Navigating the “Three Streams”: Some Second Thoughts about a Popular Typology

by Dr. Gillis Harp

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the September/October 2009 issue of Mandate magazine, and is reproduced with the permission of the author and the editor of Mandate.

Gillis Harp teaches History at Grove City College and attends Grace Anglican Church in Slippery Rock, PA with his wife and three daughters.

As theologically conservative Anglicans have in recent years sought to cooperate in constructing an orthodox Anglican province in North America,many have referred to the process as a coming together of “three streams.” Usually, they are referring to Catholic, Evangelical (or Protestant) and Pentecostal (or Charismatic) traditions or “tributaries” being channeled into a single “river.” It is difficult to determine exactly where this model originated. Church of South India Bishop Lesslie Newbigin wrote a short book, The Household of God, back in 1953 that referred to these three elements and how their distinctive characteristics complimented each other.[1]

More than thirty years later, Gordon-Conwell church historian Richard Lovelace wrote a brief (though influential) article for Charisma magazine that argued that “there are many signs that history is moving” in the direction of organic unity between Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal streams. Among the signs he cited was the work of David du Plessis with Roman Catholic and Protestant Charismatic groups, and pointed to a large rally of Catholic and Protestant neo-Pentecostals held in Kansas City in 1977.[2]

But not only Charismatics are fond of this “three streams” language, since the late 1970s, this terminology has come into favour with evangelicals of different sorts who have discovered church history and been drawn toward liturgical Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and, most significant for readers of Mandate,Anglicanism.

Many of the goals that the “three streams” advocates identify are laudable. Those of us committed to classical Anglicanism can endorse the first three put forth by the late Robert E. Webber:

1. A restored commitment to the sacraments, especially the Lord’s Table.
2. An increased motivation to know more about the early church.
3. A love for the whole church and a desire to see the church as one.[3]

Yet the thinking behind these goals and the ways some have sought to blend the three streams call for further, less sentimental reflection based upon better historical and theological analysis.

The three streams paradigm celebrated by one Episcopal congregation long involved in the Charismatic renewal is typical. Its “statement of identity” distinguishes the three streams as “defining its essential character.” It contends that St. John was actually referring to these very streams in 1 John 5:8 when he wrote that “there are three witnesses – the Spirit, the water, and the blood – and these agree.” The blood represents the Catholic stream emphasizing the sacramental and liturgical life of the church; the water stands for the washing of the Word and individual cleansing; the Spirit signifies the Pentecostal stream and the power of the Holy Spirit. (Commentators may be divided about the original context of this particular passage and what heretical view the Apostle was rejecting in it, but reading this modern model into these verses seems an extraordinary stretch, a remarkable example of eisegesis rather than exegesis.) The statement goes on to highlight how each tradition or stream has handled different aspects of Christian teaching, ecclesiastical practice or personal piety. Purportedly, Catholics have stressed works (especially sacrificial service), whereas Evangelicals have emphasized faith, and Pentecostals Spirit-guided discernment “rather than [measuring orthodoxy by] objective criteria.” The statement concludesthat the church at its best should knit together these “apparently incompatible approaches.”[4]

Some Episcopalians see this schema as normative of Anglicanism and confuse today’s talk about the ‘three streams’ with the historical division of the Church of England into high church, low church and broad church “parties,” as those terms were used in Anglican circles in the eighteenth century. At that time, the national church included within it clergy and laity who could be divided into at least three distinct groups; that is, a high church element that stressed the visible church (including it distinctive polity and traditional liturgical forms), a low church group that stressed the need for personal conversion and what eighteenth century evangelicals called an “experimental faith,” and a broad church party that stressed the reasonableness of the Christian faith and thus natural revelation over Scripture.

Notably, this interpretation was primarily a description of the contemporary situation within the established church; it was rarely celebrated as an ideal, and it was almost never viewed as the way toward some sort of desired future theological synthesis. Moreover, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, members of all three parties would have defined themselves as Protestants in a general sense (indeed, traditional high churchmen sometimes expressed views sharply critical of Roman doctrine and practice). Also, there would not have been major differences in clerical vesture or ceremonial among the clergy of these three parties, and there was a common reading of the Bible rooted in the Book of Common Prayer.

The emergence and growth of two groups in the late 1800s changed this picture, however. These were the Anglo-Catholics and theological modernists. The latter transformed the restrained liberalism of the Broad Church, making it far more radical, and the former turned the High Church party away from some tenets of the Reformation and low church worship that had characterized most of the Church of England since the Reformation. The result was an Anglican comprehensiveness that went far beyond that envisioned by the Anglican Reformers and has, as we see, made for theological and ethical incoherence in latter part of the twentieth century.

But in looking at the new “three streams” typology, one meets with at least four difficulties. First,it takes a possibly helpful (but over-simplified) descriptive model of the Western church during the middle part of the twentieth century and turns it into a prescriptive theological ideal. Newbigin’s original description may be an easy way to conceptualize some of the different traditions within Christianity in the effort to facilitate ecumenical discussion, understanding and cooperation. But using it to create a kind of doctrinal synthesis is, however, an entirely different matter. The differences between the three streams (at least as commonly identified by champions of the model) are not all simple differences of emphasis; some actually constitute opposed positions based upon very different readings of the Bible.

Two of the three streams, for instance, reject the classical Pentecostal teaching about a postconversion baptism of the Holy Spirit or the normative practice of Glossolalia and prophecy. Two of the three have historically repudiated the Roman Catholic understanding of the ordained ministry as sacerdotal, and would have a very different view of the nature and number of the sacraments. And, despite measured progress in ecumenical dialogue since the 1950s, one of the three does not understand justification as primarily the gracious imputation of Christ’s righteousness to individual believers received through faith alone. These are not peripheral matters. Wishful thinking about a tidy Hegelian historical synthesis of the three streams will not erase the contradictions. As Philip E. Hughes once
wrote about dialogue between Roman Catholics and Anglicans during the early 1970s, “to resort to fine-sounding but ambivalent terminology is to paper over the cracks and then to call attention to the attractiveness of the wallpaper.”

Second, to effect this synthesis, some advocates of the three streams approach have handled Scripture in a highly problematic way (as already noted above), lifting verses out of their original contexts. Some have extended certain metaphors in the Bible, applying them in ways incompatible with their plain sense. A few leaders of the Charismatic renewal have viewed such fanciful applications of certain Biblical passages as genuinely prophetic. In this way, Newbigin’s modest insight has gained virtual divine imprimatur. Paul W. Boosahda, an archbishop in the Communion of Convergence Churches USA, describes the development this way:

The key Scriptural passage that began to act as a prophetic matrix of
understanding for this discovery was found in Psalm 46:4,5 – “There is a
river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most
High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall.”

The insight that was given from this passage was that there is “A” river
(singular)“whose streams (plural) make glad the city of God (the Church, His
covenant people and dwelling place), the holy place where the Most High
dwells.”

As leaders from across the Church pondered this insight, it began to be clear
they were all hearing the same Voice explaining that the one River of God’s
Spirit and grace poured out into the world through the birth of His one Body,
the Church on earth, had over time been fragmented into separate streams by
breaking off from the unity and oneness and fullness of the River.[5]

As the passages are detached from their original historical contexts, there has developed a kind of far-fetched argument not strictly exegetical or theological. Again, Boosahda justifies the popular application this way: “River analogy runs all through the Scriptures when speaking of God’s saving and healing activity in history to bring about renewal, restoration, sanctification or spiritual Life.” [6] It would be difficult to disagree with this general observation but it hardly constitutes a persuasive argument from Scripture for the three streams as a prescriptive theological model.In Psalm 46, the “streams” more likely imply the abundance of water that is a metaphor for closeness to God. The metaphor seems to be drawn from the description of the river that flowed out of Eden in Gen 2:10-14. There, the river divided into four “river heads.”

Third, some champions of the three streams often display a simplistic and romantic view of the early church. They sometimes portray the first four centuries as a time of tidy doctrinal consensus and ecclesiastical harmony. The historical record, as evidenced by early church councils and the heated debates about everything from Christology to iconography, paints a different picture. The Ancient Fathers did not speak with a single voice on all theological and ethical matters, in fact, they disagreed about some questions. There is certainly a lot that the church can learn today from the teaching of the early Fathers and ignorance of their writings has definitely harmed contemporary evangelicals. But they are to be deferred to only insofar as their teaching is based upon “most certain warrants of holy Scripture” (see Article VIII). As Article XXI puts it succinctly, general councils “may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.” While the portrait of the early church in these circles is romanticized, the adherence to Patristic teaching is highly selective. Many appear eager to follow Hippolytus to the letter with regard to fine liturgical points but the same individuals are less enthusiastic about what the Fathers said about the ordination of women or the remarriage of divorced persons. Similarly, they are eager to employ the 1979 American book in worship, yet overlook its Pelagian catechism.

Fourth, because they follow the work of Robert Webber, they fall victim to his biases toward two twentieth-century theologians, Dom Gregory Dix and Gustaf Aulen whose work should be viewed with some skepticism by defenders of classical Anglicanism. Some “three streams” teaching either misunderstands the Protestant Reformation, summarizes it cursorily, leaps over it, or virtually ignores it. Although Webber occasionally noted the superiority of the Reformers’ worship over that of modern American evangelicals, he focused far greater attention in his many books on the first five centuries of church history.

