By Robin G. JordanWoe is me! For I am like those who gather summer fruits, like those who glean vintage grapes; there is no cluster to eat of the first-ripe fruit which my soul desires. The faithful man has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among men. They all lie in wait for blood; every man hunts his brother with a net. That they may successfully do evil with both hands—the prince asks for gifts, the judge seeks a bribe, and the great man utters his evil desire; so they scheme together. The best of them is like a brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge; the day of your watchman and your punishment comes; now shall be their perplexity. (Micah 7:1-4 NKJV)
The GAFCON Theological Resource Group in The Way, the Truth, and the Life identify two challenges to the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies in the Anglican Church originating in the nineteenth century. The first is John Henry Newman and the Tractarians’ interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles in a Roman direction and the second is modernism. Newman and the Tractarians not only would reinterpret the Articles in what they described as a “Catholic sense,” they would also reinterpret the Prayer Book and the Ordinal. The result was these formularies were given meanings that bore no relation to the historical context in which they were compiled or the intent of those who compiled them.
Newman would maintain that Royal Declaration of Charles I that the Articles should be taken in the literal and grammatical sense freed him and his fellow Tractarians from considering the Articles’ historical context and the intent of its compilers in their interpretation of the Articles.
While modernism has eclipsed Tractarianism as the major challenge to the authority of the Scripture and the classic formularies in the twenty-first century, Tractarianism’s challenge to their authority has not disappeared but persists in an extreme form of Anglo-Catholicism found in and outside of North America.
In historic Anglicanism tradition is subordinate to the authority of the Bible. This form of Anglo-Catholicism emphasizes the authority of tradition at the expense of the Bible. It is a discernable influence not only in the Continuing Anglican Churches in North America but also in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission in Canada and the United States. Its adherents take the position that the reformed catholicism of historic Anglicanism is not Catholic enough and the Anglican Church needs to move closer to the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in faith, order, and practice in order to become genuinely Catholic.
The influence of this form of Anglo-Catholicism in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission is attributable to a number of factors. Before the ascendancy of liberalism it was a dominant ideological stream in the Episcopal Church. A substantial number of former Episcopalians have never been exposed to genuine Anglican teaching. With the removal of modernism as a competing influence in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission its adherents have sought to restore this dominance. As well as issuing a call for a new Oxford movement to promote its ultra-Catholic ideology, its adherents have taken a number of steps to achieve this end. They have sought to establish themselves in positions of influence. They are responsible for the creation of ultra-Catholic governance structures in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission. They have produced a Prayer Book that is ultra-Catholic in tone. They persuaded the ACNA College of Bishops to authorize an Ordinal that countenances the doctrines and practices of the pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic Church and the post-Tridentian Roman Catholic Church.
The “three streams” theology popular in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission has failed to act as a check or counterbalance to the resurgence of this form of Anglo-Catholicism. Indeed it may have actually helped its rising again to prominence.
The disappearance of traditional Anglican evangelicalism from the Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century and its weak revival in the twentieth century is another factor behind the rise of this ideology. The charismatic movement would capture the imagination of North American Anglicans at the time traditional Anglican evangelicalism was beginning to make a recovery in North America.
In this type of environment the news that an Anglo-Catholic canon had taken advantage of his position in the Anglican Mission to introduce sweeping changes in the doctrine and governance structures of the Anglican Mission’s parent province, thereby moving it and the Anglican Mission in an ultra-Catholic direction is not particularly surprising. What were his objectives beyond demonstrating how easily the doctrine of an Anglican province and a missionary jurisdiction of that province may be subverted have yet to be fathomed.
The Anglican Mission has a substantial number of pastors and congregation that identify themselves as evangelical. The Anglican Church of Rwanda was founded by the Church Missionary Society, which has its roots in the Evangelical Revival. The East African Revival that has impacted a number of African provinces began in Rwanda. If any agreement that Bishop Chuck Murphy and Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje reach fails to rectify these doctrinal changes, the result will be a missionary organization in which a large number of pastors and congregations do not subscribe to the doctrinal positions imposed upon that organization through the machinations of one individual. It will also be a missionary organization that is no longer genuinely Anglican in its identity.
One is led to suspect that GAFCON and The Jerusalem Declaration are the real targets of this individual. He is known as a sharp critic of a number of provisions of The Jerusalem Declaration. He presently serves on the GAFCON Theological Education and Formation Committee and has been promoting a revamping of Anglican ecclesiology. His apparent aim is to effect a large-scale movement in an ultra-Catholic direction—a movement involving not only the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the Anglican Mission but also the entire global South Anglican community. With this movement he also appears intent upon effecting the destruction of historic Anglicanism.
This raises the question of whether the sentiments of this individual are typical of the proponents of the new Oxford movement. In this case GAFCON 2013 may need to consider how the provinces and dioceses forming the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans should respond to this challenge to the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies in the Anglican Church. In challenging their authority, it is also presenting a challenge to the fulfillment of the Great Commission, substituting false teaching for what Anglicans have historically understood to be the New Testament gospel.
Adherents of this form of Anglo-Catholicism are showing themselves to be untrustworthy allies in the struggle against liberalism. While evangelicals are going out of their way to work with Anglo-Catholics, they are taking advantage of this cooperation to further their agenda. They demonstrate that they have not outgrown the lawlessness that characterized the Ritualist movement in the nineteenth century. They are proving that the suspicions that conservative evangelicals harbor toward Anglo-Catholics are not unfounded. Today’s Anglo-Catholic is the old Romanizing Ritualist in a new guise, assiduously at work to undo the Reformation and to promote the innovations of post-Tridentian Roman Catholicism as well as the errors and superstitions of pre-Reformation Medieval Catholicism in the Anglican Church. The calls for tolerance, acceptance, and diversity from Anglo-Catholic quarters are self-serving as are similar calls from liberal quarters.
The disclosures involving the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the Anglican Mission and the developments in the Anglican Church in North America should give North American Anglicans who are committed to the Scriptures, the classic formularies, the Great Commission, and responsible, synodical church government pause to think. There is serious cause for concern. The future of Anglicanism in North America is at stake. The time has come to band together and work for the reform of the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission.
If the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission are beyond reform, as may be the case, it is also time to begin planning the next step—the formation of a truly Biblically orthodox Anglican province in North America, a province that preaches, believes, and defends the New Testament gospel of salvation by faith in Christ and is unwavering in its adherence to the Anglican formularies, a province in which the gospel imperative is a clear priority; a province where governance of the Christian community is shared by the entire Church, clergy and laity together; constitutionalism and the rule of law are respected; and leaders at the provincial, intermediary, and local congregational levels are held to high standards of accountability.
This is the path that the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission should have followed. But neither body appears to have succeeded in freeing itself from the corrupting influence of the Episcopal Church. The problems of the Episcopal Church go deeper than liberalism and those who migrated from the Episcopal Church to the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission appear to have brought these problems with them.
Related articles:
Further Implications of Recent Disclosures Involving the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the Anglican Mission
Implications of Recent Disclosures Involving the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the Anglican Mission
All Is NOT Well in the Anglican Mission
What the Future Holds for the Anglican Mission
The Curse of Trust in Man: Fatal Weaknesses in the Anglican Mission
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