I was was working on "Church Planting Mistakes and Blunders--Part 2" when my high speed internet service was restored. My area had suffered an outage for more than 48 hours. I am posting Parts 1 and 2 of this two-part article series today. I was supposed to have posted Part 1 yesterday and Part 2 today.
Read Part 2
By Robin G. Jordan
In the Catholic Church canon law, the catechism, the liturgical books, and the pope’s encyclicals define Catholic orthodoxy. In the reformed Church of England the Thirty-Nine Articles, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal annexed to that book, and the Homilies have historically defined Anglican orthodoxy. In the Anglican Church in North America the Fundamental Declarations and to a greater extent To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism and the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book will define what that church officially regards as orthodoxy. Only ACNA’ers who subscribe to the doctrines articulated or inferred in these two formularies will be recognized as orthodox in their beliefs.
A catechism that teaches Catholic beliefs and a prayer book that embodies Catholic doctrine and practices is not going to foster a theological environment within the Anglican Church in North America, which is favorable to authentic historic Anglicanism. How much freedom ACNA’ers who are committed to remaining faithful to the Bible and historic Anglican beliefs and practices (beliefs and practices consistent with the historic Anglican formularies and the central Anglican theological tradition) will have to practice and to propagate their faith remains to be seen. Although I am using wording borrowed from the Anglican Network in Canada, I have a much larger segment of the ACNA in mind. The ACNA’s constitution and canons do not extend freedom of conscience to the dioceses, clergy, and congregations of the province, much less freedom of practice and propagation. They require adherence to the church’s doctrine, worship, and discipline. The ACNA has nothing like the ecclesiastical bill of rights that I proposed to keep the bishops and the governing bodies of the province from requiring conformity from these ACNA’ers and sanctioning them in the event they refuse to conform.
Former Archbishop Bishop Robert “Bob” Duncan who chairs the ACNA’s Prayer Book and Liturgical Task Force may euphemistically refer to the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book as “ reassessment of the 1662 Prayer Book” but what he is doing is understating what the proposed book actually is—a rejection of the 1662 Prayer Book. To reassess something is to evaluate it again. What is being evaluated, however, is not just any service book. It is a service book that forms together with the Thirty-Nine Articles the longstanding Anglican standard of doctrine and worship. The Elizabethan Settlement and the historic Anglican formularies—the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Prayer Book and the Ordinal annexed to that book—lie at the heart of historic Anglicanism. The rejection of the 1662 Prayer Book embodied in the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book is not just the rejection of the classical Anglican Prayer Book. It is the rejection of this standard and ultimately a rejection of authentic historic Anglicanism.
Bishop Duncan has in the not too distant past publicly called for the replacement of the Elizabethan Settlement with a new settlement. He has also talked about turning back the clock to the pre-Reformation era as the most appropriate response to the crisis of leadership, doctrine, and morality in the Anglican Communion. The term he used was “regression.” This is the thinking of the man who shepherded the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book to completion and is promoting its adoption and use.
Bishop Duncan has championed the ACNA’s catechism which takes a Catholic view on the order of salvation, the sacraments, and other key issues, setting it at odds with the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies. He has shown a decided proclivity for Catholic liturgical practices.
All of the foregoing is a matter of public record. It is documented in addresses, sermons, interviews, and other public statements and videos of his consecration of bishops and his ordination of other clergy. It is attested to in the documents which he has signed.
Bishop Duncan is not the only member of the ACNA’s Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force. A number of people have contributed to the preparation of the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book. Bishop Duncan, however, has had a decided influence upon the proposed book’s contents, both as Archbishop of the province and the chairman of the task force. While he was Archbishop, he played an important role in its early work. He gave the task force its original charge, endorsed its “theological lens,” and promoted Texts for Common Prayer, which forms the nucleus of the proposed book.
In its Fundamental Declarations the Anglican Church in North America dilutes the 1662 Prayer Book as a doctrinal and worship standard for ACNA’ers. The ACNA also equivocates in its acceptance of the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book goes a step further. It rejects Anglicanism’s longstanding standard of doctrine and worship in its entirety.
