Isn't it time to make a SECOND PROVINCE a reality?
I originally posted this article then entitled "Authentically Anglican"on May 4, 2010, five years ago. In the article I describe a proposal that I fielded around the time the provisional constitution and canons of the Anglican Church in North America were adopted and the draft constitution and canons were made public.By Robin G. Jordan
I submitted the proposal to a number of Common Cause Partnership leaders. I only received a response from two of these leaders. Bishop Jack Iker demanded to know who had authorized the proposal. Bishop Royal Grote who is now Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church but who was at the time director of communications for the REC and screened external communications with the REC bishops and who was also a member of the Common Cause Governance Task Force denied that he was the right person to contact.
In their responses both Bishop Iker and Bishop Grote showed that had a vested interest in what would eventually become the governing documents of the Anglican Church in North America and form its doctrinal foundation. These doctrinal statements and subsequent ACNA doctrinal statements have revealed that its doctrinal foundation is unreformed Catholic, not Anglican.
As I have shown in a number of articles, the Anglican Church in North America is not only officially unreformed Catholic in its teaching and practice but also in its form of government and structure is both on paper and in practice closer to a subdivision of the Roman Catholic Church than that of a typical Anglican province.
For those who may be interested in knowing more about the basis of the proposal that I outline in the article, it was developed from my study of the constitutions and canons of a number of Anglican provinces—particularly those of the Anglican Church of Australia and the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of America; the governing documents of the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe and the Episcopal Church’s Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe; the history of the English Episcopal Chapels in Scotland; the history of the Reformed Episcopal Church in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, the Free Church of England in the United Kingdom, and the Church of England in South Africa in South Africa and adjoining African nations; the history of what are known as “peculiarities” in the Church of England—churches, chapels, and even a deanery that are independent of the diocese in which they are located; and the writings of the late Lyle Schaller and others on affinity networks as a way of resolving tensions arising from theological diversity in a denomination.
More recently I have called for the restructuring of the Anglican Church in North America and the formation of a second province in the Anglican Church in North America, a province that is faithful to the teaching of the Bible, loyal to the doctrine and principles of the Anglican formularies, and committed to the fulfillment of the Great Commission, a province that has a synodical form of government and whose bishops have no powers or prerogatives other than those expressly conveyed to them by the province’s governing documents and are subject to limitations on their terms of office and other forms of accountibility.
If you read the letters, sermons, and other works of such
sixteenth century Church of England luminaries as Thomas Cranmer, John Hooper,
Thomas Becon, John Foxe, Edmund Grindal, John Jewel, Alexander Nowell, Thomas
Rogers, and John Whitgift you comes away with the distinct impression that they
would not be welcome in the Anglican Church in the North America. If you read
the writings of later Anglicans luminaries such as Charles Simeon, George
Whitfield, William Grimshaw, Henry Venn, Charles P. McIlvaine, J. C. Ryle,
Dyson Hague, W. H. Griffith Thomas, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, Leon Morris,
William Broughton Knox, and contemporaries such as Reform’s David Holloway,
Latimer Trust’s Mark Burkill, and Roger Beckwith, you are forced to conclude
that they would also would not be welcome in the ACNA. They are not only too
Protestant, too evangelical, and too reformed for the ACNA but they also take
doctrinal positions that contradict those taken by the ACNA Fundamental
Declarations and canons. In accordance with the ACNA understanding of the
Christian faith and the “Anglican Way” as laid out in the Fundamental
Declarations, they are not orthodox Christians, much less Anglicans. The only
way that they might be welcomed is if they bit their tongues, did not make a
fuss about the beliefs and practices sanctioned in these documents, pledged
their unquestioning and unqualified support to the ACNA, and became one of the
ACNA’s tame evangelicals.
