Assembly 2014: What’s to Celebrate?

By Robin G. Jordan

Formally organized in 2009, the Anglican Church in North America will be gathering ostensibly to celebrate its first five years of existence and the election of a new archbishop at St. Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on June 24-27. The ACNA will be holding a series of meetings: College of Bishops, Archbishop’s Cabinet and Executive Committee, Provincial Council, and Provincial Assembly.

Saint Vincent Archabbey and College were founded in 1846 by Boniface Wimmer, a Roman Catholic monk from the Benedictine Abbey of Metten in Bavaria. It now includes a Seminary and a Parish as well as an Archabbey and a College and prepares young men for the Roman Catholic priesthood as well as young men and women for various secular vocations. The Anglican Church in North America’s choice of venue for these meetings, as we shall see, may be a reflection of its present direction.

During the first five years of its existence we have seen the College of Bishops establish itself as the primary locus of power in the Anglican Church in North America. While the Provincial Council is the official governing body of the Anglican Church in North America, it does not operate independently of the College of Bishops. Whatever decisions it makes must first have the tacit approval of the bishops. The College of Bishops has arrogated to itself authority that is not vested in the College by the ACNA constitution and canons or recognized by these governing documents as inherent in that body. It has usurped the authority of the Provincial Council in a number of key areas. Now it is preparing to elect a new archbishop in solemn conclave, following a process that the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals uses to choose a new pope.

The similarity between the College of Bishops and the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the role they play in the governance of their respective denominations is noteworthy. The College of Bishops’ adoption of the same process for electing a new pope for choosing a new ACNA archbishop speaks volumes as to how it perceives itself. 

The Provincial Assembly, the body with the largest number of lay members, plays no role in the governance of the Anglican Church in North America other than to rubber stamp changes to the ACNA constitution and canons. Modeled on the Anglican Mission in America’s Winter Conferences, the Assembly is little more than a glorified pep rally.

The cost of registration for the Assembly and the cost for a day pass to the Assembly may be found here. The cost of lodging at St. Vincent’s College may be found here. At those prices the organizers of the meetings should be prepared to give a detailed accounting of how all monies are used.

Since its founding in 2009, the Anglican Church in North America has produced a number of theological statements in the form of a constitution, a set of canons, a “theological lens,” an ordinal, trial daily offices and eucharistic rites, and a catechism. All these documents show that what Douglas Bess has described as “an extreme form of Anglo-Catholicism” is thriving in the Anglican Church in North America at the level that these documents were produced and approved. This form of Anglo-Catholicism “seeks to reconstruct Anglicanism on the model of the great pre-Great Schism period of the eleventh-century, undivided Church.” The English Reformers, on the other hand, sought to reform the Church of England on the model of the New Testament Church. For authentic historic Anglicanism, the Bible is its touchstone, not “the early part of the High Middle Ages.”

Doctrines and practices that the English Reformers rejected on solid biblical grounds in the sixteen century are mandated or permitted in the ACNA formularies (not to be confused with the historic Anglican formularies). The ACNA catechism, for example, distorts or misrepresents the doctrine of the historic Anglican formularies. While permitting the teaching of Roman Catholic and even Eastern Orthodox doctrine, the catechism does not grant the same license to the teaching of the Protestant Reformed doctrine. It effectively excludes authentic historic Anglicanism and classical Anglican evangelicalism from the Anglican Church in North America.

Since its inception in 2009 the Anglican Church in North America has reportedly planted a number of new congregations. The exact number, size, and viability of these congregations are unknown. Among the unanswered questions about these congregations is how many of them are actually sharing the gospel as Anglicans have historically understood it and articulated it in the 1571 Articles of Religion and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Ordinal and how many of them genuinely subscribe to the New Testament and Reformation doctrine of justiification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

If you are a conservative evangelical who is a pastor in the Anglican Church in North America or a member of an ACNA congregation; subscribes to the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the historic Anglican formularies; takes seriously Christ’s great commission to go and make disciples; and believes that the governance of the church should be shared by the whole body of Christ, clergy and laity together, you have little if anything to celebrate. At this point in time you should be intensifying your efforts at networking with others who share your beliefs and values and developing and implementing plans for an ecclesial organization that embodies those beliefs and values. It should be clear by now that the Anglican Church in North America is NOT that organization. The ACNA does not respect what you believe and value, much less embody it.