A New Anglican Jurisdiction in the United Kingdom?

By Robin G. Jordan

If one of the outcomes of the Primates Meeting this week is the formation of a new Anglican jurisdiction in the United Kingdom, my hope is that this new Anglican jurisdiction is that—an Anglican jurisdiction, and that it does not follow in the footsteps of the Anglican Church in North America. My hope is that the new jurisdiction genuinely affirms the centrality of the Bible, the English Reformation, the Protestant Elizabethan Settlement, and the historic Anglican formularies, including the Books of Homilies, to Biblically orthodox Anglican doctrine, order, and practice.

My hope is that the new jurisdiction, unlike the Anglican Church in North America, makes ample room in its Canons, its Catechism, its Prayer Book, and its Ordinal for the doctrinal beliefs and worship practices of conservative Evangelicals in the jurisdiction. Indeed my hope is that the new jurisdiction becomes a strong champion for conservative Evangelicals in the United Kingdom, in the United States, and around the world.

Rather than looking to the African bishops “to help upbuild a Confessing Church and a new Anglican jurisdiction” in the United Kingdom, confessing Anglicans in the British Isles need to look to God, to his Word, and their own Reformation heritage. The experience of the Anglican Church in North America has demonstrated the truth of God’s Word, “Put not your trust in princes…” (Psalm 146: 3-5).

The leaders of the African Church have not done a very good job of guiding the Anglican Church in North America back to the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies. After having identified Anglo-Catholicism along with liberalism as a major challenge to the authority of the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies in the Anglican Communion, they have indulged the Anglican Church in North America’s departure from the Protestant and Reformed principles of the Anglican Church based upon the Holy Scriptures and set out in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal of 1662. They have turned a blind eye to its de facto rejection of these principles and its denial of official standing to the beliefs and practices of confessing Anglicans in that jurisdiction who are faithful to the same principles. They have not shown themselves to be the strong champions of Biblical Anglicanism that many in the United Kingdom still believe them to be. Rather than being a showcase of their success in this regard, the Anglican Church in North America is a glaring example of their failure.

To be fair to the African bishops, most of the clergy and laity that forms the Anglican Church in North America come from the Episcopal Church, a nominally Anglican jurisdiction that strayed from the Anglican Way very early in its history and has been straying further and further away from it ever since. In the nineteenth century the Anglo-Catholic Movement and the Catholic Revival would cause it to stray in one direction; in the twentieth century what Les Fairfield described as “Catholic Modernism” would cause it to stray in another direction. Despite its professed acceptance of the catholic creeds, its traditional view of marriage and human sexuality, and the way it came into existence, the Anglican Church in North America is an offshoot of the Episcopal Church and has the Episcopal Church’s DNA. For want of a better word, the Anglican Church in North America is tainted.

The African Church is not only separated from the Anglican Church in North America by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean but also by cultural, historical, and linguistic differences. In overseeing the Anglican Church in North America in its early formative stage the African Church relied heavily upon indigenous leaders who did not fully accept the Bible as the Church’s rule of faith and practice and who did not have a strong commitment to the historic Anglican formularies.  A number of these leaders had different priorities from the African Church. The US delegation to the first GAFCON Conference was the only delegation to question the confessional nature of historic Anglicanism.

These leaders of the Anglican Church in North America have their own aspirations. They want to become the center of influence in the global Anglican community. They aspire to reconstruct the Anglican Church, not just in North America but globally, along the lines of the supposedly undivided Church of the early High Middle Ages before the East-West Schism in the eleventh century. In a speaking tour of the British Isles in 2008 the Anglican Church in North America’s first Archbishop called for a new settlement to replace the Protestant Elizabethan Settlement—a new settlement that would give the Anglican Church an unreformed Catholic identity. He would subsequently promote the use of the unreformed Catholic Catechism of the Anglican Church in North America in the member provinces of the Anglican Communion particularly those in the Global South.

My hope is that the African Church and the new Anglican jurisdiction established in the United Kingdom, assuming that one will be established, will learn from the mistakes made in North America and will avoid them in the United Kingdom.

The African Church still has time to redeem itself in North America, supporting the establishment of a Biblically orthodox Anglican alternative to the Anglican Church in North America in the United States and Canada—a convocation of Anglican churches in which the Bible, the English Reformation, the Protestant Elizabethan Settlement, and the historic Anglican formularies occupy a central place in its doctrine, order, and practice.