Will the Episcopal Church morph into a liberal version of the Anglican Church in North America?

By Robin G. Jordan

Jay Akasie’s article, “What ails the Episcopalians,” in The Wall Street Journal’s Houses of Worship column, elicited cries of outrage from liberal Episcopal bloggers and applause from ACNA bloggers. Liberal Episcopal bloggers are overly-sensitive to any perceived or actual criticism of their denomination. ACNA bloggers applaud any article that criticizes their denomination’s rival. What grabbed my attention, however, were Akasie’s conclusions in regards to the likely outcome of any restructuring of the General Convention and church governance in the Episcopal Church.

“Formally changing the structure of General Convention will most likely formalize the reality that many Episcopalians already know: a church in the grip of executive committees under the direct supervision of the church's secretive and authoritarian presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. They now set the agenda and decide well in advance what kind of legislation comes before the two houses.”

Akasie notes how the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop bypassed General Convention’s budget committee and presented her own budget proposals.

“In the week before this summer's convention, Bishop Schori sent shock waves through the church by putting forth her own national budget without consulting the convention's budget committee—consisting partly of laymen—which until now has traditionally drafted the document.”

Akasie points to the attention of the Episcopal Church’s conservative and liberal wings the probable consequences of a one-chamber General Convention dominated by senior clergy.

“And yet there are important issues at stake if laymen are further squeezed out of what was once a transparent legislative process. A long-standing quest by laymen to celebrate the Eucharist—even taking on functions of ordained ministers to consecrate bread and wine for Holy Communion, which is a favorite cause of the church's left wing—would likely be snuffed out in a unicameral convention in which senior clergy held sway.

Also in jeopardy would be the ability of ordinary laymen to stop the rewriting, in blunt modern language and with politically correct intent, of the church's historic Book of Common Prayer. The revisionist bishops who would hold sway over a unicameral convention in the future haven't hid their desire to do away with all connections to Thomas Cranmer, who was appointed archbishop of Canterbury by Henry VIII. He was a classic figure in the English Reformation. But today the man and his prayer book are deemed too traditional by some church bishops.”

What Akasie anticipates is likely to become the new structure of the Episcopal Church has an uncanny resemblance to the present structure of the Anglican Church in North America. As I note in my article, “A Pope, Oops, I Mean an Archbishop?! What Was the Common Cause Governance Task Force Thinking?” the leaders of the ACNA have established in their denomination the very things against which the Communion bishops of TEC are fighting in their denomination. If Akasie’s prognostications are accurate, what we can expect to see is the transformation of TEC into a liberal version of the ACNA.

The ACNA has an archbishop who may be described as secretive: He is not known for his openness or transparency. Archbishop Duncan also may be described as authoritarian: He favors the concentration of power in a ecclesiastical elite not constitutionally responsible to the denomination’s general membership. He supervises the committees and taskforces that set the agenda of the Provincial Council and which decide well in advance what kind of legislation is presented to the Council. He chairs the meetings of the Council. The Council is a unicameral legislature. The terms of Council members are staggered. The manner of their selection is not prescribed in the canons: the diocesan bishop could appoint a diocese’s representation on the Council. The Council may co-opt up to six additional members of any order. The Council may easily be dominated by the senior clergy and by a particular faction among the clergy. The Provincial Assembly is only empowered to ratify the acts of the Council or to return the legislation to the Council. It cannot initiate legislation or amend it. Archbishop Duncan also chairs the meetings of the Assembly. The Executive Committee, of which Archbishop Duncan is the chairman, prepares the budget of the ACNA with the Finance, Budget and Stewardship Committee’s help.

“We’re different,” members of the Anglican Church in North America may protest. To which I must reply, “In what way?”

The Anglican Church in North America is not entirely free from liberalism. Liberalism may not be as radical in the ACNA as in the Episcopal Church but it is present. The ACNA’s acceptance or tolerance of the ordination of women to the presbyterate is a liberal position, as is its willingness to admit divorced and remarried individuals to the ordained ministry.

Liberal thought may be found in the ACNA “theological lens” produced by the Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force and adopted by the College of Bishops and in the ACNA ordinal compiled by the same task force and authorized by the College of Bishops. It also may be found in the Anglo-Catholic and Ancient-Future convergence ideologies prevalent in the ACNA.

None of the ACNA leaders have achieved sinless perfection even those who claim to have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The ACNA is composed of sinful human beings like all denominations. As Article 9 reminds us, we are naturally inclined to evil. The flesh and the spirit are constantly at war. To use the words of Philip Edgcumbe Hughes’ A Re-Statement of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, “this infection of our nature remains even in those who in Christ are reborn.” Article 26 further reminds us, again in the words of Hughes’ A Re-Statement of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, that “…in the visible Church there is always a mingling of evil with good, and at times evil persons hold the chief positions in the ministry of the Word and sacraments….”

The ACNA leaders, like their fellow human beings, are fallible: They are not only capable of making mistakes, but also they have made mistakes and continue to make them. As they are human beings, they are not always governed by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God (Article 21). They may follow their own hearts and the human heart is extremely deceitful.

The ACNA leaders, like the liberal bishops in the Episcopal Church, in their rhetoric, give lip-service to a policy of recognizing divergent opinions in the church. In reality, however, they have problems with a comprehensiveness that included conservative evangelicals and traditional Anglican evangelicalism, much in the same way as TEC’s liberal bishops have problems with a comprehensiveness including the orthodox. Rather than making room for the full spectrum of conservative views, they have established Anglo-Catholic views (traditionalist Anglo-Catholic and Ancient-Future convergence) as the only acceptable views in the ACNA and are excluding conservative Anglicans who do not agree with these views.

The potential for the abuse of authority and arbitrariness in decision-making in a form of church governance like the one established in the Anglican Church in North America is very high. At the same the degree of accountability, openness, and transparency is extremely low. The laity, while major stakeholders in the ACNA, are denied a share in the governance of the denomination in proportion to their stake.

While there are admittedly a number of theological and moral differences between the Anglican Church in North America and the Episcopal Church, these differences do not mitigate the extent and  severity of the problems associated with the form of church governance that the ACNA has chosen to adopt.

Related:
A Pope, Oops, I Mean an Archbishop?! What Was the Common Cause Governance Task Force Thinking?