The ACNA’s Prayer Book and Liturgical Task Force may have cannibalized texts from the 1662 Prayer Book. But what the task force did is no different from what the Episcopal Church did when it prepared the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the Catholic Church did when it prepared the 1983 Book of Divine Worship for the use of “Anglican Use” parishes. It retained a number of familiar texts to make the final service book more palatable to its users who otherwise might have bulked at using the book. It is quite a stretch to conclude from the retention of these texts that the liturgical forms in the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book are a clear expression of the doctrine of the 1662 Prayer Book and respect its liturgical usages.
The Catholic Church replaced the 1983 Book of Divine Worship with Divine Worship: The Missal in 2015. Divine Worship is authorized for the use of the personal ordinariates in the United States and Canada; England, Scotland, and Wales; and Australia. Like the 2019 proposed ACNA service book, Divine Worship incorporates elements from the Anglican Missal as well as the classical Anglican Prayer Book. Divine Worship “gives expression to and preserves for Catholic worship the Anglican liturgical tradition and patrimony, understood as that which has nourished the Catholic faith throughout the history of the Anglican tradition and prompted aspirations towards ecclesial unity” (Divine Worship, p 120). The 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book may be described in similar language.
No one is under the false apprehension, however. that Divine Worship keeps alive the protestant and reformed doctrine of the Anglican Church based upon the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Prayer Book. Personal ordinariate congregations that do not use Divine Worship must use the novo ordo missal like any other Catholic congregation.
What is happening in North America is that two traditions which emerged in the Anglican Church in the nineteenth century are vying with each other to determine the identity of the North American Anglican Church. Neither tradition, however, represents authentic historic Anglicanism. Both traditions, as the GAFCON Theological Resource Group has pointed out, have undermined the authority of the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies in the Anglican Church.
In the Jerusalem Declaration the Global Anglican Future Conference and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans sought to identify the basic tenets that underpin Anglican orthodoxy. While the Council of conservative evangelical Church Society, which endorsed the Jerusalem Declaration, has found the language of the Jerusalem Declaration to not fully represent the historic Anglican position on justification and has draw attention to other problem areas in the Jerusalem Declaration and its commentary, Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, evangelicals who form the larger part of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, while recognizing the need for clearer language, generally accept the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition of Anglican orthodoxy. The Church of Nigeria has formally adopted the Jerusalem Declaration.
The Anglican Church in North America, on the other hand, has relegated its acknowledgment of the Jerusalem Declaration to the preamble of its constitution where it is incidental to the preamble’s account of the formation of the province and is not binding in any way upon the dioceses, clergy, and congregations forming the province. The ACNA’s definition of Anglican orthodoxy is found to a large part in its catechism and the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book. It is not in line with that of the Jerusalem Declaration, much less the historic Anglican formularies and the central Anglican theological tradition.
New bishops at their consecration are asked to sign the Jerusalem Declaration but it is left to the conscience of each bishop whether he will abide by its definition of Anglican orthodoxy. In reality it is an empty gesture. The ACNA’s canons have no provision requiring new bishops (or any clergy as far as that goes) to subscribe to the historic Anglican formularies.
The present situation in the Anglican Church in North America is not unlike the situation in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1804 when General Convention, at the insistence of the church’s bishops, adopted a modified version of the Thirty-Nine Articles. General Convention, however, did not require clergy subscription to these articles. The theological drift of the Episcopal Church from the nineteenth century on can be attributed in part to this decision. By the mid-twentieth century it was so unclear what was the doctrine of the Episcopal Church that a bishop could not be tried for teaching views contrary to church doctrine until each bishop had been polled in regard to his opinion of what was church doctrine. As the composition of the House of Bishops changed so did church doctrine.
I do not pretend to fathom why ACNA’ers who describe themselves as committed to remaining faithful to the Bible and historic Anglican beliefs and practices do not object more strenuously to the direction in which the Anglican Church in North America is moving under its present leadership. From the ACNA rank and file I hear expressions of concern and disappointment over this direction. But from those in positions of leadership I more often hear what amounts to denial, mixed with a high level of defensiveness. I have yet to hear an admission that the ACNA is heading in the wrong direction.
The Anglican Church in North America will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this coming June. A few such admissions made publicly or even a public statement to that effect signed by a number of ACNA leaders might dash cold water on that celebration. At the same time they might force the province to reappraise the direction in which it is heading. I seriously doubt that they would cause the province to fall apart. If the ACNA is so fragile that it cannot survive a number of these admissions, now is the time to find that out. Problems that go unaddressed only grow worse. They do not resolve themselves.
Also See:
It's Time to Talk Prayer Book
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