By Robin G. Jordan
In this article series I will be taking a look at the evolution of the office of provincial archbishop in the Anglican Church in North America and the factors behind its development. I will not only be examining applicable provisions of the governing documents of the Anglican Church in North America, its constitution and canons, but also those of its model diocesan constitution and canons, the rules of its College of Bishops, and its ordinal. I will in addition be looking at how its current provincial archbishop, Archbishop Robert Duncan, has been exercising the office.
For a number of good reasons the founders of the Protestant Episcopal Church decided against the creation of an archbishopric in the fledgling province. The Protestant Episcopal Church would have no bishop at the head of the province, much less a metropolitan who had special authority over the other bishops. All the bishops of the province would be equals; none would have special privileges. The senior most diocesan bishop by date of consecration would act as a presiding bishop and chair the meetings of the House of Bishops and the General Convention. This is how the Protestant Episcopal Church would operate for its first 150 years.
In the twentieth century the office of presiding bishop would be separated from that of diocesan bishop and more duties and responsibilities would be assigned to the office of presiding bishop. A number of factors contributed to the direction in which the office of presiding bishop was evolving. Among these factors were Anglo-Catholicism and its views of the episcopal office. These views had come to increasingly dominate the Episcopal understanding of bishops and episcopacy from the early nineteenth century on. They had found particularly fertile ground among Episcopal High Churchmen.
In 2006 conservative elements within the Episcopal Church would join with a number of breakaway groups to form the Common Cause Partnership. In 2009 delegates from the various Common Cause Partners, which had grown from six to eleven organizations, would ratify a constitution and a set of canons for what was described as a new orthodox Anglican province in North America—the Anglican Church in North America. Among the changes in ecclesiastical governance that were introduced in the Anglican Church in North America was the creation of the office of provincial archbishop for the new ecclesial body. The creation of this office represented a major departure from a longstanding tradition in American Anglicanism.
I have identified a number of factors that have contributed to this development. One factor is a desire to establish a more “Catholic” form of ecclesiastical governance in the new province. “Catholic” in this way of thinking is equated with Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and their doctrines and practices.
A second factor is a desire for more authoritative leadership. This is associated with a desire for greater certainty in what is an increasingly uncertain world.
A third factor is a particular attitude to which Thomas Cranmer refers in his essay, Of Ceremonies, Why Some Be Abolished, and Some Retained.”
…on the other side, some be so newfangled, that they would innovate all things, and so despise the old, that nothing can like them, but that is new….A related attitude is to do things differently from the way that they were done in the Episcopal Church, not because that particular way of doing things does not work but simply because it is the way things are done in the Episcopal Church.
A fifth factor is that negative feelings toward the current presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church colors perceptions of the office of presiding bishop. These negative feelings are transferred from the incumbent in the office to the office itself.
The office of presiding bishop has also become associated in some minds with liberalism. The liberalism of the primus (presiding bishop) of the Scottish Episcopal Church is cited in support of this false or mistaken notion. The conservatism of Bishops Mouneer Anis, Gregory Venables, and Héctor Zavala Muñoz, all of whom are or were presiding bishops, is ignored.
A sixth factor is a desire to enjoy the success that the global South provinces have experienced in achieving explosive growth and maintaining “orthodoxy.” This success is attributed to their way of doing things and imitating what they do is seen as the best way to attain similar results.
A desire to strengthen ties with the global South provinces also appears to be a contributing factor.
Having a provincial archbishop is associated in some minds with being Anglican.
A final contributing factor is that the creation of the office of provincial archbishop provides an additional rung on the career ladder of clergy in the Anglican Church in North America.
This list of contributing factors is by no means exhaustive.
In this article I will be examining the provisions of the constitution of the Anglican Church in North America, which are applicable to the office of provincial archbishop. Articles I, VII, VIII, IX, and X apply directly or indirectly to that office. Article I.3 states:
We confess the godly historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice, and therefore as integral to the fullness and unity of the Body of Christ.With this doctrinal statement the Anglican Church in North America maintains that what it describes as “the godly historic Episcopate” (but leaves undefined) is so involved in the constitution or essential character of “the apostolic faith and practice” (also undefined), belonging by nature to their very essence, that without such an episcopate the Body of Christ cannot experience fullness and unity.
