5 Reasons Why I Advocate the Formation of a Second Alternative North American Anglican Province

By Robin G. Jordan

Why am I championing the establishment of a second North American Anglican province as an alternative to the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the USA? Here are five reasons that I believe are the most important.

Reason #1. I do not see any evidence of a viable reform movement in the Anglican Church in North America. The need for reform has been evident since the Common Cause Partnership days of the ACNA. Those who tried to introduce changes in the draft ACNA constitution and canons got nowhere. The ACNA’s present leadership has shown itself to be adroit at keeping the denomination moving in the direction that it wishes to take the denomination. It has created a system that enables it to limit input, to orchestrate meetings, to keep opposition to a minimum, and to control the outcome of the decision-making process. It has resorted to such tactics as deception, equivocation, intimidation, secrecy, stonewalling, and various illegalities (i.e. contravention or violation of the provisions of the ACNA constitution and/or canons) and irregularities.

Reason # 2. The establishment of a second alternative North American Anglican province would draw attention to the shortcomings of the Anglican Church in North America. These shortcomings are extensive. They affect the faith, doctrine, liturgy, and governance of the province. The establishment of a second alternative North American province would emphasize not only the extent of the shortcomings but also their seriousness..

Reason #3. The establishment of a second North American Anglican province would highlight the untenability of the GAFCON Primates’ backing of a province that does not fully accept the authority of the Scriptures and the Anglican formularies and has only a rhetorical commitment to the Jerusalem Declaration. The rites and services and the catechism that the Anglican Church in North America’s bishops have endorsed show that the teaching of the Scriptures are not the supreme authority in matters of faith and practice for the ACNA’s College of Bishops, which they are for historic Anglicanism. Unreformed Catholic tradition looms large in their thinking. Like its reception of the Anglican formularies, the ACNA’s affirmation of the Jerusalem Declaration is purely cosmetic, designed to garner the recognition of the GAFCON Primates and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

Whether the establishment of such a province might prompt the GAFCON Primates to reconsider their support of the ACNA, I cannot say. Admitting an error in judgment might in their estimation make them look foolish and gullible to other Christian leaders and cost them prestige that they do not wish to lose. However, the establishment of such a province would expose the inconsistency of their support of a denomination that does not stand for what they themselves say that they stand for.

At the second GAFCON conference in Nairobi the GAFCON Primates and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans made a public commitment to intervene on the behalf of congregations and clergy excluded by their province or diocese. But this intervention appears to be restricted in practice to conservative congregations and clergy excluded by liberal provinces and dioceses, not evangelical congregations and clergy excluded by Anglo-Catholic–philo-Orthodox provinces and dioceses. The GAFCON Primates and the FCA need to clarify their position and offer a public explanation of their reason for not intervening on the behalf of evangelicals. Evangelicals may in turn wish to re-evaluate their support of the GAFCON Primates and the FCA.

Reason #4. The establishment of a second alternative North American Anglican province might create enough disequilibrium in the Anglican Church in North America to give impetus to the development of a viable reform movement in the ACNA. It might lead to the implementation of much needed reforms in that denomination. On the other hand, it might accelerate the entrenchment of Anglo-Catholic-philo-Orthodox doctrine and practice that the ACNA is presently undergoing.

One possible development is the more evangelical and mission-minded element in the Anglican Church in North America might migrate to the second alternative North American Anglican province, leaving behind the element who is not satisfied with historic Anglicanism and who wish to reconstruct the Anglican Church along the lines of the pre East-West Schism period of the supposedly undivided Church of the eleventh century.

This element dominates the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions that trace their origins to the short-lived first Anglican Church in North America. The “extreme form of Anglo-Catholicism,” to use the words of Douglas Bess, author of Divided We Stand: A History of the Continuing Anglican Movement, to which this element holds has not benefited these jurisdictions. They are all in various stages of decline.

This ideology, like liberalism, the last 40-odd years has shown, is spiritually bankrupt. It is not an ideology that is capable of sparking a church planting movement. On the contrary, it is more likely to act as a brake upon missions, evangelism, and church planting.

Without its more evangelical and mission-minded element the Anglican Church in North America would in all likelihood join the ranks of the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions.

Reason #5. I see no future for Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism in the Anglican Church in North America, much less conservative evangelicalism. Historic Anglicanism is Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in its identity. This identity is based upon Scripture and is reflected in the Anglican formularies: the Book of Homilies, the Articles of Religion, and The Book of Common Prayer in its 1662 edition.

 The Anglican Church in North America is “liberal” in the sense that the Bible alone does not rule the denomination. (See Ray Ortlund’s article, “Is Your Church Functionally Liberal?”) It gives unreformed Catholic tradition a large place in its interpretation of the Bible, its guiding beliefs, and its decision-making. It treats the Anglican formularies as relics of the past and listens to other voices.

The Anglican Church in North America makes no room for conservative evangelicals in the four important areas of faith, doctrine, liturgy, and governance. Indeed it displays a functional intolerance for those who stand most in continuity with the English Reformers in their beliefs and practices.

The ACNA top leaders’ endorsement of a Anglo-Catholic-philo-Orthodox liturgy and catechism clearly shows that they have no genuine commitment to a partnership between High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, Arminians and Calvinists, and cessionists and continuists in the service of the gospel. Rather they have taken a decidedly partisan stance. The ideology they are espousing is not faithful to the Scriptures and the Anglican formularies and is spiritually bankrupt.

Churches that embrace this ideology are not gospel churches. The message they preach is not the New Testament gospel. Their teaching is not gospel teaching.

These five reasons are why I am championing the establishment of a second alternative North American Anglican province. I can think of other reasons. However, these five reasons stand out as the most important.

Also see my previous article, "The Draft Preface to the Proposed ACNA Rite of Confirmation: An Evaluation."