When handling subjects where the Reformers disagreed with Patristic positions, Webber rarely sided with the Reformers. Significantly, he invariably drew upon the 1979 American book rather than the historic 1662/1928 BCPs. Much of his understanding of the eucharist was based upon Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy. (Dix was no fan of Cranmer’s theology. He agreed that the 1662 communion service brilliantly communicated the doctrine of justification by faith but bluntly dismissed the latter teaching.) Although Webber rejected a late medieval understanding of the eucharist as a re-sacrifice of Christ, he still argued that it should “be regarded as an offering of Jesus Christ to the Father.” [7] Similarly, Webber stressed Gustaf Aulen’s ‘Christus Victor’ understanding of the atonement over against the substitutionary interpretation followed by the Reformers, which constitutes the heart of the 1662/1928 eucharistic canon.

Consequently, looking at their writings from the standpoint of the Reformed Catholicism of the Prayer Book, three stream spokesmen mistakenly attribute the errors or distortions of nineteenth or twentieth-century evangelicals to the sixteenth century Reformers. One Pentecostal theologian recently asserted that the Magisterial Reformer had sacramental and liturgical emphases in their theology but they weren’t reflected in their practice. [8] Even a rudimentary historical study of the actual practice of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer would quickly prove the inaccuracy of that argument. This sort of bias against the English Reformation should be openly acknowledged.

If this is the path of the new Anglican movement in North America then it distorts and caricatures the position of the Anglican Reformers. The theological divide of the Reformation is happily not in some respects as wide as it once was; for that fact we can all be grateful. Nevertheless, it is important to confront its central Biblical and theological questions head-on and without fudging the remaining differences. Since the three streams theology is rooted more in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than in the sixteenth, it is important to note how it shares in the Pietistic tendency to allow subjective (inward) experience to trump propositional (external) truth. Yet classical Anglicanism holds both together while affirming the supremacy of “God’s Word written.” Also, if through its putatively Anglo-Catholic stream, the three streams approach now adopts select medieval traditions along with Pentecostal experience, one might logically wonder whether what we are seeing here is actually mostly contemporary American culture.

Along these lines, it is striking how Lovelace’s original article based its argument almost entirely upon experience, a reading of significant “signs of the times,” rather than upon doctrinal reflection. His conclusion was particularly revealing: “There will be many knots to be untied before we have a united church which is truly Catholic, evangelical and Pentecostal. In the meantime, we should design events which model the mixture, which form signposts pointing toward the meeting of the streams.” [9]

Back in 1978, David F. Wells expressed similar concerns about the movement of evangelicals that was just then emerging. The movement’s leaders, said Wells, had commendably “done much to isolate those aspects of evangelicalism that needed to be reformed.” Yet, “in their search for answers they ranged so widely and so indiscriminately among traditions that are essentially incompatible with evangelical belief. The vacuity of contemporary evangelicalism is inadvertently exposed by” this sort of response, he concluded. [10]

For orthodox Anglicans, aspects of this ‘three stream’ approach are problematic since our traditional formularies (i.e., the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, the Ordinal and the two Books of Homilies) are all products of the Magisterial Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement. The chief author of the Prayer Book and architect of the English Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, certainly sought (where Scripture allowed) to maintain continuity with the undivided church. Through its preservation of set liturgical forms, orders, an episcopal polity and the parochial system, the English Reformers preserved aspects of the Church of England’s catholicity better than did some of the other continental Reformers. They definitely sought to construct what the late Peter Toon liked to call a “Reformed Catholicism.” But their understanding of catholicity was not romantic; nor did it attempt to synthesize opposites. Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were unsparing in how they pruned beliefs and practices (including even some ancient ones) if they deemed them harmful to evangelical truth. The authors of our Prayer Book and the other Anglican formularies brought everything to the bar of the Apostolic witness of the New Testament, at the heart of which stood the Gospel message of God’s unmerited grace via the crucified and risen Savior.

Endnotes:

[1] Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God (New York: Friendship Press, 1954).
[2] Richard Lovelace, “Three Streams, One River?” Charisma
(September 1984), 8.
[3] Source: Robert Webber, “Synthesis: The Convergence Worship
Movement” at http://reformedworship.org/magazine/article.cfm?article_id=1415&id=77
[4] See: http://www.churchoftheapostles.org/index.php/coa/detail/three-streams-one-river/
[5] Paul W. Boosahda, “A Threefold Cord,” 5. See: http://saintcolumban.com.cc/pdf/cord.pdf
[6] Ibid.
[7] Robert E. Webber, Worship Old & New: A Biblical,Historica,l and Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 236.
[8] See Simon Chan’s lecture at: http://ancientwisdomanglicanfutures.blogspot.com/2009/05/simon-chan-callschurch-to-liturgical.html
[9] Lovelace, “Three Streams, One River?” p.?? Emphasis added.
[10] David F. Wells, “Reservations About Catholic Renewal in
Evangelicalism,” in Robert Webber and Donald Bloesch,
eds., The Orthodox Evangelicals (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 223-224

Navigating the “Three Streams”: Some Second Thoughts about a Popular Typology

By Dr. Gillis Harp

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the September/October 2009 issue of Mandate magazine, and is reproduced with the permission of the author and the editor of Mandate. I originally posted this article on Anglicans Ablaze on September 24, 2009.

Gillis Harp teaches History at Grove City College and attends Grace Anglican Church in Slippery Rock, PA with his wife and three daughters.

As theologically conservative Anglicans have in recent years sought to cooperate in constructing an orthodox Anglican province in North America, many have referred to the process as a coming together of “three streams.” Usually, they are referring to Catholic, Evangelical (or Protestant) and Pentecostal (or Charismatic) traditions or “tributaries” being channeled into a single “river.” It is difficult to determine exactly where this model originated. Church of South India Bishop Lesslie Newbigin wrote a short book, The Household of God, back in 1953 that referred to these three elements and how their distinctive characteristics complimented each other. [1]

More than thirty years later, Gordon-Conwell church historian Richard Lovelace wrote a brief (though influential) article for Charismamagazine that argued that “there are many signs that history is moving” in the direction of organic unity between Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal streams. Among the signs he cited was the work of David du Plessis with Roman Catholic and Protestant Charismatic groups, and pointed to a large rally of Catholic and Protestant neo-Pentecostals held in Kansas City in 1977. [2]

But not only Charismatics are fond of this “three streams” language, since the late 1970s, this terminology has come into favour with evangelicals of different sorts who have discovered church history and been drawn toward liturgical Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and, most significant for readers of Mandate, Anglicanism.

Many of the goals that the “three streams” advocates identify are laudable. Those of us committed to classical Anglicanism can endorse the first three put forth by the late Robert E. Webber:

1. A restored commitment to the sacraments, especially the Lord’s Table.
2. An increased motivation to know more about the early church.
3. A love for the whole church and a desire to see the church as one. [3]

Yet the thinking behind these goals and the ways some have sought to blend the three streams call for further, less sentimental reflection based upon better historical and theological analysis.

The three streams paradigm celebrated by one Episcopal congregation long involved in the Charismatic renewal is typical. Its “statement of identity” distinguishes the three streams as “defining its essential character.” It contends that St. John was actually referring to these very streams in 1 John 5:8 when he wrote that “there are three witnesses – the Spirit, the water, and the blood – and these agree.” The blood represents the Catholic stream emphasizing the sacramental and liturgical life of the church; the water stands for the washing of the Word and individual cleansing; the Spirit signifies the Pentecostal stream and the power of the Holy Spirit. (Commentators may be divided about the original context of this particular passage and what heretical view the Apostle was rejecting in it, but reading this modern model into these verses seems an extraordinary stretch, a remarkable example of eisegesis rather than exegesis.) The statement goes on to highlight how each tradition or stream has handled different aspects of Christian teaching, ecclesiastical practice or personal piety. Purportedly, Catholics have stressed works (especially sacrificial service), whereas Evangelicals have emphasized faith, and Pentecostals Spirit-guided discernment “rather than [measuring orthodoxy by] objective criteria.” The statement concludes that the church at its best should knit together these “apparently incompatible approaches.” [4]

Some Episcopalians see this schema as normative of Anglicanism and confuse today’s talk about the ‘three streams’ with the historical division of the Church of England into high church, low church and broad church “parties,” as those terms were used in Anglican circles in the eighteenth century. At that time, the national church included within it clergy and laity who could be divided into at least three distinct groups; that is, a high church element that stressed the visible church (including it distinctive polity and traditional liturgical forms), a low church group that stressed the need for personal conversion and what eighteenth century evangelicals called an “experimental faith,” and a broad church party that stressed the reasonableness of the Christian faith and thus natural revelation over Scripture.

Notably, this interpretation was primarily a description of the contemporary situation within the established church; it was rarely celebrated as an ideal, and it was almost never viewed as the way toward some sort of desired future theological synthesis. Moreover, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, members of all three parties would have defined themselves as Protestants in a general sense (indeed, traditional high churchmen sometimes expressed views sharply critical of Roman doctrine and practice). Also, there would not have been major differences in clerical vesture or ceremonial among the clergy of these three parties, and there was a common reading of the Bible rooted in the Book of Common Prayer.