In various comments to me Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA have
made it quite plain to me that they do not relish the prospect of any real
evangelicals in the ACNA. Some but not all are happy to share the ACNA with the
tame variety—those who are open to Anglo-Catholic doctrine and practice or at
least not critical of them. They are fairly docile and easy to manage. But real
evangelicals—those who might call for a central place for the Article of
Religion in the teaching and life of the church and even subscription to the
Articles—they have no desire to give them even a chair in the back of the room,
much less at the table. Real evangelicals are far from tractable. Real
evangelicals in the ACNA would not only make the para-church organization much
less agreeable to Anglo-Catholics but also it would pour cold water on their
dreams for the future of the ACNA, for a Anglican province that is Catholic in
doctrine, order, and practice.
Clergy and church members of the ACNA who define themselves
as “evangelicals” may take exception to my drawing of a distinction between
tame evangelical and real evangelical but making this distinction gets my point
across to the reader of this article. Real evangelicals are rightly so called.
They show evangelical spirit. Their evangelicalism has not been diluted. They
are not part evangelical and part something else. Much of what passes for
evangelicalism in the ACNA would have in the nineteenth century been classified
as “liberal evangelicalism.” Nineteenth century liberal evangelicals in the
Church of England were open to Anglo-Catholic doctrine and practice. In the
Protestant Episcopal Church they were absorbed by the liberal Broad Church
movement. Many of the ACNA’s tame evangelicals are more Broad Church than
evangelical. They are liberals (albeit the radicalism of the liberals in The
Episcopal Church makes them to appear conservative.)
If the leading Anglicans that I mentioned earlier in this
article would not be welcome in the Anglican Church in North America, how then can
the Anglican Church in North America represent itself as “Anglican”” How can
the 4GSSE recognize the ACNA as being the true heirs of the Anglican tradition
on the North American continent? To argue that Anglicanism has changed since
the sixteenth century is to adopt the same argument as The Episcopal Church. If
that argument does not hold water for TEC, it does not hold water for the ACNA.
In both cases it is a leaking sieve.
To be regarded as genuinely Anglican, the Anglican Church in North America must include real evangelicals in the mix, not just tame ones. They represent a
major theological stream in Anglicanism and are from a standpoint of doctrine
and practice the successors to the English Reformers and classical Anglicanism.
How then do we address the concerns of our Anglo-Catholic
friends who are far from pleased by the possibility of real evangelicals in the
ACNA? Shortly after the adoption of the provisional ACNA constitution I put
forward a proposal for an alternative constitution for the ACNA. It would have
grouped congregations in the ACNA into convocations by theological affinity
rather than geographic proximity. The idea was that each theological affinity
group represented in the ACNA would have one or more convocations, each with
its own bishop. They would have formed parallel networks of congregations and
ministries, sharing the same territorial jurisdiction (see David Holloway’s
Reform discussion paper, “The Reform of the
Episcopate and Alternative Episcopal Oversight”). Under this plan a
convocation might consist of five or more congregations of the same theological
affinity group that are in close proximity to each other or widely scattered,
depending upon the numerical strength of the particular theological affinity
group. I envisioned that over a period of time several convocations of the same
theological affinity group would be established in different regions of Canada
and the United States.
My more recent thinking is to rename these convocations as
“dioceses.” Each diocese would be a voluntary association of congregations of
the same theological affinity group with its own diocesan bishop and diocesan
conference. A diocese would not be so much a geographic district as the sphere
of authority of a particular bishop and conference. Diocesan bishops would
normally be the rector or senior pastor of a congregation as in the Church of
England in South Africa.
The dioceses would in turn be grouped into convocations by
theological affinity. A meeting of the convocation would be held annually and
would consist of the bishops and clerical and lay representatives of the
constituent dioceses. The convocation would meet as a single body except when
there was a call for a vote by orders. It would make canons, confirm the
election of diocesan and assistant bishops, and approve the convocation’s
budget and program. It would elect a part-time president bishop of the
convocation from the bishops of the constituent dioceses and an executive
council from the diocesan bishops and diocesan clerical and lay representatives.
The executive council would conduct the business of the convocation between its
meetings. The president bishop would preside at the meetings of the convocation
and the executive council and perform such other duties as prescribed by the
canons of the convocation or the province. The president bishop of the
convocation would be normally the bishop of a diocese as in the Anglican Church
of Australia.
