Anglicans have historically been divided over the necessity of bishops to the life of the church. The English Reformers found no support for any particular form of church government in the Bible, either for episcopacy or for presbyterianism. The seventeenth century Caroline High Churchmen, while they viewed the episcopate as a divine institution, they refused to unchurch the Continental Reformed Churches because they lacked bishops. They recognized the orders and the sacraments of these Churches. The nineteenth century Tractarians and their Anglo-Catholic successors, however, had no qualms about unchurching all non-episcopal churches. They argued that episcopacy was of the essence of the church. Where there was no bishop, there was no church. This view brought them into conflict with evangelicals who like the English Reformers took the position that bishops were not absolutely essential to the existence of the church and recognized the orders and sacraments of non-episcopal churches.
In light of these historical differences of opinion among Anglicans upon the necessity of bishops and episcopacy, one would have expected the Anglican Church in North America not to have aligned itself with any school of thought but taken a position of studied neutrality on this divisive issue. However, the Anglican Church in North America in its Fundamental Declarations aligns itself with the Anglo-Catholic school of thought. In its requirement that all congregations, dioceses, clergy, bishops, and ministry partners subscribe to the Fundamental Declarations it effectively bars Anglicans who hold a different view on this matter from participating in the Anglican Church in North America or partnering with it.
A major element of Anglican ecclesiastical governance in North America in the past two hundred odd years has been the autonomy of the diocese in its selection of the diocesan bishop and any other bishops of the dioceses (coadjutor, suffragan, or assistant). While the choice of a new diocesan bishop required the confirmation of the province—the ecclesiastical province in the Anglican Church of Canada and the entire province in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA, that choice was the diocese’s.
Diocesan autonomy in the selection of its bishop is an ancient right and practice, the origins of which are traceable to the early Church. It had been preserved albeit in a much altered form in the pre-Reformation Church of England in the practice of the chapter of the diocese electing its bishop after consultation with the leading lay figures of the diocese.
The provisions for the nomination and election or appointment of the diocesan bishop and other bishops of a diocese or its equivalent in the Anglican Church in North America represent a compromise between those who favored the retention of this practice and those who sought its replacement with a method of episcopal nomination and appointment that, while it was represented as being African in origin, was in actuality derived from the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. This was known to at least one member of the Common Cause Governance Task Force who worked on the constitution and canons. Kevin Donlan, a former Roman Catholic priest, studied canon law at Cardiff University. Donlan compiled the constitution and canons of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, drawing heavily upon the doctrine, language, norms, and principles of the Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law. He was one of the Anglican Mission’s representatives upon the Task Force and championed the so-called African method of episcopal nomination and appointment.
How familiar the other members of the task force were with the origin of this method is unknown. Phil Ashey, speaking on the behalf of the Governance Task Force, claimed that the method had been borrowed from the Church of Uganda wherein fact it had been borrowed from the Roman Catholic Church by way of the Anglican Church of Rwanda.
The provisions of the canons commend this method to not only new dioceses but also the founding entities of the Anglican Church in North America. They became the center of controversy before the draft constitution and canons were adopted since they appeared to require new dioceses to adopt the method. The application guidelines for groups seeking recognition as a new diocese supported this interpretation of the provisions. A spokesman of the Governance Task Force would deny that was the intent of the compilers of the draft canons. He stated that a new diocese might elect its diocesan bishop and submit the name of the bishop elect to the College of Bishops for confirmation. The application guidelines, however, were not withdrawn.
The provisions themselves lacked sufficient detail. They were silent on what happened if the College of Bishops rejected all of a diocese’s nominees for bishop. They did not prohibit the College of Bishops from nominating someone and appointing him the bishop of the diocese.
After the draft constitution and canons were adopted and ratified, it came to light that the Anglican Mission had a special arrangement with the Anglican Church in North America by which its new bishops who are appointed by the Rwandan House of Bishops were exempt from the confirmation process. According to the terms of this “protocol” they would be admitted into the College of Bishops without any kind of vetting before or after their appointment.
All these developments took place against a background in which the autonomy of the diocese in the Episcopal Church from which many within the Anglican Church in North America had fled was under serious attack. A. Haley has documented this assault on his web log Anglican Curmudgeon.
In light of the role bishops have played in the drift of the Episcopal Church into liberalism, modernism, and radicalism, and the steady erosion of diocesan autonomy in that church, one might have expected that the Anglican Church in North America would have incorporated more checks and balances and other safeguards into its constitution and canons. This, however, has not been the case. A very vocal school of thought in the Anglican Church in North America blames the laity for the state of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church and sees unfettered episcopacy as a panacea for a host of problems. Archbishop Robert Duncan is a leading champion of this view.
If one examines the constitutions and canons of the present dioceses of the Anglican Church in North America one discovers that very few of these ecclesiastical jurisdictions have adopted the so-called African method of episcopal nomination and appointment. The larger number of them has retained the historic practice of a diocese nominating and electing its own bishops, which is so much a part of the North American Anglican heritage. The larger number of them has also adopted a synodical form of church government in which the bishop shares the governance of the diocese with a synod of clergy and laity and which also is a major part of the legacy of North American Anglicanism to its posterity.
This writer hopes that the Anglican Church in North America will undertake a complete overhaul of its constitution and canons in the not too distant future. Among the changes that I would recommend is to modify the language of the Fundamental Declarations to permit a broader range of views of the historic episcopate in the Anglican Church in North America, and to make the nomination and election of bishops by the diocesan synod or its equivalent the principal mode of episcopal election with the option that a diocesan synod or its equivalent may delegate the election of a bishop to the College of Bishops in the event the diocesan synod or its equivalent after repeated attempts fails to elect a bishop. Such delegation would cease with the election of a new bishop, and the diocesan synod or its equivalent could at any time withdraw such delegation. A number of dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia have adopted this practice. The canons of the Anglican Church of the province of the Southern Cone of America also make provision for the Provincial Executive Council and the bishops of the Province to elect a bishop for a diocese if the diocese repeatedly fails to elect a bishop and the see is vacant for an extended period of time.
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