A Sad Day for Reformed Anglicanism in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

On the Anglican Ink website George Conger reports that seven Global South primates have declared the Anglican Church in North America to be Anglican and its primate to be an archbishop of the Anglican Communion. The seven primates either attended the investiture of the new ACNA archbishop or sent representatives to that investiture. The same primates offer no basis for this declaration. They list no specific objective criteria by which they came to this conclusion.

Two of these primates are the chairman and the vice-chairman of GAFCON. One of them chaired the GAFCON Theological Resource Group that drafted the Jerusalem Declaration and its official GAFCON commentary, Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today. Most, if not all, of the provinces of these primates are signatories to the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration.

In the Jerusalem Declaration the participants in the 2008 Global Anglican Future Conference solemnly declare fourteen “tenets of orthodoxy” that they maintain as underpinning Anglican identity. These “tenets of orthodoxy” include upholding "the Thirty-Nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God's Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today." In Being Faithful the GAFCON Theological Group reiterates that the Church is not free to expound one passage of Scripture so that it disagrees with another (Article 20). It points out that the Thirty-Nine Articles together with the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal are “the doctrinal standard of Anglicanism.”  It further points out that acceptance of the Articles’ authority “is constitutive of Anglican identity.”

Kenya’s Primate and GACON’s Chairman, Archbishop Iliud Wabukala has publicly stated, “…confessions of faith, whether they are the ancient catholic creeds or later statements such as the Church of England’s Thirty-nine articles cannot be seen just as historical documents to be reinterpreted as we wish.”

In its constitution the Anglicans Church in North America relegates its affirmation of the Jerusalem Declaration to its preface where the affirmation is purely incidental to narrative of why the ACNA was formed and is not binding upon the consciences of ACNA congregations and clergy. This includes upholding "the Thirty-Nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God's Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today" In its fundamental declarations the ACNA equivocates in its acceptance of the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles and recognizes other unidentified doctrinal standards beside the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.

The Anglican Church in North America does not in practice fully accepts the Scriptures as a canon or functioning rule for the Christian faith and life. Nor does it conform to the doctrine of what Dr. Mark Thompson, principal of Moore College, Sydney, in a recent article described as the "confessional formularies" of historic Anglicanism. The "confessional formularies" include the two Books of Homilies, as well as the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. The ACNA expound one passage of Scripture so that it disagrees with another and treats the Thirty-Nine Articles as a historical document with which it can do what it pleases. This is quite evident from the doctrinal statements that the denomination has produced to date--its fundamental declarations, its canons, Texts for Common Prayer, To Be A Christian: An Anglican Catechism, and its proposed rites for the admission of catechumens, baptism, and confirmation.

The ACNA ordination rites alter the preface of the Ordinal and dilute the Ordinal’s requirement that candidates for the diaconate must "unfeignedly believe all the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament." They mandate or permit the use of practices that are associated with doctrines rejected by the Anglican Reformers and inconsistent with teaching of the Scriptures and the doctrine of the “confessional formularies.”

The ACNA trial services of Holy Communion contain liturgical elements that teach two doctrines of eucharistic sacrifice-- the 1958 Lambeth doctrine along with the older pre-Reformation - post Tridentian Roman Catholic doctrine.  Both doctrines conflict with the doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The same services also contain liturgical elements that teach the medieval doctrine of transubstantiation—another doctrine that conflicts with the doctrine of the Articles.

The ACNA catechism in a number of places misrepresents the doctrinal positions of the Articles, the Prayer Book, and the Ordinal or ignores them entirely. Among the doctrinal positions the ACNA catechism takes is an Arminian position on salvation--faith precedes regeneration--instead of a Reformed position--regeneration precedes faith. It also adopts an unreformed Catholic position on the sacraments, recognizing seven sacraments, not two. It permits the teaching of a Roman Catholic view of justification. The ACNA proposed rite for admission of catechumens infers that we are saved not by faith but by baptism. The ACNA proposed baptism rite contradicts the ACNA catechism and ties regeneration to baptism. The ACNA catechism and proposed confirmation rite teach that confirmation is a sacrament.

The Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa, formerly the Church of England in South Africa, fully accepts the Scriptures as a canon or functioning rule for the Christian faith and life. REACH South Africa unequivocally recognizes the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal as its doctrinal and worship standard. It requires subscription to the Articles not only by its clergy but also lay church leaders. It has bishops as well as presbyters and deacons. Yet the same group of primates has not to my knowledge extended their recognition to that ecclesial body. Why not?

If anything, REACH South Africa has a much stronger claim to being Anglican than the ACNA. It evidences a much greater degree of continuity in doctrine and practice with the Anglican Reformers, the Elizabethan Settlement, and classical Anglicanism than does the ACNA.

The seven Global South primates have essentially done what Archbishop Justin Welby recently did—made themselves the arbiters of who and what is Anglican and claimed their recognition to be the determining factor for Anglican identity. This is a retreat from the position of the Jerusalem Declaration and Being Faithful.  It is also a retreat from the earlier GACON document, The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future, which identifies Anglo-Catholicism as a major challenge to the authority of the Scriptures and the “confessional formularies” in the Anglican Church along with liberalism. They have reduced the determination of who and what is Anglican to a purely subjective judgment—basically a political decision.  

Their declaration offers no incentive to the Anglican Church in North America to make room in that ecclesial body for Anglicans who are faithful to the teaching of the Scriptures and the doctrine of the “confessional formularies” and who are Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in their theological outlook. It does, however, offer encouragement to those seeking to impose a single identity on the ACNA—a unreformed Catholic identity, not a reformed Anglican one.

See also
Thoughts on the Investiture of the New ACNA Archbishop
The Latest Round in the Debate over Anglican Identity
Australian Diocese's Recognition of the ACNA Premature