Does unreformed Catholicism have a place in the Anglican Church?

By Robin G. Jordan

Those who champion the recognition and acceptance of Anglo-Catholicism as a legitimate theological strand in Anglicanism make a number of arguments to support their claim. Among these arguments is the assertion that Anglicanism has evolved since the sixteenth century and modern day Anglicans cannot be expected to conform to sixteenth century standards of doctrine and practice. Anglicans have moved on. Anglicans have become broader in what they comprehend.

One of the problems that I have with this argument is that it is the identical argument used by those championing the recognition and acceptance of liberalism as a legitimate theological strand in Anglicanism. It defines the limits of Anglican comprehensiveness in terms of the present state of affairs in the Anglican Church, or perhaps more accurately in terms of what is perceived to be the current state of affairs in the Anglican Church. This perception may not involve the entire global Anglican community but may be confined to a particular segment of that community.

Making this argument is analogous to moving the boundary markers of a parcel of land and then claiming the locations to which the boundary markers have been moved mark the boundaries of that parcel of land. The Scriptures contain a strong warning against moving a neighbor’s property line (Deuteronomy 19:14). While this passage applies to land, the underlying principle has wider application.

If we adopt the logic of this argument and pursue that logic to where it leads, then Anglicanism is no more than whatever each successive generation of Anglicans decide what it is. We can assert as do liberal Anglicans that Anglicanism is a big tent that shelters all kinds of diverse and disparate views. These views do not have to agree with the teaching of the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Anglican formularies. They do not have to be even remotely Christian. They simply have to be recognized and accepted by one part of a particular generation of Anglicans as being, in their estimation, genuinely “Anglican.”

An accompanying argument is that the Thirty-Nine Articles, contrary to what the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans upholds in The Jerusalem Declaration, is not authoritative for Anglicans today. The Articles represent the views of the sixteenth century English Reformers. They do not represent the views of modern day Anglicans. They are not binding upon the consciences or minds of contemporary Anglicans on matters of doctrine and practice.

What this argument is basically asserting is that each generation of Anglicans is its own authority on such matters. They may look to church tradition, the Council of Trent, the Jesus Seminar, the College of Bishops, or a similar authority for guidance but ultimately they are their own authority.

If we study the history of the Anglican Church, we will see where this kind of thinking has led. In the nineteenth century it led into the morass of ritualism and unreformed Catholicism; in the twentieth century it led into the swamp of apostasy and unbridled heresy. In both cases it led away from the Scriptures and the Anglican formularies. The result has been the loss of the gospel in those quarters of the Anglican Church where this kind of thinking has prevailed.

We do not need to perform good works or to receive the sacraments in order to be reconciled to God. We do, however, need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ, to repent of our sins, and believe in him.

This is not to say that doing good to others, undergoing baptism, and sharing the Lord’s Supper with our fellow believers do not play a part in the life of a Christian. However, it is faith in Jesus Christ and faith in him alone that justifies us in God’s eyes.

Anglo-Catholics would like to claim Bishop John Jewel, the benchmark Anglican theologian Richard Hooker, and the Caroline divines as their antecedents. However, scholars in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have shown that these claims have no credible basis.

Whatever apologists for the Oxford Movement may claim, nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism was not an expression of historic Anglicanism. Rather the Oxford Movement broke down the hedge that separated Anglicanism from Roman Catholicism. The Tractarians and the Post-Tractarians introduced nineteenth century Roman Catholic doctrines and practices into the Anglican Church as well as revived pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic doctrines and practices. Nineteenth century Anglo-Catholicism was at its heart a rejection of the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement.

The success of the so-called Catholic Revival in the nineteenth century can be attributed to the temper of the times.  It was a period when antiquarianism, medievalism, and Romanticism gripped the Victorian imagination.

Does High Churchmanship of any kind have a place in the Anglican Church? In the nineteenth century the Tractarians would claim to represent the only genuine High Churchmen in the Church of England and would appropriate the term “High Church” for themselves and their movement.  They would claim that only their particular form of High Churchmanship was authentically “High Church.” This claim, like so many other claims of the Oxford Movement, was spurious.  As Adolph Hitler would write a century later in Mein Kampf, if you tell a lie often enough people come to believe it. Those telling the lie may come to believe it themselves.