Each convocation would in turn be represented in a
provincial synod by the bishops and elected clerical and lay representatives of
the dioceses of the convocation. The provincial synod would elect a part-time
president bishop and a provincial executive council. The part-time president
bishop would preside at the meetings of the provincial synod and the provincial
executive council and perform such other duties as prescribed by the canons of
the province. The office of part-time president bishop would be rotated among the
convocations. The president bishop of the province would normally be the bishop
of a diocese.
Under this proposal the fundamental declarations would be
much more general than the present ones and use theologically neutral language.
The canons would be clearer and more detailed and would also not be aligned
with the doctrine of any particular theological affinity group. Certain
categories of the canons affecting the whole church would require the assent of
a diocesan conference as in the Anglican Church of Australia before a canon in
these categories would be binding upon the diocese. A diocesan conference would
be able to rescind this assent.
In respect to the ordination of women and the Articles of
Religion the church would be a microcosm of the Anglican Communion. Under this
plan each convocation would adopt its own policy on women’s ordination. The
constitution would limit bishops to male presbyters and would require the
assent of all the dioceses to change this provision. The constitution of the
Anglican Church of Australia has several provisions that require such assent
for their amendment. While the church would as a whole recognize the Articles
with the other historic Anglican formularies as classical standards of
Anglicanism, each convocation would decide how central the Articles would be to
the teaching and life of the convocation. This is not an ideal solution but it
is a workable one.
Eucharistic sacrifice and justification are thornier issues
to address but there needs to be some kind of agreement within the limits of
the Articles upon the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice and the means by which
we are accounted righteous before God. Clergy in the ACNA cannot go on
preaching and teaching two different gospels. This still leaves considerable
freedom of thought in the area of eucharistic presence. There also needs to be
some kind of agreement upon the rites of confirmation, matrimony, reconciliation
of a penitent, anointing of the sick, and ordination. Anglo-Catholics view
these rites as sacraments while real evangelicals do not. This is not to say
that God does not show his goodwill and favour towards us through these rites
or that God cannot work in us what he purposes through them. Rather God does
not automatically confer grace through them, change a person’s status in
relation to himself, or mark a person’s character through them. Such agreements
need to be acceptable not just to Anglo-Catholics and the tame evangelicals but
also to the real evangelicals.
It is pointless to hold church planting conferences and to
urge the churches of the ACNA to focus their attention upon church planting
instead of doctrine. The result may be more ACNA churches. But they will be
churches with no common theology of salvation. They will not preach a common
message of grace.
Several years ago a new model of the local church was
presented to the General Convention delegates of The Episcopal Church. This
model envisioned a church whose members held a wide diversity of theological
views but were united by the Sunday celebration of the Holy Eucharist and
mission. The latter was defined in terms of ministry to the poor, social
justice, world peace, etc. The working model of the church being advanced by
Archbishop Robert Duncan is not too different from this model but on a larger
scale. The unifying factor, however, is mission defined in terms of planting
new churches.
This model is really not new. It is simply not previously
known to North American Anglicans. The Congregationalists tried to implement a
similar model of the church in the nineteenth century. The unifying factor was
a common devotion to Jesus Christ, as each member of the church understood him.
This particular model sought to bring together those who believed that Jesus
was a great religious teacher with those who believed he was God incarnate. The
model did not work. Conservative Congregationalists formed conservative
congregations; liberal Congregationalists formed liberal congregations. These
congregations in turn formed associations that reflected their particular
theological leanings.
A common dedication to establishing new churches is not
enough to unite a denomination. It needs a common theology—agreement on the
essentials and freedom on the non-essentials. This theology needs to be
grounded in the teaching of the Scriptures and the Reformation if it
is to be authentically Anglican.
Also see
A Proposal for the Restructuring of the Anglican Church in North America – Part 2
A Proposal for the Restructuring of the Anglican Church in North America
Also see
A Proposal for the Restructuring of the Anglican Church in North America – Part 2
A Proposal for the Restructuring of the Anglican Church in North America
No comments:
Post a Comment