The emergence and growth of two groups in the late 1800s changed this picture, however. These were the Anglo-Catholics and theological modernists. The latter transformed the restrained liberalism of the Broad Church, making it far more radical, and the former turned the High Church party away from some tenets of the Reformation and low church worship that had characterized most of the Church of England since the Reformation. The result was an Anglican comprehensiveness that went far beyond that envisioned by the Anglican Reformers and has, as we see, made for theological and ethical incoherence in latter part of the twentieth century.

But in looking at the new “three streams” typology, one meets with at least four difficulties. First, it takes a possibly helpful (but over-simplified) descriptive model of the Western church during the middle part of the twentieth century and turns it into a prescriptive theological ideal. Newbigin’s original description may be an easy way to conceptualize some of the different traditions within Christianity in the effort to facilitate ecumenical discussion, understanding and cooperation. But using it to create a kind of doctrinal synthesis is, however, an entirely different matter. The differences between the three streams (at least as commonly identified by champions of the model) are not all simple differences of emphasis; some actually constitute opposed positions based upon very different readings of the Bible.

Two of the three streams, for instance, reject the classical Pentecostal teaching about a postconversion baptism of the Holy Spirit or the normative practice of Glossolalia and prophecy. Two of the three have historically repudiated the Roman Catholic understanding of the ordained ministry as sacerdotal, and would have a very different view of the nature and number of the sacraments. And, despite measured progress in ecumenical dialogue since the 1950s, one of the three does not understand justification as primarily the gracious imputation of Christ’s righteousness to individual believers received through faith alone. These are not peripheral matters. Wishful thinking about a tidy Hegelian historical synthesis of the three streams will not erase the contradictions. As Philip E. Hughes once wrote about dialogue between Roman Catholics and Anglicans during the early 1970s, “to resort to fine-sounding but ambivalent terminology is to paper over the cracks and then to call attention to the attractiveness of the wallpaper.”

Second, to effect this synthesis, some advocates of the three streams approach have handled Scripture in a highly problematic way (as already noted above), lifting verses out of their original contexts. Some have extended certain metaphors in the Bible, applying them in ways incompatible with their plain sense. A few leaders of the Charismatic renewal have viewed such fanciful applications of certain Biblical passages as genuinely prophetic. In this way, Newbigin’s modest insight has gained virtual divine imprimatur. Paul W. Boosahda, an archbishop in the Communion of Convergence Churches USA, describes the development this way:

The key Scriptural passage that began to act as a prophetic matrix of understanding for this discovery was found in Psalm 46:4,5 – “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall.”

The insight that was given from this passage was that there is “A” river (singular)“whose streams (plural) make glad the city of God (the Church, His covenant people and dwelling place), the holy place where the Most High dwells.”

As leaders from across the Church pondered this insight, it began to be clear they were all hearing the same Voice explaining that the one River of God’s Spirit and grace poured out into the world through the birth of His one Body, the Church on earth, had over time been fragmented into separate streams by breaking off from the unity and oneness and fullness of the River. [5]

As the passages are detached from their original historical contexts, there has developed a kind of far-fetched argument not strictly exegetical or theological. Again, Boosahda justifies the popular application this way: “River analogy runs all through the Scriptures when speaking of God’s saving and healing activity in history to bring about renewal, restoration, sanctification or spiritual Life.” [6] It would be difficult to disagree with this general observation but it hardly constitutes a persuasive argument from Scripture for the three streams as a prescriptive theological model.In Psalm 46, the “streams” more likely imply the abundance of water that is a metaphor for closeness to God. The metaphor seems to be drawn from the description of the river that flowed out of Eden in Gen 2:10-14. There, the river divided into four “river heads.”

Third, some champions of the three streams often display a simplistic and romantic view of the early church. They sometimes portray the first four centuries as a time of tidy doctrinal consensus and ecclesiastical harmony. The historical record, as evidenced by early church councils and the heated debates about everything from Christology to iconography, paints a different picture. The Ancient Fathers did not speak with a single voice on all theological and ethical matters, in fact, they disagreed about some questions. There is certainly a lot that the church can learn today from the teaching of the early Fathers and ignorance of their writings has definitely harmed contemporary evangelicals. But they are to be deferred to only insofar as their teaching is based upon “most certain warrants of holy Scripture” (see Article VIII). As Article XXI puts it succinctly, general councils “may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.” While the portrait of the early church in these circles is romanticized, the adherence to Patristic teaching is highly selective. Many appear eager to follow Hippolytus to the letter with regard to fine liturgical points but the same individuals are less enthusiastic about what the Fathers said about the ordination of women or the remarriage of divorced persons. Similarly, they are eager to employ the 1979 American book in worship, yet overlook its Pelagian catechism.

Fourth, because they follow the work of Robert Webber, they fall victim to his biases toward two twentieth-century theologians, Dom Gregory Dix and Gustaf Aulen whose work should be viewed with some skepticism by defenders of classical Anglicanism. Some “three streams” teaching either misunderstands the Protestant Reformation, summarizes it cursorily, leaps over it, or virtually ignores it. Although Webber occasionally noted the superiority of the Reformers’ worship over that of modern American evangelicals, he focused far greater attention in his many books on the first five centuries of church history.

When handling subjects where the Reformers disagreed with Patristic positions, Webber rarely sided with the Reformers. Significantly, he invariably drew upon the 1979 American book rather than the historic 1662/1928 BCPs. Much of his understanding of the eucharist was based upon Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy. (Dix was no fan of Cranmer’s theology. He agreed that the 1662 communion service brilliantly communicated the doctrine of justification by faith but bluntly dismissed the latter teaching.) Although Webber rejected a late medieval understanding of the eucharist as a re-sacrifice of Christ, he still argued that it should “be regarded as an offering of Jesus Christ to the Father.” [7] Similarly, Webber stressed Gustaf Aulen’s ‘Christus Victor’ understanding of the atonement over against the substitutionary interpretation followed by the Reformers, which constitutes the heart of the 1662/1928 eucharistic canon.

Consequently, looking at their writings from the standpoint of the Reformed Catholicism of the Prayer Book, three stream spokesmen mistakenly attribute the errors or distortions of nineteenth or twentieth-century evangelicals to the sixteenth century Reformers. One Pentecostal theologian recently asserted that the Magisterial Reformer had sacramental and liturgical emphases in their theology but they weren’t reflected in their practice. [8] Even a rudimentary historical study of the actual practice of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer would quickly prove the inaccuracy of that argument. This sort of bias against the English Reformation should be openly acknowledged.

If this is the path of the new Anglican movement in North America then it distorts and caricatures the position of the Anglican Reformers. The theological divide of the Reformation is happily not in some respects as wide as it once was; for that fact we can all be grateful. Nevertheless, it is important to confront its central Biblical and theological questions head-on and without fudging the remaining differences. Since the three streams theology is rooted more in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than in the sixteenth, it is important to note how it shares in the Pietistic tendency to allow subjective (inward) experience to trump propositional (external) truth. Yet classical Anglicanism holds both together while affirming the supremacy of “God’s Word written.” Also, if through its putatively Anglo-Catholic stream, the three streams approach now adopts select medieval traditions along with Pentecostal experience, one might logically wonder whether what we are seeing here is actually mostly contemporary American culture.

Along these lines, it is striking how Lovelace’s original article based its argument almost entirely upon experience, a reading of significant “signs of the times,” rather than upon doctrinal reflection. His conclusion was particularly revealing: “There will be many knots to be untied before we have a united church which is truly Catholic, evangelical and Pentecostal. In the meantime, we should design events which model the mixture, which form signposts pointing toward the meeting of the streams.” [9]

Back in 1978, David F. Wells expressed similar concerns about the movement of evangelicals that was just then emerging. The movement’s leaders, said Wells, had commendably “done much to isolate those aspects of evangelicalism that needed to be reformed.” Yet, “in their search for answers they ranged so widely and so indiscriminately among traditions that are essentially incompatible with evangelical belief. The vacuity of contemporary evangelicalism is inadvertently exposed by” this sort of response, he concluded. [10]

For orthodox Anglicans, aspects of this ‘three stream’ approach are problematic since our traditional formularies (i.e., the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, the Ordinal and the two Books of Homilies) are all products of the Magisterial Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement. The chief author of the Prayer Book and architect of the English Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, certainly sought (where Scripture allowed) to maintain continuity with the undivided church. Through its preservation of set liturgical forms, orders, an episcopal polity and the parochial system, the English Reformers preserved aspects of the Church of England’s catholicity better than did some of the other continental Reformers. They definitely sought to construct what the late Peter Toon liked to call a “Reformed Catholicism.” But their understanding of catholicity was not romantic; nor did it attempt to synthesize opposites. Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were unsparing in how they pruned beliefs and practices (including even some ancient ones) if they deemed them harmful to evangelical truth. The authors of our Prayer Book and the other Anglican formularies brought everything to the bar of the Apostolic witness of the New Testament, at the heart of which stood the Gospel message of God’s unmerited grace via the crucified and risen Savior.

