12 Ways the Anglican Church in North America Differs from the Episcopal Church in the USA

By Robin G. Jordan

The Anglican Church in North America in its constitution, its canons, and its other doctrinal statements takes the position of unreformed Catholicism ( Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, etc.) that bishops and episcopacy belong to “the essence of Christianity.” This view had its adherents in the US Episcopal Church at its founding – such as Bishop Samuel Seabury.

The Anglo-Catholic Movement that made major inroads into the US Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century espoused this view to the point that its adherents did not regard the ministers of evangelical denominations as having valid orders since their respective denominations did not have bishops. Since the ministers of these denominations were not in their estimation validly-ordained, they did not regard the congregations of such ministers as a part of the visible Church of Christ.

The Anglo-Catholic Movement’s adherents adopted measures that prohibited evangelicals in the clergy of the US Episcopal Church from fraternizing with their evangelical brethren outside that denomination. They rejected evangelical proposals to revise the American Prayer Book to comprehend evangelical views on baptism. Their rejection of these proposals was a departure from an earlier policy of comprehension evident in the 1789 Prayer Book in the rubrics permitting the omission of the signing of the cross on the newly-baptized’s forehead at baptism and the optional use of an alternative formula at the imposition of hands in the ordination service for presbyters. Anglo-Catholics in the Diocese of Kentucky refused to permit the Bishop of Kentucky to leave the diocese and assume the position of Presiding Bishop until he agreed in writing not to give full authority to the Assistant Bishop who was a conservative evangelical.

These actions were among a number of developments in the US Episcopal Church that eventually led to the secession of conservative evangelicals from the denomination in 1873 and their formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church. The US Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops, which was at the time dominated by Anglo-Catholic bishops, would adopt a resolution maintaining bishops and episcopacy were one of the four parts of the “sacred deposit” of the Christian faith in 1886.

Among the doctrinal positions that nineteenth century Anglo-Catholics would take in relation to bishops and episcopacy was that bishops as the successors to the apostles were the divinely-instituted governors of the Church. All authority in the Church flowed from them. What authority that was exercised by synods of clergy and laity was derivative. A bishop’s acceptance of the decisions of such gatherings was voluntary and non-binding. A bishop retained all authority even the authority that he delegated to these synods. Their decisions had no force unless the bishop approved their decisions.  

For the Anglican Church in North America the Articles of Religion (1571) and the Book of Common Prayer (1662) are not authoritative formularies that they are for historic Anglicanism and its modern-day counterpart—confessional Anglicanism. The wording of the ACNA fundamental declarations waters down their authority to nothing and substitutes other standards of doctrine and worship by specific reference or inference. Its attitude toward these formularies has its origins in the US Episcopal Church from which it broke away, the Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church Movements, and the more recent Convergence Movement.

The ideology that is observable in the Anglican Church in North America is more a conservative form of Episcopalianism than it is a variant of Anglicanism. There is clear continuity between attitudes toward bishops and episcopacy and the Anglican formularies that were evident in the US Episcopal Church from its founding and those that are evident in the ACNA today. The ACNA may have broken away from the US Episcopal Church but it has not entirely broken away from the ideology that dominated thinking in the US Episcopal Church from the nineteenth century on.

How then does the Anglican Church in North America differ from the US Episcopal Church? The ACNA differs from the US Episcopal Church in 12 ways:

1. The ACNA retains a traditional view of marriage and human sexuality. The ACNA does not ordain individuals who involved in same sex relationships. It does not bless or celebrate same sex relationships or authorize liturgies for blessing or celebration of such relationships. It does not lobby for the legalization and recognition of gay marriage.

2. While the ACNA has women deacons and presbyters, it does not have women bishops. Women’s ordination is an issue that divides the ACNA.

3. While bishops play a large role in the governance of the US Episcopal Church in practice if not on paper, bishops play a much larger role in the governance of the ACNA. There is a widening gap between the form of governance envisioned in the ACNA’s governing documents and its working form of governance. While the ACNA Provincial Council may be its official governing body, the real locus of power is its College of Bishops, which functions in many respects like a conference of bishops in the Roman Catholic Church.

4. The laity plays a much more limited role in the governance of the ACNA than they do in the US Episcopal Church. The largest representative body in the ACNA, its Provincial Assembly, has no legislative powers. It is a rubber stamp for the Provincial Council, which has increasingly become the puppet of the College of Bishops. The College of Bishops strongly influences the decisions of the ACNA task forces. Only legislation that enjoys the support of the College of Bishops makes it to the floor of the Provincial Council.

5. While modernism is not entirely absent from the ACNA, it does not dominate the ACNA in the way that it dominates the US Episcopal Church.

6. The ACNA is more creedal than the US Episcopal Church in its beliefs. Both denominations recognize the catholic Creeds. The ACNA adheres more closely to the teaching of the Creeds than does the US Episcopal Church. At the same time the US Episcopal Church does have pockets of creedalism, congregations and clergy that adhere to the Creeds’ teaching.

Note that I avoided describing the ACNA as more Scriptural than the US Episcopal Church in its beliefs. Due to the influence of Anglo-Catholicism in the ACNA and liberalism in the US Episcopal Church, both denominations may be characterized as not fully accepting the Bible as canon—as their guiding rule of faith and practice. Consequently, in the words of J. I. Packer “their Christian profession… is flawed.”  The GAFCON Theological Resource Group in The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future identifies Anglo-Catholicism and liberalism as the leading challenges to the authority of the Bible and the classic formularies in the Anglican Church since the nineteenth century (p. 32).

