Truth Matters: An Evangelical Response to A Guide to Anglican Church Planting—Part 1

By Robin G. Jordan

In his treatise, “A Guide to Anglican Church Planting” Victor Novak’s Anglo-Catholic churchmanship is evident from the outset. Novak asserts that baptism is more important than hearing the gospel or believing in Jesus Christ. This is clearly what he is inferring with his statement: “It is not enough for people to hear the Gospel, or even to receive Christ as Lord and Saviour; they must be grafted into the Church - the Body of Christ - where they can share in its sacramental and corporate life [emphasis added].” As a consequence the treatise has limited usefulness to church planters who do not share his theological outlook. This is not the only drawback of the treatise. It is full of inaccuracies and other forms of misinformation. In this article we will examine the first part of the treatise, which is titled “A Fruitful Past And A Promising Future.”

In this part of the treatise Victor Novak repeats the claim that the downward spiral of the Episcopal Church began with the Prayer Book revision and woman’s ordination. This theory, while popular with Continuers, fails to take into consideration the larger picture. Early in the nineteenth century the Episcopal Church would fall under the spell of the Tractarian and Ritualist movements. The two movements would undermine biblical Anglicanism in the Episcopal Church and would prepare the way for modernism. During the nineteenth century the Episcopal Church did not join the westward movement until the advent of the steamboat and the railroad. The Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Presbyterians accompanied the pioneers west and had already been laboring on the frontier decades before the arrival of the Episcopal Church.

In the nineteenth century the Episcopal Church had a vibrant Evangelical wing. The growing influence and spread of Ritualism would lead to the succession of conservative elements of that wing from the Episcopal Church and the formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873. The more liberal elements of the Episcopal Church’s Evangelical wing would subsequently migrate to its Broad Church wing. By 1900 traditional Anglican evangelicalism had disappeared from the Episcopal Church.

Catholic Modernism, the outgrowth of Anglo-Catholicism and modernism took a grip upon the Episcopal Church in the years before World War I and would increase that grip between the wars and after World War II. Far from being “as evangelistic and soul-winning as any evangelical Church in America, and more so than most” the Episcopal Church developed an identity that was not only anti-evangelical but also anti-evangelistic.

The 1950s were not the heyday of Americanism Episcopalianism as Novak would like us to believe. Growth in the Episcopal Church was largely confined to cities and to the wealthy, educated, upper middle class. The Episcopal Church did not do as well in small towns and rural areas or with the poorer, less educated, blue collar workers. When compared with the Episcopal Church of today, the Episcopal Church of the 1950s may appear healthier but looks are deceiving.

The Episcopal churches here in the Jackson Purchase in western Kentucky exemplify the pattern of growth and decline of the Episcopal Church in many parts of the United States. The four oldest churches were founded in the nineteenth century and are located in four of the region’s older commercial centers. A new Episcopal church was launched in Murray, a modest-sized university town, in the 1950s. The last new Episcopal church was launched in Gilbertsville in 1980. Wherever these churches were planted, one finds a Roman Catholic parish in the same community. (The Episcopal Church in Kentucky was decidedly Anglo-Catholic in character.) The exception is Gilbertville. The Roman Catholic parish is located in the adjoining community of Grand Rivers. Except for Grace Church in Paducah, all the surviving churches are missions. St. Martin’s in the Fields in Mayfield was closed in 2005.

The Episcopal Church threw the classic Anglican Prayer Book overboard more than thirty years before the trial liturgies of the 1960s. The 1928 revision introduced far-reaching and even radical changes in the American Prayer Book. In the 1920s the two dominant theological streams in the Episcopal Church were Anglo-Catholicism and Broad Church latitudinarianism. Both had fallen under the influence of modernism by the opening decades of the twentieth century. This influence is observable in the 1928 Prayer Book. For example, the 1928 Prayer Book dilutes the penitential language of the American Prayer Book and eliminates the requirement of blanket belief in the Old and New Testaments for the ordination of deacons. It also gives countenance to beliefs and practices that are contrary to the Word of God.