Endnotes:

[1] Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God (New York:
Friendship Press, 1954).
[2] Richard Lovelace, “Three Streams, One River?” Charisma
(September 1984), 8.
[3] Source: Robert Webber, “Synthesis: The Convergence Worship
Movement” at http://reformedworship.org/magazine/
article.cfm?article_id=1415&id=77
[4] See: http://www.churchoftheapostles.org/index.php/coa/detail/three-streams-one-river/
[5] Paul W. Boosahda, “A Threefold Cord,” 5. See: http://saintcolumban.
co.cc/pdf/cord.pdf
[6] Ibid.
[7] Robert E. Webber, Worship Old & New: A Biblical,Historica,l and Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 236.
[8] See Simon Chan’s lecture at: http://ancientwisdomanglicanfutures.
blogspot.com/2009/05/simon-chan-callschurch-to-liturgical.html
[9] Lovelace, “Three Streams, One River?” p.?? Emphasis
added.
[10] David F. Wells, “Reservations About Catholic Renewal in
Evangelicalism,” in Robert Webber and Donald Bloesch,
eds., The Orthodox Evangelicals (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 223-224

Navigating the “Three Streams”: Some Second Thoughts about a Popular Typology

by Dr. Gillis Harp

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the September/October 2009 issue of Mandate magazine, and is reproduced with the permission of the author and the editor of Mandate. I originally posted this article on Anglicans Ablaze on September 24, 2009.

The discussion of the Anglican Mission’s choice of ministry partnership status with the Anglican Church in North America instead of full membership on Stand Firm has exposed the views of the Ancient-Future or Convergence movement, the dominant ideology in the Anglican Mission, to public scrutiny. In this discussion the term “Convergentist” was used, suggesting “Convergentism” as an appropriate description of this ideology. In his article Dr. Harp takes a thoughtful look at Convergentism.

While Convergentism has a strong following in the Anglican Mission, it also has adherents in the Anglican Church in North America. Archbishop Robert Duncan has used Convergentist language and themes in his addresses and sermons. Nineteenth century Evangelical Bishop J. C. Ryle identified ritualism and liberalism as perversions rather than genuine Anglicanism. In the nineteenth century liberalism helped ritualism establish itself in the Church of England and daughter churches. In the twentieth century ritualism helped radical liberalism gain ascendancy in The Episcopal Church. In Convergentism we see the emergence of what may be a new form or synthesis of ritualism and liberalism and a new perversion of genuine Anglicanism.

Gillis Harp teaches History at Grove City College and attends Grace Anglican Church in Slippery Rock, PA with his wife and three daughters.

As theologically conservative Anglicans have in recent years sought to cooperate in constructing an orthodox Anglican province in North America, many have referred to the process as a coming together of “three streams.” Usually, they are referring to Catholic, Evangelical (or Protestant) and Pentecostal (or Charismatic) traditions or “tributaries” being channeled into a single “river.” It is difficult to determine exactly where this model originated. Church of South India Bishop Lesslie Newbigin wrote a short book, The Household of God, back in 1953 that referred to these three elements and how their distinctive characteristics complimented each other. [1]

More than thirty years later, Gordon-Conwell church historian Richard Lovelace wrote a brief (though influential) article for Charismamagazine that argued that “there are many signs that history is moving” in the direction of organic unity between Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal streams. Among the signs he cited was the work of David du Plessis with Roman Catholic and Protestant Charismatic groups, and pointed to a large rally of Catholic and Protestant neo-Pentecostals held in Kansas City in 1977. [2]

But not only Charismatics are fond of this “three streams” language, since the late 1970s, this terminology has come into favour with evangelicals of different sorts who have discovered church history and been drawn toward liturgical Christian traditions, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and, most significant for readers of Mandate, Anglicanism.

Many of the goals that the “three streams” advocates identify are laudable. Those of us committed to classical Anglicanism can endorse the first three put forth by the late Robert E. Webber:

1. A restored commitment to the sacraments, especially the Lord’s Table.
2. An increased motivation to know more about the early church.
3. A love for the whole church and a desire to see the church as one. [3]

Yet the thinking behind these goals and the ways some have sought to blend the three streams call for further, less sentimental reflection based upon better historical and theological analysis.

The three streams paradigm celebrated by one Episcopal congregation long involved in the Charismatic renewal is typical. Its “statement of identity” distinguishes the three streams as “defining its essential character.” It contends that St. John was actually referring to these very streams in 1 John 5:8 when he wrote that “there are three witnesses – the Spirit, the water, and the blood – and these agree.” The blood represents the Catholic stream emphasizing the sacramental and liturgical life of the church; the water stands for the washing of the Word and individual cleansing; the Spirit signifies the Pentecostal stream and the power of the Holy Spirit. (Commentators may be divided about the original context of this particular passage and what heretical view the Apostle was rejecting in it, but reading this modern model into these verses seems an extraordinary stretch, a remarkable example of eisegesis rather than exegesis.) The statement goes on to highlight how each tradition or stream has handled different aspects of Christian teaching, ecclesiastical practice or personal piety. Purportedly, Catholics have stressed works (especially sacrificial service), whereas Evangelicals have emphasized faith, and Pentecostals Spirit-guided discernment “rather than [measuring orthodoxy by] objective criteria.” The statement concludes that the church at its best should knit together these “apparently incompatible approaches.” [4]

Some Episcopalians see this schema as normative of Anglicanism and confuse today’s talk about the ‘three streams’ with the historical division of the Church of England into high church, low church and broad church “parties,” as those terms were used in Anglican circles in the eighteenth century. At that time, the national church included within it clergy and laity who could be divided into at least three distinct groups; that is, a high church element that stressed the visible church (including it distinctive polity and traditional liturgical forms), a low church group that stressed the need for personal conversion and what eighteenth century evangelicals called an “experimental faith,” and a broad church party that stressed the reasonableness of the Christian faith and thus natural revelation over Scripture.

Notably, this interpretation was primarily a description of the contemporary situation within the established church; it was rarely celebrated as an ideal, and it was almost never viewed as the way toward some sort of desired future theological synthesis. Moreover, prior to the mid-nineteenth century, members of all three parties would have defined themselves as Protestants in a general sense (indeed, traditional high churchmen sometimes expressed views sharply critical of Roman doctrine and practice). Also, there would not have been major differences in clerical vesture or ceremonial among the clergy of these three parties, and there was a common reading of the Bible rooted in the Book of Common Prayer.

The emergence and growth of two groups in the late 1800s changed this picture, however. These were the Anglo-Catholics and theological modernists. The latter transformed the restrained liberalism of the Broad Church, making it far more radical, and the former turned the High Church party away from some tenets of the Reformation and low church worship that had characterized most of the Church of England since the Reformation. The result was an Anglican comprehensiveness that went far beyond that envisioned by the Anglican Reformers and has, as we see, made for theological and ethical incoherence in latter part of the twentieth century.

But in looking at the new “three streams” typology, one meets with at least four difficulties. First,it takes a possibly helpful (but over-simplified) descriptive model of the Western church during the middle part of the twentieth century and turns it into a prescriptive theological ideal. Newbigin’s original description may be an easy way to conceptualize some of the different traditions within Christianity in the effort to facilitate ecumenical discussion, understanding and cooperation. But using it to create a kind of doctrinal synthesis is, however, an entirely different matter. The differences between the three streams (at least as commonly identified by champions of the model) are not all simple differences of emphasis; some actually constitute opposed positions based upon very different readings of the Bible.

Two of the three streams, for instance, reject the classical Pentecostal teaching about a postconversion baptism of the Holy Spirit or the normative practice of Glossolalia and prophecy. Two of the three have historically repudiated the Roman Catholic understanding of the ordained ministry as sacerdotal, and would have a very different view of the nature and number of the sacraments. And, despite measured progress in ecumenical dialogue since the 1950s, one of the three does not understand justification as primarily the gracious imputation of Christ’s righteousness to individual believers received through faith alone. These are not peripheral matters. Wishful thinking about a tidy Hegelian historical synthesis of the three streams will not erase the contradictions. As Philip E. Hughes once wrote about dialogue between Roman Catholics and Anglicans during the early 1970s, “to resort to fine-sounding but ambivalent terminology is to paper over the cracks and then to call attention to the attractiveness of the wallpaper.”

Second, to effect this synthesis, some advocates of the three streams approach have handled Scripture in a highly problematic way (as already noted above), lifting verses out of their original contexts. Some have extended certain metaphors in the Bible, applying them in ways incompatible with their plain sense. A few leaders of the Charismatic renewal have viewed such fanciful applications of certain Biblical passages as genuinely prophetic. In this way, Newbigin’s modest insight has gained virtual divine imprimatur. Paul W. Boosahda, an archbishop in the Communion of Convergence Churches USA, describes the development this way:

The key Scriptural passage that began to act as a prophetic matrix of understanding for this discovery was found in Psalm 46:4,5 – “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall.”

The insight that was given from this passage was that there is “A” river (singular)“whose streams (plural) make glad the city of God (the Church, His covenant people and dwelling place), the holy place where the Most High dwells.”

