Robert William Duncan (born July 5, 1948) is an American Anglican bishop. He was the first primate and archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) from June 2009 to June 2014. In 1997, he was elected bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh. In 2008, a majority of the diocesan convention voted to leave the diocese and the Episcopal Church and, in October 2009, named their new church the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. (The Episcopal Church continued to maintain its Diocese of Pittsburgh under new leadership.) Duncan served as bishop for the new Anglican diocese until 10 September 2016 upon the installation of his successor, Jim Hobby.
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). At the time of Duncan's departure from the Episcopal Church, he was described as "probably the top conservative Episcopal bishop in America".
Early life and ministry
Duncan was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1948. His mother suffered from mental illness and he found refuge from the tumult of his family life in prayer and meditation at Christ Episcopal Church in Bordentown.
Duncan attended Bordentown Military Institute where he graduated valedictorian. He then entered Trinity College (A.B. cum laude) in Hartford, Connecticut. After graduating from Trinity in 1970, he enrolled at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church (M.Div., DD honoris causa) in New York. During his time at seminary, he also studied Scottish history at Edinburgh University.
Duncan was ordained as a deacon on April 22, 1972, and as a priest on October 28, 1973, the feast of Saints Simon and Jude. His first assignments were at the Chapel of the Intercession in New York City; at Grace Church in Merchantville, New Jersey; and a short period at Christ Church in Edinburgh. From 1974 to 1978, he served as assistant dean at the General Seminary. He spent the next four years in campus ministries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, serving as assistant rector for campus ministries at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 1982, he was called to be rector of St. Thomas' parish in Newark, Delaware, where he served for 10 years.
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.
In 1995 Duncan was elected as bishop coadjutor of the diocese of Pittsburgh and succeeded Hathaway upon his retirement in 1997. Duncan was not among the nominating committee's candidates, but instead nominated from the floor of the convention, however, and was eventually elected. 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 program committee of the Network for Anglicans in Mission and Evangelism, an agency created at the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
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 (United States)."
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". 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.