How the Anglican Church in North America Is Creating Obstacles to Its Own Growth – Part 3
By Robin G. Jordan
By Robin G. Jordan
The typical Anglican Province has a Provincial Assembly or
its equivalent which plays a significant role in the governance of the
province. This body is made up of the bishops of the province and clergy and
lay delegates from its dioceses. Among its usual functions are to amend the
constitution of the province, make canons for the province, create new dioceses
and missionary districts, approve the budget of the province, elect a
Provincial Council or its equivalent, give directives to the Provincial Council
and oversee its work. It may be recognized in the constitution of the province
as the supreme authority of the province. Its functions may include the
election of the metropolitan of the province if the province has a
metropolitan.
The Provincial Council or its equivalent typically carries
on the work of the Provincial Assembly or its equivalent between its meetings
and makes recommendations to the Provincial Assembly or its equivalent. It
implements the budget of the province and coordinates the work of the
province’s administrative organs. It cannot, however, amend the constitution or
make canons. It is accountable to the Provincial Assembly or its equivalent,
which can review its decisions and modify or reverse them.
The exact power-sharing arrangement between the Provincial
Assembly or its equivalent, the Provincial Council or its equivalent, and the
College of Bishops or its equivalent varies from province to province.
This description of the form of government in the typical
Anglican Province is a reasonably accurate one. It shows that this form of
government is essentially synodical, not prelatical as in the Roman Catholic
Church.
The Anglican Church in North America departs from this
model. Its form of government is closer to that of the Roman Catholic Church.
The ACNA has a Provincial Assembly but its powers are negligible. Under the provisions of the provincial constitution the Assembly is empowered to ratify changes to the constitutions and canons and to make recommendations. This is the extent of its role in the governance of the province-in-formation.
The ACNA has a Provincial Assembly but its powers are negligible. Under the provisions of the provincial constitution the Assembly is empowered to ratify changes to the constitutions and canons and to make recommendations. This is the extent of its role in the governance of the province-in-formation.
The Assembly cannot modify the constitutional and canonical changes
submitted to it for approval. The Assembly can only accept proposed changes
adopted by the Provincial Council or reject them and send them back to the Council.
It is a process reminiscent of the legislative process in number of former European
colonies in Africa in the days leading to independence.
The Assembly’s advisory function is limited by the lack of a
mechanism to appoint commissions, committees, or task forces to investigate or
study matters of concern to the delegates to the Assembly and to report their
findings to the Assembly with their recommendations.
The Archbishop or his designee is the presiding officer of
the Assembly. This enables whatever faction or party to which the Archbishop or
his designee belongs to set the agenda for the meetings of the Assembly and to
control what happens at these meetings.
The ACNA’s most recent Provincial Assembly lasted four days.
An hour and a half late on a Friday afternoon was devoted to the Provincial
Assembly Delegates Meeting. For most of the four-day Assembly the delegates’
time was occupied by bible studies, eucharists, speakers, and breakout groups. In
this hour and a half the delegates were expected to propose recommendations,
consider their merits, and make decisions about them, as well as to weigh the proposed
constitutional and canonical changes presented to them for ratification and to
approve or reject them.
In allotting such a brief span of time to the meeting, it is quite evident that ACNA leaders had no intention of permitting the delegates to do anything more than formalize what they themselves had already decided upon. To my knowledge the delegates have not to date rejected anything presented to them for ratification.
In allotting such a brief span of time to the meeting, it is quite evident that ACNA leaders had no intention of permitting the delegates to do anything more than formalize what they themselves had already decided upon. To my knowledge the delegates have not to date rejected anything presented to them for ratification.
The Provincial Assembly is modeled upon the annual Winter
Conference, a non-deliberative assembly of the Anglican Mission in America. It
also bears resemblance to the consultative assemblies that the Pope,
archbishops, and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church convene from time to
time. The delegates to these assemblies are appointed not elected and are
largely clergy and religious. These assemblies have no power to legislate
unless this power is specifically granted to them and then it is limited to
legislating on specific matters. Any legislation adopted by these assemblies
must be approved by the authority that convened the assembly.
The official governing body of the Anglican Church in North
America is its Provincial Council. The Council consists of a bishop, a clergy
representative, and two lay representatives from each diocese. The term of
office of Council members representing dioceses is five years. Council members
serve staggered terms and are re-eligible for appointment or election to a
second five year term. They may not serve more than two terms in a row. This
includes bishops. The provincial canons make no special provisions for bishops
who are the only bishop in their diocese—an oversight that has never been
corrected. They must step down after two five-year terms on the Council.
The staggering of terms prevents any sweeping change in the
membership of the Council and precludes any possibility of the Council’s
introducing meaningful reform. It enables one faction or party to dominate the
Council.
