The Anglican Church in North America and the Classical Formularies: A Church Gone Adrift

By Robin G. Jordan

As I noted in my previous article, “The Fundamental Declarations of the Anglican Church in North America: The Insights of the Late Peter Toon,” Dr. Toon would draw attention to the defects of what would eventually become the Fundamental Declarations of the Anglican Church in North America when the ACNA was the Common Cause Partnership. Others, including myself, would independently draw attention to these defects.

In the brief period that the proposed constitution and canons of the Anglican Church in North America were made available for public examination and comment, a number of provisions of the two documents would become the focus of debate upon the Internet. This debate would led to a public denial by representatives of the CCP Governance Task Force member that the Fundamental Declarations were biased in favor of the doctrinal positions of any particular school of thought in the Anglican Church. The CCP Governance Task Force would subsequently issue a report of its work, in which it maintained its denial of any doctrinal bias in the Fundamental Declarations.

The Internet debate would also prompt an open letter by AMiA Bishop John Rodgers appealing to evangelicals in the entities forming the Common Cause Partnership to support the adoption and ratification of the two documents. In this letter Bishop Rodgers, while appearing to admit the existence of a doctrinal bias in the Fundamental Declarations, claimed that they could not be changed. He also claimed that if the draft constitution and canons were not adopted and ratified, there would be no new Anglican province in North America. This letter was posted on the Common Cause Partnership website and subsequently the Anglican Church in North America website but would eventually be removed from that website.

During the same time period I would post a series of articles directing attention to major problem areas of the draft constitution and canons. As the meetings of the provisional ACNA Provincial Council and the inaugural ACNA Provisional Assembly drew closer, one or more influential persons in the Common Cause Partnership would pressure the journalist who had been publishing my articles on his website into discontinuing their publication. I also worked with a group of evangelicals in the CCP in drafting a presentation of their concerns to the Governance Task Force and to the leaders of the Common Cause Partner with which they were affiliated.

At the Bedford meeting of the provisional ACNA Provincial Council CANA Bishop Martyn Mimms drew to the attention of the Council the concerns of the evangelicals in CANA regarding the draft constitution and canons. The Anglo-Catholic Council members reacted by claiming that if the language of the Fundamental Declarations were modified, it would cause the fragile alliance between evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics to unravel. In response to this muted threat of an Anglo-Catholic walkout, Bishop Mimms backed down. Bishop Jack Iker would move that the Council should adopt the Fundamental Declarations as they were, except for one change. 1571 should be substituted for 1563 as the date of the Thirty-Nine Articles. This change, while presented as minor, was significant. The 1563 version of the Articles omits Article 29:

The wicked and those who are void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth (as S. Augustine said) the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a thing.

The omission of this Article would have eliminated a hurdle to the teaching of an ex opera operato view of the sacrament of the Holy Communion in the Anglican Church in North America. Apparently the Anglo-Catholic Council members were convinced that Article 1.7 of the draft constitution was so worded that changing the version of the Articles would not prove an obstacle to the teaching of this doctrinal view. The provision of the canons authorizing the admission of baptized children to the Holy Communion assumed an ex opera operato view of the sacrament of the Holy Communion as it did not require such children to evidence a vital faith before their admission to the Holy Communion.

Archbishop-elect Robert Duncan would ensure that two documents were ratified by the inaugural Provincial Assembly as is, except for a number of amendments drafted by the Governance Task Force. No amendments were permitted from the floor and debate upon the provisions of the two documents and the proposed amendments was limited. The delegates were given only one day in which to consider their provisions. The delegates were repeatedly urged to quickly finish their deliberations as speakers were waiting to address them. Frequent interruptions were permitted, distracting the delegates’ attention from the work at hand. A number of delegates later reported that they had serious misgivings about the provisions of the two documents and the proposed amendments but that they voted for their ratification out of the fear that if they did not ratify them, there would be no new Anglican province in North America. I have documented elsewhere how the ACNA leaders, particularly Archbishop Duncan, having secured the ratification of the draft constitution and canons, have ignored their provisions, treating them as a mandate to do what they think fit.

As Dr. Toon would observe as early as 2006, the Common Cause Partnership did not need the kind of doctrinal statement that its Leadership Council would adopt to form the basis of a working unity for the theologically-diverse group that comprised the CCP. A slightly edited version of Canon A5 of the Church of England Canons would have sufficed. It would have, as he believed, obtained “the greatest acceptance and the greatest comprehension on the best principles.” It would have helped to establish a new North American province that was biblically faithful and orthodox Anglican and in which there was room for confessional evangelicals as well as Anglo-Catholics and charismatic evangelicals, for those for whom bishops are of bene esse of the church as well as those for whom they are of the esse or plene esse.

It is quite evident that the Fundamental Declarations despite their references to the classical formularies promote a doctrinal standard different from Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. It is a doctrinal standard that permits beliefs and practices that the classical formularies reject. The new ordinal supports the validity of this observation. It is also a doctrinal standard that requires the acceptance of a theological and ecclesiological position related to the episcopate, which, as Dr. Toon himself observed is Anglo-Catholic, and “excludes most Anglicans worldwide today, and excludes the millions of evangelical Anglicans who have been faithful Anglicans over the generations!” He further observed, “it puts a particular spin on the 1662 Ordinal…and prohibits the comprehensiveness that has always been a part of the genius of the Anglican Way!”

The Anglican Church in North America does not appear to take seriously the New Testament concept of fellowship, which Philippians 2:1-2 and John 1:1-3 tell us are “anchored in a common faith and a common mind.” (Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, 91) While prohibiting genuine Anglican comprehensiveness, the Fundamental Declarations promote unacknowledged theological pluralism. They permit the evasion of the classical formularies as the authoritative doctrinal standard for Anglicans. In the Anglican Church in North America more than one gospel may be preached. It is even possible to preach in one of its subtler forms the gospel of universal redemption heard in the Episcopal Church. In their choice of language the Fundamental Declarations have disabled one of the four major functions of the Thirty-Nine Articles—to safeguard the truth of the gospel.

The Anglican Church in North America relies too heavily on its bishops to protect the church from false teaching. In their adoption of the new ordinal the ACNA bishops have demonstrated that they are not equal to the task. They have allowed into the church beliefs and practices that historic Anglicanism rejects.

In the place of the classical formularies the Anglican Church in North America has substituted whatever is the consensus of opinion of the moment among its bishops. This is what happened in the Episcopal Church. We have seen where that led. In the ACNA it has led to the tacit acceptance of disparate theologies of justification and salvation, and the proclamation of multiple gospels.

There is a very real need for the recovery of the classical formularies in the Anglican Church in North America. There is an equally as real need for the establishment of genuine Anglican comprehensiveness. Without these and other critical elements in place, the recognition of the ACNA as the orthodox Anglican province in Canada and the United States and its admission to the councils of the larger Anglican community is premature at best. If the ACNA continues on its current path, it will, like the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church, be treading a path separate from that of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and the Global Anglican Future Conference. Like the liberal Western churches it will be competing with the FCA and GAFCON to shape the future of the Anglican family of churches.