Bad to the Bone – Part 1

An Appraisal of American Anglicanism

By Robin G. Jordan

The ACNA Prayer Book will be the last piece in the puzzle. It will complete the picture. The pieces—the constitution and canons of the Anglican Church in North America, the creation of offices and structures for which these governing documents make no provision, the making of appointments by individuals that they do not authorize to make such appointments, the new ordinal, and the recent consecrations and investitures—as they have been fitted into place show more and more of that picture. It is not a picture of a province in which the clergy and the laity share in the governance of the church at all levels, major decisions are made openly and transparently, and constitutionalism and the rule of law is respected and valued. Nor is it a picture of a province in which there is genuine Anglican comprehensiveness, room for the Protestant/reformed catholic faith of the classical Anglican formularies, and universal acceptance of salvation by grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone as the essence of gospel teaching. The final piece will confirm what the other pieces have been telling us. North America continues to need a biblically faithful, mission-oriented, orthodox Anglican province.

There are folks both in and outside the Anglican Church in North America who want to pretend that with the establishment of the Anglican Church in North America the problems of American Anglicanism have been fixed. But this is not really the case. In this three-part article I will look at the problems besetting American Anglicanism and what lies behind them. I will be focusing on seven areas—the Bible, the Protestant Reformation, the Prayer Book, the Thirty-Nine Articles, bishops and episcopacy, the sacraments, and mission.

I took the title for this three-part article from the title of a song by George Thorogood and the Destroyers, released in 1982 on the album with the same name. It is a reminder that the problems of American Anglicanism are not superficial. They are deeply entrenched and longstanding.

The Bible. The classical Anglican position on the authority of Scriptures is that the Bible is God’s word written. Scripture is totally true in all that it affirm, “telling us all that God wills to tell us and all we kneed to know for salvation and eternal life.” Scripture is also perspicacious, that is, it is “straightforward and self-interpreting on all matters of importance.” (J.I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, p. 17) This position, while valuing reason and tradition, takes Scripture seriously as canon, as “a functioning rule of faith and life,” and “systematically submits all human thoughts to Scripture.” (Ibid., p. 18) For this reason, Canon A5 of the Church of England’s canons states:

The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures [my emphasis]. (The Canons of the Church of England, p. 7

In the North American Church two other positions have to a large part displaced the classical Anglican position in the past 200 years. These two positions are the Catholic and liberal positions. The Catholic position, while it maintains that Scripture is divinely inspired, turns to tradition and to the church as the infallible interpreter of tradition to understand the Bible. Tradition, the Catholic position claims, is also divinely inspired and the church in interpreting tradition is guided by the Holy Spirit. Tradition, it argues, continues where the Scripture leaves off. Indeed Scripture is just another form of tradition.

The liberal position rejects the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture and does not regard Scripture as trustworthy or expressing God’s mind. At the same time it maintains that through the Holy Spirit’s leading wisdom from God may be found in Scripture.

The Catholic and liberal positions, while they refer to Scripture as the canon, do not take Scripture seriously as a functioning rule of faith and life. As J. I. Packer puts it,

Thus they do not in practice fully accept its authority, and their Christian profession, however, sincere, is thereby flawed. (Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, p. 18)

From the point of view of working theology, the two positions make the church the ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice.

The two positions have, in some quarters of the North American Church, become fused together. Of Scripture and tradition, the latter is seen as the more trustworthy, and is treated as a last court of appeal, except where it differs with the liberal consensus on a particular matter. As a result a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated elements of the Eucharist may be combined with a commitment to radical inclusion, the acceptance of women’s ordination, and the normalization of homosexuality in the church.

The fusion of the two positions is not confined to the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church but is also found in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission (formerly the Anglican Mission in America) and surprisingly to some degree in the Continuing Anglican Churches.

The dominance of Catholic and liberal positions on Scripture in the North American Church help to explain why the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles is not accepted in the North American Church. For Catholics the Articles are too Protestant; for liberals, they are too biblical.