As leaders from across the Church pondered this insight, it began to be clear they were all hearing the same Voice explaining that the one River of God’s Spirit and grace poured out into the world through the birth of His one Body, the Church on earth, had over time been fragmented into separate streams by breaking off from the unity and oneness and fullness of the River. [5]

As the passages are detached from their original historical contexts, there has developed a kind of far-fetched argument not strictly exegetical or theological. Again, Boosahda justifies the popular application this way: “River analogy runs all through the Scriptures when speaking of God’s saving and healing activity in history to bring about renewal, restoration, sanctification or spiritual Life.” [6] It would be difficult to disagree with this general observation but it hardly constitutes a persuasive argument from Scripture for the three streams as a prescriptive theological model.In Psalm 46, the “streams” more likely imply the abundance of water that is a metaphor for closeness to God. The metaphor seems to be drawn from the description of the river that flowed out of Eden in Gen 2:10-14. There, the river divided into four “river heads.”

Third, some champions of the three streams often display a simplistic and romantic view of the early church. They sometimes portray the first four centuries as a time of tidy doctrinal consensus and ecclesiastical harmony. The historical record, as evidenced by early church councils and the heated debates about everything from Christology to iconography, paints a different picture. The Ancient Fathers did not speak with a single voice on all theological and ethical matters, in fact, they disagreed about some questions. There is certainly a lot that the church can learn today from the teaching of the early Fathers and ignorance of their writings has definitely harmed contemporary evangelicals. But they are to be deferred to only insofar as their teaching is based upon “most certain warrants of holy Scripture” (see Article VIII). As Article XXI puts it succinctly, general councils “may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.” While the portrait of the early church in these circles is romanticized, the adherence to Patristic teaching is highly selective. Many appear eager to follow Hippolytus to the letter with regard to fine liturgical points but the same individuals are less enthusiastic about what the Fathers said about the ordination of women or the remarriage of divorced persons. Similarly, they are eager to employ the 1979 American book in worship, yet overlook its Pelagian catechism.

Fourth, because they follow the work of Robert Webber, they fall victim to his biases toward two twentieth-century theologians, Dom Gregory Dix and Gustaf Aulen whose work should be viewed with some skepticism by defenders of classical Anglicanism. Some “three streams” teaching either misunderstands the Protestant Reformation, summarizes it cursorily, leaps over it, or virtually ignores it. Although Webber occasionally noted the superiority of the Reformers’ worship over that of modern American evangelicals, he focused far greater attention in his many books on the first five centuries of church history.

When handling subjects where the Reformers disagreed with Patristic positions, Webber rarely sided with the Reformers. Significantly, he invariably drew upon the 1979 American book rather than the historic 1662/1928 BCPs. Much of his understanding of the eucharist was based upon Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy. (Dix was no fan of Cranmer’s theology. He agreed that the 1662 communion service brilliantly communicated the doctrine of justification by faith but bluntly dismissed the latter teaching.) Although Webber rejected a late medieval understanding of the eucharist as a re-sacrifice of Christ, he still argued that it should “be regarded as an offering of Jesus Christ to the Father.” [7] Similarly, Webber stressed Gustaf Aulen’s ‘Christus Victor’ understanding of the atonement over against the substitutionary interpretation followed by the Reformers, which constitutes the heart of the 1662/1928 eucharistic canon.

Consequently, looking at their writings from the standpoint of the Reformed Catholicism of the Prayer Book, three stream spokesmen mistakenly attribute the errors or distortions of nineteenth or twentieth-century evangelicals to the sixteenth century Reformers. One Pentecostal theologian recently asserted that the Magisterial Reformer had sacramental and liturgical emphases in their theology but they weren’t reflected in their practice. [8] Even a rudimentary historical study of the actual practice of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer would quickly prove the inaccuracy of that argument. This sort of bias against the English Reformation should be openly acknowledged.

If this is the path of the new Anglican movement in North America then it distorts and caricatures the position of the Anglican Reformers. The theological divide of the Reformation is happily not in some respects as wide as it once was; for that fact we can all be grateful. Nevertheless, it is important to confront its central Biblical and theological questions head-on and without fudging the remaining differences. Since the three streams theology is rooted more in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than in the sixteenth, it is important to note how it shares in the Pietistic tendency to allow subjective (inward) experience to trump propositional (external) truth. Yet classical Anglicanism holds both together while affirming the supremacy of “God’s Word written.” Also, if through its putatively Anglo-Catholic stream, the three streams approach now adopts select medieval traditions along with Pentecostal experience, one might logically wonder whether what we are seeing here is actually mostly contemporary American culture.

Along these lines, it is striking how Lovelace’s original article based its argument almost entirely upon experience, a reading of significant “signs of the times,” rather than upon doctrinal reflection. His conclusion was particularly revealing: “There will be many knots to be untied before we have a united church which is truly Catholic, evangelical and Pentecostal. In the meantime, we should design events which model the mixture, which form signposts pointing toward the meeting of the streams.” [9]

Back in 1978, David F. Wells expressed similar concerns about the movement of evangelicals that was just then emerging. The movement’s leaders, said Wells, had commendably “done much to isolate those aspects of evangelicalism that needed to be reformed.” Yet, “in their search for answers they ranged so widely and so indiscriminately among traditions that are essentially incompatible with evangelical belief. The vacuity of contemporary evangelicalism is inadvertently exposed by” this sort of response, he concluded. [10]

For orthodox Anglicans, aspects of this ‘three stream’ approach are problematic since our traditional formularies (i.e., the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, the Ordinal and the two Books of Homilies) are all products of the Magisterial Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement. The chief author of the Prayer Book and architect of the English Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, certainly sought (where Scripture allowed) to maintain continuity with the undivided church. Through its preservation of set liturgical forms, orders, an episcopal polity and the parochial system, the English Reformers preserved aspects of the Church of England’s catholicity better than did some of the other continental Reformers. They definitely sought to construct what the late Peter Toon liked to call a “Reformed Catholicism.” But their understanding of catholicity was not romantic; nor did it attempt to synthesize opposites. Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer were unsparing in how they pruned beliefs and practices (including even some ancient ones) if they deemed them harmful to evangelical truth. The authors of our Prayer Book and the other Anglican formularies brought everything to the bar of the Apostolic witness of the New Testament, at the heart of which stood the Gospel message of God’s unmerited grace via the crucified and risen Savior.

Endnotes:

[1] Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God (New York:
Friendship Press, 1954).
[2] Richard Lovelace, “Three Streams, One River?” Charisma
(September 1984), 8.
[3] Source: Robert Webber, “Synthesis: The Convergence Worship
Movement” at http://reformedworship.org/magazine/
article.cfm?article_id=1415&id=77
[4] See: http://www.churchoftheapostles.org/index.php/coa/detail/three-streams-one-river/
[5] Paul W. Boosahda, “A Threefold Cord,” 5. See: http://saintcolumban.
co.cc/pdf/cord.pdf
[6] Ibid.
[7] Robert E. Webber, Worship Old & New: A Biblical,Historica,l and Practical Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 236.
[8] See Simon Chan’s lecture at: http://ancientwisdomanglicanfutures.
blogspot.com/2009/05/simon-chan-callschurch-to-liturgical.html
[9] Lovelace, “Three Streams, One River?” p.?? Emphasis
added.
[10] David F. Wells, “Reservations About Catholic Renewal in
Evangelicalism,” in Robert Webber and Donald Bloesch,
eds., The Orthodox Evangelicals (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 223-224

The Misuse of the Three-Streams Model in the North American Church

By Robin G. Jordan

The topology of three streams of Anglican faith and practice—evangelical, catholic, and charismatic—has been used to promote a revisionist, hyper-Catholic view of Anglicanism in North America. This is evident when the application of this typology to Anglicanism in The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future is compared with the interpretation of the three-streams model in North America. As a consequence this typology no longer has value when applied to the North American Church.

In the North America Church one encounters a reductionist view of evangelicalism that is divorced from how evangelicalism has been historically understood in the Anglican Church. In this view evangelicalism is reinterpreted in terms of an emphasis upon Scripture and evangelism. North American Anglicans identify themselves as “evangelical” because they recognize the Bible as authoritative and divinely inspired and seek to convert others to the Christian faith as they understand it. Liberal Anglo-Catholics like Archbishop Robert Duncan claim to be “High Church Evangelicals” and traditionalist Anglo-Catholics like Forward in Faith North America claim to be “Evangelical Catholics.” Evangelicalism, as it has historically been understood in the Anglican Church, refers to the doctrine of the Protestant school maintaining salvation by faith (as opposed to good works and sacraments) as the essence of Gospel teaching. However they view themselves, those who do not submit to the rule of the plain sense of the Scriptures and the classic Anglican formularies are not evangelical!

As I have written elsewhere, the Episcopal Church in the United States at a very early stage fell away from the teaching of the Scriptures and the classic Anglican formularies. The Thirty-Nine Articles would not occupy the central place in the life and teaching of the Episcopal Church that it occupied in the Church of England and would occupy in other Anglican provinces. The first American Prayer Book of 1789 would depart from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with the adoption of the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer of Consecration. Each successive revision has moved the American Prayer Book further away from the doctrine and liturgical usages of the 1662 Prayer Book.

One of the first breakaway Anglican churches—the Reformed Episcopal Church—was established by conservative members of the Episcopal Church’s evangelical wing in the nineteenth century. They fled the growth and increasing influence of Anglo-Catholicism in the Episcopal Church. In the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century the Reformed Episcopal Church lost its evangelical identity due to a number of factors. These factors include its present leaders who are not committed to maintaining that identity and have actively sought to undermine it.

