Bartering for Baubles

By Robin G. Jordan

While I am a sojourner in a non-Anglican church, I am still at heart an Anglican. Although I am not happy with a number of developments in the Anglican Church, in particular in North America and the United Kingdom, I feel no inclination to completely turn my back on what the late Peter Toon dubbed “the Anglican Way.” At the same time I do understand the feelings of those who are so disappointed with the contemporary expressions of the Anglican Church that they have concluded that they cannot be part of that denominational tradition as they presently find it. Like myself, they are faced with making the best of the situation in which they find themselves and in which there are no alternatives particularly attractive to them.

Over the past ten years I have developed firm opinions on a number of topics. The use of the terms “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” is one of them. A number of my readers may disagree with the opinions that I express in this article. I ask two things from them: First, they not take anything that I say personally. Second, they give thought to what I have written. I am not trying to start an argument with them. I just wanted to let my readers know where I stand.

A major part of the present struggle in the Anglican Church has been over who defines what “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” means. I am not prepared as are some to throw in the towel and let Romanists, liberals, and other latecomers define the meaning of these terms. They strike me too eager to abandon the use of the terms and to adopt some new appellation for themselves and their beliefs. I personally do not favor any move to permit a revisionist redefinition of a word to become the prevailing definition.

The terms “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” they argue have become tainted and they do not want to be associated with tainted words. A word cannot itself become tainted. The taint is in the mind of those who are claiming that the word is tainted. They may not be happy with a number of the people who use the word to describe themselves and their beliefs. But a particular group’s use of the word does not taint the word. They are giving too much power to that group, the power to define the word for them and for others and to color their thinking about the word.

This is what happened in the nineteenth century when evangelical Episcopalians accepted as authoritative a Ritualist interpretation of 1789 Book of Common Prayer.” They became obsessed with the idea that the American Prayer Book contained “the germs of Romanism.”

Canadian Dyson Hague would write a defense of the English Prayer Book, The Protestantism of the Prayer Book, in the late nineteenth century because a similar hysteria had begun to infect the evangelical wing of the Church of England. In its English edition Hague’s book was published with a preface by the great English evangelical leader Bishop of Liverpool J. C. Ryle. Like Hague, Ryle was concerned how evangelicals were misinterpreting the Prayer Book due to the influence of the Oxford Tractarian and Ritualist movements.

Those who are prepared to abandon the use of the words “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” may have friends in other denominational traditions, who seek to dissuade them from using these terms for reasons of their own. They may have mistaken notions about the terms themselves. These friends may want them to adopt new appellations for themselves and their beliefs out of the conviction that it will move them closer to themselves and their own beliefs.

If a word has inadvertently acquired negative associations in one’s mind and the minds of others, then I would suggest one needs to take steps to reduce these negative associations and to replace them with the positive ones. “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” are perfectly good words. What troubles me is not the negative associations that these words may have acquired but the proclivity to dwell on these negative associations and to reinforce such negative associations in the minds of others. I have already noted where it can lead.

I have a dictionary that was published by Oxford University in 1934. It is full of words that are no longer in use. These words are perfectly good. However, they have lost favor for one reason or another and have been dropped from the vocabulary of most English speakers. The English language has been greatly impoverished by their desuetude.

While languages evolve, we appear to live at particular time in history when the pace of this change has quickened. I am not particularly impressed by the new additions to the English language and I am appalled by the losses from it. One young man of my acquaintance, a college graduate and a schoolteacher, is unfamiliar with words, idiomatic phrases, and proverbial sayings that I have taken for granted as part of the English language since I was a boy.

My mother, who herself taught in English and American schools for a number of years, first drew my attention to the dearth of general knowledge in American children and the limits of their vocabulary. They knew far less general facts and far less words than most English children of the same age. The problem was not one of intelligence nor was it regional in scope. It affected children from outside the South as well as Southerners.

Language is not just a means of communication. It is a vehicle of culture, a conveyor of ways of thinking, and a transmitter of values. The losses are not just to our shared vocabulary. They are to our common perceptions of reality.

Like “Anglican” and “Anglicanism,” “Catholic” and “Catholicism” and “Protestant” and “Protestantism” are also perfectly good words. The Church of Rome has appropriated the word “Catholic’ and “Catholicism” for itself, applying them to its particular brand of Catholicism, if it can indeed be rightly called that, which includes its own innovations in doctrine and worship over the past two millennia. It is done such a good job of promoting its particular definition of these words that “Catholic” and “Catholicism” are associated in the minds of a substantial number of people with “Roman,” not “universal.”

