A Proposal for the Unification of the North American Anglican Church

By Robin G. Jordan

A concept that I believe has merit is an expansion of the “third-province” proposal that was made several years ago. Under this proposal a third non-geographic province would have been created in England for Church of England parishes that could not for reasons of conscience accept the ministry of women priests and Church of England clergy who could not for similar reasons accept the oversight of women bishops. This province would have in turn been organized into geographical dioceses and episcopal areas that would have shared the same territory as the dioceses of the Provinces of Canterbury and York. They and the parishes in them would have been ‘peculiarities,’ as they are known in English canon and ecclesiastical law.

A ‘peculiarity’ is a chapel, district, or parish that is under the oversight of a different bishop from the bishop of the diocese in which it is located. The Deanery of Jersey is a ‘peculiarity’ under the oversight of the Bishop of Windsor. The Deanery of Jersey has its own canons. The Bailiwick of Jersey on the island of Jersey is not a part of the United Kingdom; it is a self-governing British Crown Dependency. It has its own parliament, the States of Jersey. The Diocese of Sodor and Man also has its own distinct ecclesiastical law. The Isle of Man is also a self-governing British Crown Dependency and has its own own parliament, the Tynwald.

The concept of overlapping jurisdictions is not new. The Convocation of American Churches in Europe and the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe, also known as the Diocese in Europe, overlap each other. The Anglican Church in North America has a number of non-geographic dioceses and geographic dioceses with congregations outside of their territorial bounds.

What I envision is a new Anglican province in North America that is comprised of non-geographic ecclesiastical or internal provinces composed of dioceses that are voluntary associations of churches that share affinity with each other in one or more ways. In my original proposal that I submitted to a number of Common Cause bishops and published on the Internet I called these non-geographic ecclesiastical or internal provinces ‘convocations’ since this was the designation that a number of Anglican entities that had formed in North America under the oversight of one of the global South provinces or dioceses had adopted for themselves. Each ecclesiastical or internal province would have its own synod and bishops and would be divided into geographic dioceses and episcopal areas.

An episcopal area is a sub-division of a diocese to which is assigned an assistant, auxiliary, or suffragan bishop. An episcopal area might have an archdeacon and form an archdeaconry as in the Diocese of Europe and the proposed consolidated dioceses in the Province of York.

At the time I made my original proposal I saw the formation of these ecclesiastical or internal provinces as an evolutionary development of the existing convocations as each convocation attracted congregations and clergy that shared affinity with each other in one or more ways. Congregations and clergy would migrate to the convocation in which they felt most at home.

This particular organization of the new Anglican province would establish buffers between those affinity groups that have historically experienced tension between each other when they shared a province or diocese together and even experienced hostility toward each other.

Congregations and clergy opposed to women’s ordination and congregations and clergy supporting women’s ordination would have their own provinces. Conservative evangelicals would have their own province; traditionalist Anglo-Catholics would have their own province.

The diocesan synods would elect representatives to a general synod that would meet periodically. As in the case of the Anglican Church of Australia certain categories of legislation would not be binding upon a diocese affected by that legislation unless the synod of the diocese assented to the legislation. A diocesan synod would also be able to withdraw its assent at a later date.

A diocese would be able to elect bishops in a number of ways. The diocesan synod would be able to elect bishops. It would be able to elect a board of electors, electoral board, or electoral college to elect bishops. It would be able to delegate the election of a bishop to what in the regulations of the Diocese of Trinidad and Tobago refers to as a ‘Selection Committee.’ A similar method is used in a number of dioceses of the Anglican Church in Australia when the diocesan synod cannot agree upon a new bishop. The selection of a new bishop is delegated to the metropolitan and other bishops of the internal province to which the diocese belongs in a resolution of the diocesan synod, which may include instructions to the bishops and a list of candidates. The diocesan synod may reserve approval of the candidate that the bishops select. When the first two methods would be used to elect a bishop, a certificate of election would be submitted to the provincial metropolitan or bishops of the internal province or the chancellor of the diocese who would confirm the bishop elect meets the necessary canonical requirements. This is the procedure followed in the Anglican Church of Australia.

The Anglican Church of Australia and the Anglican Church of the Province of the Southern Cone of America are good models for a new Anglican province in North America. The Anglican Church of Australia is a federation of dioceses that were at one time in their history completely independent of each other. The Province of the Southern Cone is also a federation of dioceses. With the except of the Diocese of Argentina and the Diocese of Northern Argentina each diocese is also a national church, and encompasses the territory of a South American country within its bounds.

Dioceses and episcopal areas in different provinces could engage in joint projects where they shared common interests in the same way the sub-divisions in different denominations cooperate with each other. Congregations in the same locality but different ecclesiastical or internal provinces could also cooperate with each other.

This proposal recognizes that one of the problems intrinsic in territory-based judicatories is that they usually contain a number of affinity groups with disparate theologies and one group will seek to dominate the judicatory and impose its beliefs and practices upon the other groups. This not only generates tension and hostility but also eventually leads to the marginalization of one or more groups and their exclusion from the judicatory.

A judicatory will acquire a particular ethos and will not welcome the formation of new congregations with a different ethos or even the emergence of a different ethos in existing congregations. In the 1980s the ethos of the Diocese of Kentucky was High Church. The singing of ‘celebration songs,’ associated with the charismatic movement, was not encouraged in parish and mission churches even from the authorized supplement to the hymnal, Songs for Celebration. At the same time these songs were harmonious with regional tastes in music and would have made Episcopal services more attractive to the local population. Kentucky is the home of shaped note hymn singing, bluegrass music, and other forms of folk music. Country-western music is very popular in the state.

In the Episcopal Church territory-based judicatories contributed to the liberalization of the denomination as the liberal faction in one diocese after another gained hegemony in the diocese. Conservative parishes and clergy were forced to capitulate to the liberal agenda or withdraw from the diocese. In the past we have seen the Anglo-Catholic party do the same thing. In the Diocese of Kentucky in the nineteenth century the Anglo-Catholic clergy of the diocese prevented the bishop of the diocese, the Right Rev. Benjamin Bosworth Smith, relocating to New York and taking up the duties of Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church until he agreed not to give full ecclesiastical authority to his assistant bishop. The assistant bishop was Bishop George David Cummins. This incident was one of a number of incidents that finally led Cummins to succeed from the Protestant Episcopal Church and to form the Reformed Episcopal Church.

This proposal would not eliminate tribalism within the conservative wing of the North American Anglican Church. It would, however, recognize the existence of tribalism and form judicatories based on tribe instead of territory. It would not put a complete stop to the rivalry between the different tribes but it would end the warring for the control of a particular judicatory. It would channel their competition into planting new churches and advancing the gospel. It would also be a positive step toward giving a semblance of order to the alphabet soup that comprises the conservative wing of the North American Anglican Church, and forming it into a new North American Anglican province. With the Roman Catholic Church forming its own Anglican Church within its fold, now may be the time to give serious thought to this proposal.