Anglican Mission and Anglican Church of Rwanda to Sever Ties?

By Robin G. Jordan

The recent news of a possible split between the Anglican Mission and the Anglican Church of Rwanda draws attention to one of the problems that Africans are facing in their dealings with North Americans. A number of North Americans even conservative ones have their own agenda and they are capable of exploiting the Africans to achieve their own ends. Their actions reflect poorly upon the rest of North Americans and create the impression that North Americans in general cannot be trusted.

In the case of the Anglican Mission and the Anglican Church of Rwanda the Rwandans are coming to realization that they have been tricked out of their birthright for a mess of pottage. Under the provisions of the 2008 revision of the Rwandan canons the Rwandan bishops may have gained greater authority than they may have enjoyed in the past: they became the sole legislators in their dioceses with the diocesan synod serving in a purely consultative role. But in exchange for this authority they bartered away their evangelical Anglican heritage. The Anglican Church of Rwanda is no longer a province ruled by the plain sense of Scripture and the classic formularies.

Anglo-Catholicism is one of two challenges to the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies in the Anglican Church identified by the GAFCON Theological Resource Group in The Way, the Truth, and the Life. The other challenge is liberalism, or modernism. The Way, the Truth, and the Life and Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today largely focus upon the second challenge. They neglect the first challenge, which the experience of the Anglican Church of Rwanda demonstrates is as much a threat to biblical Anglicanism as liberalism/modernism.

It invites attention that the attack upon biblical Anglicanism in the Anglican Church of Rwanda came from the Anglican Mission, its missionary jurisdiction in North America, and not from within the African province itself.

Anglo-Catholicism is experiencing a resurgence in North America, in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission, in an environment in which charismatics and evangelicals have bought into the idea that the differences between Anglo-Catholicism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism are differences of emphasis rather than “opposed positions based upon very different readings of the Bible” and are vying with each other to show how tolerant they are of variations. They are not pressing their own distinctives. The result is that Anglo-Catholicism is becoming the prevailing system of beliefs and practices even where Anglo-Catholics are a numerical minority. The principal casualties of this development are the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies.

In the Anglican Mission in which the “three-streams” topology is widely used, the Solemn Declaration of Principles, An Anglican Prayer Book (2008), and more recently Bishop John Rodger’s Essential Truths for Christians (2011) make significant concessions to Anglo-Catholicism. Acceptance of the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles has fallen by the wayside. Since authority of the Articles comes from their agreement with the teaching of Scripture, the acceptance of biblical teaching has also suffered.

One of the main functions of the Thirty-Nine Articles is to safeguard the truth of the gospel. Since faith comes from hearing the proclamation of the gospel and by faith in Christ we are saved, the truth of the gospel is critical to our salvation.

Anglo-Catholicism differs from biblical Anglicanism in three critical areas—revelation, salvation, and the sacraments. As a result Anglo-Catholics arguably preach a different gospel from what Anglicans have historically recognized as the New Testament gospel.

Bishop Chuck Murphy’s approval and recommendation of a draft revision of the Rwandan canons departing significantly from historic Anglican principles in doctrine and governance raises serious questions about his own commitment to biblical Anglicanism, as does his earlier endorsement of An Anglican Prayer Book, a service book that fails to meet the worship standard adopted by the Anglican Mission—the Book of Common Prayer of 1662. The doctrinal provisions of the 2008 Rwandan canons are clearly in conflict with the Thirty-Nine Articles that the Anglican Mission in its Solemn Declaration of Principles recognizes as its doctrinal standard. It also raises questions as to where the Anglican Mission really stands doctrinally on a number of key issues.

One is prompted to ask how really effective is the Anglican Mission in planting new Anglican churches and growing and strengthening existing ones if it does not uphold and defend historic Anglican principles.

The possible break between the Anglican Mission and the Anglican Church of Rwanda also raises questions about the Anglican Mission’s name change from the “Anglican Mission in the Americas” to simply the “Anglican Mission” and reports of the new Rwandan Primate not supporting Bishop Chuck Murphy’s decision to expand the sphere of operations of the Anglican Mission beyond North America. The name change bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the name change of The Episcopal Church, which many interpreted to mean that The Episcopal Church was seeking to establish its own Communion.

Bishop Murphy has a reputation of being highly ambitious, more of a corporate executive than a church leader and theologian, and preoccupied with the accumulation of power and prestige and the building of his own personal empire. These characteristics of the Anglican Mission’s Chairman, the title Murphy prefers, were one of the reasons that clergy and congregations fleeing the Episcopal Church after the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson did not join the then Anglican Mission in America but formed missionary convocations under other global South provinces beside Rwanda—Kenya, Nigeria, Southern Cone, and Uganda.

The original blueprint for the Anglican Mission, the draft constitution and canons of the Anglican Missionary Province of North America submitted at Kampala in 1999, would have established an alternative orthodox Anglican province in North America as early as 2000. After the Anglican Province of Southeast Asia refused to join Rwanda in sponsoring the Anglican Mission, this document would disappear from the Anglican Mission web site. It would eventually be replaced by the present organization and structure with Murphy at the top of a hierarchy, the authority of the members of which was either delegated to them directly by Murphy or indirectly through a member of the hierarchy whose authority came from Murphy. Murphy had a final say in all major decisions in the Anglican Mission, including how funds were expended in the organization.

While a number of the Anglican Mission’s church planting networks have shown themselves highly effective in establish new churches, these networks have overall not shown themselves as effective in maintaining historic Anglican principles. One criticism leveled at the churches that the Anglican Mission has been planting is the shallowness and unsoundness of their theology. They are alleged to be proclaiming a gospel of self-help rather than the gospel of grace.

The Anglican Mission is not likely to reconsider its decision not to become fully integrated in the Anglican Church in North America as long as Bishop Murphy is its head and such integration would involve the dismantling of the organization and structure Murphy has established and the curtailment and reduction of his authority. A Rwandan proposal to change the organization and structure of the Anglican Mission, to take away the almost unlimited authority Murphy has enjoyed over the Anglican Mission, and to require greater accountability from the missionary organization, this writer has good reason to believe may be behind this rupture in the relationship between the Anglican Mission and the Anglican Church in North America—that and the changes in the doctrine of the Anglican Church of Rwanda accompanying the provisions supposedly needed for the Anglican Mission to operate in North America. Whether those provisions were actually needed is highly debatable. They give Murphy almost absolute authority over the missionary organization. The changes in doctrine were certainly not needed. They conflict with the Anglican Mission’s own Solemn Declaration of Principles.

I see the Anglican Mission taking an independent course as long as Bishop Murphy is its head unless Murphy can cut a deal with the Archbishop Robert Duncan and other ACNA leaders that would allow the Anglican Mission to retain its present organization and structure and Murphy his current position and which would not give Archbishop Duncan and the ACNA any real oversight over Murphy and the Anglican Mission or hold the Murphy and the Anglican Mission actually accountable to Duncan and the ACNA.

As for another global South province sponsoring the Anglican Mission, I would strongly recommend that any global South province considering sponsoring the Anglican Mission carefully investigate the split between the Anglican Mission and the Anglican Church of Rwanda and what led up to that split. I believe that it would discover multiple reasons not to sponsor the Anglican Mission. How the Anglican Mission used its relationship with the Anglican Church of Rwanda to undermine the Anglican orthodoxy of the Rwandan Church should be alone sufficient reason to not consider sponsorship.