“Catholic” and “Catholicism” in its original sense is applicable to those beliefs that were widely shared by the Apostolic Church and which are agreeable to Scripture. In this sense Anglicans are entitled to regard themselves as “Catholic,” as much as anyone else. Indeed in having stripped away accretions that have defaced and overlaid the Primitive and Apostolic Christian Faith, they have a more rightful claim to the appellation than do members of the Church of Rome. This is a point that John Jewel, William Whitaker, John Cosin, and other defenders of the Church of England against its Roman Catholic detractors have repeatedly drawn to the attention of the English Church’s critics.

“Protestant” and “Protestantism” are words that have fallen on hard times. Due to the influence of the Oxford Tractarian movement, the Ritualist movement, and more recently the ecumenical movement Anglicans, particularly in North America, have been reluctant to use the term “Protestant” to describe themselves or to use the term “Protestantism” to describe their beliefs.

In the preface of A Protestant Dictionary the editors make a very important point:

As the word “Protestant,” which occurs in the title of this work, is often misrepresented, a few remarks respecting its meaning may be useful. “Protestant” and “Catholic” are terms which, when rightly understood, are not conflicting. True Protestantism holds firmly the truths set forth in the Creeds of the Apostolic Church, and protests only against unscriptural additions made to the Primitive Faith. Protestantism is the reaffirmation of that Faith combined with a distinct protest against those errors of doctrine, ritual, and practice which were brought, as St. Peter says, ”privily” into the Church of Christ (2 Pet. ii. 2), but which were accepted as “Church teaching” in medieval times, and are still too prevalent. The word Protestantism stands for the return to Primitive and Apostolic Christianity. It is the reassertion of “the faith once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). When Protestantism is negative in its declaration, it is only to preserve and accentuate some truth which is being perverted. Like the great “Ten Words,” as the Jews were wont to term “the Ten Commandments,” truths sometimes appear to be simply negations, when in reality they are very far from having that character, as our Lord’s summary of the Law (Matt. xxii. 36-40) abundantly proves.

An Anglican who upholds the tenets of authentic historic Anglicanism is both “Catholic” and “Protestant” and has no reason to be ashamed of this dual identity.

In the history of the Church of England and subsequently in the history of her daughter churches we can observe a number of movements. These movements are not always organized or deliberate. They have, however, influenced the direction of the church whose history we may be examining. They might be compared with a pack of independent-minded dogs each attached to the same log with his own chain or leash, and each pulling against his chain or leash in different direction and pulling the log with them. In some cases a dog may strain at his chain or leash so hard that it will break and the dog will run off, dragging his broken chain or leash behind him. In other cases a dog may drag the log and the other dogs in a particular direction until he tires. The church in this analogy, of course, is the log and the movements are the dogs attached to the log. An Alaskan or Canadian would astutely observe that the dogs in question would not make a good dog sled team.

One of the oldest dogs is pulling the log in an ultra-Protestant direction. There were other dogs like him but they snapped their tethers and ran off. They may have had puppies and their puppies had puppies and the latter may be tied to the log but they are not what their grandparents were and they are pulling in a different direction. The descendants of other dogs like him may be keeping a safe distance from the log and those who might attach them to it and urging him to snap his tether and join them.

Another of the oldest dogs is pulling the log in a Romeward direction. He has never been to Rome but when he was a little pup, his great grandmother who had been raised in a Roman kennel told him all kinds of stories about Rome. There were also other dogs like him but they too snapped their tethers and ran off.

The movement of the log itself through history is very jerky—first one way and then the other, backwards and then forwards. Each dog has a direction in which he wishes to go and each dog pulls against his chain or leash in that direction.

While this view of the Anglican Church is less appealing than the “via media” theory or the “three streams, one river” theory I believe that it accurately describes the Anglican Church in the past and in the present. Different dogs have been tethered to the log at different times in history and have pulled the log in different directions. This accounts for where we are today.

Do we throw up our hands in dismay and beat a hasty retreat from the Anglican Church? Or do we recognize that the dogs have at times pulled the log in a good direction and have not in doing so caused any real harm to the church? This is admittedly a subjective judgment call unless we develop some kind of criteria by which we can determine that the direction in which the church was pulled was a good one that caused no real harm to it.

Among the criteria that I would suggest is “How does this movement draw the church closer to the teaching of the Apostles or further away from their teaching?” “How does it help or hinder the church’s two principle tasks of proclaiming the Gospel and making disciples? I think that we will discover both good and bad in the direction in which the dogs have dragged the log and while the bad may initially grab our attention, we should not let it keep us from seeing the good.

This is one of the reasons why I am not ready to relinquish the use of the term “Anglican” to describe who I am and the use of the term “Anglicanism” to describe what I believe. It is not the only reason but it is an important one.

