The Anglican Church in North America: The New Improved Episcopal Church

2 X Ultra Formula

By Robin G. Jordan

While claiming to be a part of a reform movement in American and global Anglicanism, the Anglican Church in North American has made no discernable effort to restore the true character of Anglicanism in the American Church. While the ACNA has backed away from some of more radical changes that The Episcopal Church has embraced, the ACNA has not moved closer to historic Anglicanism. Rather the ACNA may be described as embodying a somewhat more conservative form of American Episcopalianism.

The use of the term “Episcopalianism” to describe the religious system in the American Church is not particular to this writer. In his article “The American Church” in A Protestant Dictionary Benjamin Whitehead uses the term as early as 1904. A Protestant Dictionary, edited by Charles H. H. Wright and Charles Neil, and produced under the auspices of the Protestant Reformation Society, was published by Hoddard and Stoughton in the same year. Paul Zahl also uses the term in The Protestant Face of Anglicanism in 1998. Both Whitehead and Zahl recognize that the religious system in the American Church diverges from historic Anglicanism in doctrine and practice.

What then is the true character of Anglicanism? It can be expressed in four words—Protestant, Reformed, evangelical, and catholic.

Protestant

The positive meaning of the word "Protestant" is largely neglected and forgotten. It is the primary sense of the term. In his article “Protestant” in A Protestant Dictionary Frederick Meyrick explains its origin.

The German theologians and partisans of Reform, from whom the name of Protestant comes, used the word in its positive sense. Their protestation was not a string of negatives, but a declaration of their faith, positive and negative. From them the word and its meaning passed into England; so that the Protestant Faith in England meant the Faith of the Church of England, as in Germany it meant the Faith of the Confession of Augsburg. It was not used in contrast with Catholic, nor even at first with Popish, but it signified the Catholic Faith cleared from the uncatholic additions and corruptions of the mediaeval and modern Roman Church, which was the faith which the Church of England made protestation, or protested, that it held.

Meyrick goes on to explain:

Thus all the seventeenth-century divines unhesitatingly speak of themselves as Protestants. Laud, for example, solemnly protested “that he was innocent of all practice, or so much as thought of practice, for any alteration to Popery or any way blemishing the true Protestant Religion established in the Church of England” (Troubles and Trial), and in his last Will and Testament he declared that he died in the orthodox profession of the Catholic Faith. In his estimation the “Catholic Faith” and the “Protestant Religion” were one and the same.

Jeremy Taylor pronounced St. Augustine a Protestant in his teaching on the Holy Communion (Real Presence, xii. 30). He did not mean that Augustine formally denied the mediaeval and modern Roman dogmas, which had not come into being in his day, but that he taught the true doctrine on the subject, which doctrine was identical with that which in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was known as the Protestant doctrine.

We do not find any group in the Anglican Church trying to distance themselves from the word "Protestant" until the Tractarians and the Ritualists in the nineteenth century. While the Tractarians spuriously claimed to be the successors to the Caroline divines, they not only showed an undisguised sympathy for the Roman Catholic Church but also appointed themselves the task of extirpating the Protestant identity of the Anglican Church. The Tractarian movement was far from a movement to revive the High Church emphases of the Caroline divines. As one late nineteenth century historian sympathetic to the Tractarian movement observed, the Tractarians would break down the hedge that separated the Church of England from the Church of Rome.

The Tractarian movement prepared the way for the Ritualist movement that followed closely on its heels. The Ritualists were not satisfied to resurrect pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic doctrine in the Anglican Church and introduce post-Tridentian Roman Catholic teaching. They also revived the liturgical usages of the pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic Church and imported the worship innovations of the post-Tridentian Roman Catholic Church. In England they flouted the canons of the Church of England and made unauthorized alterations and additions to the liturgy. They were not content to use the Book of Common Prayer as had been the Tractarians. Their lawlessness set a negative example that other groups seeking to change the character of the Anglican Church and Anglicanism have followed to this day.

