The Anglican Church in North America’s Commitment to Subsidiarity Is Just Talk

By Robin G. Jordan

We hear a lot of talk about subsidiarity in the Anglican Church in North America. For those unfamiliar with the term “subsidiarity” A. S. Haley offered this explanation in a recent article on his blog:

Subsidiarity is the idea that the affairs of an organization are dealt with at as local a level as possible, and that only those matters which truly affect the organization as a whole need to receive attention at the topmost level. (It is the principle on which PECUSA itself was founded, and which governed its affairs for the first 150 years of its existence.)

If the Anglican Church in North America actually practiced the principle of subsidiarity, however, and did not merely give lip service to it, the ACNA would have taken a quite different shape from what it has taken.

In an Anglican ecclesial body committed to this concept the constitution or its equivalent would recognize that the ecclesial body was a voluntary association of autonomous dioceses, which in turn were voluntary associations of self-governing congregations. It would recognize that the ecclesial body derived its authority from its constituent dioceses. They in turn derived their authority from the congregations forming them, and these congregations in turn derived their authority from Christ. As A. S. Haley has pointed out in several articles this was the thinking behind PECUSA.

A number of Anglo-Catholic bishops departed from this thinking in the nineteenth century. They would claim that all authority in PECUSA was derived from its bishops whom they asserted were the successors to the apostles. Instead of viewing the diocese as a creature of the congregations forming it and supporting and helping them in their mission, these bishops regarded congregations as creatures of the diocese, subordinate to the diocese and serving it. We are seeing the consequences of this departure played out in TEC and the ACNA today.

In an Anglican ecclesial body committed to the principle of subsidiarity the representation of each diocese in the Provincial Council would be larger and the Council would function as a central synod. It would attend solely to those matters that affected the ACNA as a whole.

The dioceses would retain the power to ratify constitutional and canonical changes rather than delegating that power to a Provincial Assembly. Such changes adopted by the Provincial Council would be presented to the diocesan synod or the equivalent of each diocese for its assent. If a specific number of dioceses assented to a change in the constitution or canons, it would go into effect. Some categories of legislation might require the assent of a diocese before they are binding upon the diocese, as in the Anglican Church of Australia.

As for the other purposes of the Provincial Assembly, they also would be undertaken at the regional and diocesan levels. Several dioceses would jointly sponsor and plan a regional mission conference; individual dioceses would conduct diocesan mission conferences. The various sessions of these conferences would be live-streamed on the Internet and recorded on video and the recordings distributed over the Internet.

Regional mission centers would be established to develop and distribute educational materials and training resources. Itinerant teams connected with these centers would conduct seminars and workshops within their respective regions.

An Anglican ecclesial body committed to the subsidiarity principle would not have centralized hierarchy with an archbishop at the top of that hierarchy. It would be more lateral in its organization. It would have a moderator, president or presiding bishop, or primus. This officer would have very limited functions and powers and certainly would not have the functions and powers that the ACNA canons and model diocesan constitution and canons assign to Archbishop Duncan or which Archbishop Duncan has arrogated to himself.

The ACNA constitution would prohibit not only the province from holding the property of local congregations in trust but also the dioceses and other groupings.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the 1661 Ordinal would be recognized alongside the Thirty Nine Articles as the doctrinal standard of the Anglican Church in North America. The 1662 Prayer Book would be recognized as its standard of worship and prayer and the 1661Prayer Book as its standard of clerical orders. The dioceses would be free to develop their own worship resources consistent with these standards in addition to any service books adopted by the Provincial Council, as in the Anglican Church of Australia. Local congregations would be at liberty to determine for themselves what service books and worship resources they used.

The organizational principle that I find more often put into practice in the Anglican Church in North America involves taking decisions away from the local congregation and giving them to the diocese and taking decisions away from the diocese and giving them to the province. This is not pushing power down to the lowest possible level by any stretch of the imagination. It is quite the opposite. All the talk about the principle of subsidiarity in the ACNA is simply that—talk.