Continuing Anglican History

One of the main troubles that I have is that my mind is not very linear and so sequential work is very difficult. For this reason, I sadly had to decline the writing of the history of the Anglican Catholic Diocese of the United Kingdom. As far as I am aware, there is only one published history on the Continuing Anglican movement and that is Divided We Stand by Douglas Bess. The trouble is that it is written from the perspective of an outsider and thus does not really do justice to the motivation behind the movement.

Of course, there have been some rather shameful moments in our history - the famous "Bishops' Brawl" being one of them but this is true of the whole Catholic Church. However, many of the original instigators of the movement are still with us. I had the privilege of meeting them four years ago during my trip to the Provincial Synod. I can't say that the Provincial Synod I attended was terribly interesting  but then, as Bishop Damien always says, a dull Synod is a sign of stability.

This year is different: four Continuing Anglican jurisdictions are, God willing, signing a statement of full communion. This is highly significant because it will undo divisions that existed when our Diocese was coming into existence. Our Diocese also suffered loss when Bishop Hamlett and other Bishops broke away to form the Holy Catholic Church. I would love to be there as many of my friends across the Continuum will be there - friends whom I have never seen face to face! The fact that I have friends throughout the Anglican world is a testament that there are no barriers to true friendship.

But there are people whom I will never meet - at least not in temporality - having entered their rest in God. They have been instrumental in helping the Continuing Anglican movement get off the ground, especially in the face of disgust from the See of Canterbury. It is their strength of character given by the grace of God that has helped us make forty years of history. It will be forty years on 28th of January 2018 since the Denver Consecrations made that clear statement that our walk with the Episcopal Church of the United States was over.

I have a little plea for my readers, especially to those of a venerable age. Perhaps you would write your memoirs, detailing the history of the Continuing Anglican movement as you saw it. If we can collate as much material as we could, then we have a record of who we are in the past forty years and a record of our testimony to the work of Our Lord Jesus Christ during this time of moral relativism and cultural Marxism.