How the Anglican Church in North America Is Creating Obstacles to Its Own Growth - Part 1

By Robin G. Jordan

If the growth figures for the Anglican Church in North America that Archbishop Robert Duncan reported in his Address on the State of the Church are compared with the growth figures for the combined populations of the United States and Canada, one is faced with the painful realization that the ACNA is a very small denomination with a very small population base. While its growth is not utterly dismal, it is far from stellar - whatever Archbishop Duncan said in the address. One must not forget that while Duncan was the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, it was part of his job to portray the ACNA in the best possible light and to encourage support of the denomination in and outside of the ACNA, throughout North America and beyond. Having played a leading role in its formation, he also has a vested interest in presenting the ACNA as a growing, successful venture.

Although Duncan has turned over the office of Archbishop to a successor, it remains to be seen whether he will fully relinquish the role of lead bishop that he established while he occupied that position in the ACNA hierarchy. From what I have seen he has already positioned himself to continue to influence the direction of the ACNA as a member of the College of Bishops, the Provincial Council, and the Governance Task Force.

Archbishop Foley Beach finds himself in the unenviable position of a senior pastor whose predecessor is a member of the church, which he has been called to lead, and continues to exercise substantial influence with the other church leaders. Whether Beach will be able to move out of Duncan’s shadow and lead the ACNA in a new direction is anyone’s guess. Relocating denominational headquarters to Georgia may be a wise move on Beach’s part.

The Episcopal Church in the USA, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Orthodox Anglican Church/Anglican Orthodox Church, and the Continuing Anglicans Churches all have relatively small population bases. (A population base is the segment of the population that provides support for a denomination.) They were unable to successfully expand their population bases. The successful expansion of a denomination’s population base is vital to its maintenance of healthy, long-term growth. In turn, the maintenance of healthy, long-term growth is essential to the further expansion of its population base.

The Episcopal Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church, and the Orthodox Anglican/Anglican Orthodox Church would spread beyond the borders of the United States but this kind of expansion did not involve an expansion of population base. The latter entails not only expanding geographically but also expanding across the whole cultural, ethnic, linguistic, racial, and social-economic spectrum of the general population.

Like new judicatories and new congregations, new denominations may enjoy an initial growth spurt. They then plateau and eventually decline. They create obstacles to their own growth. They are uninterested or unwilling to move past these self-imposed barriers and off the plateau. They may in time come to recognize these barriers for what they are. They may also discover that they have missed a critical window of opportunity and they are unable to move past them. They have locked themselves into a trajectory that leads only downward.

Among the obstacles that the Episcopal Church and the Continuing Anglican Churches created for themselves was they became elitist and exclusionary in their orientation. They became denominations designed to appeal to a particular kind of people.

The Episcopal Church’s elitist, exclusionary orientation is traceable to the influence of the Catholic Revival upon the High Church party in that denomination in the nineteenth century. While the denomination had exhibited elitist, exclusionary tendencies before the Catholic Revival, they would bloom under its influence.

Manifestations of the nineteenth century Episcopal Church’s elitist, exclusionary orientation included the insistence that bishops and episcopacy were essential to the church; the refusal to recognize the ordination of clergy of denominations without bishops; and a ban on the fraternization of Episcopal clergy with the clergy of such denominations. They also included the rejection of Evangelical proposals for the revision of the Prayer Book, and the dismissing of the Muhlenberg Memorial. The latter was a proposal submitted to the House of Bishops that would have opened a wider door for admission to the gospel ministry in the Episcopal Church. It urged the House of Bishops to permit the ordination of men from other Christian bodies without requiring them to surrender all the liberty in public worship to which they were accustomed. 

The same period in Episcopal Church history would see the secession of Bishop George David Cummins and conservative Evangelicals from the Episcopal Church and their formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church over the truculence of the High Church party and its attacks on Evangelical beliefs and practices.

By the first half of the twentieth century the elitist, exclusionary orientation of the Episcopal Church had led the denomination to develop an anti-Evangelical identity and to reject anything and everything associated with Evangelicalism. The Episcopal Church’s distaste for evangelism can be traced to this development.

The radical inclusivism of the twenty-first century Episcopal Church is actually a manifestation of the denomination’s elitist, exclusionary orientation. The Episcopal Church has become a denomination for liberal elites with a particular view of homosexuality and the place of homosexuals in the Church. Conservative Episcopalians who do not accept this view have been marginalized. Those who retain a biblical view of homosexuality are prevented from practicing what they believe or teaching it. Even privately holding such a view is identified as harmful and dangerous. Individuals who do so are vilified as bigoted and homophobic.

Prayer Book revision and women’s ordination would prompt an exodus of Episcopalians unhappy with these changes from the Episcopal Church in the 1970s. This exodus resulted in the abortive formation of the first Anglican Church in North America. The original ACNA was short-lived and quickly fragmented into a number of smaller Continuing Anglican Churches. The clergy and congregations that comprised this exodus were principally divided into two groups—those who were content with the Protestant nature of Anglicanism and those who wanted to make Anglicanism more Catholic. The second group would win the struggle for ideological dominance. The outcome was a multiplication of tiny denominations and a corresponding multiplication of barriers to growth. Among these obstacles was an elitist, exclusionary orientation.

What happened in the Episcopal Church and the Continuing Anglican Churches is relevant to the Anglican Church in North America. The ACNA shows clear signs of following the footsteps of these denominations.  Like these denominations, the ACNA exhibits elitist, exclusionary tendencies. They were evident during the Common Cause Partnership phase of the ACNA. They have become increasingly more pronounced over the past five years.

The elitist, exclusionary orientation of the Anglican Church in North America is primarily discernible in five areas—doctrine, governance, worship, clergy, and discipline. This orientation is not limited to these areas. It is evident in other areas of the life and ministry of the denomination. It presents a major obstacle to the expansion of the denomination’s population base as do specific barriers in these five areas.

In this article series we will examine the ways that the Anglican Church in North America is hampering its own growth. We will also take a look at how the ACNA might eliminate or reduce these self-imposed growth barriers.