Subsequent breakaway Anglican churches—the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Mission, and the Anglican Church in North America—have followed in the footsteps of the Episcopal Church. The classic Anglican formularies have formal authority in the Anglican Mission but they play a negligible role in shaping faith and practice in that ecclesial body.

As Roger T. Beckwith who participated in the GAFCON Theological Resource Group meetings writes in The Church of England: What It Is, And What It Stands For, the Anglican Church “is catholic, in that it retains the ancient common heritage of Christendom, in a biblical form.” (Roger T. Beckwith, The Church of England: What It Is, And What It Stands For, p. 25) But it is a reformed catholicism. The Anglican Reformers “used the standard of Scripture, applied by reason, to correct whatever needed correcting in the church’s inherited forms.” (Ibid., p. 25)

The GAFCON Theological Resource Group in The Way, the Truth, and the Life states the position of historic Anglicanism:

Anglican orthodoxy is catholic in that it values the
catholic creeds and the ecumenical Councils of the early Church, recognizing that these have provided a ‘rule of faith’ that is derived from Scripture. While honouring the creeds, Anglican orthodoxy also upholds the substance of the Protestant confessions, recognizing that they contain key insights into the truth of the Gospel. In particular, it offers the Articles of Religion as an abiding contribution to the wider Christian church, and claims them as normative for its members. (Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 101)

Clause 3 of The Jerusalem Declaration states:

We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Clause 4 of The Jerusalem Declaration further states:

We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.

Both clauses reflect this position

Those who use the three-streams topology in promoting a revisionist, hyper-Catholic view of Anglicanism in North America, when they refer to the Catholic stream in Anglicanism are not referring to the reformed catholicism of historic Anglicanism. The Catholicism to which they refer is the unreformed Catholicism of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. It is directly antagonistic to the reforms of the sixteenth century.

The third stream in this topology is the charismatic stream. To identify a distinct theological stream in Anglicanism centered on the Holy Spirit is a twentieth century development. In his examination of the twentieth century charismatic movement, Keep in Step with the Spirit, J. I. Packer identifies that movement as the “step-child of Pentecostalism” and “evangelicalism’s half-sister.” (J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, pp. 172-173). Pentecostalism, he writes, “sprang at the start of this century out of the older Wesleyan heritage.” (Ibid., p. 172) This is a reference to the holiness movement. In the last decade we have seen an attempt to Catholicize the origins of this theological stream, focusing upon the place that Eastern Orthodoxy gives to the work of the Holy Spirit in its theology. It seeks to subsume the charismatic theological stream as it does the evangelical stream so that they are reduced to particular emphases in unreformed Catholicism.

Like the analogies of a three-legged stool and the via media, or middle way, the three-streams topology is being exploited to redefine Anglicanism and to market this redefinition of Anglicanism. What is being passed off as Anglicanism is represented as embodying three emphases—Scripture, Sacraments, and Spirit. Each emphasis is identified with one of the three streams of this topology—evangelical, catholic, and charismatic. But how these emphases are interpreted has little connection with how the Scriptures, the sacraments, and the Holy Spirit are viewed in historical Anglicanism.

Conspicuous by their absence are the great truths of the Reformation. It is these truths that are formulated in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the doctrinal parts of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Thirty-Nine Articles, which affirm the catholic creeds with their teaching on the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, “add teaching on three other important areas of biblical theology, namely
Revelation, Salvation and the Sacraments.” (Roger T. Beckwith, The Church of England: What It Is, And What It Stands For, p. 17) What the Anglican Reformers maintained in connection to the doctrine of the sacraments was closely related to the doctrine of revelation and the doctrine of justification by faith.

The doctrine of revelation was the basis on which they attempted to get back to biblical teaching about the sacrament; and, as to the doctrine of salvation, Cranmer's Communion service (substantially that of the 1662 Prayer Book) has been well described by Gregory Dix as 'the only effective attempt ever made to give liturgical expression to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. (Ibid., p. 7)

Missing is a major principle on which the Anglican Church is founded and which link it to the reformed churches. The Anglican Church is a confessional church. It “uses confessions of faith to express the teaching of the Bible.” (Ibid., p. 17)The GAFCON Theological Resource Group affirms this principle in The Way, the Truth, and the Life:

The Anglican Church has always been a confessional institution, but its confession does not seek to be comprehensive on every issue, or to foreclose discussion. Over the last two hundred years, however, an unwillingness has grown up, in some parts of the Church, to bind itself to confessional formulae, such as the Thirty-nine Articles. Instead, there has been a strong move towards a more general affirmation of the Thirty-nine Articles, accepting them as a historical background which informs our life and witness, but not as a test of faith. As long as this unwillingness remains, there is little hope for an effective Covenant within the Anglican Communion.(Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 91)

The GAFCON Theological Resource Group subsequently would emphasize in Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, its commentary on The Jerusalem Declaration, that acceptance of the Thirty-Nine Articles’ authority “is constitutive of Anglican identity” (Ibid., p. 35). The GAFCON Theological Resource Group goes on to stress:

The Jerusalem Declaration calls the Anglican Church back to the Articles as being a faithful testimony to the teaching of Scripture, excluding erroneous beliefs and practices and giving distinct shape to Anglican Christianity. (Ibid., p. 36)

Rather than to make clear the distinct character of Anglicanism, the three-streams model is used in the North American Church to help forward a revisionist, hyper-Catholic view of Anglicanism that repackages Anglican Catholicism’s disregard of the Bible and its restoration of medieval tradition for a new generation. The product may bear the Anglican label and have “evangelical” and “charismatic” listed on the package but the main ingredient is unreformed Catholicism. Because of the misuse of this topology in the North American Church a more accurate descriptive model is needed.

Through a Glass Darkly--Part 3

By Robin G. Jordan

A second major trend in North America warranting our examination is the tendency to regard as normative for Anglicans the doctrines and practices historically associated with the Tractarians and their Anglo-Catholic successors who in fact represent only one school of thought in Anglicanism. This may be accounted for by the growth and spread of Anglo-Catholic – Romanist influence in the Episcopal Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and the disappearance of classical Anglican evangelicalism from that church by 1900. I touched upon this trend in the previous article in this series.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term “Romanism,” it generally refers to the adoption or the promotion of the adoption of Roman Catholic beliefs and/or practices. An individual may adopt or promote such beliefs and practices without embracing the papal system and espousing the theory of Papal Supremacy.

In the nineteenth century the Romeward movement in the Church of England sought corporate reunion with the Church of Rome. Its guiding principle was to encourage members of the Church of England, whether clergy and laity, to adopt more or less Roman Catholic doctrines and practices and to remain within her fold for the purpose of “Catholicizing” her and making her respectable enough for the Pope to accept her in the passage of time. Pope Benedict’s proposal for an apostolic constitution for Anglicans in the form of a personal ordinariate is proof of the failure of the Romeward movement since this proposal essentially requires individual succession to Rome. If Anglicans wish to be reconciled with the Church of Rome, they must become Roman Catholics.

We see a continued effort to Romanize the Anglican Church for a variety of reasons. Among these reasons is the mistaken notion that that in Romanizing the Church those championing Roman Catholic beliefs and practices believe that they are making the Church more Catholic. Some advocates of Roman Catholic doctrine and practice may cling to the old vision of the nineteenth century Romeward movement. Eventually the Pope will accept their branch of the Anglican Church or their particular jurisdiction as “Catholic” enough for reunion with Rome. They will not need to relinquish their orders and to put aside their wives. They will not have to undergo catechesis as if they were not truly Catholics, retraining as if they were not truly Catholic priests, and lengthy probation as if they were newcomers to pastoral ministry.

We see efforts to export Anglo-Catholic - Romanist influence to the global South provinces in the twenty-first century. The various activities of Canon Kevin Donlan aimed at promoting Anglo-Catholicism - Romanism in Rwanda and the other African churches as well as in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission were noted in the previous article in this series. Donlan has secured appointment to the global South Theological Formation and Education Task Force. This places him a highly strategic position to disseminate his ideas among the African churches and to influence their thinking. The Anglo-Catholic bishops came back from the GAFCON Conference, expressing dissatisfaction with the Jerusalem Declaration. Donlan himself was a critic of a number of its provisions. He has worked assiduously since that time to undermine and weaken the evangelical influence in GAFCON and the global South provinces. When he served on the GAFCON Theological Resource Group, he was a strong proponent of the view of apostolic succession and the episcopate that historically has been associated with Anglo-Catholicism, Romanism, and other forms of Western Catholicism.

The alleged wide diversity of doctrine and practice in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the North American Anglican community does not weaken the historic association of that wing with Romanism. Those who claim such diversity in Anglo-Catholicism in North America need to produce more than anecdotal evidence to support their claim. Anglo-Catholicism has never been totally homogenous and some variance in belief and practice is not surprising. The mainstream of the Anglo-Catholic movement in North America has historically evidenced Romanist leanings. The onus to demonstrate conclusively that the greater number of North American Anglo-Catholics have abandoned these leanings to the point that they can no longer be characterized as adopting or promoting the adoption of Roman Catholic doctrines and practices rests on those making such a claim. A few anecdotes concerning individual Anglo-Catholics who do not accept this or that Roman Catholic doctrine or practice is not sufficient proof.