My observation has been that due to their weak numbers, lack of external and internal support, and relative isolation, those who lean toward traditional evangelical Anglicanism in North America are prone to defeatism. We are too quick to admit defeat often without even entering the fray. In doing nothing, we do not lose anything but we also relinquish the chance of gaining anything. To quote an old saw, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” What beneficial influence we might have, we withhold.

Our stewardship of the gifts and talents that God has given us resembles the stewardship of the one coin that the master gave to his servant. Did he invest it to make a profit for his master? No. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and buried it the ground. True he returned the coin to his master. But if a brick or tile had fallen off a roof while he was passing by, landed on his head, and killed him, his master would not have received the coin back. What he had been given would have benefited neither him nor another.

Abandoning the term “Anglican” to describe ourselves and relinquish the term “Anglicanism” to describe what we believe is to cater to this defeatist attitude. At the same time it can also be an early sign that we are moving toward bidding farewell to the Anglican tradition altogether.

I was involved in child welfare work for a number of years, working with foster children, their natural parents, and their caregivers, and then with children at risk in their own homes. As a foster care worker I came to recognize the signs of a failing placement even before the caregivers themselves. One of these signs was a growing dissatisfaction with the child, his adjustment, his school performance, and the like. Having taken note of one of the child’s shortcomings, the caregiver was beginning to notice his other failings.

Unless this process of rejection of the child is arrested and the attachment and commitment of the caregiver to the child is strengthened so that their relationship will weather every problem, a request for the child’s removal is inevitable. People will evidence similar dissatisfaction before they withdraw from a home group, a church, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or a denominational tradition. Both the child and the group has been weighed in the scales and found wanting.

This process may be a painful one, not just for the child but also for the caregiver. The caregiver may experience guilt associated with the rejection of the child. Those who withdraw from a group may go through a similar struggle. They may be torn between loyalty to friends in the group and a growing recognition that the group itself no longer holds any attraction for them.

With the Roman Catholic Church’s creation of ordinariates for former Anglicans who have converted to Roman Catholicism, I definitely do not think that it is the time to consider a name-change. The impending departure of the modern-day Romanists to Rome renders moot any objection to the use of the terms “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” because the Romanists have used them to describe themselves and their beliefs. The Romanists are showing their true colors. The statement that the General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England Wales issued clearly says that those who accept the papal offer will be no longer Anglicans. They will be “Catholics.”

While I may disagree with the Roman Catholic Church’s definition of “Catholic” and “Catholicism,” I must be agree with this statement in so far as it acknowledges a change of status. From my perspective they are going from being Romanists in the Church of England to Romanists in the Church of Rome, which, if one thinks about it, is the logical place for Romanists to be. (If you are not familiar with the terms “Ritualist,” “Romanist,” “Romanism,” and “Romeward Movement” as I use them in this article, you can look up their meaning in A Protestant Dictionary.)

The creation of the ordinariates for former Anglicans in the Roman Catholic Church does provide an opportunity to sort out the identity confusion that the Romeward Movement has created since the nineteenth century. We can stop trying to be ecumenically correct and recognize Romanists for what they are—proselytizers for Roman Catholicism. Whether that was their original intention, the Roman Catholic Church has cast them in that role.

The creation of the ordinariates also puts in a different light those who advocate the blending together of disparate theologies in the Anglican Church—the Convergence Movement. We need to challenge their presuppositions. We need to ask some tough questions. For example:

Why did the Holy Spirit bring about the reform of the Church of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

Why has the Holy Spirit made a complete about-face and is reviving beliefs and practices in the Anglican Church that the English Reformers, prompted by the Holy Spirit, disowned and rejected in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as not consonant with Scripture?

Why is the Holy Spirit introducing into the Anglican Church innovations in doctrine and worship that were adopted in the Roman Catholic Church from the Counter-Reformation on and which are also not consonant with Scripture?

How can the Holy Spirit be bring back “the separated brethren” into the fold of mother church as the Roman Catholics claim if He is bringing together “the separated brethren” and their conflicting theologies in the Anglican Church?

Why would the Holy Spirit after reforming a part of Christ’s Church undo the work He did? What does this say about God’s character and nature?

Now is clearly not the time to change our name. Rather we should be affirming that we are Anglicans and being Anglican means being Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, and Reformed.

The terms “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” are a part of our Anglican heritage. Discard those terms and we throw away a part of that heritage. If we discard one part, what is to keep us from throwing away another? In the past year or two I have seen a willingness to discard some parts of our Anglican heritage for very poor reasons while at the same time misinterpreting and distorting other parts of that heritage.

We throw away what is good and turn what we keep into something bad. We have a rich heritage and we are despoiling it of its treasures and trading them for cheap trinkets. We are like the Manhattan Indians selling their ancestral lands for strings of glass beads and bolts of dyed cloth. It is time to put a stop to this foolishness!