Securing a Future for Historic Anglicanism in North America

In a previous article, “The Heritage Anglican Network and the Future of Anglicanism in North America,” I envisioned five roles that the Heritage Anglican Network might play in Anglicanism’s future in North America. The five roles that I envisioned correspond with the five aims of the Heritage Anglican Network laid out in its organizational charter. In this article I explore how the Heritage Anglican Network might fulfill these roles.

The aims of the Heritage Anglican Network are:

--To advance the cause of the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ in North America and throughout the world;

--To encourage and support the members of the Heritage Anglican Network and other like-minded Christians wherever God has placed them and in whatever ministry to which God has called them.

--To promote cooperation, fellowship, mutual assistance, and unity between members of the Heritage Anglican Network and other like-minded Christians in and outside existing Anglican bodies, in and outside of North America.

--To establish and grow new Anglican churches in North America and strengthen existing ones.

¬--To promote authentic historic Anglicanism and the Protestant and Reformed heritage of the Church of England.

What could the Heritage Anglican Network do to carry out these aims?

The Heritage Anglican Network could promote the formation of regional and local branches of the Network. It could sponsor regional and local gatherings of members to which interested parties could be invited.

The Heritage Anglican Network could foster the use of the classical Anglican Prayer Book—The Book of Common Prayer of 1662—wherever and whenever its use is practicable. It could create a website on which would be found not only the rubrics, the tables of lessons, and the texts of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer but also notes on the meaning of archaic or unfamiliar words, rendering of the services, and the doctrine and liturgical usages of the 1662 Prayer Book, a selection of alternative rubrics, tables of lessons, texts, services, and forms from other historic Prayer Books, and a selection of additional services, forms, prayers, and thanksgivings for use on various occasions. This amplified and annotated Prayer Book would be downloadable.

The Heritage Anglican Network could create a similar web site for the Thirty-Nine Articles. It could produce downloadable mp3s and videos on the 1662 Prayer Book and the Articles. It could also prepare modern language versions of the two Books of Homilies and Alexander Nowell’s A Catechism. It could employ the whole range of media to show that, as J. I. Packer observes in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, “historic Anglicanism is not just a style of worship; it is also, and fundamentally, a confessional stance [my emphasis].

The Heritage Anglican Network could develop guidelines for the revision of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and recommend specific proposals for its revision. The Jerusalem Declaration upholds the 1662 Prayer Book “as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.” These guidelines would primarily address how the 1662 Prayer Book could be adapted for use in North America without changing its doctrine.

The Heritage Anglican Network could also develop alternative rites and forms in both traditional and modern language versions for use together with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. There is a definite need in North America for alternative rites and forms that are agreeable with the Scriptures, which conform to the biblical and Reformation teaching of the 1662 Prayer Book, and which in liturgical matters show due regard to the continued use of the 1662 Prayer Book and its continuance as the standard of the Anglican worship and prayer. The Heritage Anglican Network could also develop guidelines and worship resources for Anglican churches that have adopted local patterns of worship

The Heritage Anglican Network could develop and disseminate its own educational and training materials designed to further its aims, periodically revising and updating them. It could also identify, evaluate, and recommend available resources that would serve this purpose. The Heritage Anglican Network could establish and maintain libraries, resource centers, traveling exhibits, and interactive, informational websites. It could sponsor conferences and seminars. It could also take advantage of the latest advances in information technology in the furtherance of its aims.

The Heritage Anglican Network could establish and administer, subject to applicable state and federal law for non-profit corporations, grant-in-aid and scholarship programs for qualified individuals preparing on a part or full time basis for licensed or ordained ministry in Anglican churches in and outside of North America in an approved residential program, non-residential program, distance-learning program, correspondence course, or program of independent study

The Heritage Anglican Network could develop its own course of ecclesiastical study for preparing qualified individuals for licensed or ordained ministry in Anglican churches in and outside of North America. It could also develop other ministerial training strategies including apprenticeship programs, conferences, continuing education programs, in-service training programs, internship programs, mentoring programs, regional and local ministerial training programs, seminars, study groups, and workshops.

The Heritage Anglican Network could develop national and regional strategies for starting new Anglican churches in Canada and the United States. It could provide training and couching to church planters and seed money for new church plants. The Heritage Anglican Network could establish Anglican churches in the less affluent areas of North America, in inner city neighborhoods, in rural areas and small towns, in those places that the ACNA and the AMiA has shown little or no inclination to launch new works and where the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church has consolidated or closed churches and pockets of Anglicans and Episcopalians have been left churchless. The people living in these areas need Christ as much as the people living in the affluent suburbs. It could target Hispanics and other ethnic groups in the increasingly diverse population of Canada and the United States. Rather limiting itself to one model of “doing church,” it could employ a whole range of models. It could adopt flexible approaches to Christian ministry and could make extensive use of bivocational pastors, lay ministry teams, and lay ministers.

The Heritage Anglican Network could form its own convocation of churches in which new Anglican churches that do not wish to unite with the ACNA, the AMiA, and any other existing North American Anglican body could band together to spread the gospel and to help and support each other. This convocation could provide an alternative jurisdiction for member congregations and clergy that discover that they are mismatched with the Anglican body with which they have united, and conclude after prayer and reflection that the convocation would be a better match.

At the present time conflicts over divergent beliefs and practices are not a major problem in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission in the Americas. Divisions, however, do exist. With the passage of time tensions over these divisions are likely to grow especially as special interest groups vie with each other for leadership of a particular Anglican body and seek to further their own agenda. Competition is likely to replace cooperation.

The tendency in the ACNA to organize that body into geographic judicatories (i.e. dioceses) rather than a combination of geographic and non-geographic judicatories is going to create an environment that will heighten tensions over existing divisions and cause new divisions. Congregations and clergy in a diocese that do not conform to the prevailing beliefs and practices in the diocese will face increasing pressure to accept these beliefs and practices. They will experience greater difficulty in maintaining their particular identity. They will be confronted with the very real prospect of marginalization. A bishop seeking to reshape the diocese to fit with his notions of the Church could deny licenses to the clergy and place the congregations in the position of calling clergy more to the bishop’s liking or leaving the diocese.

At the Constitutional Convention that adopted the governing documents of the new Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic members of the ACNA Governing Task Force were present during the deliberations and spoke against a number of proposals. These proposals, while they were not contrary to the constitution and canons of the ACNA, the members of the ACNA Governance Task Force claimed would cause the Provincial Council to reject the proposed constitution and canons and to deny the Anglican District of Virginia’s petition for recognition as a diocese of the ACNA. This points to the existence of a special interest group in the ACNA Provincial Council and its Governance Task Force that is actively seeking to impose its agenda upon the young denomination. This agenda includes limiting the autonomy of dioceses within the ACNA. When we consider Archbishop Duncan’s establishment of an Archbishop’s Cabinet, an administrative organ seen in Roman Catholic archdioceses, and his disregard of the ACNA’s governing documents, we have a glimpse of the direction in which this special interest group in the ACNA is intent upon taking that jurisdiction.

This article should give readers some idea of what the Heritage Anglican Network could do to achieve its aims and to ensure that authentic historic Anglicanism and “the true gospel and the Protestant, Reformed religion established by law” of the 1688 Coronation Oath Act,” which lies at its heart, has a future in North America.