It is time to take that first step…

By Robin G. Jordan

Less than 48 hours from now we will be celebrating the passage of 2009 and the arrival of 2010. Among the events of 2009 that have captured public attention within the North American Anglican community are the formation of the Anglican Church in North America in response to the GAFCON Primates’ call for a new Anglican province in North America to uphold orthodox doctrine and practice. The ACNA, if one listens to its propaganda, offers a “safe harbor” for Anglicans “traditionalists” who cannot for reasons of conscience remain in the Anglican Church of Canada or The Episcopal Church.

Even before the ACNA was formed in late June of 2009, it became quite clear from the provisional constitution and canons of the ACNA and then the proposed constitution and canons of that ecclesial body that only Anglican “traditionalists” of a certain type would be able to anchor in the safety of that harbor. Despite the claims that the ACNA is a church that is “truly Catholic, truly evangelical, and truly Pentecostal,” ACNA “comprehensiveness” does not extend to conservative evangelicals who embrace the Protestant and Reformed beliefs and principles that have historically distinguished classical evangelical Anglicanism and are articulated in the following statement:

“1. We accept the doctrine of the Church of England as set forth in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion understood in their plain, natural and intended sense.

2. More particularly
(i) We worship the one God as He has revealed Himself to us in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Scriptures In his divine nature, he is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite, immortal and immutable. He is wholly good, trustworthy and holy in all his ways. He has revealed himself to be a Trinity of three co-equal and co-eternal persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, subsisting in an eternal relationship of mutual love. Each person manifests the fullness of the Godhead, and yet is distinguished from the others by incommunicable attributes which are revealed in their particular work. To the Father belongs; the plan of salvation, which he entrusted to the Son to fulfil. To the Son belongs his incarnation as the man Jesus Christ, and the saving work which he accomplished in his human nature. To the Holy Spirit belongs the task of creating and preserving the church as Christ's bride and body.

(ii) We receive the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments in their intended literal sense as the inspired and unerring Word of God the sole sufficient and perspicuous rule of Christian faith and practice and the final court of appeal in all controversies relating thereto and we admit post-apostolic traditions only so far as they are compatible with the teaching of the New Testament. The Old Testament is to be interpreted in the light of the New, and all parts of the New Testament are of equal and apostolic authority No part of Scripture is to be interpreted in a way which contradicts or excludes any other part.

(iii) We acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Priest and Mediator who took our place on the cross and by his sacrificial death paid the price for our sins, thereby satisfying the demands of the Father's justice and reconciling us to God. Through his death alone, without further priestly intervention or offering of sacrifice on our behalf we gain full access to God and acceptance with Him by faith. We believe that Christ's atoning sacrifice of Himself offered and accepted once-for-all is a finished work which can under no circumstances be repeated, prolonged, supplemented or re-represented and we repudiate all views of the Ministry and the Lord's Supper which imply the contrary.

(iv) We affirm that according to the New Testament the Christian Ministry is not a sacerdotal ministry but was instituted for the purpose of preaching, teaching and pastoral oversight. We reject all practices (such as the Eastward Position and the use of eucharistic vestments at the Lord's Supper) which imply a sacerdotal character of the Ministry. We reject also all theories of the sacraments which imply that the ministerial action invariably conveys grace.

(v) We affirm that a due exercise of Christian discipline is a mark of the faithful Church and that the government of the Christian community properly belongs under God to the Church as a whole, both clergy and laity together, and not exclusively to bishops or to any other particular order.

(vi) We affirm that the true unity of Christ's Church is a unity in faith, doctrine, and love and not of ministerial orders or external uniformity. We hold that the Lord's people should openly express this unity in particular at the Lord's Table as well as in other ways of witness and worship. Moreover while approving the threefold ministry of the Church of England we deny that non-episcopal orders are necessarily defective and constitute a barrier to reunion.