Their argument is reminiscent of that of a young man whom I encountered in my local public library. Dan Brown’s books and PBS had greatly influenced his thinking concerning the early age of the Gnostic Gospels. He insisted that they had been written within 40 years of Christ’s death and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had been written a hundred years later. He became very belligerent when I pointed to his attention that the mainstream of Bible scholarship did not support his contention, dating the writing of the Gnostic Gospels to a much later period. He demanded that I prove to his satisfaction that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had been written at an earlier date, setting himself up as judge of the evidence. He had never heard of the principle of onus probandi, that is, the obligation to prove rests on the opponent of the orthodox or established. When I declined his invitation to a debate, which he wanted to conduct in the library parking lot and which sounded more like a challenge to a fistfight, he became extremely insulting, revealing his true intent.

This young man’s views on the Gnostic Gospels points to another major trend in North America. There exists a large body of erroneous information that a number of popular writers along with radicals on the fringe of Bible scholarship are promoting as the latest findings in the field. A growing number of people including Anglicans and other Christians are accepting this information uncritically. They are not taking the time to investigate its validity. They display a preference for speculation over solid research.

A fourth major trend in North America is the tendency to gloze over critical differences between Protestantism, Catholicism, and Pentecostalism. Gillis Harp drew attention to this tendency in his Mandate article, “Navigating the Three Streams.” (Those who have not yet read Dr. Harp’s article will find it time well spent.) Noting that the differences between the “three streams”… “are not all simple differences of emphasis” but that “some actually constitute opposed positions based upon very different readings of the Bible,” Doctor Harp goes on to write:

Two of the three streams, for instance, reject the classical Pentecostal teaching about a postconversion baptism of the Holy Spirit or the normative practice of Glossolalia and prophecy. Two of the three have historically repudiated the Roman Catholic understanding of the ordained ministry as sacerdotal, and would have a very different view of the nature and number of the sacraments. And, despite measured progress in ecumenical dialogue since the 1950s, one of the three does not understand justification as primarily the gracious imputation of Christ’s righteousness to individual believers received through faith alone. These are not peripheral matters. Wishful thinking about a tidy Hegelian historical synthesis of the three streams will not erase the contradictions. As Philip E. Hughes once wrote about dialogue between Roman Catholics and Anglicans during the early 1970s, “to resort to fine-sounding but ambivalent terminology is to paper over the cracks and then to call attention to the attractiveness of the wallpaper.”

Doctor Harp draws attention to four other trends of particular significance in the same article. The first of these trends is the highly problematic way in which some advocates of the three streams approach handle Scripture in order to affect a synthesis between the disparate theologies of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Pentecostalism. After noting that these advocates of the three streams approach lift verses out of their original context, he further writes:

Some have extended certain metaphors in the Bible, applying them in ways incompatible with their plain sense. A few leaders of the Charismatic renewal have viewed such fanciful applications of certain Biblical passages as genuinely prophetic.

Passages are detached from their historical context in the development of a kind of argument that not only far-fetched but also not theological or exegetical. This is a serious misuse of Scripture.

The second trend of these trends is the romanticization of the early Church. Dr. Harp notes the disregard of an important principle adopted by the English Reformers in their reading of the early Church fathers and incorporated into the canons of the Church of England: the Patristic writings, like all human thought, must be submitted to the Scriptures. The teaching of the Patristic writers is to be given deference only in so far as they are agreeable to the Scriptures. The authority of their teaching is, like that of the Thirty-Nine Articles, derived from the authority of the Scripture. Despite their antiquity they have no authority of their own. Dr. Harp further notes that adherence to Patristic teaching is at the same time highly selective.

The third of these trends a number of the champions of the three streams approach are followers of the works of the late Robert Webber. As a consequence they have absorbed his particular biases toward two twentieth century theologians Dom Gregory Dix and Gustaf Aulen whose work defenders of classical Anglicanism should view with skepticism. Webber in his numerous books generally ignores the Reformation, focusing much greater attention on the first five centuries of Church history. Webber rarely sides with the Reformers against the Patristic positions on key issues. Dix strongly influenced Webber’s view of the Eucharist and Aulen his view of the atonement.

The fourth of these trends is the tendency of the spokesmen of the three streams approach to attribute the distortions or errors of nineteenth and twentieth century evangelicals to the sixteenth century Reformers. There is a definite bias against the English Reformation that is not openly acknowledged.

Dr. Harp makes a very important observation:

If this is the path of the new Anglican movement in North America then it distorts and caricatures the position of the Anglican Reformers. The theological divide of the Reformation is happily not in some respects as wide as it once was; for that fact we can all be grateful. Nevertheless, it is important to confront its central Biblical and theological questions head-on and without fudging the remaining differences. Since the three streams theology is rooted more in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than in the sixteenth, it is important to note how it shares in the Pietistic tendency to allow subjective (inward) experience to trump propositional (external) truth. Yet classical Anglicanism holds both together while affirming the supremacy of “God’s Word written.” Also, if through its putatively Anglo-Catholic stream, the three streams approach now adopts select medieval traditions along with Pentecostal experience, one might logically wonder whether what we are seeing here is actually mostly contemporary American culture.

In other words, we are seeing a manifestation of cafeteria Christianity with its highly selective approach to belief and practice.

If we use as indicators the web sites of the Anglican Church in North America and Anglican Mission, the websites of their respective congregations, and the public statements of their leaders, the influence of three streams theology in some form is widespread in these two bodies. There is frequent reference to the three Ss of the three streams—Sacraments, Scripture, and the Holy Spirit. Both Chairman-Primatial Vicar Chuck Murphy and Archbishop-Primate Bob Duncan have used three streams terminology in their sermons and addresses.

We have so far identified eight major trends that can be reasonably expected to affect the future of historic Anglicanism in North America. Three additional trends of like significance are the amorphous character of what passes as evangelicalism in the North American Anglican community, the splintering of the more conservative evangelical groups within that community, and the lack of strong voice in North America in support of authentic historic Anglicanism. We will examine these trends in the next article in this series.

Why Isn’t the Anglican Church in North America More Comprehensive?

By Robin G. Jordan

Those who claim that there is no single way to be Anglican are displaying the influence of Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism. Both Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism have sought to expand the boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness beyond those set by the Thirty-Nine Articles. According to one liberal view Anglicanism embraces anything and everything that a church identifying itself as Anglican believes or practices. All the church needs is some kind of historical connection with the Church of England and the recognition of the See of Canterbury.

While the eighteenth century latitudinarians may have been the first to assert that Anglican comprehensiveness is broader than its sixteenth century limits, the nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics were the most aggressive in pressing beyond those limits. They were intent on carving out a space for themselves in the Anglican Church. However, they were not satisfied to be one church party or faction among many. Their ultimate goal was to take over the entire church.

Their vision in the nineteenth century was to so Catholicize the Church of England that the Pope would readmit the English Church to the Roman fold. Their vision is still to Catholicize the Anglican Church. The Pope Leo XIII’ declaration of the invalidity of Anglican orders in 1896 and more recently Pope Benedict XVI’s creation of the Anglican Ordinariate have forced Anglo-Catholics to abandon the hope of reunification with Rome. In place of that vision they have settled for making Edward Bouverie Pusey’s theory of Anglicanism as a third great branch of Catholicism a reality.

In the second half of the twentieth century Anglo-Catholics found allies in the adherents of the convergence and Ancient Future worship renewal movements. The convergence movement began as a movement among evangelical and charismatic churches in the United States to blend charismatic worship with liturgies from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and other sources. The Ancient Future worship renewal movement is a particular expression of the convergence movement that has encouraged evangelical and charismatic churches to incorporate liturgical forms and other traditional practices into their worship. The convergence movement would lead to the formation of the so-called “convergence communions.” Convergence theology has strongly influenced the Anglican Mission in the Americas and the Anglican Church in the North America.

One of the developments in the convergence/Ancient Future worship renewal movement is a growing receptivity toward Catholic doctrine, order, and practice. While supposedly bring together the three streams of Catholicism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism into one river, the Catholic stream has proven to be the strongest current in the river. This stream is not the reformed catholicism of historic Anglicanism but the unreformed Catholicism of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

The Catholic stream is so strong that what is happening in churches in which the influence of the convergence/Ancient Future worship renewal movement is the strongest may be described as a Catholic resurgence. Among the characteristics of the convergence/Ancient Future worship renewal movement is a rather naïve, romantic view of the early and medieval Churches, a penchant for antiquarianism, and an aversion to the Reformation. These same characteristics marked the Anglo-Catholic movement and the Catholic revival in the nineteenth century.

Adherents of the convergence/Ancient Future worship renewal movement claim what they perceive as the bringing together of the Catholic, evangelical, and Pentecostal traditions is the work of the Holy Spirit. One of the implications of this claim is that the Reformation was not the work of the Holy Spirit. Historically evangelicals have understood the Reformation to be the Holy Spirit’s work and have traced the roots of evangelicalism to the Reformation and its recovery of the Bible and the gospel. This may explain in part the redefinition of evangelical and evangelicalism in convergence circles and their claims of the existence of “Ancient Evangelicals.” Evangelicalism is reduced to an emphasis on the Bible and evangelism.

