By Robin G. Jordan
The Anglican Church in North America’s College of Bishops
has since its formation shown a consistent pattern of favoring the denomination’s
Anglo-Catholic wing and unreformed Catholic teaching and practices over the
denomination’s confessional Anglican wing and confessional Anglicanism. The
College of Bishops has extended not only recognition and affirmation but also
protected status to the convictions of the Anglo-Catholic wing.
The message that the College of Bishops is conveying is that
it has no respect for the convictions of confessional Anglicans and ultimately
for confessional Anglicans as Christians. The College of Bishops is essentially
saying that confessional Anglicans and their convictions are not important
enough in the scheme of things to be given even the slightest consideration.
Confessional Anglicans are as far as the College of Bishops
is concerned nobodies—people of no importance. This is how the College of
Bishops as a body perceives them.
Now the Anglican Church in North America’s Anglo-Catholic
wing is supposed to be confessional Anglicans’ brothers and sisters in Christ,
their partners and fellow workers in mission and ministry. This is what
Archbishop Iliud Wabukala, GAFCON chairman, called them in his latest pastoral
letter. But it is quite obvious that the denomination’s Anglo-Catholic wing do
not see confessional Anglicans this way.
Treating the convictions of Biblically faithful Anglicans as
not worthy of consideration is to marginalize them, to treat them as
individuals of no worth. Whatever position confessional Anglicans may occupy in
a particular diocese, network, or other para-church organization, the position
that they occupy in the denomination is that of a marginalized group. There is
no escaping this fact. Their convictions do not at the denominational level
enjoy the recognition, affirmation, and protected status that the convictions
of Anglo-Catholics and those who share their convictions do. By no stretch of
the imagination can the Anglican Church in North America be regarded as
genuinely comprehensive even where theologically-conservative Anglicans are
concerned.
While it is possible for now for para-church organizations
in the Anglican Church in North America to adopt a more confessional Anglican
stance, the denomination’s governing documents do not contain any provisions
that actually sanction such action. Here again we enter the murky realm of
unwritten understandings which only bind those who chose to accept their terms.
Adopting such a stance does not extend recognition and affirmation of the
convictions of confessional Anglicans beyond the para-church organization adopting
it. It certainly does not extend protected status to confessional Anglican convictions
or to those who hold such convictions within the denomination nor reduce or
eliminate the marginalization of confessional Anglicans. It is at best--as
important as it may be--an inadequate measure.
The only way to extend recognition, affirmation, and
protected status to confessional Anglicanism in the Anglican Church in North America and to lessen and
ultimately end the marginalization of confessional Anglicans is to form a
second province within the Anglican Church in North America—a province that in
its teaching and practices is closely aligned to the Holy Scriptures and the
Anglican formularies and which has its own rites and services, catechism,
bishops, and synodical government. The alternative is to undertake a major
overhaul of the denomination’s governing documents and other doctrinal
statements and to replace a substantial number of its top leaders.
These actions would require the cooperation of the College of Bishops and the denomination’s Anglo-Catholic wing and consequently has very little likelihood of happening. They have no incentive to undertake such actions.
These actions would require the cooperation of the College of Bishops and the denomination’s Anglo-Catholic wing and consequently has very little likelihood of happening. They have no incentive to undertake such actions.
Due to conditions in the Anglican Church in North America
the formation of a second province within the denomination requires independent
action. It is a reality that Anglicans whose convictions are confessional must
face.
Confessional Anglicans must also go about establishing this
second province in such a way that the College of Bishops and the denomination’s
Anglo-Catholic wing will have no option but to accept its existence or reveal
their true colors. Their acceptance of the second province would offer definite
proof that they are confessional Anglicans’ brothers and sisters in Christ,
their partners and fellow workers in mission and ministry, which Archbishop
Wabukala would like us to believe that they are.
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