By Robin G. Jordan
A recent article on VirtueOnline, Michael Heidt’s "War of the Bishops," caught my attention. It examines, to use Heidt’s own words, the two different understandings of the Episcopal Church’s polity thrown into sharp relief by the war of letters waged by rival groups of bishops at the 2012 General Convention. Heidt points out that the exchange of letters reveals a deep conflict over the nature of the Episcopal Church’s authority and hierarchy. The first letter was written by Provisional Bishops Wallis Ohl and John Buchanan. Heidt sums up their understanding of Episcopal Church polity as follows:
“Most importantly, and this is acknowledged in the order of the allegations, Ohl and Buchanan are claiming that the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church is metro-political in nature; that TEC's ultimate Ecclesiastical Authority is the Office of the Presiding Bishop and General Convention, not the local Diocese and its Ordinary. All else flows from this. With such an understanding in place, individual dioceses do not have unilateral freedom to leave the Episcopal Church nor do they have autonomous control over diocesan property and assets.”
The second letter was written by Bishops Paul E. Lambert, William H. Love, D. Bruce MacPherson, Daniel M. Martins, Edward L. Salmon, and James M. Stanton. They answer the first letter point by point. In their letter the six bishops describe a very different understanding of Episcopal Church polity from that which Ohl and Buchanan express. Heidt writes:
“Acknowledging that the Episcopal Church is hierarchical, they state that ‘hierarchical authority for matters within a diocese is the Ecclesiastical Authority of the diocese, which according to our Constitution is the diocesan bishop.’ The Episcopal Church is, for them, a ‘dispersed hierarchy’ as opposed to a metropolitan one in which authority is vested in an Archbishop. Far from being a matter of personal opinion, or invention, the bishops claim a historical "pedigree" for their belief, citing Canon Dawley's work on church polity.”
Heidt goes on to write:
“The dispersed nature of the hierarchy in question is then backed up by reference to the Episcopal Church's Constitution, which has no ‘Supremacy Clause.’ Likewise, it specifies no ‘office or body’ with ‘hierarchical authority over the Ecclesiastical Authority of the diocese for matters within a diocese. And as bishops, we take no vow of obedience to any other office or body.’ They go on to state that this was a deliberate rejection of the metro-political polity of the Church of England, where bishops swear obedience to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. They state that there is no such oath in the Episcopal Church.”
Heidt concludes:
“THERE WE HAVE IT, two radically different understandings of the nature of the Episcopal Church's essential governance. The one, as expressed in the first open letter, is the prevalent view of the church and is deployed by the Presiding Bishop and her legal teams in the Dioceses of Fort Worth and Quincy. On it stands the Episcopal Church's claim to the property and assets of the dioceses lead by bishop Iker and Morales. Given, they argue, that the Ecclesiastical Authority proper to the Episcopal Church resides in the office of the Presiding Bishop and General Convention, dioceses have no freedom to depart with money and property that belongs, ultimately, to these entities.
The other view, held by the bishops currently being investigated under Title IV of TEC's disciplinary canons, argues that the locus of authority in the Episcopal Church rests neither in the Presiding Bishop or the General Convention. On the contrary, they attempt to prove from historical precedent and the church's Constitution, that TEC's hierarchy is dispersed, residing at local level in the church's dioceses and their respective bishops.”
He further states:
“That both understandings are radically opposed is readily apparent, with one envisaging church power as distributed, the other as centralized. That such differing conceptions of ecclesial polity would inevitably come into conflict would seem probable; that they have is unquestionable. Who will win the war in this clash of bishops, though even the most sanguine of observers must admit it unlikely that a church which has ceded power to centralized authority in the interest of legal victory will willingly relinquish that power now, regardless of the Constitution.”
The conflict over the nature of the Episcopal Church’s authority and hierarchy is not a new development. Tim Smith and George Conger wrote a lengthy article on the subject in October 2007. Titled “[The] Parish is the basic unit of the church in American Anglicanism: Serious Challenges Face American Anglicanism: On What Principles Will a New Order Be Shaped?” They point out:
“Since its founding and in the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, its basic unit has been the local parish. The federal system of church government -or, more properly speaking, the confederated system - is the hallmark of Anglicanism in the United States. This is a chief difference between the Anglicanism of the Church of England and the Anglicanism of the Episcopal Church in the United States.
William White, the first Bishop of Pennsylvania and the very first Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was the primary advocate for the parish-based ecclesiology which was actually adopted by ECUSA. Thereunder, governing authority rested with the parish and thereupon was delegated by the parish to any other body, such as the diocese or the national church.”