More simply put, the Anglican Church in North America is claiming that bishops are of the esse, or essence of the Church. This position is strongly associated with Anglo-Catholicism and it is a position over which Anglicans have historically been divided.
The Anglican Church in North America requires its dioceses its bishops, its congregations, its clergy, and its ministry partners to subscribe to this position “without reservation.”
This particular statement was originally a part of the Theological Statement drafted by the Common Cause Round-Table. At the time the Common Cause Partnership consisted of the leaders of six conservative Anglican organizations—the Anglican Communion Network, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Mission in America, Forward in Faith North America, the Anglican Province of America, and the American Anglican Council.
Anglo-Catholic views of bishops and episcopacy dominated the Common Cause Round-Table’s thinking. The Proposed Theological Statement of the Common Cause Partners contained the following statement:
We believe the godly Historic Episcopate to be necessary for the full being of the Church.The late Peter Toon drew attention to the partisan nature of the proposed statement:
…if one reads the Articles and the Ordinal together then one will not be able to say on the basis of them (or by direct deduction from the New Testament) that the historic Episcopate is necessary for the full being of the Church. This statement is an Anglo-Catholic doctrine and belongs, I think, to the distinctions between the Episcopate seen as the bene esse (of the well being) or the plene esse (of the fullness of being) or the esse (of the necessary being). Anglicans have held varied doctrines of the relation of the Episcopate to the Church and it is not clear what is being claimed by the English expression, “full being” here. Whatever is claimed it excludes the majority of Anglicans since 1549 who have recognized other Churches (Lutheran, Presbyterian etc) as genuine churches with genuine presbyters, even if lacking the good thing of the Episcopate.Article VII gives “the Chair” of the Provincial Council responsibility for the agenda of each Council meeting. Note that Article VII does not identify “the Chair.” The canons of the Anglican Church in North America, however, establish the chairing of the meetings of the Council as one of the duties of the provincial archbishop.
Article IX creates the office of provincial archbishop and assigns the title of “Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America” to this officer. It establishes election by the College of Bishops as the means by which the provincial archbishop is selected and limits his term of office to two five year terms. It also contains a transitional provision under which the Moderator of the Common Cause Partnership is to become the first provincial archbishop. Article IX enumerates the provincial archbishop’s duties and responsibilities as follows—to convene the meetings of the Provincial Assembly, the Provincial Council, and the College of Bishops and to represent the province in the councils of the church. It makes provision for the assignment of additional duties and responsibilities to the provincial archbishop by canon.
This last provision was added in response to the criticism that the Governance Task Force was assigning in the canons all kinds of powers and functions to the provincial archbishop for which the constitution made no provision, interpreting these powers and functions as intrinsic to the office of provincial archbishop, that is, belonging to its essential nature, a view at odds with Article VIII.
The member dioceses, clusters or networks (whether regional or affinity-based) and those dioceses banded together as jurisdictions shall each retain all authority they do not yield to the Province by their own consent. The powers not delegated to the Province by this constitution nor prohibited by this Constitution to these dioceses or jurisdictions, are reserved to these dioceses or jurisdictions respectively.Under the provisions of Article VIII the powers and functions of officers of the province, including its archbishop, are delegated: The provincial archbishop has no powers and functions beyond those that the constitution and canons give him.
As we shall see, Archbishop Bob Duncan takes a different view. During his short tenure as provincial archbishop he has generally shown a low regard for the concepts of constitutionalism and the rule of law and arrogated to his office powers and functions that these governing documents do not give him.
The Episcopal Church has experienced a similar problem with its current Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori. This can be attributed in part to the influence of Anglo-Catholicism and its particular views of bishops and episcopacy and in part to the desires of these two individuals to expand the power and prestige of their respective offices, extend their influence, and to pursue their own agenda for the church.
