The Rt. Rev. Daniel H. Martins, Bishop of Springfield, discusses one of the reasons he will not attend the House of Bishops’ next meeting, scheduled in Taiwan:
We are an American church. That we have foreign dioceses in our own hemisphere is testimony to the missionary zeal of our forebears, but the final stage of a responsible missionary strategy is always to spin off such churches as they mature into self-sustainability. We have already done so with Mexico and Brazil, for example. Rather than exploiting our Latin American dioceses for purposes of TEC branding, we should be focusing on helping them reach the point where they can form a new autonomous (but interdependent, of course) Anglican province. The number of flags on the dais should not be a point of boasting, but a source a mild embarrassment that we haven’t done a better job in bringing the missionary cycle to an organic conclusion.
