Things change....Common Cause Partners plow ahead.

Well, just posted a comment on Nigeria's Frequently Asked Questions and said we hadn't heard form the Moderator of the Network. So this morning, in the midst of writing, wouldn't you know, the ACN web pages has a new posting.

It announces "Common Cause Council of Bishops Set for Sept. 25 – 28."

“By the time we meet, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church will have given its response to the Anglican Communion as to its decision to ‘walk apart.’ By contrast, I expect our gathering to signal a new level of ‘walking together’ both with each other and with the wider Anglican world,” wrote Anglican Communion Network Moderator and Common Cause convener Bishop Robert Duncan. The meeting, said Bishop Duncan, is the result of many years of work toward Anglican unity, work responding to resolutions of both the Lambeth Conference of Bishops and The Episcopal Church’s General Convention."

It doesn't appear that the Moderator has much confidence in the ABC and House of Bishops Meeting, much less in any process beyond September 30th. In that at least he agrees with Nigeria.

So the Common Cause Partnership bishops are on the move. Among the stated goals of the meeting is

"to initiate discussion of the creation of an “Anglican Union” among the partners, moving forward the vision of the Primates of the Global South for a new “ecclesiastical structure of the Anglican Communion in the USA.”

The bodies with bishops part of this council are : TEC -Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Mission in the Americas (including the Anglican Coalition in Canada), the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Anglican Province of America, Forward in Faith North America and the Reformed Episcopal Church. There are other bodies in the process of joining the Common Cause Partnership.


This is the effort to Hang Together. It remains to be seen if this grab bag of ecclesial entities - some part of the Anglican Communion, some not, can overcome their difference from oneanother to achieve the unity needed. Remembering that where there is a college of Common Cause Bishops there will no doubt be a president or chair, high stakes conversations will be the order of the day.