The Fundamental Declarations of the Anglican Church in North America: The Insights of the Late Peter Toon

By Robin G. Jordan

In August 2007 the late Peter Toon wrote an essay entitled “Does 1662 rise as 1928 falls?” in which he speculated upon the sudden popularity of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer at that time and the possible outcome of this popularity. Among the reasons that he surmised as accounting for the 1662 Prayer Book’s sudden popularity was that the Common Cause Partnership had no future or meaning without the active support of the Global South Provinces, which had constitutions based upon the historic Anglican formularies and which in a number of cases used the 1662 Prayer Book. The Common Cause Partnership would have an easier walk with the Global South Provinces if the CCP adopted the same formularies as those Provinces.

The Common Cause Partnership, however, had no intention of recovering the authentic Anglican Way, as Dr. Toon would hopefully speculate in his essay. Its adoption of the classic formularies, as the passage of time has revealed, was purely cosmetic. The CCP was seeking to give the appearance of accepting the authority of the classical formularies. The Common Cause Theological Statement was so written that the entities forming the alliance could in actual practice evade their authority. The Theological Statement contained a number of major concessions to the Anglo-Catholic entities in the alliance. It also reflected attitudes toward the classic formularies that the Common Cause Partners as former Episcopalians had brought with them from the Episcopal Church. This became all too evident with the formation of the Anglican Church in North America and the adoption and ratification of its present governing documents and the approval of its new ordinal.

The former Common Cause Partnership would gain what it coveted—the recognition of the leading Global South Provinces. Their primates would endorse the newly formed Anglican Church in North America as “a genuine expression of Anglicanism.” Since that time the leaders of the ACNA have been pushing the limits, not only within that ecclesial body but also outside it, seeking to see how far they can go without causing an outcry from the member churches of the ACNA or the Global South Provinces.

Far from leading a recovery of the authentic Anglican Way in North America, the leaders of the Anglican Church in North America appear to be set on leading the ACNA even further away from historic Anglicanism. The College of Bishops approved an ordinal that authorizes the use of ceremonies and ornaments long associated with doctrines and practices that the classical formularies reject. By its authorization of these ceremonies and ornaments the ordinal sanctions the associated doctrines and practices.

In an earlier July 2006 essay entitled “Proposed Doctrine for the Network: Can it be improved?” Dr. Toon questioned why the Common Cause Partnership could not have used a slightly edited version of Canon A5 of the Church of England Canons as the basis of a working unity for the theological diverse group that formed CCP:

The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. (The Canons of the Church of England, p.8)

He would point out a number of inconsistencies and other problem areas in the proposed Common Cause Theological Statement:

If, following the C of E Canon, [one] carefully reads the Thirty-Nine Articles, one will get a full and clear statement of the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures for instructing us in the way of salvation and godliness. One will also learn what are the Catholic Creeds and why they are accepted in the Church in relation to the Bible. And the same goes for the two Dominical Sacraments. (See also the Catechism in the BCP)

This obviated the need for clauses 1, 2, and 4 of the proposed statement. Dr. Toon went on to note:

At the same time one will learn that Councils may err and so one will not accept automatically the teaching of “the Seven Ecumenical Councils.” And this is especially important with regard to the seventh, the Second Council of Nicaea, whose teaching on the veneration of icons is effectively rejected by the Articles and specifically by the Book of Homilies to which Article XXXV points. The historic Anglican Way has always affirmed four general councils and stopped at that – leaving to the area of discretion by local churches whether to affirm more.

GAFCON in The Jerusalem Declaration affirms these councils and does not go any further. Dr. Toon further notes:

In this regard the Affirmation of St Louis set forth by Anglo-Catholic Continuers in 1977 went way past any previous official, provincial or Lambeth Conference Anglican statement in relation to the Councils by making 7 councils and their teaching mandatory – a big mistake.

In the final version of its Theological Statement the Common Cause Partnership would back away from its earlier affirmation of the teaching of the seven Ecumenical Councils.

Dr. Toon identified as Anglo-Catholic and exclusionary the doctrinal position of clause 6, which maintained “the godly Historic Episcopate to be necessary for the full being of the Church.”

