The Dismal State of North American Anglicanism

By Robin G. Jordan

The sermon that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church preached at All Saints Church in Curaçao in the diocese of Venezuela has elicited a harsh response on the Internet. George Conger took note of this response in his article, “Diversity, not Jesus, saves says Presiding Bishop,” earlier in the week.

Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori’s theological views come as no surprise. Nor does the harsh response from conservative quarters to her views. From a doctrinal standpoint the Presiding Bishop is heterodox at best.

While you are not likely to hear anyone in the Anglican Church in North America equating salvation with diversity, you are likely to hear an association made between salvation and the sacraments and good works. This association, however, is no more Biblical than Bishop Schori’s equation of salvation with diversity.

The Articles of Religion, also known as the Thirty-Nine Articles, historic Anglicanism’s confession of faith, reflect the Biblical and Reformation view of salvation. We are saved by grace alone by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

In its choice of language the Fundamental Declarations of the Anglican Church in North America evade acknowledging and recognizing the full authority of the Articles of Religion as Anglicanism’s confession of faith. When the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement were drafted, members of the North American delegation questioned the central place that these documents give to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The constitution of the Anglican Church in North America relegates its affirmation of the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement to its preamble where the affirmation forms a part of the narrative describing the founding of the ACNA and is open to interpretation as not being binding upon that ecclesiastical body.

The evasive language of the Anglican Church in North America’s Fundamental Declarations in relation to the Thirty-Nine Articles can be attributed to two influences in the ACNA—Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism. These two influences have dominated North American Anglicanism—particularly in the United States but also in Canada—since the nineteenth century. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, while it adopted a revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles, did not require its clergy to subscribe to this revision of the Articles.

Anglo-Catholicism is manifest in two forms in the Anglican Church in North America—in traditional Anglo-Catholicism with its roots in the nineteenth century Tractarian Movement and Roman Catholicism and in “three streams, one river” ideology with its roots in the twentieth century Ancient Future/Convergence Movement. In the Ancient Future/Convergence Movement the Catholic stream flows the strongest and its waters dilute the waters of the evangelical and Pentecostal streams. Indeed they are little more than gentle eddies near the banks of the river. The Ancient Future/Convergence Movement might be more accurately described as the Catholic Resurgence.

Even those who identify themselves as “evangelicals” in the Anglican Church in North America have been strongly influenced by Anglo-Catholic doctrine and practice. Anglo-Catholic clergy and congregations are flourishing in the Reformed Episcopal Church, which was established in a reaction to the growing influence and spread of Tractarianism in the nineteenth century and to what was seen as incipient Roman Catholic theology in the 1789 Book of Common Prayer. The Reformed Episcopal Church is a founding entity of the Anglican Church in North America and a sub-province of that ecclesiastical body.

While we tend to associate liberalism with the Episcopal Church, liberalism is present in the Anglican Church in North America. In the Anglican Church in North America liberalism primarily takes the form of what an earlier generation would have described as Broad Church views. One of its manifestations is the tolerance of Anglo-Catholic doctrine and practice.

In The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future the GAFCON Theological Resource Group, chaired by Nigerian Archbishop Nicholas Okoh, identifies two major challenges to the rule of the plain sense of Scripture and the classic formularies in Anglicanism. (The Way, the Truth, and the Life was written as a handbook to serve as a theological introduction and definition for GAFCON.) These two challenges are Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism.

If GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans were launched in response to the challenges of Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism to the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies, one is prompted to ask why GAFCON and the FCA have not been bolder in confronting them in the Anglican Church in North America. If Anglican Church in North America was intended to restore the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies to North American Anglicanism and to provide an authentic Anglican alternative to the Episcopal Church, it has been a abysmal failure. While some may argue that the Anglican Church in North America is planting new churches and growing while the Episcopal Church is not, its church planting efforts and growth deserve—no, require closer scrutiny. What kind of churches is the ACNA planting? At what population segments are these churches targeted? What gospel are they proclaiming? What kind of growth are they experiencing—transfer growth, conversion growth? One is also prompted to ask whether the supporters of the Anglican Church in North America outside of the United States and Canada are confusing social conservatism with Anglican orthodoxy.

There is mounting evidence that the Anglican Church in North America is moving in a more Anglo-Catholic direction and away from the rule of the plain sense of Scripture and the classic formularies. This evidence is found in its governing documents, its Ordinal, and the actions and statements of its leaders, and, I suspect, will in time be found in its Catechism and its Prayer Book. There is also a movement within the Anglican Church in North America to move not only that ecclesiastical body in a more Anglo-Catholic direction but also GAFCON, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, and the Global South Anglican Churches. The Episcopal Church has tried to export its brand of liberalism to the Global South. This particular movement seeks to export its brand of Anglo-Catholicism. Both represent threats to the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies in global Anglicanism.

There is a clear need for the establishment of a Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church in North America, a church that upholds the Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical character of the Anglican Church as well as fully supports the authority of Scripture and the classic formularies against the challenges of Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism, a church that is wholeheartedly committed to proclaiming the gospel to all segments of the population in the United States and Canada and to planting gospel-centered churches throughout North America, a church whose primary focus is reaching and evangelizing the lost, discipling them, and enfolding them into new churches, not being bigger than the Episcopal Church. The time has come to launch REACH North America.