Since the word Protestant is so often misrepresented, Wright and Neil in the Preface of A Protestant Dictionary make this statement in respect to its meaning.

“Protestant” and “Catholic” are terms which, when rightly understood [my emphasis], are not conflicting. True Protestantism holds firmly to 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 re-affirmation 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 mediaeval 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 declarations, 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 that Law (Matt xxii. 36-40) abundantly proves.

Reformed

Reformed theology in the Church of England has historically been varied. Reformed theology in the Edwardian and Elizabethan periods is classifiable with early Reformed theology on the Continent—with the theology of Martin Bucer, John Bullinger, and Peter Martyr Vermigli. The doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 place the Church of England squarely in the Reformed camp with the Continental Reformed Churches such as the Swiss Reformed Churches in Geneva and Zurich. During the Jacobean period the theology of John Calvin, while not absent during the Elizabethan period, would become more influential. Due to his position in the Vesterian Controversy Bullinger would loose favor with those who sought to further reform the Church of England. Calvin would eventually eclipse Bullinger as the most influential Continental Reformed theologian in the English Church. His influence, however, was not confined to the wing of the English Church desiring the further reform of the Church.

It must be noted that Calvin and the earlier Reformed theologians, while they were in disagreement on some points, were in agreement on most key issues. Calvin built on the work of the earlier Reformed theologians, using their concepts and illustrations.

Reformed theology did not disappear with the restoration of the Stuart dynasty and continued to influence the thought of the Church of England. With the Glorious Revolution it was the Protestant Reformed religion that was established by law, and not the Protestant religion as the Arminians would have preferred.

Reformed Anglicans after the Restoration avoided the term “Calvinist” because it had become associated with non-conformity and presbyterianism. A number of the Reformed Anglicans, while Reformed in their theological outlook, did not adhere to a rigid system of theology modeled on that of Calvin or Beza. They particularly differed from Calvin and Beza in the areas of liturgy and ecclesiology.

Charles Simeon, a leader of the Evangelicals in the Church of England in the eighteenth century described himself as a “Bible Christian,” not a “system man.” He placed the authority of the Bible above any particular system of theology. A century later Bishop J. C. Ryle, a leading Evangelical of his day, would take a similar view. Both men were Reformed Anglicans.

Due to the influence of Anglo-Catholicism in the American Church in the nineteenth and twentieth century most Episcopalians and former Episcopalians are ignorant of the Reformed character of Anglicanism. They have acquired a revisionist view of Anglicanism, which portrays Anglicanism as essentially a form of independent Catholicism. This view is traceable to the nineteenth century Tractarian leader Edward Bouvrie Pusey. If one is to believe the claims of a number of Wikipedia articles and Episcopal and former Episcopal clergy, it is barely distinguishable in doctrine from Roman Catholicism. The major difference between the two theological systems, it is claimed, is that Anglicanism rejects the doctrines of Papal infallibility and supremacy. The pervasiveness of this view shows the extent to which revisionism has influenced the American Church in the past 178 years.

Evangelical

A number of revisionist definitions of the term “evangelical” are in circulation in the American Church. They adopt a reductionist view of evangelicalism, taking one of its characteristics and portraying this characteristic as its sole characteristic. Three of evangelicalism’s major characteristics, however, are excluded from these revisionist definitions. The first is evangelicalism’s Protestantism. The second is its emphasis upon the once for all time nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice for sin on the cross, a sacrifice that is sufficient for all sin, which we cannot repeat, to which we cannot add, and in which we cannot participate. The third is its maintenance of the position that salvation by grace alone by faith in Christ alone (opposed to sacraments and works) is the essence of Gospel teaching.

Catholic

The improper use of the term “Catholic” for Roman Catholic in the United States and elsewhere has further added to the confusion respecting the true character of Anglicanism. To avoid misinterpretation the early American Prayer Books substituted the phrase “Thy holy Church universal” for “Catholic Church” in The Prayer for All Conditions of Men.