Anglo-Catholic movement has strongly influenced how American Anglicans and Episcopalians view the episcopal office. This includes liberals as well as conservatives.
In the United Kingdom a number of judicial rulings affirmed the principle that English bishops are not above the law but must confirm to the law, whether Act of Parliament, church canon, or Prayer Book rubric, like any other minister. They have discretion only in those areas where the law grants discretion to them and then within the limits that the law set.
In the United States Anglo-Catholic bishops were left free to work out in practice their belief that bishops as successors to the apostles are the primary source of authority in the church and all other authority flows from them. It is noteworthy that this belief and its outworking conflict with the ecclesiology upon which the Episcopal Church was originally based.
In this ecclesiology the parish is the basic unit of the church and derives its authority directly from Christ. The diocese is a voluntary association of parishes deriving its authority from its constituent parishes and the national church is a voluntary association of dioceses deriving its authority from its constituent dioceses. The powers and functions of the bishop of a diocese are delegated, as are the powers and functions of the diocesan standing committee and the diocesan convention (or synod).
The failure of some parts of the Episcopal Church to respect the original ecclesiology of that province and to substitute a different ecclesiology is a major contributing factor to developments in the Episcopal Church.
The provincial archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America is NOT a metropolitan archbishop. Nowhere in Article IX or elsewhere in the constitution of the Anglican Church in North America is the provincial archbishop recognized to be the metropolitan of the province or to have metropolitical jurisdiction over the province. Such provisions are typically found in the governing documents of Anglican provinces in which the provincial archbishop is a metropolitan archbishop.
Article X is largely superfluous. It states that the College of Bishops is to elect the provincial archbishop from among its own members. This provision could have been included in Article IX.
The Archbishop will be elected by the College of Bishops [from among its own members].In my next article in this series I will be examining the provisions of the Anglican Church in North America’s canons applicable to the office of provincial archbishop. The canons in a number of areas vest in the office of provincial archbishop authority that exceeds that of a metropolitan of a province. As we shall see in subsequent articles, this tendency is not confined to the canons.
I think that you are missing an important point. The office of Bishop has been with the Church since the beginning. It is important that this office be maintained. You seem to suggest that the Bishop if a function of the parishes and give no standing to the idea that the Bishop is a Bishop for the whole Church. It is important to remember, the Bishop is a Bishop for the whole Church not just the jurisdiction which he serves.
ReplyDeleteThe ACNA has it problems, but I understand the desire to have a national identity. One needs only to look to the early 80s and the Continuing Church which soon became a maze of independent jurisdictions to understand why this is desirable. The approach of the ACNA is far from perfect in my thinking, but it has avoided many of the problems of the Continuing Church.
What I read as your approach to church government, is that is should be mostly congregational in nature. That all power starts with the membership of the parishes. It seems to lack any acknowledgment of authority which is inherent in the office of Bishop. I understand that some think ACNA is too centralized, I am not totally suggesting this is wrong. But your suggestion for church government is too far in the other direction.
Scott+
Scott,
ReplyDeleteIn the New Testament we find the office of elder-overseer of a local congregation but not the office of bishop of a diocese, much less archbishop of a province. The monarchical bishop is a post-apostolic development. Anglo-Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholic theologians, I must point out, have been criticized for reading more into the Patristic writings about this development than their authors intended, essentially reading later views into their writings.
Nowhere in my article do I advocate the elimination of the office of bishop. I do, however, call attention to the original ecclesiology of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA. In this ecclesiology the local congregation was the primary source of authority in the PECUSA, ultimately deriving its authority from Christ himself. Documentation of this ecclesiology is found in the writings of Bishop William White, the architect of the PECUSA. It is examined extensively in the writings of Bishop George Cummins and the founders of the Reformed Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century and more recently by George Conger, A. S. Haley, and Tim Smith. Paul Avis, Mark Burkill, Michael Green, and others in the United Kingdom have pointed out that the parish, not the diocese, is the basic unit of the Church of England.