The Episcopal Church’s abandonment of the classical Anglican Prayer Book had begun one hundred and thirty-nine years earlier with the adoption of the 1789 Prayer Book. It replaced the Prayer of Consecration of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer with that of the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer Book. The latter was the work of two superannuated Scottish Non-Juror bishops who belonged to the minority Usager faction among the Scottish Non-Jurors. The Usagers are not only known for their revival of medieval practices—the Mixed Chalice, Prayers for the Dead, prayers of Oblation and Invocation before the Communion, and the Unction of the Sick—that the English Reformers had rejected on solid biblical grounds in the sixteenth century but also their peculiar view of the Atonement. They held that Christ did not offer himself as a sacrifice for our sins on the cross but at the Last Supper. He was only slain on the cross. They taught that the priest re-offers Christ’s sacrifice in the Eucharist.

Contrary to what Novak claims, the 1977 St. Louis Church Congress did not bring organization to the Continuing Anglican movement. Rather it revealed its divisions. “Loyalist Anglicans” would struggle with “Ultra-Catholics” for the control of the direction of the movement. The “Ultra-Catholics” would triumph. They, however, would show little enthusiasm for reaching the unchurched and enfolding them into new churches.

Novak also claims that the Global Anglican Future Conference’s issuance of The Jerusalem Declaration sparked “a new reformation.” But the evidence of such a reformation in North America, if one has occurred, is negligible. Retrograde movement to pre-Reformation beliefs and practices hardly qualifies as “a new reformation.” A new counter-reformation would be a more accurate description.

Novak goes on to claim that “a new orthodox Province of the Anglican Communion in North America” has been organized to replace the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. This is wishful thinking on Novak’s part. The Anglican Church in North America may at best, out of charity, be described as an Anglican province in formation. While the ACNA may have the recognition of some Anglican provinces, it has not been admitted as a province of the Anglican Communion.

As for the ACNA being “orthodox,” that is highly debatable. The “theological lens,” which the ACNA Prayerbook and Common Liturgy Taskforce developed and the ACNA College of Bishops approved, raises serious questions about the “orthodoxy” of the ACNA as do the doctrinal provisions of its constitution and canons and the rubrics of its ordinal.

Novak indulges in hyperbole when he asserts that the ACNA has 1000 congregations. Archbishop Robert Duncan has made similar claims but upon investigation it turned out that he was counting congregations of the ACNA’s then ministry partner, the Anglican Mission in the Americas.

What is Novak inferring when he makes statements like this one? “A New Reformation has broken out in the Anglican Communion that promises to restore the Communion to Biblical orthodoxy….” Is he suggesting that “Biblical orthodoxy,” at least as he understands it as an Anglo-Catholic, has vanished entirely from the Anglican Communion? It is noteworthy that Novak is a presbyter of the Reformed Episcopal Church that has since the late twentieth century departed from what its founders regarded as “Biblical orthodoxy” and has succumbed to the very beliefs and practices from which its founders fled in 1873.

In this writer’s opinion Novak might have done well to omit this part of his treatise altogether. He might have devoted the opening paragraphs of his treatise to a thoughtful examination of the gospel imperative:

“Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 Good News Bible

“Go throughout the whole world and preach the gospel to all mankind. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned….” Mark 16:15-16 Good News Bible

“This is what is written: the Messiah must suffer and must rise from death three days later, and in his name the message about repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem….” Luke 24:46-47 Good News Bible

“As the Father sent me, so I send you.” John 20:21 Good News Bible

“But when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power, and you will be witnesses for me in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” Acts 1:8 Good News Bible

All followers of Jesus Christ are first and foremost servants of the gospel, and therefore church planters. They are called to establish, grow, and multiply communities of disciples that not only proclaim the good news but also are the good news. The gifts that Holy Spirit gives are for the increase of the people of God as well as their upbuilding. While some Christians may be called to lead in mission, all Christians are called to be missionaries, sharing in God’s mission to the world.