Posted by George Patsourakos
on 10/12/2009, 10:23 pm
On October 10, 2009, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary signed an historic covenant with Nashotah House -- an Anglican seminary located in Nashotah, Wisconsin -- in which traditional Anglican leaders and leaders of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) pledged to work towards unity.
Speaking to an international audience of 170 people, Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) Archbishop Robert Duncan stated that signing the conference inter-seminary covenant -- committing Nashotah House and St. Vladimir's seminaries to mutual prayer and fellowship -- "lays the groundwork of something very much larger," namely "serious dialogue with the OCA and the resumption of ecumenical discussion between two separated parts of the Church."
Metropolitan Jonah, head of the OCA and a former Anglican, spoke of the urgency of unity in the face of an increasingly aggressive secularism.
The OCA Metropolitan said, "We stand at a crisis which threatens to undermine the very basis of our culture...only by standing together, united by one Faith, one Heart, one Church, will we be able to withstand the onslaught of licentiousness...and fight against it. There is in materialism, there is in secularism only despair."
Future ecumenical discussions have been set between the two ecclesial bodies.
For more information on the Orthodox-Anglican covenant, visit the Virtue On Line website.
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