While some clergy and congregations in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission have recovered the classical Anglican position on the authority of Scripture, there is no evidence of a church-wide movement to recover this position.

The Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation as a spiritual movement that flowed from the recovery of the New Testament gospel in the sixteenth century is not fully appreciated in the North American Church if it is appreciated at all. Within the North American Church there is a tendency to dismiss the Protestant Reformers and their teaching and to maintain that the Church has moved on since then and is more enlightened in its beliefs and practices. The latter is defined in liberal or unreformed Catholic terms or a combination of the two.

The reformed catholicism of classical Anglican formularies is a development of the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation occurred in the British Isles as well as on the Continent. The English Reformers “used the standard of Scripture, applied by reason, to correct whatever needed correcting in the church’s inherited forms.” (Roger T. Beckwith, The Church of England: What It Is And What It Stands For, p. 25)

Within the North American Church there is a tendency to redefine the term “reformed catholicism” to mean a form of unreformed Catholicism with a vernacular liturgy or a form of liberalism in unreformed Catholic trappings. Neither definition is an accurate representation of reformed catholicism of Anglicanism, which, while “it retains the ancient common heritage of Christendom, in a biblical form,” is reformed not only in its vernacular liturgy but also in its emphasis upon the Bible, in its Thirty-Nine Articles, and in the place it gives to the laity in the government of the Church. (Ibid., p. 25)

The place Anglicanism gives to the laity in church government is not well understood and requires explanation. In the Church of England it would take the form of the royal supremacy in its government. The English monarch would become the supreme governor of the Church with the right to nominate and appoint the bishops of the Church. Any changes in doctrine, order, and practice in the English Church would require the approval of the English Parliament and the assent of the English monarch, as well as the Convocations of the two Provinces forming the English Church. The reformed model of church government that was adopted in England was that of the Swiss Reformed Churches with the exception of Geneva. In the Swiss city-states, exclusive of Geneva, the magistrate governed the Church with the Church serving as the magistrate’s conscience. In England the monarch was the magistrate, and governed in concert with Parliament. The Protestant Episcopal Church would adopt a system of conventions and standing committees through which lay delegates would share in the government of the Church with the bishops and the clergy.

Where Continuing Anglican Churches have adopted prelatical forms of church government, modeling their form of church government upon that of the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and reducing the laity to a purely consultative role at best, they have abandoned a major reformed element of Anglicanism. This is what has happened in the Anglican Mission where the laity has a role in church government only at the local congregational level. It is what is happening in the Anglican Church in North America at the provincial level and may over time happen at the diocesan level.

The provisions of the ACNA constitution and canons permit a diocese to adopt a constitution in which the bishop appoints the standing committee and nominates two or three candidates from whom the College of Bishops chooses his successor. The ACNA governing documents do not prevent a bishop from selecting two or three nominees in consultation with his fellow bishops with the result that the College of Bishops could eventually become self-perpetuating.

The participation of the laity in the selection of a successor to the bishop of a diocese has a long history going back to the early Church. The practice of bishops selecting bishops as in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches is a later development.

In the mode of selecting bishops adopted at the time of the Reformation the laity at least indirectly took part through the English monarch and his Privy Council in the selection of a new bishop. The Protestant Episcopal Church would move closer to the primitive mode of selecting a bishop in its vesting of the choice of a new bishop in a diocesan convention made up of clergy and laity.

Lay involvement in church government at all levels is a must if Anglicanism is to retain its reformed character. This includes participation of laypersons in the discussion and decision-making affecting major issues in the Church, including the selection of bishops. The laity is a part of the Church. They have, as "An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whit-Sunday" reminds us, received the Holy Spirit. The manifestations of the Holy Spirit they have been given are for the whole Church. This includes the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. Such gifts are not confined to one person in the Church or to one class of persons. To scorn the spiritual gifts of the laity is to spurn the One who gave them.

In the second part of this article I will continue my examination of the problems besetting American Anglicanism and what underlies these problems.