By Robin G. Jordan
Archbishop Wabukala and the GAFCON Primates give the
distinct impression that they do not appreciate the seriousness of the present
state of affairs in the Anglican Church in North America and its implications
for the renewal of biblical Anglicanism in North America. They appear so
obsessed with the Episcopal Church to the point that they
are not paying attention to developments in the ACNA. Or they are choosing to
ignore these developments.
Either way their failure to address these developments
negates any statement that they make about the need to support and recognize
Anglicans who have been excluded from their provinces or dioceses, and the duty
to reject the authority of churches and leaders who hold and teach erroneous
doctrine. It raises serious questions about the depth of their commitment to
the renewal of biblical Anglicanism.
Part of the problem may be that the GAFCON Primates depend
upon unreliable sources for information about the ACNA. Part of the problem may
be that they do not know how they should respond to what little they do know. Part
of the problem may be that they have too much happening at home to give their
full attention to what is going on in the ACNA.
The GAFCON Primates could correct this impression if they
publicly extended their recognition and support not to the ACNA but to
convictional Anglicans in North America, both in and outside the ACNA. This
includes encouraging and supporting the formation of a second alternative Anglican
province in North America, one that fully accepts the authority of the
Bible and the Anglican Formularies, genuinely affirms the Jerusalem
Declaration, and squarely stands in the heritage of the English Reformation and
the Protestant Elizabethan Settlement. It would do a great deal to restore
their credibility as champions of biblical Anglicanism.
While the Anglican Church in North America is nominally Anglican,
the ACNA is far from Anglican in conviction, based on its formularies. The
formation of a second alternative Anglican province that is both Anglican in
name and in conviction would help to highlight this fact. Its establishment
might also prompt the present ACNA leadership to rethink their current policy
toward convictional Anglicans and to take steps to make the jurisdiction more
comprehensive.
The formation of such a province would provide North
American Anglicans with a much needed second
option. It would add to the number of ecclesial organizations in North
America with a serious commitment to spreading the gospel, evangelizing the
lost, and planting new churches.
The need for a second option will become more urgent with
the finalization of the proposed ACNA Prayer Book particularly for convictional
Anglicans. The Anglican Church of Canada and TEC have succumbed to liberalism and modernism. The larger part of the Continuing
Anglican jurisdictions in North America are dominated by an extreme form of
Catholic Revivalist ideology. The handful of Continuing Anglican jurisdictions,
which claim to subscribe to the doctrinal and worship principles of the Thirty-Nine
Articles of Religion, mandate the use of the retrograde 1928 Prayer Book,
thereby belying that claim. All of the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, like
the Anglican Church of Canada and TEC, are in a state
of decline. They are shrinking as their population base shrinks.
The GAFCON Primates as the recent Primates Gathering has
shown can do little about TEC. At the gathering TEC showed itself to be unwilling to accept any
of the “consequences” that the gathered Primates sought to impose upon it. The
Primates who voted in support of the imposition of these “consequences” have no
mechanism by which they can enforce them. All their respective provinces can do
is to declare the existence of a state of impaired communion with TEC and severe their ties with that province. The result is an
Anglican Communion in which some provinces maintain a relationship with the
American Episcopal Church and others do not.
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