Robert Duncan (bishop)

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Robert Duncan (bishop) bigraphy, stories - Religion

Robert Duncan (bishop) : biography

July 5, 1948 –

Robert William Duncan (born July 5, 1948) is an American bishop. He has been Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) since June 2009.. Accessed April 15, 2010. In 1997, he was elected Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. In 2008, a majority of the diocesan convention voted to withdraw the diocese from the Episcopal Church, and in October 2009, the diocese renamed itself the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. Duncan continues to serve as bishop for this diocese as well as archbishop of the ACNA.

Duncan served as moderator of the Anglican Communion Network from 2003 to 2009 and chairman of the Common Cause Partnership from 2004 until the creation of the Anglican Church in North America. He has honorary doctorates from General Theological Seminary (1996) and Nashotah House (2006). Until Duncan’s departure from the Episcopal Church, he was considered to be "probably the top conservative Episcopal bishop in America".http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/belief-blog/2008/Sep/18/bishop-duncan-gets-heave/

Conservative leadership

Duncan quickly became the head of a group of Episcopal leaders hoping to maintain conservatism within the denomination. When openly gay priest Gene Robinson was elected Bishop of New Hampshire, Duncan voiced strong opposition to the election. After Robinson’s election was confirmed by the church’s general convention on August 5, 2003, Duncan acted as spokesman for a group of conservative bishops and lay leaders at a press conference expressing disappointment at Robinson’s election. Duncan denounced the election claiming that the Episcopal Church had "departed from the historic faith and order of the Church of Jesus Christ". Duncan and Robinson were members of the same GTS class, both having taken their MDiv degrees in 1973.

In January 2004, Duncan became the leader of the newly formed Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes, a conservative action group whose stated mission was to allow "Episcopalians to remain in communion with the vast majority of the worldwide Anglican Communion who have declared either impaired or broken communion with the Episcopal Church USA."

At the March 17, 2005, meeting of Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops, Duncan read a speech in which he admitted that the rift between the two sides may be "irreconcilable".http://www.anglicancommunionnetwork.org/news/dspnews.cfm?id=126 In a possible sign of schism, St. Brendan’s, a liberal parish in Franklin Park, Pennsylvania, announced in February 2005 that it no longer wished to be under Duncan’s oversight.

In July 2007, Duncan made remarks criticizing Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, for inadequately supporting "orthodox" breakaways from ECUSA, declaring, "The cost is his office… To lose that historic office is a cost of such magnitude that God must be doing a new thing." The statement critical of the Anglican Communion’s worldwide leader led the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner to resign from the Anglican Communion Network, which he had assisted in founding, out of the concern that "Bishop Duncan has, in the end, decided to start a new church."Jan Nunley, Radner explained, "Bishop Duncan has now declared the See of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference — two of the four Instruments of Communion within our tradition — to be ‘lost’."E. Radner, "." At the request of Rowan Williams, Duncan attended the 2007 Primates’ Meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Election as bishop

Duncan was a candidate for Bishop of Colorado in 1990. In 1992, Alden M. Hathaway, then Bishop of Pittsburgh and a noted theological conservative, named Duncan his canon to the ordinary. He also served as bishop coadjutor of the diocese.

Duncan was not nominated by the committee that picked candidates for Bishop Hathaway’s successor. He was nominated from the floor of the convention, however, and was eventually elected. On September 13, 1997, he was consecrated Bishop of Pittsburgh. The Diocese of Pittsburgh was at that time considered by many in the Episcopal Church to be one of the most conservative and evangelical dioceses in the Episcopal Church. Duncan served on the programme committee of the Network for Anglicans in Mission and Evangelism, an agency created at the 1998 Lambeth Conference.