The Anglican Mission Has More than One Option

By Robin G. Jordan

I find Canon Kevin Donlon’s arguments in his response to “the Washington Statement” to be spurious. While they may impress some readers with his seeming eruditeness, they are misleading. Among the facts that are not mentioned is that Donlon drafted the 2007 Rwanda canons. He created the office of Primatial Vicar, made the authority of the Missionary Bishops derivative from the Primatial Vicar, and provided no role for the clergy and laity of the Anglican Mission in its ecclesiastical governance except at the Network and local congregational level. He drew upon Roman Catholic models. The 2007 Rwanda canons owe more to the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law (1983) than any other source. They incorporate the doctrine, language, norms, and principles of that code.

In the comments left in response to a post on another blog related to Canon Donlon’s response to “the Washington Statement,” I read at least one comment that attributes the top-heavy structure of the Anglican Mission to the Rwandans and the African penchant for authoritative bishops. But the fact is that the top-heavy structure is related more to Roman Catholic proclivity for centralized hierarchies and prelacy than any such African penchant.

Canon Donlon belongs to a particular school of thought that while it likes to claim the Caroline divines as its antecedents has its origins in the Tractarian Movement of the nineteenth century and has a much greater affinity with pre-Reformation Medieval Catholicism and post-Tridentian Anglo-Catholicism than its does with what Canon Frederick Meyrick describes as “Old Anglicanism.” In the nineteenth century the Tractarians would assert that bishops were a superior order to presbyters, deacons, and laity. God had vested them with supreme authority over the church as the successors of the apostles. A number of bishops in then Protestant Episcopal Church would claim that all authority in the diocese flowed from them and the authority of the diocese standing committee and the diocesan convention was derived from them. What limits that the diocesan canons imposed upon their authority were voluntary. The same bishops would claim that the General Convention of the Episcopal Church derived its authority from the House of Bishops. This view of episcopal authority stood in stark contrast to the thinking behind the constitution of the Episcopal Church. In that thinking the authority of diocesan bishops was derived from the constitution of the diocese, in other words from the consent of the clergy and congregations forming the diocese. The General Convention derived its authority from the dioceses forming the national church.

A number of bishops in the Church of England adopted a similar position and sought to exercise the authority that they claimed was inherent in the episcopate. The result was a series of judicial rulings that affirmed the principle that bishops were subject to the laws of the land, the canons of the church, and the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer as was any other minister. A bishop could only exercise discretionary judgment in matters in which the laws of the land, the canons of the church, and the rubrics of the Prayer Book permitted him discretionary judgment and then only within the limits that they set.

Canon Donlon would have Anglican Mission clergy, congregations, and mission partners believe that if the Anglican Mission becomes independent, the only option open to the Anglican Mission is to give even more authority to Bishop Chuck Murphy while in so far as the authority of the other bishops of the Anglican Mission is concerned, it has no option but retain the present state of affairs with the other bishops deriving their authority from Bishop Murphy in his new position as Apostolic Vicar. What he is asserting is that there is a body of canon law that has its own independent existence and to which the Anglican Mission must accede. This is how John Henry Newman sought to reinterpret the Thirty-Nine Articles, claiming that there was a body of Catholic tradition by which the Articles must be interpreted.

In reality the Anglican Mission is ultimately a voluntary association. What authority its bishops and other leaders exercise is whatever authority its governing documents (i.e. canons, charter, bylaws, etc.) give to their respective offices or recognize as inherent in a particular office.

The Anglican Mission, if it chooses to separate from the Anglican Church of Rwanda, has another option. It can draw up its own constitution and set of canons, establishing a representative governing body, defining the functions and powers of its bishops, and so on. Its bishops can become Area Bishops with responsibility for a specific cluster of churches and one of them can be designated Moderator or Presiding Bishop. The original vision of the Anglican Mission, after all, was to be the Anglican Missionary Province of North America.

As I have written elsewhere, the structure of the Anglican Church in North America is also top-heavy at the provincial level. There is a discernable movement toward implementing a prelatical form of ecclesiastical governance. At the same time there is also a noticeable movement to retain synodical forms of church government at the diocesan level.

These two developments bring to mind what happened in the Continuing Anglican Church Movement. A serious division would develop between those who were loyalist Anglican and favored a synodical form of church government and those who were ultra-Catholic and championed a prelatical form of ecclesiastical governance. This division would contribute to, if not cause, the fragmentation of the Continuing Anglican Church.