With the departure of the Episcopal Church from its original parish-based ecclesiology, its drift toward a centralized hierarchy, and the problems associated with this centralization one would have expected that the Common Cause Governance Task Force would have proposed a governance model for the Anglican Church in North America closer to that of early Protestant Episcopal Church. Despite lip service to the principle of subsidiarity, a principle of organization in accordance with which matters are “handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority,” the taskforce proposed a centralized governance model in which planning, decision-making and power are concentrated in a small group of people. This is not particularly surprising considering the make-up of the original Common Cause Governance Task Force.
Among the members of the taskforce were then Bishop Robert Duncan who advocated the regression of the church to an earlier period in its history, before the Protestant Reformation, to a period when bishops governed the church, subject only to a prelate, or bishop of superior rank, such as an archbishop, patriarch, or pope. They included the Rev. Larry Bausch, who represented Forward in Faith North America (FiFNA), an organization committed to promoting Catholic faith and order in the province-in-formation; AMiA Canon Kevin Donlon who drafted the 2008 PEAR canons and the 2009 AMiA charter for ministry that introduced Roman Catholic doctrine and governance structures into the Anglican Church of Rwanda and the Anglican Mission; and AMiA Chairman Chuck Murphy who approved the drafts of these documents and benefited from their provisions.
The taskforce evidenced a fascination with what its members believed were African governance structures but in actually were Roman Catholic ones. It also displayed a marked prejudice against the office of presiding bishop, equating the institution with liberalism and the present and previous incumbents of that office in the Episcopal Church.
The centralized governance model is not as immediately apparent in the constitution of the Anglican Church in North America as it is in the canons of the ACNA but the indicators are present in both governing documents. Rather than a president bishop like the Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Mideast, a presiding bishop like the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of America, the Church of England in South Africa, and the Reformed Episcopal Church, a moderator like the Church of South India, or a primus like Scottish Episcopal Church, the ACNA has an archbishop who also has the title of primate.
Despite these titles the role of the archbishop described in the constitution is not any different from a presiding bishop. The archbishop convenes the meetings of the Provincial Council, the Provincial Assembly, and the College of Bishops and prepares the agenda of the Provincial Council with the assistance of its Executive Committee and the officers of the province, serves as the spokesman of the province, and “carries out such other duties and responsibilities as may be provided by canon.”
This last provision was originally not included in the constitution until it was drawn to the taskforce’s attention that in the canons they were giving substantially authority and power to the archbishop for which the constitution made no provision and which the constitution did not recognize as inherent in the office of archbishop. The taskforce has taken full advantage of the provision to enlarge the authority and power of the archbishopical office well beyond that typically exercised by the metropolitan of an Anglican province.
The taskforce has also taken advantage of the provisions of Article VIII of the constitution to give more authority and power to the archbishop in the ACNA model diocesan constitution and canons. Archbishop Duncan himself has, during his tenure as archbishop, arrogated authority and power to that office, which neither constitution nor canons give to the office of archbishop or recognize as inherent in that office. The Provincial Council and the College of Bishops has not publicly raised any objections to this arrogation of authority and power.
The canons of the ACNA require the other bishops of the province to take a vow of obedience to the archbishop. It must be stressed that nowhere in the constitution or the canons of the ACNA is the archbishop recognized as being the metropolitan of the province and having metropolitical jurisdiction over the province, a common provision in the constitution and/or canons of an Anglican province that has a metropolitan or in the case of the Anglican Church of Australia, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Church of England a number of metropolitans. Only in Anglican provinces where an archbishop is clearly recognized in the constitution or canons of the province to be the metropolitan of the province and to have metropolitical jurisdiction over the province are the other bishops of the province required to swear obedience to him.
The preceding are not the only indicators of centralization in the ACNA constitution and canons. I have examined the other indicators elsewhere.
The leaders of the Anglican Church in North America are putting into place in the ACNA what orthodox bishops in the Episcopal Church are fighting to keep from happening in that denomination. I hope that others beside myself can see the incongruity between what ACNA leaders are doing and what orthodox Episcopal bishops are doing. It does not commend the ACNA to the orthodox dioceses and congregations remaining in the Episcopal Church, especially as they weigh their options in the light of recent events. It also provides liberal Episcopalians with ammunition to attack Archbishop Duncan’s motivations for forming the Common Cause Partnership, leading the Diocese of Pittsburgh out of the Episcopal Church, and establishing the Anglican Church in North America. Whether or not ACNA leaders and members would like to acknowledge them, it does suggest that the present head of the ACNA has papal pretensions. It also suggests that a segment of the ACNA is seeking to establish that kind of leadership structure in the Anglican province wannabe.
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