By Robin G. Jordan
The 2008 Jerusalem Declaration upholds the historic Anglican
doctrinal and worship standard of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion and The Book of Common Prayer of 1662. These
formularies set out the protestant and reformed principles of the Anglican
Church, which are based upon the Scriptures. The Jerusalem Declaration
recognizes this standard as underpinning Anglican orthodoxy.
The GAFCON
Resource Group in Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, the official GAFCON commentary on the Jerusalem Declaration, emphasizes the
Thirty-Nine Articles’ agreement with Scripture and their acceptance as
constitutive of Anglican identity. It also emphasizes the 1662 Book of Common
Prayer as a true and authoritative standard against which other Anglican liturgies should be measured.
While these liturgies may deviate from the 1662 Prayer Book’s language and
structure, they should be close to its doctrine and liturgical usages.
In its affirmation of the historic Anglican doctrinal and
worship standard of the Articles and Prayer Book, the 2008 GAFCON Conference
seeks to contain if not undo the damage that the 1958 Lambeth Conference caused
to Anglican orthodoxy with its endorsement of the Report of the Sub-committee
on the Book of Common Prayer and its recommendations. Among these
recommendations was that the provinces of the Anglican Communion abandon the
Articles and the Prayer Book as Anglicanism’s doctrinal and worship standard. In
place of this standard the Anglican provinces should adopt a common structure
for the Holy Common service. Instead of being united by common doctrine and
liturgical usages the Anglican Communion would be united by the common structure
of the Holy Communion service.
The 1958 Lambeth Conference and the Report of the Sub-committee
on the Book of Common Prayer were both an expression of theological and
liturgical drift in the Anglican Communion and a contributor to that drift. The
conference’s endorsement of the report would condone the drift and give impetus
to it. With this endorsement and the subsequent drafting of a proposed common
structure for the Holy Communion service the Anglican Communion descended into
theological and liturgical chaos.
With the adoption of its first Book of Common Prayer in 1789
the Episcopal Church had already started down a path of deviation from the
doctrine and liturgical usages of the 1662 Prayer Book. Its 1789 Prayer Book
incorporated a modified version of the Prayer of Consecration from the 1764
Scottish Non-Juror Communion Office. The original version of this Consecration
Prayer was a major deviation from the 1662 Prayer Book and reflected the
doctrinal peculiarities of the Usager wing of the Scottish Non-Jurors.
Of the two wings of
the Scottish Non-Jurors the Usagers were the most extreme in doctrine and
liturgical usages. Among their doctrinal peculiarities was that they taught
that Christ had offered himself for the sins of the world not on the cross but
at the Last Supper.
With the adoption of a revised version of the Thirty-Nine
Articles in 1804 the Episcopal Church had also started down the path of
deviation from the doctrine of the Articles. This revision for a large part
retained the doctrinal provisions of the original Thirty-Nine Articles.
However, the Episcopal Church did not require its clergy to subscribe to these
provisions. Already at this very early stage the Episcopal Church was
displaying strong indications of theological and liturgical drift.
This drift did not come to fruition until the late
nineteenth century. By that time liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism had become
the major theological streams in the Episcopal Church. Anglo-Catholic churches
were using The Anglican Missal in its
various editions. Its conservative evangelical wing would break with the
Episcopal Church over the doctrine of the 1789 Prayer Book and the growth of
liberalism and Anglo-Catholicism. The only adherents of its revision of the
Thirty-Nine Articles would succeed from the Episcopal Church and form their own
denomination—the Reformed Episcopal Church.
The products of the Episcopal Church’s theological and
liturgical drift are the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the 1979 Book of Common
Prayer, and the Enriching Our Worship
series, particularly Enriching Our
Worship 1 with its gender-inclusive language and feminine imagery of God.
With each liturgical book the Episcopal Church has moved further and further
away from the doctrinal and worship standard of the Thirty-Nine Articles and
the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
The Reformed Episcopal Church has joined the movement away from the doctrinal and worship standard of the Anglican formularies with
its latest service books, which draw heavily upon liturgical material from the
1928 Prayer Book. The liturgies that the Anglican Church in North America has
produced to date also continue the movement of the American Church away from
this doctrinal and worship standard.
The doctrinal standard of the Anglican Church in North
America is its catechism, which is a hybrid of Arminian and Anglo-Catholic
theology with Anglo-Catholicism the stronger of the two theological strains,
and which permits the teaching of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theology.
Its worship standard is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer plus the whole raft of
service books that preceded the 1662 Prayer Book from the 1637 Scottish Prayer
Book to the late first century or early second century Didache. This standard
includes the partially-reformed 1549 Book of Common Prayer and the Sarum
Missal, a late Medieval Catholic Mass book, from which The Anglican Missal in its various editions takes texts and
rubrics.
The Anglican Church in North America’s College of Bishops
has endorsed the catechism and Texts for
Common Prayer, a liturgical book containing an Ordinal and services of
Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion. The doctrine of the rites in Texts for Common Prayer is
Anglo-Catholic and the ordination services and the services of Holy Communion in
this liturgical book may be interpreted as teaching Eastern Orthodox and Roman
Catholic doctrine.
By its endorsement of the catechism and Texts for Common Prayer the College of Bishops has shown that it
does not affirm the Jerusalem Declaration whatever the preamble to the Anglican
Church in North America’s constitution and the denomination’s website may say.
The two forms for the service of Holy Communion do, however, use the common structure
of the Holy Communion service that was the result of the 1958 Lambeth
Conference’s Sub-Committee on the Book of Common Prayer’s recommendations.
Rather than being a part of the solution, the Anglican Church in North America
with this endorsement has become a part of the problem.
The College of Bishops, while it is willing to accept the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans' recognition and support of the Anglican Church in North America, is not willing to further FCA aims. I hope that the one-sidedness of the Anglican Church in North
America’s relationship with the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is not lost
on FCA members outside of North America.
Photo: timotheosprologizes.blogspot.com
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