A Protestant form of High Churchmanship existed in the Church of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--long before the Oxford Movement. The term “High Church” was first used in 1668. Those who practiced this form of High Churchmanship within the Church of England did not venture beyond the boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness that the Thirty-Nine Articles set. High Churchmanship of this kind has a place in the Anglican Church. It does not like the Anglo-Catholic variety disregard those boundaries.

In the fledgling Episcopal Church a different form of High Churchmanship would emerge very early in the history of that church. Those who practiced this form of High Churchmanship questioned the need for the addition of the Thirty-Nine Articles to the 1789 Prayer Book, believing that the doctrines of the church were sufficiently declared in the creeds and the liturgy in that book.

When a revised version of the Articles was finally adopted by the young church’s General Convention in 1801, clerical subscription was not required. Every Episcopal minister would be permitted to be his own judge of orthodoxy and his personal prejudices would be allowed to color his judgment.

High Churchmen in the Episcopal Church would find in the writings of the Oxford Movement opinions congenial to their own. “Oxford Divinity” as Bishop Charles McIlvaine described it would make rapid advances in the Episcopal Church. By the middle of the nineteenth century, to the alarm of Episcopal Evangelicals like McIlvaine, ritualism and unreformed Catholicism were flourishing in the Episcopal Church.

The High Church party would defeat in the General Convention an Evangelical proposal to regulate the ornaments of the church and the clergy. The High Church party-dominated General Convention would refuse to consider an Evangelical plea for revision of the 1789 Prayer Book. The Evangelicals requested the addition of an alternative baptismal service to the Prayer Book or alternative language to the existing baptismal service. The High Church party would secure the passage of a canon prohibiting Episcopal clergy from fraternizing with the clergy of other denominations and ministering outside the Episcopal Church. This canon was aimed at the Evangelical practice of associating with the clergy of evangelical churches and exchanging pulpits with them.

In the Diocese of Kentucky the ritualists would form a powerful voting block in the diocese’s standing committee and convention. They would refuse to allow Bishop Benjamin Bosworth Smith to take up residence in New York City as the Episcopal Church’s new Presiding Bishop until he agreed to prohibit Assistant Bishop George David Cummins from exercising his episcopal authority in his absence. The ritualists feared that Cummins would use this authority to suppress ritualism in the diocese.

Cummins would eventually leave the Episcopal Church and with other disaffected Evangelicals form the Reformed Episcopal Church. By 1900 the Episcopal Church would no longer have an Evangelical wing. The Evangelicals who did not leave the Episcopal Church in the 1870s had become Broad Churchmen.

By 1900 the earlier form of High Churchmanship found in the Episcopal Church had also disappeared, replaced by the Anglo-Catholic variety. The twentieth century would see a number of developments in Anglo-Catholicism in North America. One of these developments was the emergence of a liberal form of Anglo-Catholicism. Another development was the splitting of two groups of Anglo-Catholics from the Episcopal Church. One group would form what would become the Continuing Anglican Churches; the other group would migrate to the Roman Catholic Church. The opening decade of the twenty-first century has seen a third development. Two more groups of Anglo-Catholics have split from the Episcopal Church. One group would play a role in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America; the other would migrate to the Roman Catholic Church.

The group of Anglo-Catholics that split from the Episcopal Church and played a role in the formation of the Anglican Church in North America is seeking to shape the doctrine and worship of the ACNA. It has found an ally in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Reformed Episcopal Church. The emergence of this wing is a recent development in the REC. It has been influential in reshaping the doctrine and worship of that ecclesial body. What we are seeing in the ACNA and the REC is a resurgence of ritualism and unreformed Catholicism in what passes for North American Anglicanism.

It is this kind of High Churchmanship that really has no place in the Anglican Church. It is not only outside the boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness set by the Thirty-Nine Articles but also it is contrary to the spirit of authentic historic Anglicanism. Anglo-Catholics need to choose whether they are going to be Anglicans or unreformed Catholics. They cannot be both. To be Anglican is to accept the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies. To be Anglican is to uphold a reformed faith in a reformed church. Those who style themselves as “Anglo-Catholics” are, by no stretch of the imagination, doing either. 

Also see

The Place of the Caroline Divines in Classical Anglicanism

Photo: layanglicana.org