…if one reads the Articles and the Ordinal together then one will not be able to say on the basis of them (or by direct deduction from the New Testament) that the historic Episcopate is necessary for the full being of the Church. This statement is an Anglo-Catholic doctrine and belongs, I think, to the distinctions between the Episcopate seen as the bene esse (of the well being) or the plene esse (of the fullness of being) or the esse (of the necessary being). Anglicans have held varied doctrines of the relation of the Episcopate to the Church and it is not clear what is being claimed by the English expression, “full being” here. Whatever is claimed it excludes the majority of Anglicans since 1549 who have recognized other Churches (Lutheran, Presbyterian etc) as genuine churches with genuine presbyters, even if lacking the good thing of the Episcopate.

In the final version of its Theological Statement the Common Cause Partnership would alter the language of the clause but as Dr. Toon would point out in a subsequent essay, “The Ordaining and Consecrating of a Bishop – but what is his real identity?” the clause continues to take a doctrinal position that is Anglo-Catholic and exclusionary.

With regards to clause 5, which stated, “we accept the 1549 through the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and its ordinal as the foundation for Anglican worship and the standard for doctrine and discipline,” Dr. Toon made this very important observation:

It is the 1662 edition that is in the Constitutions of the majority of the Anglican Provinces and this Book has been translated into 150 languages or more. (Go to provinces like Uganda and see it used each Sunday and find it written into the Constitution.) No official province of the Anglican Communion authorizes the 1549 or the 1552 or the 1559 or the 1604 editions. A very small continuing group here or there may authorize the 1549.

Further, the 1662 was adapted for use in the Republic of the USA in 1789….

In the final version of its Theological Statement the Common Cause Partnership would also modify the language of this clause. However, the revised clause was no better than the original clause. The Common Cause Partnership would receive the 1662 Prayer Book and its Ordinal as “a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline,” and, “with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.” The revised clause did not identify what books that preceded the 1662 Prayer Book, and has subsequently been interpreted to include the pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic service books, an interpretation that its vague language does not disallow.

Dr. Toon suggested that the following statement, an adaptation of Canon A5, should be substituted for the proposed Common Cause Theological Statement.

We accept the doctrine of the Anglican Way as it is grounded in the holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, we receive such doctrine as is to be found in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal (as all three of these are printed in the English edition of 1662, the American edition of 1928 and the Canadian edition of 1962 of The Book of Common Prayer).

He believed that this statement would “obtain the greatest acceptance and the greatest comprehension on the best principles.”

The only problem that I have with this suggestion is that the 1928 American Prayer Book and 1962 Canadian Prayer Book are not quite the gentle revisions of the classical Anglican Prayer Book as Dr. Toon maintained. Only the 1662 English Prayer Book is recognized as a historic Anglican formulary.

The seven clauses of the final version of the Common Cause Theological Statement would be incorporated into the draft constitution of the Anglican Church in North America. With the adoption and ratification of that document they became the Fundamental Declarations of that ecclesial body. They put the ACNA on a path that leads it away from the authentic Anglican Way and from GAFCON and The Jerusalem Declaration.

The history of American Episcopalianism and the more recent history of the Continuing Anglican Movement in North America do not suggest that this path is a temporary detour and the Anglican Church in North America will return to the Anglican Way. On the contrary, they suggest that ACNA will continue on the road that it has taken.

How long the Global South Provinces will tolerate the Anglican Church in North America’s departure from the authentic Anglican Way remains to be seen. The Global South Provinces are distracted by their own problems to give their full attention to the ACNA. They have yet to come to the realization how negligible the support for the positions stated in The Jerusalem Declaration is in a large section of the ACNA. Clergy across the ACNA are teaching their congregations views that conflict with what the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans uphold in The Jerusalem Declaration. The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, for those who may not be aware, is the provinces, dioceses, churches, and individuals that comprise the participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference, not the American organization that has adopted the same name and is a creature of the ACNA.

Like the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America has chosen to take its own road. The ACNA in its doctrinal positions is hardly a sterling example of the fourteen tenets of orthodoxy that The Jerusalem Declaration insists underpin Anglican identity. Its Fundamental Declarations differ from The Jerusalem Declaration in substance as well as language and emphasis. Its Constitution and Canons require that its clergy, member dioceses and churches, and ministry partners must unreservedly subscribe to its Fundamental Declarations.

As the late Peter Toon recognized, two can walk together only if they agree (Amos 3:3). The FCA and GAFCON must eventually come to a parting of the way with the ACNA or countenance what the FCA and GAFCON were formed to oppose—theological pluralism. As I observed elsewhere, a chain is as strong as its weakest link and the ACNA gives all appearances of being the weak link of the FCA and GAFCON.