Hewett said Islam is pushing us from behind. God is using Islam to bring His Church together, more quickly than we would have thought possible. Much of what needs to be done for a unified and orthodox Anglican witness in this country comes by simple living and serving together, within and beyond our jurisdictions. Our vocation is to produce saints, not strategies. Our vocation as Anglicans is to help the two lungs of the Church, Rome and Constantinople, breathe together again.

"If Rome is the shoe and Orthodoxy is the foot, we Anglicans can be the shoe-horn." Hewett said Continuers should look toward the Greek Orthodox Church because the Greek bishops have said to our people that they =should receive Holy Communion at our altars, if there were no Greek parishes nearby.

"The sincere friendship and rapport the Episcopal Church had with the Greek Orthodox was grievously shattered in 1976 with the purported ordination of women. The Greeks were betrayed. It is up to the traditional orthodox Anglican remnant in the US to re-build the relationship with the Greeks. We may be the only ones who can do it. If we can rebuild our relationship with the Greeks, then they can talk to the Holy See through is, and through us, the Holy See can talk to the Greeks. This may be the only way in which the full communion is ever restored."

Hewett said that what Continuers have to offer in a realigned orthodox Anglicanism has now been tested and refined by a wilderness generation that has wrestled long and hard with issues of sexual identity and family life in the light of Scripture and Tradition. He said Rome wants a strong dose of our Benedictine family life life. Our small parishes are family units. Their parishes are so large that they have to sue the Ignatian model of the Church as the militia Christi, the army of God. The Ordinariate, set up by Rome as a specific response to a certain community of Anglicans who requested a place in Rome, is not the answer, noted Hewett.

"Rome knows that 99% of traditional, orthodox Anglicans, who number tens of millions, are not going to accept the Ordinariate. What Rome is asking of the bulk of us is first to get our act together in the great re-alignment. This convergence has been accelerating since the Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in 2008. First we get our act together. Secondly, we clean up our act. Anglican dioceses that ordain women have to stop and reform and get it right on holy orders. The Federation of Anglican Church in the Americas (FACA), comprised of six continuing bodies is working to magnify the biblical office of deaconess. As the priestess door closes, the deaconess door opens. We can magnify women's ministries based on Scripture and Tradition: deaconesses, catechists, nuns, church Army officers, lay canonesses, and above all, wives and mothers. And we have to get it tight on holy matrimony.

"If God has a vocation for us as Anglicans then the great realignment in our global Anglican community will go forward. And God does have a vocation for Anglicanism. Anglicanism is not all washed up. We are no more washed up than anyone else would be under similar attack. We have a vital role to play in the Body of Christ. When the Episcopal Church turned itself into a Gnostic sect in 1976, we gave Rome and Orthodoxy and believing Protestants something identifiably Anglican with which they could still relate. One point of contact with fellow Bible-believing Christians was, and is, the congregations that welcome us through the years to get our start with them, to rent from them, until we could buy our own property. We have had cheek-to-jowl fellowship with Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and others.

"The Anglican Continuum has been the reconnaissance of the Lord's army. We are the eyes of the army. We have mapped the minefields. We have nearly 40 years of wilderness experience behind us, and part of our message is that when we get our act together, and clean up our act, we are not then to sit on our laurels, but to move out again, to fulfill our vocation, to help reveal the unity of the Body of Christ, to help get the two lungs of the Church breathing together again."

In his remarks, Anglican Church in America Presiding Bishop Brian Marsh criticized the Anglicanus Coetibus saying it offered a "conversion opportunity for those Anglicans who wished to become Roman Catholic." It made few provisions for the so-called "Anglican Patrimony", he added. He said Anglicanus Coetibus has in fact drawn us all closer together.

Marsh said it is only through "mutual cooperation" that we will truly become God's holy church.

Marsh points to the Victoria, BC Conference earlier in the year which he described as a "marvelous beginning" where we are celebrating our Anglican presence. "Many of us left with a renewed commitment to the Anglican Continuum."

"In September the Anglican Church in America and the Anglican Province of America signed an agreement of inter-communion, recognizing the validity of each others' holy orders and sacraments. It is another example of the Continuing churches drawing together. Archbishop Mark Haverland of the Anglican Catholic Church noted in his ecumenical address to the synod that the inter-communion agreement between the ACA and the APA is an "unambiguously positive" development.

"Archbishop Haverland invited Bishop Walter Grundorf of the APA and myself to the ACC Synod last month. We were both deeply moved to be accorded seat and voice at that Synod. We were invited to address Synod and were accorded a place of honor during the procession at Synod Mass. If this is what it means to grow up, let us pray for more of it."

Marsh said the last two years have signaled a shift toward maturity. He described the present state of the Continuum as moving into a "mature stage of our development" with an opportunity to use the gifts that God has given to create a new beginning for his holy church.

Marsh said he was open to talking to the AMIA, an evangelical church, with whom he said a "genuine dialogue" could take place.

He said that the ACA gained five congregations in New Hampshire following the Robinson consecration.

"We need to take the 39 Articles seriously and Newman's Tract 90 the purpose of which was to establish the contention that the fundamental ecclesiological identity of the Church of England was Catholic rather than Protestant. He has given us a way to talk to one another. The Chicago Quadrilateral is also part of our patrimony.

"We must always ask what minimum things we can do and not hurt God's people."

END