The ACNA Constitution and the Future of the ACNA

By Robin G. Jordan

From one source I gather that the Drafting Committee of the Executive Committee of the ACNA Provincial Council, formerly the Council of the Common Cause Partnership, is drawing up the constitutions and canons that will be adopted at the “constitutional convention” to be held this coming August. I must admit to some trepidation at the prospect of two more documents like the ACNA provisional constitution and canons that contain conflicting provisions and leave a lot unsaid that should have been said, suggesting that they were hastily put-together without much consultation between the different individuals or groups involved in their drafting. They also contain provisions that are not compatible with North American Anglicanism such as the concentration of power in a non-representative governing body, dominated by bishops and other clergy, and the House of Bishops’ appointment of the bishops of new judicatories admitted to the ACNA. The way the government of the new province is structured is reminiscent of how the Communist Party and the government of the USSR were organized in the days of the former Soviet Union.

North American Anglicans are accustomed to a modified form of episcopacy in which the bishop, other clergy, and the laity share in the governance of the church. They are accustomed to synods or governing bodies that contain a substantial number of elected lay representatives and the election of the bishop of the judicatory by the synod or governing body of the judicatory. One of the reasons that North American Anglicans left the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church was due to the increasing centralization of the two church bodies and the abuse of episcopal authority in those church bodies. They certainly did not leave the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church out of a desire to be a part of an even more authoritarian system.

A serious weakness of the provisional ACNA constitution is that it permits both geographic judicatories—dioceses—and non-geographic judicatories—clusters and networks, a mixed system that can be expected to experience the same kinds of problems as a system in which the judicatories are organized solely on the basis of territory. I recently received a report of a group of churches attempting to organize a new judicatory based on territory, in which one affinity group is already trying to dominate the forming diocese. This is something that North Americans should be leaving behind them in the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church. But it is bound to happen where the territorial principle is used as the basis for organization of judicatories. If the “powers that be” in the ACNA keep this mixed system, we can expect to see more tension, conflict, and power struggles in the new province, as different affinity groups vie for control of their particular patch of turf. We can also expect to see further abuse of episcopal authority.

A more sensible approach to the organization of the ACNA would be to use the affinity principle as the basis for the organization of judicatories. Instead of geographic dioceses and non-geographic clusters and networks the new province would be organized into nongeographic convocations. Each such convocation would consist of a network of churches that stood in the same theological stream—Anglo-Catholic, charismatic evangelical, confessional evangelical, etc.—and which shared the same position on a number of key theological and ecclesiological issues, for example, the number of sacraments, the ordination of women and the role of the laity in the Church. This approach does not do away with organization on the basis of territory altogether but organization on that basis would be secondary. The network of churches that formed the convocation would consist of a number of smaller networks of churches and each such network would be concentrated in a particular region. Each convocation would have a bishop who oversaw the entire convocation and a number of regional or auxiliary bishops who superintended one of these regional clusters of churches. Each convocation would have a convocational synod or governing body and each regional cluster of churches would have a regional synod or governing body. The focus of the regional synod would be carrying out the mission of the Church in the region while the focus of the convocational synod would be the entire convocation. Convocations would be in turn organized into internal provinces that, like the convocations, would be nongeographic and affinity-based. This approach would not eliminate tension, conflict and power struggles but it would reduce them. It is the approach embodied in the constitution that I am proposing for the new province.

I have posted a revised draft of that constitution on the Internet at: http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com/2009/01/proposed-constitution-of-anglican.html

I have included an introduction to the proposed constitution that explains the model of synodical government used in the constitution, specific features of the constitution and the rationale behind them. It also gives the sources from which different sections of the proposed constitution were adapted.

I am proposing this constitution for the new province not with the expectation that it will be adopted but to provide North American Anglicans with something concrete with which they can compare the constitution that the Drafting Committee produces. The kind of constitution that they draw up and the ACNA Provincial Council adopts will shape the life of the new province. If the Drafting Committee uses the provisional constitution as the basis of the constitution it draws up, a number of North American Anglicans are not going to be very happy in the new province. Indeed they may be quite disappointed with the direction that it has taken. North American Anglicans need to be critically examining the constitution and canons that the ACNA leadership comes up with and weighing how these documents are going to affect them. They are as much a part of the Church of Jesus Christ as bishops and other clergy. They have a stake in the future of the ACNA.

Is the vision of the new province’s future that the ACNA constitution and canons may articulate truly a vision that they want to embrace? Leaving the fashioning of their church’s future in hands of other than their own was what they were asked to do in the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church. Do they want to do that in the Anglican Church in North America and accept the consequences of abdicating their role in shaping the new province’s future?