Convocation of Anglicans in North America

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The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) is a Nigerian Anglican body in the United States comprised primarily of U.S. Anglican and Episcopal churches that have disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA). CANA was initially a missionary initiative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria that ministered to Nigerian Anglicans living and working in the United States, an area in which previously the only ministry of the Anglican Communion had been through The Episcopal Church, which also welcomed Nigerian Anglicans in the United States. CANA has grown as part of the broader Anglican realignment.^[1] The primary issue of CANA and for its creation was the issue of homosexuality, gays in the priesthood, and specifically the ordination of Gene Robinson as the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, and his relation to the The Episcopal Church.

Contents 1 Name 2 Leadership 3 Size 4 Beliefs 5 Controversy regarding overlapping Anglican jurisdictions 6 Member parishes 7 Property dispute trial 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Name

The first reference to CANA was in a letter from Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria on 7 April 2005, which announced the formation of "the Convocation of Anglican Nigerian Churches in America".

A press release from the Church of Nigeria issued on 15 September 2005 retained the acronym "CANA" but altered the full title to "the Convocation of Anglican Nigerians in Americas".

A letter from Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria dated 16 November 2005 was the first to title CANA as "a Convocation for Anglicans in North America".

Since then, CANA has said (for example on its website) that the acronym stands for "the Convocation of Anglicans in North America".

[edit] Leadership

In June 2006, the Reverend Martyn Minns, then the rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, was elected by the Anglican Church of Nigeria as the Missionary Bishop for CANA. Minns was consecrated in Abuja, Nigeria in August 2006 and installed as Missionary Bishop in May 2007. The consecration was controversial because both the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Archbishop of Canterbury had requested that it not proceed. Subsequently, in May 2007, the Archbishop of Canterbury excluded Bishop Minns from his invitation list to the 2008 Lambeth Conference, as a bishop whose appointment had caused "exceptionally serious division or scandal within the Communion". ^[2]

In March 2007, the Right Reverend David J. Bena, retired from his post as the Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, became the Suffragan Bishop for CANA.^[3]

[edit] Size

As of 29 May 2007, the CANA website claimed a total of 37 churches in 15 states plus the District of Columbia. It does not publish total membership or average weekend worship attendance. Earlier that month, the website had claimed membership of "around twenty clergy and a dozen congregations". It is centred on what is has designated "The Anglican District of Virginia" (to distinguish it from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, with whom it is in litigation over property). In a press release of 14 June 2007, the Anglican District of Virginia claimed "18 member congregations, 14 of which are under the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of CANA, The Right Reverend Martyn Minns, and four which are ADV associate members and ecclesiastical members under direct authority of other Anglican Archbishops". It has two US-based bishops and has announced plans to appoint more bishops at the Church of Nigeria's meeting of bishops in September 2007.

[edit] Beliefs

CANA is more theologically conservative than ECUSA, in particular on how to interpret the Bible, as demonstrated in clashes over human sexuality and marriage that have occurred between ECUSA and member churches that have disaffiliated to join CANA. The following excerpts were taken from the CANA Convocation's Web site FAQ.

Core values

“

CANA is Christ-centered and outwardly focused, mission driven with an emphasis on evangelism and discipleship, church planting, and a passion for reaching and serving the least, the last and the lost.[4]

”

Interpretation of the Bible

“

CANA holds to the traditional formularies of Anglican Christianity. It adheres to "the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacrament and Discipline of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as the Lord has commanded in his holy word and as the same are received as taught in the Book of Common Prayer and the ordinal of 1662 and in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion" (quotation from the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Nigeria).[5]

”

Human sexuality

CANA "believes that Marriage, by Divine institution is a lifelong and exclusive union and partnership between one man and one woman."^[5]

[edit] Controversy regarding overlapping Anglican jurisdictions

CANA, as a missionary initiative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, has been accused of breaking the Anglican tradition of having ecclesiastical jurisdictions that do not geographically overlap.^[6] In particular, CANA's Anglican District of Virginia covers the same territory as The Episcopal Church's Dioceses of Virginia and Southern Virginia.

The Lambeth Commission on Communion (appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury), in the Windsor Report (2004) called on "bishops who...intervene in provinces other than their own" to express regret for the consequences of their actions and to effect a moratorium on further interventions.^[7]

Anglican churches generally do not establish jurisdiction in areas already served by other provinces within the with the worldwide Anglican Communion. There are other Anglican groups, such as the Anglican Province of America and Reformed Episcopal Church, which overlap with dioceses and provinces of The Episcopal Church. However, they are not affiliated with the Anglican Communion.

In May 2007, it was confirmed that CANA's Bishop would not be invited to attend the 2008 Lambeth Conference of the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion. [1]

[edit] Member parishes

In December 2006, Truro Church, The Falls Church, Church of the Apostles in Fairfax, and other ECUSA churches in Northern Virginia voted to leave the ECUSA Diocese of Virginia, following a process called "40 Days of Discernment",^[8] and affiliate with CANA. The departing churches took almost 5,000 parishioners with them.^[9] These churches formed an association within CANA called the Anglican District of Virginia.^[10] In January 2007, clergy of the departing churches were "inhibited" (barred from duty),^[11] and the churches' ownership of their property was legally disputed by the ECUSA Diocese of Virginia and the national church after the diocese declared the property of the churches to be "abandoned."^[12]

However, these were not the first churches in Virginia to affiliate with CANA: Church of the Messiah, an ECUSA Diocese of Southern Virginia parish in Chesapeake, Virginia, in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, voted to leave ECUSA and move to CANA in October 2006.^[13]

In February 2007, St. Andrew's-in-the-Pines, a 350-member ECUSA congregation in Atlanta, Georgia voted to leave the ECUSA Diocese of Atlanta and join CANA.^[14] The group of parishioners that voted to leave later dropped its claims to parish property and reorganized as the Anglican Church of Fayette County. ^[15]

In March 2007, Grace Church and St. Stephen's Parish in Colorado Springs, Colorado disaffiliated with the ECUSA Diocese of Colorado to join CANA. ^[16]

In May 2007, members of Trinity Church, including Rev. Donald Helmandollar voted to leave the ECUSA Diocese of Connecticut and join CANA.^[17] A dispute over ownership of the church's property is ongoing in Connecticut Superior Courts. ^[18]

[edit] Property dispute trial

The first trial in the property dispute between CANA and the Diocese of Virginia occurred in mid-November 2007 in the Fairfax County Circuit Court, before Judge Randy Bellows. The trial addressed "issues related to the applicability and interpretation" of a Virginia statute by which the CANA churches claim entitlement.^[19] The law in question, enacted in 1867, addressed the many divisions among Protestant churches over issues of slavery and race following the American Civil War. During the winter of 2006, the CANA churches filed in court under the protection of this law to establish their right to gain property control from the Episcopal Church.^[20] Judge Bellows had initially indicated that he expected to issue a ruling in mid-January 2008. However, as of March 19, 2008, no such decision had been published.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Church of Nigeria (Anglican)
• Convocation of Anglicans in North America
• Truro Church
• The Falls Church
• Church of the Apostles, Fairfax