Adherents of the convergence movement are not the only ones who claim that the Holy Spirit is at work in their movement. So do liberals. The nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics also believed that the Holy Spirit was at work in their movement.

A part of the appeal of convergence theology to North American Anglicans is its claim that the convergence of the Catholic, evangelical, and Pentecostal traditions the Holy Spirit is bringing about is taking place in the  the Anglican Church in North America and the concomitant belief that the leaders and members of the ACNA are particularly anointed by God. As well as meeting a need for meaning in people’s lives, these beliefs also appeal to a common human weakness—pride. North Americans in the United States have also long viewed themselves as set apart by God for greatness: They have in their own estimation a special destiny to fulfill.

What is emerging in the  Anglican Church in North America is a synthesis of Pusey’s theory of Anglicanism as the third great branch of Catholic Christianity and convergence theology’s notion of one river in which flows three streams. The two views complement each other in a number of ways.

How do these developments have any bearing upon comprehensiveness in the Anglican Church in North America? They are actually very pertinent to why the ACNA is not more comprehensive than it is.

Anglo-Catholics have a history of demanding room for their theological tradition in the Anglican Church while at the same time refusing to make room for other theological traditions. In the nineteenth century they tried to drive the evangelicals out of the Church of England. Through their intransigence in response to the plea of conservative evangelicals for modest revisions in the American Prayer Book they forced these evangelicals out of the Episcopal Church.

For Anglo-Catholics, as for liberals, tolerance is a one-way street. You can travel down it only in one direction. They expect, even demand to be tolerated but are quite intolerant themselves. They expect others to compromise but are unwilling themselves to compromise. Where they do compromise, it is on matters that are not of great importance to them.

Anglo-Catholics favor the kind of comprehensiveness, if it can be called that, which provides ample room for their beliefs and practices but affords very little room for the beliefs and practices of other theological traditions, which are not compatible with theirs. It calls for the acceptance or tolerance of Anglo-Catholic views and the dismissal of incompatible views. It is essentially saying that Anglo-Catholic views should be recognized over the views of other traditions because Anglo-Catholic views are right and the views of other traditions are wrong. It is not really comprehensiveness.

Those who adhere to convergence theology display similar attitudes to Anglo-Catholics. They expect tolerance of their views but they are intolerant of views not in agreement with theirs. They are persuaded that the Holy Spirit is uniquely at work in themselves and that they are fulfilling a divine mission. Those who do not agree with them are either spiritually unenlightened or blind or they are deliberately opposing God. Convergentists suffer from all the shortcomings of the Corinthian pneumatics even though they as individuals may not have experienced the baptism or release of the Holy Spirit and may not practice the sign gifts such as speaking in tongues.

Like Anglo-Catholics, convergentists believe that their views should be accepted or tolerated because they are right and those who do not share their views are wrong. Tolerance of their views includes not putting up an argument, staying silent, and going along with whatever they say or do.

In their tendency to ignore or minimize the differences between the Catholic, evangelical, and Pentecostal traditions, adherents of convergence theology overlook the fact the Catholic and evangelical traditions represent not only conflicting interpretations of Scripture but disparate views of the Bible and revelation. As I previously noted, they take a reductionist view of evangelicals and evangelicalism. The end result is that unreformed Catholicism tends to dominate their theological outlook as well as their piety and practice.

A notable trend in convergentist circles is to equate the Pentecostal tradition that is converging with the Catholic and evangelical traditions in the Anglican Church in North America with Eastern Orthodoxy and its pneumatology, and not with the twentieth century Pentecostalism and the charismatic and third-wave movements. Those who take this view appear to be trying to redefine the Pentecostal tradition and provide it with Catholic credentials. Twentieth century Pentecostalism has its roots in the holiness movement and Wesleyanism and ultimately the Reformation and Protestantism.

Adherents of convergence theology favor the same kind of comprehensiveness as Anglo-Catholics. It would make plenty of room for themselves and those who have similar beliefs and practices to theirs but would give very little space to those who do not. The latter group would be required to go along with the beliefs and practices of the other two groups. As I noted earlier, it is not really comprehensiveness.

You may have noted that I do not refer to convergentists as charismatics. The convergence movement is an outgrowth of the charismatic movement. However, those who subscribe to convergence theology are not all charismatics. They may have a continualist view of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and they may have adopted the more free-flowing style of worship associated with charismatic churches. But they may not themselves have experienced the baptism or release of the Holy Spirit. They also may not practice the sign gifts. They do exhibit the tendency to view themselves as a spiritual elite, a tendency that marred the charismatic movement.

The limits of historic Anglican comprehensiveness are defined by the Thirty-Nine Articles. As J. I. Packer points out in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, doctrinal requirements are kept down to the minimum and the maximum of flexibility and variety are allowed on secondary matters:

The Articles are in this sense minimal (they are the shortest of the Reformation confessions.) But they are meant to ensure that all Anglican clergy, whatever their views on other matters, should unite in teaching an Augustian doctrine of sin and a Reformed doctrine of justification and grace – should, in other words, unite in proclaiming what the Reformers took to be the New Testament gospel.

Within these limits, High Church Protestantism flourished alongside evangelicalism in the Church of England.

The “evangelical comprehensiveness” to which the Thirty-Nine Articles sets the boundaries is too restrictive to the tastes of Anglo-Catholics, convergentists, and liberals. They prefer a comprehensiveness the limits of which they themselves define and which benefits them the most. It is not inclusive of Anglicans faithful to the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine and liturgical usages of the Anglican formularies. It leaves out those who from perspective of the Anglican formularies are genuinely Anglican.

The situation in the Anglican Church in North America in the early twenty-first century parallels that in the Episcopal Church in the early twentieth century. Anglo-Catholic elements in the Episcopal Church joined with Broad Church elements in that province to remove the Thirty-Nine Articles from the back of the American Prayer Book and to produce the retrograde 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA have joined with convergentists—the new Anglo-Catholics—in the ACNA to produce an ordinal and eucharistic rites that also can be described as moving backward—returning to the beliefs and practices of unreformed Catholicism.

This partnership also produced the Common Cause Theological Statement which would be adopted as the Fundamental Declarations of the ACNA—a document that equivocates in its acceptance of the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles; includes the Medieval Sarum Missal, the partially-reformed 1549 Prayer Book, and the retrograde1637 Scottish Prayer Book in its standard of worship; and takes an Anglo-Catholic position on the necessity of the episcopate to the existence of the Church. The Fundamental Declarations effectively bars from the ACNA faithful Anglicans who are firm in their adherence to the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies and are unwilling to compromise their beliefs.

The canons of the Anglican Church in North America also contain doctrine, both stated and implied, over which Anglicans historically have been divided. The Thirty-Nine Articles reject the Roman Catholic sacramental system but the ACNA canons accept it.

For those who were paying attention, a number of then Bishop Robert Duncan’s speeches were red flags warning them of what lay ahead. In the days before the most recent Lambeth Conference Bishop Duncan dismissed the Elizabethan Settlement as being no longer relevant to the contemporary Anglican Church and talked about the need for a “new settlement.”  The Anglican formularies—the Thirty-Nine Articles, the two Books of Homilies, and even the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal—are an integral part of the Elizabethan Settlement.  The 1662 Prayer Book and the 1661 Ordinal are essentially the Prayer Book and Ordinal of the Elizabethan Settlement.  In later speeches he spoke about the need for regression in a time of crisis, for turning back the clock to an earlier time in the faith and life of the Church.

I personally question the genuineness of the Anglican identity of the Anglican Church in North America for the reasons I have outlined in this article. I do not believe that the ACNA can be viewed as Anglican because one group of faithful Anglicans who adhere to the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies are presently maintaining a tenuous existence in that body. They are making compromises which eventually will lead to the erosion of their Anglican identity. The ACNA has not made any major changes to accommodate them.

The existence of this group of Anglicans in the Anglican Church in North America is not an indication that the ACNA is comprehensive in a true sense of the word.  It might be described as an accident. Some might describe it as providential but they are more optimistic than I am. The preponderance of evidence, when weighed, leads me to conclude that the days of this group of Anglicans are numbered. Those who exercise the most influence in the ACNA’s doctrinal and liturgical commissions and its College of Bishops are moving the ACNA in the direction of unreformed Catholicism. They are not making room for this group of Anglicans and their beliefs and practices. This group of Anglicans will, with the adoption of the ACNA Prayer Book and Catechism, be expected to conform more closely to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the ACNA. If they are unwilling to do so, they will be given the option to leave.

This kind of exclusion is exactly what happened to the same group of Anglicans in the Episcopal Church. They could privately hold to whatever beliefs they liked. However, they could not publicly practice their beliefs or pass them on to others. It is the kind of exclusion that should prompt the intervention of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. For reasons to which I am not privy the GFCA cannot bring itself to take such action.  The world once more will be treated to the spectacle of Anglicans suffering persecution in a purportedly Anglican church for being Anglican.

Photo: Overwhelmed by Grace