The new ACNA eucharistic rites on closer inspection (Part 4)

By Robin G. Jordan

In light of the present direction of the Episcopal Church and the contribution of the 1928 and 1979 Prayer Books to the movement of the Episcopal Church away from the Biblical and Reformation theology of the Anglican formularies, one might have expected the Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force in the eucharistic rites that it produced to have distanced the Anglican Church in North America from the defective American Prayer Book tradition and moved the Province closer to the 1662 Prayer Book tradition. However, rather than break with the American Prayer Book tradition the task force embraces it, celebrates it, and embellishes it.

In cobbling together the new ACNA eucharistic rites, the task force drew heavily from the 1928 and 1979 Prayer Books. These two Prayer Books were strongly influenced by Anglo-Catholic and liberal movements in the Episcopal Church. The task force also incorporated liturgical material from the new English translation of the third edition of The Roman Catholic Missal

The new ACNA eucharistic rites stand squarely in the same Prayer Book tradition as the 1928 and 1979 Prayer Books. This is not particularly surprising as most of the task force’s members are former Episcopalians. The task force does take the new ACNA eucharistic rites further in an Anglo-Catholic direction than the compilers of the 1979 Prayer Book would have dared to go. This is a direction that the task force has shown no hesitance at taking, for example, the Anglo-Catholic doctrine and ceremonial in the ACNA ordinal

Two GAFCON conferences have called Anglicans to return to the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies. In the Anglican Church in North America that call goes unheeded.

The Nairobi Conference established guarding the gospel as one of the priorities of the Global Fellowship of Confession Anglicans. The new ACNA eucharistic rites show that the Anglican Church in North America is unable, if not unwilling, to rise to the task.

The long and short forms of the new ACNA eucharistic rites are almost identical in structure and content. Why did the Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force opt for two forms when the task force could have just as easily produced a single eucharistic rite—one with one or more alternative forms for the Prayers of the People, one of more alternative Confessions of Sin, one or more alternative Prayers of Consecration, and one or more Post-Communion Prayers?

Someone of more cynical frame of mind than myself might be tempted to suggest that the Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force was trying to give the appearance that it has been working much harder to compile a service book for the Anglican Church in North America than it actually has. A more charitable explanation is that the task force was aping the 1979 Prayer Book and the other more recent Anglican service books.

Neither form of the new ACNA eucharistic rites conforms to the doctrine of the classic Anglican Prayer Book, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Neither form respects its liturgical usages. Indeed the Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force show very little regard for the 1662 Prayer Book as a formulary of authentic historic Anglicanism—as one of Anglicanism’s primary doctrinal standards and as Anglicanism’s principal worship standard.

The Prayer of Consecration in the short form may omit the oblation of the bread and wine. But this omission does not make the short form any less Anglo-Catholic in doctrine. The 1549 Canon omitted the oblation of the bread and wine and the 1549 rubrics forbade the elevation of the Host and the showing of the Sacrament to the people. This did not prevent Bishop Gardiner from interpreting the 1549 Communion Service as teaching the Medieval doctrines of the Sacrifice of the Mass and Transubstantiation.

The rubrics of the new ACNA eucharistic rites are silent on the matter of ceremonial. At the same time they do not prohibit the priest from offering up the bread and wine at the offertory and again during the Prayer of Consecration. They also do not prohibit the priest from elevating the Host or showing the Sacrament to the people. All these ceremonies are associated with the Medieval doctrines of the Sacrifice of the Mass and Transubstantiation.

The new ACNA eucharistic rites contain all the elements needed to give liturgical expression to the view of the eucharistic celebration articulated in Canon 899 §1 of the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church:

In it, Christ the Lord, through the ministry of the priest, offers himself, substantially present under the species of bread and wine, to God the Father and gives himself as spiritual food to the faithful united with his offering.

This view of the eucharistic celebration, however, is at odds with the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies.

For eucharistic rites that do endeavor to conform to the doctrine of the classical Anglican Prayer Book and to respect its liturgical uses, see The Holy Communion in An American Prayer Book (2009) and Services of the Lord’s Supper in the Diocese of Sydney’s Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Centered Gatherings (2012).

The new ACNA eucharistic rites are defective not only from a theological standpoint but also from a practical one. The growth of liturgical churches in North America is tied to a large part to demographics. The Roman Catholic Church, North America’s largest liturgical denomination, is growing only in those areas where the Roman Catholic population is growing. North America’s smaller liturgical denominations, for example, the Continuing Anglican Churches are declining because the segment of the population from which they drew their members is disappearing.