(vii) We affirm that men and women are equal as human beings created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ We also affirm that God created male and female differently, in order for them to be complementary to each other. This complementarity is specially to be seen in the marriage relationship and in the roles given to men and women in the family of the church. Thus matrimony is the lifelong union between one man and one woman, and sexual relations outside that context are sinful in God's eyes. Furthermore, within the church there is a divinely appointed order in which headship roles are given to the male, not for the purpose of domination over the female, but in order to protect and nourish the entire body of Christ The ministry of men and women is equally valid in God's eyes, but the Church must take care to study and to obey Scripture with regard to preserving the complementarity of roles.” [Doctrinal Basis of the Charity, Memorandum of Association of the Latimer Trust, on the Internet at: http://www.latimertrust.org/download/basis.pdf, accessed on December 30, 2009 at 10:15 AM]

The waters of the ACNA “safe harbor” are not friendly to conservative evangelicals who seek to uphold and preserve such beliefs and principles. Their “religion” is regarded as “too narrow,” that is to say, it does not accede to the doctrines and practices of Anglo-Catholic traditionalists or to the broad views of a number of ACNA clergy and members who define themselves as “evangelicals.”

This second group sits very loosely to the beliefs and principles that have historically set classical evangelical Anglicanism apart from other schools of thought claiming to be Anglican. Indeed they tend to view such beliefs and principles as being a relic of the past and therefore not relevant to today’s church. While conservative evangelicals are unequivocal in seeing Anglicanism, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and themselves as Protestant, this particular group of self-identified “evangelicals” is apt to subscribe to a view of the Anglican tradition that Edward Bouverie Pusey, a leader of the Oxford movement, first put forward in the nineteenth century. In this view Anglicanism is a via media, or middle road, between Catholicism and Protestantism.

This view gained considerable popularity in The Episcopal Church in the twentieth century. The convergence movement was particularly drawn to it, as was the Ancient-Future movement. It continues to greatly influence thinking in the ACNA.

In their efforts to form a synthesis of contradictory and conflicting Catholic and Protestant beliefs and principles, the adherents of this view are neither faithful to the Catholic tradition nor the Protestant tradition, much less to the Bible. One result is that there is a lack of congruency between the message of the sermon and the message of the liturgy on Sunday mornings.

Conservative evangelicals who drop anchor in the ACNA “safe harbor” do so at their own peril. They will not be able to hold onto their beliefs and principles if they wish to shelter there but will be required to accept without reservation the Common Cause Theological Statement. This statement gives only token authority to the historic formularies of the Church of England. It countenances John Henry Newman’s fanciful ahistorical reinterpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles in a Rome-ward direction and mandates a view of bishops that initially came to the fore in the Church of the England and the then Protestant Episcopal Church with Newman’s first Tracts for the Times. This view asserts that the historic episcopate is absolutely essential to the church.

They will also be expected to conform to the teachings of the canons of the ACNA that are implicitly if not explicitly Anglo-Catholic in their doctrine in a number of places where in a genuinely comprehensive church the wording would not be aligned with the doctrinal position of any particular school of thought but would be unambiguously neutral.

A small number of Continuing Anglican Churches make the claim that they are a “safe harbor” for conservative evangelicals, asserting that they are maintaining the Protestant, Reformed and evangelical character of the Anglican Church. Yet these ecclesial bodies use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer that was compiled when Anglo-Catholicism and Broad Church liberalism were at the height of their influence in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Their clergy wear stoles and eucharistic vestments for the Lord’s Supper, and adopt the Eastward Position for the Prayer of Consecration. They fail to see the contradiction between the claim that they make, the Prayer Book that they use, and the practices that they follow.

These churches suffer from other problems beside a lack of congruity between doctrine and practice. One of them has a dismal record of retaining its clergy and may no longer have any congregations. None of these churches offer a real “safe harbor” for conservative evangelicals. Rather they themselves give the appearance of being greatly in need of safer anchorage.

In the New Year conservative evangelicals need to make up their minds about what they are going to do to rectify this state of affairs and do it. Waiting to see what others do is not a formula for bringing about change. It is time to take matters into their own hands.

Conservative evangelicals who are in the ACNA need to organize to defend and advance the Protestant and Reformed beliefs and principles of the Anglican Church in that church body. Those who are outside the ACNA need to form a viable alternative jurisdiction to the ACNA, in which the Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical character of the Anglican Church is maintained. The two groups need to network with each other to encourage, help, and support each other and to further their common goals.

As the Chinese proverb tell us, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. It is time to take that first step. The door is open and the path lies ahead. Let us not linger inside the doorway but step resolutely through it, and begin the journey. As Paul wrote Timothy, “…God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind…” (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV). Let step forward boldly into the bright sunshine of a new day.