OCEANSIDE – For those following the ongoing tensions between the U.S. Episcopal Church and conservative congregations who are breaking away from it, the Anglican bishop of Bolivia offers this prediction:
It won't be long until the worldwide Anglican Communion replaces the Episcopal Church as its U.S. branch with one more to the liking of conservatives.
“I see everybody coming together to form a new structure for the Anglican Church in the United States,” Bishop Frank Lyons said yesterday during a meeting with members of two breakaway congregations, St. Anne's Anglican Church in Oceanside and Holy Family Anglican Church in Vista, which are under Lyons' long-distance oversight.
“I see all that coming together in the next year,” Lyons said at the meeting, held at St. Anne's. “I think it will work that fast. That's what I'm pushing for.”
San Diego Episcopal Bishop James Mathes did not want to comment on Lyons' predictions.
“This is a time for Christian charity and cooperation, not a time for rumors and divisions,” Mathes, through a spokesman, said yesterday.
Last week, in a statement about Lyons' upcoming visit, Mathes said he was “distressed” that the Anglican bishop is not abiding by a centuries-old tradition of honoring the authority of the local bishop.
Mathes also noted the disparity between the number of churches Lyons oversees in Bolivia and the United States. Lyons said yesterday he supervises 35 congregations in the United States and has five churches, including one that will open later this year, in Bolivia.
“Rather than growing the church in his mission field, he has inserted himself in the affairs of another part of the communion and exacerbated the conflict,” Mathes said in his statement. “I suspect his reasons are more driven by economics and ego rather than theology.”
The 77-million-member Anglican Communion is made up of 38 self-governing provinces around the world, with the spiritual head being the Archbishop of Canterbury in England. The U.S. province is the 2.4-million-member Episcopal Church.
Over the past three years, in a dispute rooted in theological and cultural divisions, dozens of conservative congregations have left the Episcopal Church and sought oversight elsewhere in the Anglican Communion. Eight of San Diego County's 51 congregations have been affected by the split.
Next month's meeting in Tanzania of the Anglican Communion's top leaders, called primates, will be key, Lyons said.
“That's going to be D-Day right there,” he said.
Among the leaders who will be at that meeting will be Lyons' primate, Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone of the Americas, who repeatedly has declared his displeasure with the U.S. church. Lyons, who became the Anglican bishop of Bolivia in 2001, said he was asked by Venables to help supervise congregations who wanted to leave the Episcopal Church but remain Anglican.
Lyons, 52, grew up attending an Episcopal Church in Maryland and later moved to South America to do missionary work. He described the divisions as festering for decades. The 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church and last year's election of the denomination's first female presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, were “only precipitating causes.”
“It's kind of like the Episcopal Church is not paying attention to anybody, any of their partners overseas,” Lyons said.
After his meeting with church members, Lyons presided at a joint worship service, which drew about 175 people. He will spend two weeks in this area, visiting with breakaway congregations. On Saturday, he will ordain a new deacon at St. Anne's, Austin Mansfield, who plans to start an Anglican church in South County next month.
Sandi Dolbee: (619) 293-2082; sandi.dolbee@uniontrib.com
