NOT A NEW ORGANIZATION BUT A MORAL VOCATION & THEOLOGICAL VISION

What Toon & Tarsitano seek to achieve by their writings
This is an explanation and an apology produced as an expression of koinonia amongst orthodox-minded American Anglicans, who feel the pain and the strain of the present position and divisions of the American Anglican Family.

Since the publication of the Statement of the Primates of the Anglican Communion on October 16, Peter Toon & Lou Tarsitano have written a series of short essays, articles and pieces on the general topic of REBUILDING THE AMERICAN ANGLICAN HOUSEHOLD.

They have not had in mind the creating of a new organization or society; in fact, to do such a thing has not even been discussed or contemplated by them. They have no money to create any cause: they simply write when they are free from parish duties, for both are parish ministers.

As two persons committed to the unity without uniformity of the Anglican Way in the USA, on sound and generous principles, they are seeking each week to offer theological insights to their brethren in order to encourage serious reflection on (a) the basis of the Anglican Way in terms of its doctrine & formularies; (b) the Polity of the Anglican Way as a fellowship of National Provinces; (c) how the divided but orthodox-minded members of that Way in their many groupings in America can be brought together into one reformed and renewed Household, and (d) where the concerned Primates’ fit into all this as external helpers and guides.

Much of their writing is posted at www.american-anglican.fsnet.co.uk to which you are encouraged to go for a sample!

Both have their own strong convictions and both have been treated less than kindly in the past by bishops of the erring ECUSA – which means that they can begin to understand the pain of others therein now. Yet they long to see the “faithful remnant” that is left within the ECUSA and the growing number of Extra-Mural Anglicans outside the ECUSA (and thus officially outside the present Anglican Communion) find substantial ways as quickly as possible to enter into full dialogue with each other.

They have proposed that this dialogue should lead on eventually to a full congress of representatives of all the parties (and they have suggested it be under a Convener from outside – a person of stature respected by all). They themselves do not wish to have any leadership or steering role in this development (or in another like unto it). They see their vocation as merely preliminary, that of putting positive ideas before Anglicans, and thus into the common “floating” fund of such ideas, so that in God’s good providence there will arise soon from within the Anglican Household the common leadership to provide the means necessary to organize the full dialogue & the full growing together of the now “separated brethren,” who have more in common than in what divides them. The longer this growing into unity takes the greater will be the obstacles to overcome.

Thus they are not in competition with others be they the Fellowship of Anglican Churchmen, Anglicans [Episcopalians] United, the American Anglican Council, the Ekklesia Society, the Forward in Faith, the Traditional Anglican Communion or any further societies. Rather, their ideas call for the members of these groupings to be expressions in their decisions and witness of the centripetal grace of God bringing separated brethren together from their present seeming centrifugal [and thus divisive] activities.

November 22, 2003.