The Council may also co-op six additional members. This
permits any faction or party dominating the Council to strengthen its hold on
the Council. It can also permit the tipping of the balance between the number
of clergy and the number of lay persons in the Council. Considering the
proportion of lay persons to clergy in the denomination, one would expect the
Council to reflect that proportion.
Individual members of the Provincial Council may not draft
proposals for changes in the constitution and canons and submit them to the
Council. The drafting of such proposals is the special responsibility of the
Governance Task Force, a panel of so-called “experts,” the bishops, other
clergy and lay persons that make up this task force. How this task force is
selected and how often its members are rotated is not detailed in the
provincial canons.
From what I gather the drafting of these proposals involves
frequent consultation with the Archbishop and other members of the College of
Bishops. Several members of the College of Bishops, as I have already noted,
serve on the task force. They presently include former Archbishop Duncan. While
the Governance Task Force may formally present a proposal, the idea for the
proposal has in all likelihood originated with the Archbishop or one of the
other bishops.
In addition to drafting proposed changes to the provincial
constitution and canons, the Governance Task Force has prepared a model
diocesan constitution and a set of model diocesan canons. These documents
combine provisions taken from one or more governing documents of dioceses of
the Episcopal Church with provisions peculiar to the Anglican Church in North
America. What is notable about these model diocesan governing documents is that
whoever prepared them grossly misinterprets the provincial constitution,
applying to the judicatories of the ACNA provisions that clearly and
undisputedly apply to the denomination. If a diocese-in-formation adopts the
same model diocesan governing documents without any changes, it would surrender
a number of its reserved or residual powers to the denomination. In the event the see fell vacant, they would
permit the College of Bishops to appoint at the request of the standing committee an acting bishop to be in charge of the diocese until a bishop can be
elected. (The Diocese of Western Anglicans does not have this provision in its diocesan constitution.) They would
require the standing committee of the diocese to obtain the permission of the
Archbishop before it could declare the see to be vacant in the event of the prolonged
absence or incapacity of the diocesan bishop. They would also permit the
Archbishop to intervene in “the relationship between a vestry and a
congregation.” In the last two cases the relinquishment of these powers to the
denomination represents a significant loss of diocesan autonomy.
The Governance Task Force has also sent representatives to
advise constitutive bodies drafting the constitution and canons for a
diocese-in-formation. The provincial canons relating to the form of government
of dioceses in the Anglican Church in North America anticipate the imposition
of greater uniformity upon the provisions of governing documents of the
dioceses at a future date. Representatives of the Governance Task Force taking
part in meetings of constitutive bodies developing governing documents for
dioceses-in-formation have consistently discouraged the inclusion of provisions
placing term limits on bishops (i.e. mandatory retirement ages, specific terms
of office), telling these bodies that the Provincial Council would not approve
governing documents containing such provisions. This does not appear to be
motivated by a desire for greater uniformity of the provisions of dioceses’
governing documents so much as adherence to a particular view of the role of
bishops and episcopacy. It points the
Governance Task Force being a major locus of influence of the High Church party
in the ACNA.
Discernible in the proposals that the Governance Task Force
has drafted to date, including the proposed constitution and set of canons that
the Common Cause Governance Task Force, the predecessor of the present
Governance Task Force, drafted, is the influence of a particular special
interest group in the Anglican Church in North America. This special interest
group appears to be motivated by the desire to control the legislative process
and have that process serve its purposes. It is elitist in its outlook and
evidences a basic distrust of the laity as a whole. It appears to be willing to
trust only select individuals, those whom in its estimation qualify as “experts”
or support its vision and goals for the ACNA or are sympathetic toward them.
The members of this special interest group may be described as the High
Church party due to their particular views of the role of bishops and
episcopacy. They are prelatical in their understanding of episcopacy. They
appear to subscribe to modern-day version of the Caroline High Churchmen’s
doctrine of the divine right of bishops, a doctrine that was a major cause of
controversy in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and which divides
Anglicans to this day. (The English Reformers did not find any mandate for
episcopacy or any other form of church government in the Bible.) They also
appear to have been strongly influenced by Roman Catholic views of ecclesiology,
episcopacy, and apostolic succession.
Some members of this special interest group are
traditionalist Anglo-Catholics; others came to their conclusions by a different
route. Bishop Keith Ackerman may be expressing one of the views of this special
interest group when he describes bishops as the governors of the Church.
Former Archbishop Robert Duncan is himself a member of this
special interest group. Duncan has advocated what he describes as “regression.”
When faced with a crisis like the one the Episcopal Church’s election and
consecration of an openly gay bishop precipitated, Duncan maintains that an
appropriate response is to return an earlier stage in the life of the Church,
to revert to older and more authoritarian ways of doing things. This appears to
include a reversion to the practices of unfettered episcopacy, to the ways that
the lordly prelates of the Medieval Catholic Church had ruled their provinces
or dioceses. These pre-Reformation archbishops and bishops had governed their
sees in the manner of the feudal lords that they were.