What is extremely weak in both denominations is Anglican confessionalism, which recognizes not only the teaching of the catholic Creeds but also the doctrine of the Articles of Religion and the Homilies. The Homilies are one of the earliest statements of the Protestant and Reformed principles of the Anglican Church. The Articles of Religion commend the Homilies as containing “Godly and wholesome doctrine.” Article 11 describes the Homilies as going into greater depth and detail about the important New Testament doctrine of justification by faith. The GAFCON Theological Resource Group in The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future stresses that “the recovery…of the classic doctrinal and liturgical formularies” is vital to “an adequate definition of Anglican orthodoxy" (pp. 32-33) The ACNA, like the US Episcopal Church, does not share that view.

7. The ACNA officially as a denomination has shown greater interest in church planting than the US Episcopal Church. Church planting has been at low ebb in the US Episcopal Church since the events of 2003. It did not receive the priority that it should have received in the abortive Decade of Evangelism in the last decade of the twentieth century. What new churches that the US Episcopal Church planted before 2003 were negatively impacted by the events of that year as were existing churches in that denomination. There have to my knowledge been no studies of how widespread interest in church planting is at the diocesan and local levels in the ACNA. Some dioceses and local churches are active in church planting; others are not. While the ACNA may showcase church planting networks like Green House, there is nothing to indicate that they are representative of church-planting throughout the denomination. The statistics that the ACNA has published are not particularly detailed or reliable. Some ACNA clergy doubt the need for research and accurate statistics. As long as this attitude prevails, we will not have a complete picture of church planting activity in the ACNA.

8. While we may not agree with the doctrinal views articulated or inferred in them and their use of gender-inclusive language, and feminine imagery for God, the commissions that prepared the 1979 Prayer Book and its supplements have done a much better job in putting together rites and services than the ACNA Liturgy and Common Prayer Task Force has done to date. It is noteworthy that the liturgies of the 1979 Prayer Book is what attracted evangelicals and charismatics to the US Episcopal Church in the closing decades of the twentieth century, not the 1549 Prayer Book, the 1928 Prayer Book, and the Anglican Missals. As well as showing a strong affinity with Roman Catholic teaching in its liturgies, the ACNA also displays a similar affinity with Roman Catholic liturgical practice. On the other hand, the liturgies of the 1979 Prayer Book reflect the influence of the Gallican and other non-Roman liturgical traditions of the Western Church and the influence of doctrinal and liturgical traditions of the Eastern Church.

9. The ACNA differs from the US Episcopal Church in its view of confirmation, penance, matrimony, ordination, and unction. The ACNA catechism describes them as “sacraments of the Church.” The US Episcopal Church catechism describes them as “sacramental rites.” The ACNA view of these rites is very close to if not identical with that of the Roman Catholic Church. See “The Sacraments of the Church” in The Catechism of the Catholic Church.

10. The ACNA countenances the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice in its liturgies. The US Episcopal Church officially subscribes to the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice that the 1958 Lambeth Conference commended to the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The ACNA also admits this doctrine as acceptable in its liturgies.

11. The ACNA takes a definite position on the ordo salutis, the order of the application of salvation, in its catechism.  It takes the position of Anglo-Catholics, Arminians, Wesleyans, and Pentecostals that faith precedes regeneration. While tying regeneration to faith and teaching the imparting of the Holy Spirit at baptism, the ACNA catechism does not entirely exclude baptismal regeneration. The ACNA catechism, however, does exclude positions of the conservative Evangelical school of thought in Anglicanism. These positions are:

1. Regeneration precedes faith.
2. Regeneration may occur before, at, and after baptism. A person may be regenerate without receiving the sacrament of baptism. A baptized person may be unregenerate.
3. The imparting of the Holy Spirit is not tied to baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit may be given apart from baptism.

These positions have a long history in the Anglican Church. They were held by the English Reformers themselves. They represent legitimate positions on regeneration, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit in Anglicanism.  Their exclusion is evidence of the anti-Reformed bias of the ACNA catechism, a bias that is not restricted to the catechism.

12. The ACNA in its trial eucharistic rites and its catechism countenance the omission of the filoque clause from the Nicene Creed.

If one is familiar with the science fiction concept of alternate time lines, the Anglican Church in North America is the Episcopal Church in the USA in an alternate time line. In the twenty-first century the two time-lines have intersected and merged, resulting in two Episcopal Churches, one conservative and the other liberal.  One has to wonder what would have happened if the Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church Movements had not made major inroads into the US Episcopal Church in the nineteenth century or the Anglo-Catholics had accommodated the evangelicals in US Episcopal Church in the same century and made room for them. Would the crisis in doctrine, morality, and leadership that led to what is the ACNA to break away from the US Episcopal Church have occurred in the first place? One also has to wonder what the ACNA might have become if its leaders had sought to comprehend conservative evangelicals rather than excluding them from that denomination. On its present trajectory the ACNA appears to be headed in the direction of becoming the latest Anglo-Catholic Continuing Anglican Church in North America. The older Anglo-Catholic Continuing Anglican Churches have not fared well on the North American mission field. Will the ACNA over the long haul do any better? Will it be able to sustain its much-touted initial growth spurt?

Also see

The Anglican Church in North America: Catholic but NOT Reformed

The Anglican Church in North America: Pulling Back the Curtain
The Anglican Church in North America and the Struggle over Anglican Identity
The Anglican Church in North America: Different Emphases?
The Anglican Church in North America - a Church for All Conservative North American Anglicans?

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