The Case for a Second Alternative Anglican Province in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

At the present time North America has no jurisdiction that, in the words of the Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), “upholds and maintains the faith of the Church expressed in the Bible, the Anglican Formularies, and the Jerusalem Declaration.”

Throughout Canada and the United States are a scattering of congregations and clergy who do uphold and maintain the Anglican Church’s “historic faith.” However, they are not united in a single organization.

The organization with which they are affiliated in most cases is a diocese or sub-province of the Anglican Church in North America and accedes to its constitution and canons. Under the provisions of its governing documents ACNA dioceses and sub-provinces and the congregations and clergy affiliated with them are required to conform to the teaching and practices mandated or sanctioned in its official formularies (i.e., constitution, canons, ordinal, catechism, etc.). They and the congregations and clergy affiliated with them must use the proposed ACNA prayer book now in preparation once it is finalized.

The Anglican Church in North America in its formularies distances itself from the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the Anglican Formularies. The ACNA is aligned with the Roman Catholic Church and the Council of Trent in its doctrine of apostolic succession, the episcopate, salvation, revelation, and the sacraments and with the Eastern Orthodox Church in its doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

The Anglican Church in North America makes no room in its formularies for the biblical and Reformation principles of the English Reformers and their successors—the congregations and clergy who stand in the heritage of the English Reformation and the Protestant Elizabethan Settlement and who are Anglican in conviction as well as name. The proposed ACNA prayer book is unreformed Catholic in its teaching and practices.

At the present time North America also has no jurisdiction that is genuinely committed to the renewal of biblical Anglicanism in North America, to the restoration of the Bible and the Anglican Formularies to a central place in the North American Anglican Church.

Historically the jurisdictions that have embraced the extreme form of Catholic Revivalism whose influence is reflected in the formularies of the Anglican Church in North America have shown little interest in reaching and engaging the unchurched population of North America. Where they have planted new churches has been limited to locations that have an existing population that subscribes to this ideology.

With the exception of the Anglican Church in North America all of these jurisdictions are in decline. The ACNA is a new jurisdiction and has benefited from defections from The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

If Kentucky is a microcosm of the Anglican Church in North America, only a small number of churches are active in evangelizing the unchurched and planting new congregations. The larger number of churches is moribund.

The gospel preached in churches influenced by the ideology of this extreme form of Catholic Revivalism is not the gospel expressed in the Bible and the Anglican Formularies. It is a different gospel—a gospel of sacraments and works.

The prelacy, ritualism, sacerdotalism, and sacramentalism that dominates thinking in the same extreme form of Catholic Revivalism inhibits the utilization of the experience, spiritual gifts, and talents of the laity in the leadership, ministry, and mission of the local church as well as the jurisdiction and its subdivisions. It prevents the church at all levels from realizing its full potential in the service of Christ and his gospel. It hampers the church from reaching and engaging a wide segment of the North American unchurched population.

The Anglican Church in North America is so structured to permit a special interest group to occupy the place of power in the jurisdiction, to entrench its views, and to block meaningful reform. There is little likelihood of the ACNA becoming more comprehensive and adopting other much needed reforms.

The only way forward is the formation of a second alternative North American Anglican province, one that brings together under one roof all North American Anglicans who upholds and maintains the Anglican Church's "historic faith" and who are committed to the renewal of biblical Anglicanism in North America.

Photo: A wild rose that grows in the hedgerows alongside the country lanes in Seely Suffolk, Holy Suffolk, so called for its numerous churches. Wild roses also grow here in western Kentucky. They bloom in early June, around the time the farmers harvest the winter wheat. .