The Challenges to Biblical Orthodoxy in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Psalm 119: 105 ESV

The struggle in the Anglican Church in recent years has been over Anglican orthodoxy. Liberals in the Anglican Church sought to make their reinterpretation of Anglican orthodoxy the accepted understanding of orthodoxy in the Anglican Church. The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, the Global Anglican Future Conference, the GAFCON Statement, and The Jerusalem Declaration are the global South provinces’ response to the liberal reinterpretation of Anglicanism.

In the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission in the Americas as well as the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States we find resistance to the tenets of Anglican orthodoxy set out in The Jerusalem Declaration. The resistance in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States naturally comes from the liberal Anglicans in those two churches.

The resistance in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission in the Americas, on the other hand, comes from the Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA and the AMiA and those who have been influenced by their thinking. They are intent upon moving these two churches in a more unreformed Catholic direction. This puts them at odds with GAFCON and The Jerusalem Declaration that lays emphasis upon the return of the Anglican Church to the plain sense of Scripture and to the classic formularies.

These challenges to biblical orthodoxy in the Anglican Church are not new. They both have been around since the nineteenth century (see Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, pp. 96-97). With the weakening of liberalism in the ACNA and the AMiA, Anglo-Catholics have sought to increase their influence in these two bodies, sedulously promoting unreformed Catholic beliefs and practices. They seek to replace the collapsed liberal consensus with a new unreformed Catholic one.

Among the steps Anglo-Catholics have taken to promote these beliefs and practices is that they have formed organizations for that purpose. They have blocked changes to the ACNA fundamental declarations that would have brought them more in line with The Jerusalem Declarations. They have opposed the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’ call to the larger Anglican community, including the American Church, to reaffirm and return to the classical formularies as the long-recognized doctrinal standard of Anglicanism. They put forward Anglo-Catholic reinterpretations of Anglicanism that conflict with this standard and have produced a prayer book and an ordinal that repudiates it. They have also sought to export unreformed Catholic beliefs and practices to at least one global South province.

The emergence of a ‘new Oxford movement’ in what was the Common Cause Partnership presents a serious obstacle to the recovery of biblical orthodoxy in the bodies that were supposed to form a new orthodox Anglican province in North America. The Anglo-Catholic approach to Scripture, like the liberal approach, is defective. As J. I. Packer puts it:

Canon means a rule or standard. The first two positions refer to Scripture as the canon but they fail to take it with full seriousness as a functioning rule for faith and life. Thus they do not in practice fully accept its authority, and their Christian profession, however sincere, is thereby flawed.

(Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, p. 18)

Contemporary Anglo-Catholicism finds what it believes is God’s truth in the Scripture interpretations embodied in a particular tradition and consensus. Historic Anglicanism, as reflected in the Thirty-Nine Articles (Article XIX), takes the position that “’orthodoxy’ cannot be equated with one church or tradition. Instead it must be proved by Holy Scripture (Article VI).” (Being Faithful The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 96)

The English Reformers sought to build the doctrine of the Church of England upon the solid foundation of the Holy Scriptures. They understood Scripture to function as the instrument of Christ’s lordship over his followers. Building on Scripture was building upon Christ. This was the bedrock down to which they dug in order to ensure that the reformed Church of England had a secure and strong foundation. They accepted the teaching of the ancient Fathers and the Councils of the Church in so far as they were consonant with Scripture.

The truth of all doctrine must be tried by the test of Scripture is a fundamental principal of Anglicanism. To be orthodox in the Anglican sense is to hold doctrine tested by Scripture and found to be sound. Anglo-Catholicism, whatever its adherents may claim, in actual practice gives more weight to tradition than to Scripture. It seeks to justify its use of tradition as the means of testing doctrinal truth by arguing that Scripture is itself tradition that was put into writing. In making this argument, it shows that it does not fully take Scripture seriously as a rule of faith and life. It is also willing to void the Word of God for the sake of its own tradition.

Authentic Anglicanism does more than give lip service to the authority of Scripture. The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future states:

Authentic Anglicanism is a particular expression of Christian corporate life which seeks to honour the Lord Jesus Christ by nurturing faith, and also encouraging obedience to the teaching of God’s written word, meaning the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It embraces the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (published in the year 1571) and the Book of Common Prayer (the two versions of 1552 and 1662), both texts being read according to their plain and historical sense, and being accepted as faithful expressions of the teaching of Scripture, which provides the standard for Anglican theology and practice.

While authentic Anglicanism makes no claim to be perfect, and respects Christians of other traditions, it nevertheless insists on certain basic theological commitments. These are to be found in the classic documents of the Anglican tradition, but they need to be reiterated and reaffirmed in each generation.

(Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, pp. 85-86)

The Way, the Truth, and the Life goes on to list the non-negotiable core of these commitments. They include:

--the significance of the Church as the gathering of the redeemed people of God around the word of God and in the Spirit of God;

--the supreme authority of the Scriptures as the word of God written, and as the source of true teaching about God, his purposes, and the appropriate response to God’s mercy in Jesus Christ;

--the purpose of Christian ministry within the churches to nourish faith and obedience through careful teaching of the Bible in the context of genuine personal relationships;

---the generous provision of the Lord’s Supper and baptism which, as sacraments, visibly represent the promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ to his people;

---the legitimate exercise of authority within the churches which is characterized by unreserved obedience to the teaching of Scripture and Jesus Christ’s own pattern of service…

(Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 87)

The entire list may be found here.

In a future article I will take a look at the steps that need to be taken to restore biblical orthodoxy in North America. Some may be taken at the local parish level. Others must be taken at the diocesan or network level and higher. These steps are essential to the establishment of a biblically faithful Anglican province in North America. They are critical to ensuring that Anglicans in North America walk in the light of God’s Word.

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