By Robin G. Jordan
This statement grabbed my attention in a comment thread on
Anglican Ink: “…today's [Reformed Episcopal Church] on the whole is not phobic
of Anglo-Catholicism.” As I understand the term “phobic,” based upon my years
of working as a social worker in fields of mental health and child welfare, it
means to have an irrational fear of something. The use of the term in relation
to Anglo-Catholicism was reminiscent of the liberals’ use of the term in
relation to homosexuality.
Convictional Anglicans have genuine disagreements with
Anglo-Catholics over their interpretation of Scripture, and their theology.
This includes Anglo-Catholic acceptance of the authority of tradition to the degree
that tradition is given more weight than Scripture in their thinking. Their
disagreements with Anglo-Catholics involve primary matters—the order of
salvation, justification, sanctification, the sacraments, apostolic succession,
ordained ministry and other key issues. They also object to the way that the
Anglo-Catholic Movement has sought to change the identity of the Anglican
Church. Their disagreements with Anglo-Catholics have nothing to do with an
irrational fear of Anglo-Catholicism.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries convictional
Anglicans devoted a great deal of thoughtful scholarship to the critiquing of
the unreformed Catholic teaching and practices of the Anglo-Catholic Movement. They
showed that the movement did not represent a tradition that had existed in the
Anglican Church since the English Reformation. Rather it constituted a foreign
intrusion into the Anglican Church, not only reviving pre-Reformation doctrine
and practices that the Church at the Reformation had rejected on solid biblical
grounds but also introducing unscriptural innovations in doctrine and worship
that the Roman Catholic Church had adopted since the Reformation. They also
showed that Anglo-Catholicism, or Catholic Revivalism, was antithetical to
historic Anglicanism, the Protestant Reformed faith of the Thirty-Nine Articles
of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. At its heart the
Anglo-Catholic Movement was a movement to undo the English Reformation and the
Protestant Elizabethan Settlement in the Anglican Church.
From a convictional Anglican perspective the openness toward
unreformed Catholic teaching and practices that the person who made this
comment describes as characterizing younger members of the Reformed Episcopal Church is an openness to error and superstition. While this individual describes himself as an Anglican, he is an Anglican in name only and not in conviction.
What he views as Anglicanism is in actuality Anglo-Catholicism/Catholic
Revivalism, not historic Anglicanism.
One is prompted to ask how large a segment of the Anglican
Church in North America does this individual and others like him represent. Whatever
the size of this wing of the ACNA, it certainly exercises power and influence
over members of a number of key task forces and committees in the ACNA and the
province’s College of Bishops. To date it has determine the content of the
province’s Ordinal and Catechism and is determining the content of its Prayer
Book currently under preparation. A term that describes the power and influence
it wields in these bodies is “dominance.” While some refuse to acknowledge that
Anglo-Catholicism/Catholic Revivalism is strongly influencing the present
direction of the ACNA, they do so in the face of the mounting evidence that
Catholic Revivalism in the form of traditional Anglo-Catholicism and
Convergentism are a dominant influence in the ACNA formularies.
The present situation in the Anglican Church in North
America is not unlike that in the Anglican Communion. A handful of provinces
are seeking to promote a particular sexual culture in all provinces of the
Communion. In the case of the ACNA, Catholic Revivalists are seeking to promote
their views throughout the province at the expense of convictional Anglicans. In
both cases biblical Anglicanism is under fire. Just as there is a need for a “special status” for biblically
faithful Anglicans in the Anglican Communion, there is also a need for a similar
status for convictional Anglicans in the ACNA.
This special status may take the form of substantial changes
to the constitution and canons of the Anglican Church in North America and
revision of its other formularies or the establishment of a second province
within the ACNA, a province with its own declaration of principles, its own
form of government, its own bishops and method of choosing them, and its own
prayer book, ordinal, and catechism. The third option is the formation of a second
alternative province separate from the ACNA. This option goes beyond a special
status for convictional Anglicans in the ACNA but it may prove the only
workable option.
As I have argued elsewhere, convictional Anglicans should
not wait for the provincial authorities
to form a second province within the Anglican Church in North America but
should take steps to establish the province themselves. I do not see in the
provincial authorities the will to make substantial changes to its constitution
and canons and to revise its other formularies, much less the inclination to
form a second province within the ACNA, especially a province with its own
declaration of principles, its own form of government, its own bishops and
method of choosing them, and its own prayer book, ordinal, and catechism. Convictional
Anglicans in the various subdivisions of the ACNA should join together to establish
the organizational structure for a second province, to elect its governing
body, to select bishops and to secure their consecration, to frame a declaration
of principles, and to adopt a prayer book, ordinal, and catechism. The
provincial authorities would be presented with a fait accompli, which they
would be forced to accept or reveal their true colors.
No comments:
Post a Comment