Catholic and Roman Catholic, however, are not synonymous. Against the Roman Catholic detractors of the Church of England, the sixteenth and seventeenth century divines would show from the Bible and the early Church fathers that the Church of Roman, rather than being the epitome of Catholicism, has departed from the teaching of the Primitive and Apostolic Christianity and become corrupt in its doctrine and practice.

As well as being Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical, historic Anglicanism is also catholic. It “retains the ancient common heritage of Christendom, in a biblical form.” It accepts the teaching of the three ancient catholic creeds—the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed—where such teaching agrees with Scripture. The Church of England, at the Reformation, kept such practices as liturgical worship, infant baptism, and episcopal ministry, which had been handed down from antiquity. The English Reformers “used the standard of Scripture, applied by reason, to correct whatever needed correcting in the church’s inherited forms.”

Protestant, Reformed, evangelical, and catholic—these four words, in a nutshell, describe the true character of Anglicanism. This is the goodly heritage that the leaders of the Anglican Church in North America should be calling the congregations and clergy in that body to reclaim. Yet they have up to this point shown no sign of doing so.

Repackaged Episcopalianism

The fundamental declarations that the Anglican Church in North America adopted in its constitution do not “uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.” Rather they “receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.” For how Anglo-Catholic interpreters of the Thirty-Nine Articles have used the phrase “literal and grammatical sense” to evade consideration of the historic context of the Articles and original intent of their framers in their interpretation of the Articles, see Gillis J. Harp’s “Recovering Confessional Anglicanism.” Clause 7 of the ACNA fundamental declarations essentially robs the Articles of any authority for Anglicans for today. It infers that the Articles deal with past controversies and that other doctrinal standards exist beside the Articles. These standards may supercede the Articles.

The ACNA fundamental declarations do not “uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.” Rather they “receive The Book of Common Prayer as set forth by the Church of England in 1662, together with the Ordinal attached to the same… with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.” The Books that preceded the 1662 Book of Common Prayer include the Sarum Missal as well as the 1549, 1552, 1559, and 1604 English Prayer Books and the 1637 Scottish Prayer Book. This is a nebulous “anything goes” standard. Those preparing a new Prayer Book for the ACNA are able to pick and choose whatever they want.

The ACNA fundamental declarations “confess the godly historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice, and therefore as integral to the fullness and unity of the Body of Christ.” They take a position over which Anglicans historically have been divided, and which is strongly associated with the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Anglican Church and its view of apostolic succession and the historic episcopate, and assert that it is “characteristic of the Anglican Way.” They require acceptance of this position as “essential to membership.”

By no stretch of the imagination do the ACNA fundamental declarations promote the Protestant, Reformed, evangelical, and catholic character of Anglicanism. Neither do the canons of the Anglican Church in North America. They contain provisions adapted from the canons of the Anglican Church of Rwanda that in turn are adapted from the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law. The adaptations modify the language of these provisions but not the doctrine, norms, and principles contained in the provisions. Implied in the canons, if not directly stated, are a number of Roman Catholic teachings.

Their endorsement of the ACNA governing documents and their public statements respecting the character of Anglicanism point to one conclusion: The present ACNA leadership have no intention of championing the recovery of authentic historic Anglicanism in the Anglican Church in North America. Their own beliefs and practices are too far removed from historic Anglicanism. All these leaders can offer Anglicans in America is the same Episcopalianism in a repackaged form that produced the crisis in leadership, doctrine, and morals that prompted the formation of the Anglican Church in North America. If the Reformed Episcopal Church can in a space of thirty-five years make a complete about face in its doctrine, adopting a revisionist reinterpretation of the principles of its founders and in practice abandoning those principles, the Anglican Church in North American, without a firm commitment to the doctrine of the historic Anglican formularies and to historic Anglicanism, can be expected to succumb to the same pressures as the Episcopal Church in two or three decades. Authoritative leadership will not prevent it from happening. In fact, such leadership may bring it about.