Bishop Cox Leaves The Episcopal Church

03/30/2007

Concerned that his presentment trial would be a financial and public relations disaster for The Episcopal Church, retired Bishop William J. Cox informed Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on March 29 that he had left The Episcopal Church and had been received into the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone.

“I don’t want a fight amongst Christians,” Bishop Cox told The Living Church. “I don’t hold a grudge against [Oklahoma] Bishop [Robert] Moody or [Kansas] Bishop [Dean] Wolfe for bringing charges against me.

“I would hope this transfer will enable me to be of service to congregations in this country that have already affiliated with the Southern Cone, but that decision will be up to Archbishop [Gregory] Venables."

Bishop Cox, who served as Bishop Suffragan of Maryland from 1972 to 1980 and assistant Bishop of Oklahoma, 1980-1988, said there are three congregations under the oversight of the Southern Cone in Tulsa, where he lives with his wife, Betty. There are around five others in Texas and several more Southern Cone congregations in California.

Wicks Stevens, who is Bishop Cox’s lawyer, received formal notification of the presentment charges from the Presiding Bishop’s office earlier this week. Bishop Cox said he wants to remain in active ministry and be a member of the Anglican Communion. Both of those would be put in jeopardy if he went through a trial and was deposed, which Bishop Cox said was likely since he did not think it would be possible for him to receive a fair trial in an ecclesiastical court of The Episcopal Church.

“At the request of another Anglican primate, I tried to minister to Episcopalians who had been made outcasts by their church,” he said. “This is not the same church in which I was ordained.”

This article comes from The Living Church Foundation
http://www.livingchurch.org/

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