Legal framework set for new Third Province in North America

Thursday, 4th December 2008
By George Conger

Leaders of the Third Province movement sidestepped the contentious issue of women clergy last night, and have endorsed a provisional constitution and canons governing the emerging Third Province in the Americas.

“God did a great work today,” Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan told supporters at a church service in Wheaton, Illinois at the end of the Dec 1-3 gathering, as the disparate members of the Common Cause Partnership (CCP) of Anglican traditionalists in the US and Canada “came together with the proposed draft of the constitution and canons” and after discussing each proviso, “adopted unanimously” each article of the code.

This was “staggering considering who was around the table” said Bishop Duncan — the moderator of CCP and now the interim primate and archbishop of the provisional province.

Comprised of approximately 700 congregations with an average Sunday attendance of 100,000, the newly created Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) boasts Anglo-Catholics, Evangelicals, Charismatics, and a variety of traditionalists at odds with the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada. the rest