By Jeremy Reynalds

Bishops, clergy and lay leaders from the United States and Canada unveiled a provisional constitution and the first set of canons for the new Anglican Church in North America at a news conference and worship service Wednesday at Wheaton Evangelical Free Church in suburban Chicago.

A news release reported that the movement unites 700 orthodox Anglican congregations, representing about 100,000 people, in an organization that members believe will be recognized as a province – the Anglican term for the church’s largest regional jurisdictions – by many of the world’s Anglican leaders.

“The purpose of this province is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and his transforming love in the United States, Canada and beyond,” said Bishop Bob Duncan of Pittsburgh, moderator of the Common Cause Partnership, speaking in a news release.

According to the news release, church officials and lay people at the news conference said that the new church would heal many years of division and unite Anglicans committed to Scripture and traditional Anglican beliefs.

The preamble to the provisional constitution says that they are “grieved by the current state of brokenness within the Anglican Communion (Anglicans’ worldwide church) prompted by those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance.”

Dr. Michael W. Howell, who has been appointed the executive director of Forward in Faith North America, said he was thrilled at the movement to form a new church.

“Some of us have been praying for this for decades,” he said in the news release. “Instead of focusing on things that divide us, we as orthodox Anglicans are focusing on the things that unite us.”

Cynthia Brust, Director of Communications for the Anglican Mission in America, also said in the release, “Today is the beginning of the healing of the Anglican Communion …The main component to me is the mission focus. We will be driven by mission, not structure.”

The Common Cause Partnership is a federation of Anglican Christians that links together eight Anglican jurisdictions and organizations in North America., including the American Anglican Council, the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the Anglican Communion Network, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, Forward in Faith North America, the Reformed Episcopal Church, and the bishops and congregations linked with Kenya, Uganda, and South America’s Southern Cone.

The news release said that the leadership of the Common Cause Partnership began forming the new church in response to a request from the leading archbishops of the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem last summer.

At the close of that gathering, Anglican leaders released the Jerusalem Declaration and the GAFCON Statement on the Global Anglican Future, which outlined their Christian beliefs and goals to reform, heal and revitalize the worldwide Anglican Church.

The news release said that Bishops of the Common Cause Partnership, joined by members of the congregation, signed the Jerusalem Declaration at Wednesday’s Common Cause Worship Celebration. About 800 people, representing Anglicans from all across North America, participated in the service.

Bishop Martyn Minns of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America said in the news release it took “a lot of prayer, a lot of grace and a lot of hard work” to formulate the documents organizing the new church. Bishop Duncan said that the leaders on the council passed every provision of the constitution and each of the nine canons unanimously.

“We submitted to one another on matters of unity,” Bishop Duncan said in the same release.

The Anglican Church in North America will hold a church-wide assembly in the summer of 2009 in Bedford, Texas, where the documents will be ratified by all those who choose to be part of the Anglican Church in North America.

For more information, visit www.united-anglicans.org.

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