Issues Dividing the Anglican Church in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

On Stand Firm Sarah Hey draws attention to a number of issues that divide the Anglican Church in North America. They include the selection of bishops for dioceses and networks by the College of Bishops opposed to their election by the dioceses and networks themselves and the consolidation of existing ACNA judicatories into geographically contiguous dioceses and the abolition of non-geographic affinity networks in the ACNA. The need for “catholicity” is given in both cases for doing away with diocesan/network election of bishops and affinity networks. The exact meaning of “catholicity,” however, is not clearly defined.

The election of a bishop by his diocese is a much older practice than selection of a bishop for a diocese by a pope (the Roman Catholic practice) and the selection of a bishop of a diocese by a province’s bench of bishops (the Eastern Orthodox practice). Historically both the clergy and laity of the diocese were involved in the bishop’s election. The only role that the other bishops of the province played was to confirm his election, which they did by consecrating the bishop-elect.

In the English Church the canons of the diocesan cathedral would come to represent the clergy of the diocese in the election of the bishop and the English monarch to represent the laity. Only candidates nominated or approved by the English monarch could be elected and only the English monarch could issue a call for the election of a new bishop.

The English monarch could and did suspend bishops, place them under house arrest, and appoint royal commissioners to carry out all but their sacramental responsibilities.

The Episcopal Church in its adoption of the practice of the election of the bishop of the diocese by the diocesan convention or the diocesan council (another name for a diocesan convention) was restoring an ancient practice in that denomination.

Arguably for the choice of a bishop and even an archbishop to be genuinely Anglican, the laity must play a substantial role in making that choice.

Non-geographic affinity networks are not a modern innovation. They have a long history in the Roman Catholic Church. In addition to parishes affiliated with territory-based dioceses, the Roman Catholic Church also has parishes affiliated with non-territory based religious orders.

Overlapping jurisdictions are common in the Eastern Orthodox Churches in which jurisdictions are ethnically and linguistically based and operate within the same geographic territory.

To this day the Church of England has what are know as "peculiars," places of worship outside the jurisdiction of the bishop and archdeacon of the diocese in which they are situated. They include archbishops' peculiars which are subject to the direct jurisidiction of an archbishop and royal peculiars which are subject to the direct jurisdiction of the monarch. Among the royal peculiars is Westminster Abbey. The whole deaneries of Jersey and Guernsey are also royal peculiars.

In From Geography to Affinity: How Congregations Can Learn From One Another Lyle E. Schaller, “often called America’s foremost church consultant, and the author of more than fifty books on church leadership during the last four decades,” makes a strong case for establishment of affinity networks—“groups of congregations that share particular goals and visions”—at the judicatorial level in denominations. He argues that judicatories should be formed around “a particular sense of mission or distinctive theological stands” rather than organizing them on the basis of state or regional boundaries.

The literature suggests that affinity networks enjoy greater success at extending the mission of congregations and making their ministries more effective than do territory-based judicatories. They are particularly effectual in planting new churches since the sharing of common goals and visions fosters a higher level of cooperation

Among the drawbacks of making state or regional boundaries the organizational principle by which congregations must align themselves within a denomination is that congregations so aligned often have very little in common. When disparate schools of thought are represented in a territory-based judicatory, factionalism is frequently the result. This can lead to one school of thought dominating the judicatory at the expense of the others. In the Episcopal Church, in dioceses in which liberals gained the ascendancy, conservatives were marginalized. Their marginalization contributed to the formation of the Anglican Church in North America.

The one issue that is bound to affect the continued existence of non-geographic affinity networks in the Anglican Church in North America is the eventual mandatory use of the ACNA rites and catechism, which, while they are generously permissive toward Anglo-Catholic, Roman-Catholic, and even Eastern Orthodox doctrine and practice, do not extend a similar license to Protestant, Reformed and evangelical doctrine and practice. This development will effectively rule out theologically-based affinity networks since ordination candidates and clergy (including bishops) will be required to conform to the worship and doctrine of the ACNA.

It must be noted that the Anglican Church in North America does not appear to recognize a common theological, liturgical, and ecclesiological outlook as a basis for the formation of an affinity network, only previous association. The guidelines for recognition of a new diocese or network state:

The new province is committed to organizing itself around the historic principle that parishes form around a bishop. Simultaneously, it recognizes that either geographic proximity or affinities because of relationship are equally valid ways of practicing that principle. The additional principles that follow are designed to respect the choice of each congregation for either affinity or geography as its organizing principle.

It should also be mentioned that the oldest parishes in North America, in what is now the United States, were not formed around a bishop. See George Conger’s article, “The Parish as the basic unit of the Church.”

In its insistence that ACNA parishes must form around a bishop, the Anglican Church in North America is promoting an Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology. Anglo-Catholics have historically viewed the parish as ancillary to the diocese while conservative evangelicals have historically viewed the diocese as ancillary to the parish.

Article 39 defines “the visible Church of Christ” as “a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.” It is not referring to a diocese but to a parish—to a congregation in a particular locality. Nowhere in the Scriptures, it must be, added, do we find any reference to dioceses. They are purely a human institution, modeled upon the civil administrative districts of the ancient Roman Empire.

The issues that divide the Anglican Church in North America are ultimately theological, liturgical, and ecclesiological.

Behind the movement to do away with diocesan/network election of bishops and non-territory based affinity networks appears to be a movement to impose a rigid uniformity upon the Anglican Church in North America. None of the theological statements that have been produced by the ACNA to date display any commitment to a policy of comprehension that would make ample room in the ACNA for Anglicans who are Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in doctrine and practice.

Further Reading:

George Conger: The Parish as the basic unit of the Church (2003)

Mark Burkill: Better Bishops (2009)