Mchungaji wa Kimarekani wa Kanisa la Anglikan kwenda Zanzibar

The Rev. Jerry Kramer, the Episcopal priest who threw his church into the recovery of Broadmoor after Hurricane Katrina, has left the church for a more conservative Anglican community.

Kramer, the former rector of the Free Church of the Annunciation, said by e-mail he now is affiliated with the Anglican Church in North America.

That community is composed of former Episcopalians who split with the U.S. church in 2008 over deep theological differences.

Kramer is now a member of an Anglican community in New Braunfels, Texas, with his wife and three children.

He said he is awaiting training before moving to Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania in east Africa, to do missionary work in a predominantly Muslim region.

Kramer left New Orleans in 2009 on a medical disability. He said he was physically and psychologically exhausted, suffering from difficult-to-manage diabetes, heart and liver problems.

After Katrina ruined his church, Kramer and his congregation put off rebuilding.

Instead, they opened the campus to the needs of Broadmoor residents, who received food, washed their clothes, got health care and used trailers on the site to house the offices of the Broadmoor Improvement Association, which planned the recovery of the devastated neighborhood.

Kramer's gifts fit the moment. Hyperactive and inventive, he spun off ministries and blew up established conventions in pursuing the work, almost erasing the distinctions between the church and the surrounding community.

In other ways, however, he was deeply orthodox.

He was increasingly ill at ease with changes in the Episcopal church's theology, particularly what critics saw as its diminution of the authority of Scripture and its increasing openness to faithful, same-sex relationships.

Those were the changes that caused the rift between the Episcopal church and those who left to form the Anglican Church in North America. That body, which says it has 100,000 members in nearly 1,000 congregations, now seeks to become a recognized member of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

From Texas, Kramer said the Epsicopal church "simply no longer believes what Christian have always believed."

He said the Anglican community he is now affiliated with "is in the process of replacing (the Episcopal Church) as the authentic expression of Anglicanism in the Americas."

Kramer said his Type 2 diabetes is now "completely cured," and he is medically cleared to resume work.


nola.com