Some may argue that this is not the case for all of the smaller liturgical denominations, pointing to the growth of a number of Orthodox denominations in some areas of North America. This growth, however, is transfer growth, not true conversion growth rising from the proclamation of the New Testament gospel. Attracting a larger share of “the circulation of the saints” is not the same thing as fulfilling the great commission. The churches in these denominations are not gospel-centered and other factors account for their growth.

If the Anglican Church in North America is genuinely committed to reaching unreached people groups in and outside of North America with the New Testament gospel and planting gospel-centered churches that plant more gospel-centered churches, it needs an entirely different type of forms of service from the ones that Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force have compiled to date:

First, the Anglican Church in North America needs forms of service that are centered on the gospel—the gospel of salvation by grace by faith alone in Christ alone, which the Thirty-Nine Articles were intended to preserve and to which the 1552 and 1662 Communion Services give liturgical expression. It is to the ministry of the gospel that Anglican clergy are also ordained in accordance with the rites of the 1661 Ordinal. If ACNA churches are not teaching and preaching the gospel and using forms of service that embodies the gospel message, they are not carrying out the great commission whatever they are doing. The Anglican Church in North America does not need forms of service that obscures the New Testament evangel and proclaims “a different gospel.”

Second, the Anglican Church in North America needs forms of service with enough flexibility to permit worship planners to tailor services to a wide variety of circumstances – composition, size, ministry target group, and worship style of the congregation, cultural context of the community, availability of clergy and musical resources, worship setting, and other variables. The Anglican Church in North America needs forms of service that can be used in the informal setting of a living room, an office, a hotel conference room, a school auditorium or cafeteria, a movie theater, a picnic shelter in a park, or a storefront – all the places where 21st century Anglican Christians can be expected to meet for worship - as well as in the more formal setting of a parish church. The new ACNA eucharistic rites are designed for large gatherings worshiping in the traditional setting of a parish church, seminary chapel, or cathedral. They presume clergy and a congregation that is receptive to Anglo-Catholic beliefs and practices and is wed to a High Church style of worship. Many 21st century Anglican congregations may never own a building; they may never have the pews, kneelers, lecterns, pulpits, reading desks, altar tables, and other paraphernalia that we have come to associate with Prayer Book worship. If they are gospel-centered, they will have adopted a worship style that best suits their circumstances and serves the gospel. The new ACNA eucharistic rites will if anything prove a hindrance to their ministry and a barrier or obstacle to the spiritually disconnected and the unchurched.

Third, the Anglican Church in North America needs forms of service that both a congregation with a formal, traditional style of worship and a congregation with a more informal, more free-flowing worship style can use. The forms of service should be adaptable to the type of worship which a congregation has discovered it can do well and which the congregation has concluded works best for it in reaching the spiritually-disconnected and the unchurched and drawing seekers and believers closer to God in its particular circumstances. The new ACNA eucharistic rites seek to force the worship of all congregations into the same mold—an Anglo-Catholic, High Church mold. In the 21st century all sorts of churches and all kinds of worship are needed to fulfill the Great Commission and to make disciples of all people groups. A “one size fits all” approach is not going to work. What is key, however, is that these churches are gospel-centered churches.

Fourth, the Anglican Church in North America needs forms of service that are distinguished by simplicity and restraint. These qualities are one of the hallmarks of Anglican worship at its best. It is sparing in its use of gesture and posture in the liturgy. It avoids excessive, fussy and unintelligible ceremonial. It refrains from cluttering the liturgy with superfluous prayers and devotions that needlessly prolong the opening and close of the service and give unwarranted emphasis to the ingathering and presentation of the people’s alms and oblations. It practices the liturgical principle that “less is more.” The new ACNA eucharistic rites, however, appear to be designed to do the exact opposite. Services that are long, tiring, and incomprehensible are not going to attract the younger generations.

The Anglican Church in North America has entered a period of reception. If no one says anything about the new ACNA eucharistic rites, publishes their concerns on the Internet, conveys their concerns to the Prayer Book and Common Worship Task Force, their bishop, and the College of Bishops , these rites will become the official eucharistic rites of the Anglican Church in North America and their theology, the official eucharistic theology of the denomination.

The Anglican Church in North America has reached another crossroads. It can take a wrong turn, abandon the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies for the false teaching of Anglo-Catholicism, give up the true gospel for a false one, and take the same road as the Continuing Anglican Movement, a road that will lead to its eventual dissolution and demise. Or it can step back from the abyss. It can make a much needed change in the direction that it has taken so far. Pray that the leaders of the Anglican Church in North America have the wisdom to make the right choice. The future of the Anglican Church in North America is in their hands.

Also see
The new ACNA eucharistic rites on closer inspection (Part 1)
The new ACNA eucharistic rites on closer inspection (Part 2)
The new ACNA eucharistic rites on closer inspection (Part 3)