In his Opening Address to the Inaugural Provincial Assembly
in 2009, then Archbishop-Elect Duncan revealed his impatience with the
synodical form of church government and his own preference for a more authoritarian
form of ecclesiastical governance. In an earlier statement in support of the
proposed constitution and canons Bishop John Rodgers, then a senior bishop of
the Anglican Mission in America but now an assistant bishop of Duncan’s own
diocese, had expressed similar impatience with how deliberative church
assemblies conducted their business, in particular the length of time they took
in weighing the merits of various courses of action, and how undesirable
proposals might find their way to the floor and be adopted and desirable
proposals might be watered down and even killed.
When people came forward greet him at one of the services at
the Inaugural Provincial Assembly in Bedford, Texas in 2009, Archbishop –Elect Duncan
extended his hand for people to kiss his archiepiscopal ring. Visible delight
was on his face. Duncan’s behavior was very revealing into how he saw his new
office.
Kissing a bishop’s ring is a Roman Catholic practice. In the
Roman Catholic Church laypersons and inferior clergy are by custom obligated to
kiss the bishop’s hand, that is, his episcopal ring. Roman Catholics at one
time believed that an indulgence of 50 days resulted from this act. Some Roman
Catholics still claim that if the ring is viewed as an object of piety, an
indulgence may be received since kissing an object of piety carries a partial
indulgence. The reformed Church of England rejected whole idea of indulgences
“as repugnant to Scripture.”
Duncan’s subsequent creation of an Archbishop’s Cabinet, an
administrative organ that is typically found in Roman Catholic archdioceses and
for which the constitution and canons make no provision points to the strong
influence of Roman Catholic ideas upon his thinking.
During his term of office as Archbishop Duncan displayed a
flagrant disregard for constitutionalism and the rule of law and made a number
of appointments that he had no authority to make under the provisions of the
constitution and canons. He would appoint a longtime friend, Bishop Don
Harvey, as Dean of the province. The Governance Task Force would subsequently
propose canonical changes regularizing this appointment. His last
appointment was to give the position of vicar-general of the Diocese of Western
Anglicans to Bishop Frank Lyons, another assistant bishop of his own diocese.
The provincial constitutions and canons contain no provisions authorizing the Archbishop
to take over a vacant see in the event of the prolonged absence, death,
incapacity, or incarceration of its ordinary and to appoint a vicar-general for
that see. The canons do, however, recognize the standing committee of a diocese
as its ecclesiastical authority in the event the see falls vacant. The constitution and canons of the Diocese of
Western Anglicans contains no provisions giving authority to appoint a
vicar-general to the Archbishop in the event the see falls vacant nor do they contain any provision authorizing the diocese's standing committee to request such an appointment. Under the
provisions of the provincial constitution a diocese retains all powers that are not
prohibited to it by the constitution and which it has not relinquished to the
province.
None of these appointments are justifiable on the grounds
that a particular set of circumstances necessitated the appointment. The
College of Bishops could have elected a Bishop for Special Missions to assist
the Archbishop in his duties and responsibilities. This would, however,
entailed the College of Bishops choosing Duncan’s assistant, not himself. The
College of Bishops could have held a special meeting for the purpose of
electing a new Archbishop and then elected a new bishop for the Diocese of
Western Anglicans at its regular meeting. Under the provisions of the governing
documents of the Diocese of Western Anglicans, its House of Delegates could
have elected a bishop and submitted the name of the bishop-elect to the College
of Bishops for confirmation. The proposed change to the provincial canons
requiring a diocese to obtain the permission of the College of Bishops in order
to elect a bishop, if it was adopted by the Provincial Council and ratified by
the Provincial Assembly, is not yet in force.
These appointments were more than a quick and easy way to
solve a problem. They suggest that Duncan views the office of Archbishop as possessing
broad reserve or discretionary powers,
a view of the archiepiscopal office that is not recognized by the provincial
constitution and canons. They also suggest that members of the College of
Bishops, the Governance Task Force, and the Provincial Council share this view.
Like Duncan, these individuals do not appear to value constitutionalism and the
rule of law.
One also cannot rule out the very likely possibility that
former Archbishop Duncan was expecting the Diocese of Western Anglicans to
defray the expense of Bishop Lyon’s rather hefty compensation package and even
hoping that the Diocese of Western Anglicans might nominate him as the sole
candidate for the office of bishop of that diocese. This might especially be
the case if Duncan and the other members of the College of Bishops did not like
the candidates for the office of bishop that the diocese had nominated and were
faced with a difficult task of choosing between them and the prospect of
rejecting of the whole slate of candidates.
In the next article in this series we will complete our
examination of the form of church government in the Anglican Church of North
America and how it operates and look at how this particular form of church
government and its way of operating is creating obstacles to the expansion of
the province-in-formation’s population base and its maintenance of healthy,
long-term growth.
See also
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