course one of the biggest news from the Assembly was the consecration of Andy Lines, an English bishop (under the authority of ACNA College of Bishops), whose job will be to go to Great Britain and directly challenge the authority of liberals there.

    Now that I am thinking about it, much of the conference was captured in the Live Streams, so you can see for yourself:

    http://anglicanchurch.net/?/main/page/1395

    To get the substance of the content you will want to skip around until you get to the sermons and the keynote sessions.


    I wasn't there in the very early days (early 2000s) when that was more the case, but essentially this may help:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Vineyard_Churches

    The major name you'll see there is Todd Hunter who later converted into Anglicanism, but retained some of what the Vineyard movement espoused. Then he was consecrated as a bishop in ACNA, in the early 2010s. That influenced was the greatest then and has been waning since. In the live streams above you will not find any traces of any Vineyard influence, simply because it is anti-Anglican and none of the other bishops are interested in it.
     
  10. Ide

    Ide Well-Known Member

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    This is interesting with regards to the Vineyard movement because I noted that the ACNA churches tended towards more contemporary expressions than did TEC, which I found off because the majority of people in the ACNA came from TEC. Or at least I thought. This blend of the contemporary and traditional Anglican expression comes from this influence? I really have been liking the ACNA approach, but found the evangelical approach to be not really "Anglican" so it's left me confused. It's good to know the background on this.

    I will pick through the Live Stream and see what I can find. I do hope that the ACNA can help turn a corner for the Anglican communion. I have been fairly aghast at what has been going on in the UK recently. It's been hard for me to truly trust and commit to the Anglican church and tradition when the "mother ship" seems to be faltering to a great degree.

    Lastly, (and I hope I am asking this correctly) was anything mentioned about being in communion with Canterbury? It seems that they have been moving towards that for sometime, but I wasn't sure if there was any progress in that regard.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2017
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  11. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Well there has been a more broader stream of evangelicalism in TEC since probably the 1940s and 50s, with the advent of John Stott, Lloyd-Jones and other famous English Anglicans combined with the mighty sway of Billy Graham, Charles Henry and the really big heavyweights of the 50s. The impact from that infusion of evangelicalism has been both positive and negative, but on the negative side it was a rejection of vestments, and a disdain for the liturgy. When the mainstream TEC was taken over by the modernist/progressive heretics, the Anglo-Catholics left in the 1970s, because that's when the first women priests were ordained. The evangelicals largely remained. They made their exodus in the 1990s and 2000s. Thus it came to be that the Continuing Churches are Anglo-Catholics, for that's simply who withdrew back then; and ACNA was at the start more Evangelical than not, for that's who mainly withdrew then.

    Add to it the fact that the early days of ACNA were so fragile that the very bare minimums of Biblical orthodoxy were required. People like Todd Hunter came in for they certainly were not heretical on matters of sin. They also weren't Anglican, but since some of the evangelicals didn't wear vestments or pay much heed to the liturgy that didn't seem much of a barrier.

    I feel that this has changed tremendously in the last ten years, because 1) the saner minds have prevailed in ACNA regarding the future movement of the body; it could be towards less vestments, less liturgy; or more; and they have consistently chosen more. 2) the crisis in the Anglican Communion and the disappearance of older minders who remembered the old ways has led to a positive effect of people now taking on themselves to learn and recover the old ways. If no one else was going to carry those burdens, then the evangelicals have decided they would do it. So there's a lot more interest in the liturgy, everyone always wears vestments. It's just a very different environment from how things used to be 10-15 years ago.


    Keep in mind that the Church of England is the "mother church", not the "mother ship" in the way that the Vatican is for Rome. For Rome, if the Vatican falls the whole Roman Church falls and disappears in one fell swoop. However for us, we have the historical context of the ancient See of Antioch, now destroyed; the Diocese of Carthage and Hippo the old haunt of St. Augustine, now gone and destroyed. These events while they sadden us do not stop us, indeed cannot stop us. Thus the Anglican Communion is effectively indestructible.