The theory that bishops are bishops of the whole church is not germane to the topic of my article and therefore I saw no need to touch upon it. It is also a concept that means different things to different people. Its Scriptural basis, if it has one, is open to question. It is largely if not entirely based upon assumptions that all Anglicans, much less all Christians, do not share.
For example, what do you mean by “whole church”? The New Testament recognizes only the visible church—the local congregation in a specific place and time—and the invisible Church—the great crowd of witnesses in all places and times. Some New Testament scholars believe that the New Testament also may also recognize as the church loose associations of local congregations in a particular region. But this is as far as the New Testament goes. It does not recognize as the church para-church organizations like dioceses and provinces. These para-church organizations Joseph Lightfoot, Roger Beckwith, and others have shown are derived from the civil and military organizational structure of the Roman Empire.
You also have the problem that Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Roman Catholic Church do not recognize Anglican and Episcopal bishops as bishops. As far as that goes, they may on paper recognize each others’ orders but in practice they do not recognize the authority of each others’ bishops. For this reason you may have not only a Roman Catholic bishop in a particular locality but several Eastern Orthodox bishops, each representing a different branch of the Eastern Orthodox Church and in a number of cases a different jurisdiction of the same branch.
How then can a bishop be a bishop of “the whole church”? In actuality a bishop is only a bishop of those who recognize him to be a bishop. This recognition may be confined to a very small group beside himself and in some cases solely to himself.
While some opponents of the consecration of an non-celibate homosexual bishop appealed to the concept of a bishop being a bishop for the whole church in the case of Gene Robinson, those who opposed Robinson’s consecration on the grounds that he did not meet New Testament standards for an overseer-elder had a stronger case. As a practicing homosexual he should have never been made a deacon, much less ordained a presbyter or consecrated a bishop. From the standpoint of the New Testament he was unfit for all these offices. (Cont'd)
It is important to recognize that more than one school of thought about bishops and episcopacy exists in the Anglican Church. The views of the Anglo-Catholic movement are not shared by all Anglicans.
ReplyDeleteAnglicans do not agree on what authority, if any, is inherent in the office of bishop. They do not agree on the nature and character of the episcopal office itself.
The original ecclesiology of the PECUSA took the position that the authority of the episcopal office was delegated, as was that of the diocesan standing committee and the diocesan convention. All residual powers not delegated to the diocese and its various officers and bodies were retained by the local congregation.
The only concession made to the High Church views of Bishop Samuel Seabury was that the bishops were given the power to veto legislation adopted by the General Convention.
In the nineteenth century a number of Anglo-Catholic bishops in the PECUSA and the Church of England would argue that they were the successors to the apostles and therefore were the primary source of authority in not only in their dioceses but also in their provinces. All other authority was derived from them.
While this view gained enough support in the PECUSA to lead to changes in the constitutions and canons of a number of dioceses reflecting such thinking, as I point out in my article, that did not happen in the Church of England. The ecclesiastical courts and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council dismissed the claims of Anglo-Catholic bishops that they were entitled to exercise certain privileges and prerogatives conferred upon their office by church tradition. They ruled that bishops, like other ministers, were bound by the law. The law, not they, determined the nature and extent of the authority of their office. This is an important principle, which, when ignored, results in all kinds of problems as we have seen in the Episcopal Church, the Continuing Anglican Churches, the AMiA, and the ACNA.
I have so far not made any suggestions in this article series as to reforms that the ACNA needs to undertake. I have drawn attention in previous articles to the lack of accountability, openness, and transparency in the ACNA, the widening gap between the principles that its Governance Task Force touts and their application in its governing documents, its leadership’s disregard of the provisions of its governing documents, and the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a small elite. A number of these problems are also found in the Episcopal Church and raise serious questions about the claims of ACNA leaders to be spearheading a reform movement in North America.
Does Archbishop Jensen (of that notoriouosly AngloCatholic holdout, Sydney) know that archbishops are contrary to reformed Anglicanism?
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