From the Archbishop

Pastoral Letter, 1999

To the clergy and people of the Anglican Province of Christ the King:

We have now reached 1999, the decisive year of the final century of this millennium. These last hundred years has seen the rapid erosion of Christian civilization, marked by two devastating World Wars. Our Lord has promised that the gates of Hell will never prevail against His Church. With this in mind, I recently celebrated the twenty-first year of my consecration as a Bishop.

Time has escaped, but we can reflect on the miracle of grace bestowed on us through receiving the succession of apostolic authority. It came with the Episcopal consecrations in Denver, Colorado on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas in 1978. By that act, the renewal of our Church began. We started out alone on the march through the desert. The Province of Christ the King had only five priests and one Bishop, five churches and one private chapel. We lost three churches through lawsuits at the start. Today, we reach across the country with eighty-five clergy and sixty-four parishes and missions.

Our seminary is the only traditional Episcopal theological college in the country. St. Joseph of Arimathea is an outstanding school, both academically and spiritually. Many American Episcopalians and Anglicans around the world are beginning to seek out the Province of Christ the King as a center of stability, education, and growth.

Moses spent forty years in the wilderness; we in the Province of Christ the King have nineteen years to go. Yet the great opportunity for our future advancement is the Province of Christ the King Development Fund. Through the generosity of Mr. & Mrs. Harry Sunderland, we have matching funds of up to three million dollars for building and establishing new churches throughout our country. At this point, we have raised one hundred ten thousand dollars plus the matching funds. It is manna from Heaven, but we all need to give and continue to give until the goal is reached.

The morning after my consecration in Denver twenty-one years ago, I awoke in the Arizona mountain town of Payson. Nancy and I had traveled through the night to be there and to ordain our first priest, Fr. Robert Donovan. I was very tired and as I started to rise that bright Sunday morning, it seemed as if I had a great beam on my back. The sudden realization came that I was carrying the history of two thousand years of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic experience with Christ.

Today, I rejoice with my fellow bishops, priests, deacons, and laity (for I walk no longer alone, we carry the cross together into the next millennium.

The Blessing of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost be amongst you and remain with you always.

The Most Reverend Robert Sherwood Morse