AMESBURY — It's been nearly three years since the Episcopal Church was officially divided in the wake of the consecration of the Rev. Gene Robinson, an openly gay Episcopal clergyman, to bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire, giving birth to the more conservative Anglican Church of North America.
At the leading edge of that shift was the Rev. William Murdoch, who had led All Saints' Church in West Newbury since 1993. Like many Episcopalians, Murdoch saw Robinson's election as the final step in a growing perception of the church's increasingly liberal philosophy.
In response, Murdoch effectively resigned as an Episcopalian in 2007 to start one of the first Anglican churches in North America, which found a new home in Amesbury.
This week, Amesbury is again serving as a hub for the North American Anglican movement, hosting an estimated 100 bishops and laypeople from Canada and across the country at All Saints Anglican Church to celebrate their coming together as a new religious denomination.
"All Saints Church has played a central leadership role in the development of the ACNA," said All Saints pastor Michael Morse, who served with Murdoch as assistant rector in West Newbury prior to coming to All Saints. "So part of the reason for meeting here is to recognize the role this church has played."
While they're here, the Anglican leadership will anoint All Saints as the ACNA's official Anglican Diocese in New England.
"This parish will serve as the cathedral on a temporary basis during the tenure that Bishop Murdoch remains bishop of the diocese," Morse said.
Seeds of change
Morse said splitting from the Episcopal denomination was not solely based on the consecration of a gay Bishop, which was more of a last straw for a number of clergymen, laypeople and parishioners in the church.
"For the largest number, there was a theological drift that is really going back a century that came to a culmination with the consecration of Gene Robinson," Morse said. "But that was more of a precipitating last straw."
Morse said the decision to leave West Newbury was made not so much in the interest of excluding homosexuals from their church but in the interest of sticking to a traditional interpretation of the scripture as practiced by the Anglican church since its origins as the Church of England.
"The precipitating event certainly was the election and consecration of Gene Robinson as bishop in New Hampshire," Morse said. "More fundamentally, it is about wanting to maintain a posture of classical, historical Christian Orthodoxy. It has to do with maintaining a fidelity to the classical doctrines of Christian faith — the personal work of Christ and biblical authority. They're more foundational than the question surrounding sexual ethics."
In July 2007, Murdoch officially left the Episcopalian Church and traveled halfway around the world to be ordained as an Anglican bishop by the Diocese of Nairobi in the Anglican Province of Kenya.
In September of that year, Murdoch and a number of others who followed him from the West Newbury church arranged to purchase the old Sacred Heart Church on Friend Street from the Catholic Archdiocese. Since then, they have sought to formalize their new church structure and their affiliations.
Morse said the Anglican church is welcoming of all but ensures the teachings of the church promote marriage between a man and a woman.
"We welcome everybody into the community of our churches," Morse said. "Everybody comes into the church with a less-than-perfect sexual life and sexual ethic — that's true for everybody. It's more a question of what we teach. But our official teaching, just as it would be with a heterosexual couple, is that sexual expression is appointed within the confines of heterosexual marriage."
Morse said the new Anglican church, which has grown to be represented in New England by 10 individual churches, six missions and six new church starts, is affiliated with "a number" of provinces in the worldwide Anglican communion but not all.
The Episcopalian Church also exists under the umbrella of the Anglican Communion in England, which is the third-largest religious communion in the world, with 77 million members, behind only the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy.
While there are differences of opinion within the church, Morse describes the Episcopalians as being in greater internal turmoil.
"The Episcopal Church is a denomination I would say in great flux," Morse said. "There's a wide diversity of views — an extraordinary diversity of views, on not only sexual ethics but on a whole host of other things."
Town 'abuzz'
Morse said the public is invited to attend the Investiture of the Bishop and Designation of All Saints' Anglican Church as the Pro-Cathedral of the Diocese, an event taking place tonight at 7:30 that's expected to draw a large crowd.
After the formal designation and the business of the new church is completed, Morse said the church will set about seeking growth and a greater presence in the community. So while residents may notice this week the number of spiritual leaders spread out across the town, they will also begin to notice the church getting more involved in community outreach.
"I think right now what we're doing is we're hopefully ending the period of consolidation," Morse said. "I see us getting involved within the local community of Amesbury and greater Newburyport with social outreach programs."
Anglican Church Archbishop Robert Duncan, who spoke yesterday to the group meeting this week in Amesbury, said the new Diocese property has great potential.
"There is so much more possibility here," he told the group. "The Cardinal Archbishop of Boston, like so many ecumenical allies, moved heaven and earth (as they say) to make this place available for homeless Anglicans."
He said Mayor Thatcher Kezer came to the church to welcome them to their new home, and that the whole town is "abuzz" with what's happening in the new cathedral.
"The school building will be used by the town for at-risk kids five days a week," he said. "Accountable to the Scriptures."
Describing the church's new direction, he added, "Accountable to the Tradition. Accountable for social transformation. Boundless vision. All things new. This is the Anglican Church in North America."
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