By Robin G. Jordan
While I understand why the various GAFCON Primates might
send greetings to the newly organized New Zealand chapter of the Fellowship of
Confessing Anglicans, I must question the Anglican Church League’s singling out of ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach from the other Primates in its article on that development. Why not mention the
other Primates who sent their greetings, assuming that they also sent them to
the newly-organized New Zealand chapter? Mentioning Archbishop Iliud Wabukala
is understandable as he is GAFCON Primates Council Chairman and Bishop Richard
Condie as he is chairman of FCA Australia. But why ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach? Has he become the poster child for GAFCON and the FCA?
The Anglican Church in North America is far from a sterling
example of what the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans claims to stand for in
the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration. A number of its leaders espouse an
ideology that is at variance with the positions that the FCA takes in the
Jerusalem Statement and Declaration, in particular, its position on the
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, historic Anglicanism’s confession of faith. Unlike
the FCA, they do not believe that “the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism”
which defines Anglicans’ core identity as Anglicans, is expressed in the words
of Canon A5 of the Church of England. They are not committed to this standard
nor do they join with the FCA in calling Anglicans to reaffirm and return to
it.
In the Jerusalem Declaration the first GAFCON conference and
the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans identify as a tenet of orthodoxy
underpinning Anglican identity the upholding of the Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion “as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s
Word and as authoritative for Anglican’s today.
In its authoritative commentary on the Jerusalem Declaration, Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic
Anglicanism Today, the GAFCON Theological Resource Group takes the position
that acceptance of their authority “is constitutive of Anglican identity.”
The Anglican Church in North America in its governing
documents, its ordinal, its catechism, and its rites of Admission of
Catechumens, Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, and confirmation, and its position
statement on the use of blessed oils repeatedly rejects the Thirty-Nine
Articles of Religion and The Book of Common Prayer as historic Anglicanism’s
longstanding standard of doctrine and worship. It mandates and sanctions
unreformed Catholic teaching and practices that conflict with this standard and
the biblical and Reformation theology of historic Anglicanism.
ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach is on record as having voted in
favor of the endorsement of the ordinal and the other formularies and their unreformed
Catholic teaching and practices by the ACNA College of Bishops. He is also on
record as describing Anglicanism as “confessional” because it subscribes to the
three so-called Catholic creeds—a viewpoint that embodies a revisionist
understanding of Anglican confessionalism.
Highlighting Archbishop Beach’s greetings to the
newly-organized New Zealand FCA chapter sends the wrong message. It implies
that the Anglican Church in North America and Archbishop Beach are on the same
track as the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans when in actuality the ACNA is
on a different track—a track of its own that leads away from the principles of
doctrine and worship laid out in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and The Book of Common Prayer.
As Archbishop Wabukala has himself pointed out on several
occasions, a primary aim of GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans
is to restore the Bible and the gospel to the heart of the Anglican Church.
Such a restoration requires the restoration of the Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion to a central place in the faith and life of that Church. The
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, as the GAFCON Theological Resource Group
points out in Being Faithful: The Shape
of Historic Anglicanism Today, derive their authority from the Holy
Scriptures. Their authority is the authority of the Bible. They do not bind the
conscience any more than the Bible does. As J. I. Packer points out in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and
Use Today, the Articles embody what historically is the Anglican
understanding of the gospel. Among their main functions is to safeguard the
truth of the gospel and to prevent it from being lost again.
The Anglican Church in North America in its repeated
rejection of historic Anglicanism’s longstanding doctrinal and worship standard
is rejecting the authority of the Bible as well as the authority of the
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Anglican understanding of the gospel
embodied in the Articles. As well as embracing the error and superstition of
church tradition in place of the truth of God’s Word, it is espousing what the
apostle Paul described as “a different gospel.” The ACNA’s acceptance of a
traditional view of marriage and human sexuality and the doctrine of the
so-called Catholic creeds do not go far enough in offsetting this serious
deficiency.
The Anglican Church League is supposedly committed to
defending and maintaining the protestant, reformed, and evangelical character
of the Anglican Church. If it is genuine in this commitment, the ACL should not
even indirectly be holding up the Anglican Church in North America as a model
for FCA chapters to emulate.
While Archbishop Beach’s video greeting may be entirely
innocent—a show of solidarity with the newly-organized New Zealand FCA chapter,
it does raise a number of questions about the genuineness of Archbishop Beach’s
motivations due to the past actions of ACNA leaders and other factors. It is
admittedly the twenty-first century and video greetings are not out of the
ordinary. At the same time I believe that these factors merit our attention in
seeking to understand the Anglican Church in North America and the actions of
its Archbishop.
Was Archbishop Beach following in the footsteps of his
predecessor and seeking to keep the Anglican Church in North America in the
limelight, as the focus of public attention?
Was Archbishop Beach seeking to foster the impression that the ACNA is stalwart in its support of the FCA when the ACNA is doctrinally at variance with the FCA in a number of key areas Whatever its leaders may say, its formularies, its governing documents, its ordinal, its catechism, and its rites of Admission of Catechumens, Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, and confirmation, and its position statement on the use of blessed oils, tells a different story.
Where the ACNA differs with the FCA falls into the realm of
primary matters as well as into the realm of secondary ones. They involve
matters on which Anglicans cannot
agree to disagree. These differences are significant ones. They cannot be
dismissed lightly. In its formularies the ACNA not only takes positions that
put it at odds with other GAFCON member provinces and the FCA but also show a
lack of tolerance toward the views of legitimate conservative schools of
Anglican thought on the same issues, particular the school of thought that is
closest to the English Reformers in its thinking. It makes no room for these
views in its formularies. Its catechism is unreformed Catholic in its teaching
in such important areas as the Holy Spirit, the order of salvation, justification,
sanctification, and the sacraments. Its rites
of Admission of Catechumens, Baptism, the Holy Eucharist, confirmation, and ordination and
its position statement on the use of blessed oils embody unreformed Catholic
doctrines and practices. While it is possible to make the various ACNA rites
more unreformed Catholic, it is not similarly possible to do the reverse—to make
them more protestant, reformed, and evangelical. A Catholic Revivalist bias is also
discernible in its constitution and canons. The US chapter of the FCA is little
more than a puppet of the ACNA, espousing its doctrinal positions, and
supporting its leaders’ agenda.
Was Archbishop Beach
seeking to establish a greater leadership role for the ACNA in the GAFCON
movement and the FCA? As I have pointed out in previous articles, the leaders of
the Anglican Church in North America, like their liberal counterparts in the
Episcopal Church, are not satisfied with playing second fiddle to the global
South Primates. One of the notions circulating in the ACNA is the belief that
in the ACNA three major traditions are converging—Catholicism, evangelicalism,
and Pentecostalism—and that the ACNA represents the future shape of Anglicanism.
ACNA leaders see the ACNA as spearheading a reform movement in the Anglican
Church—“a new reformation.” Unlike the Protestant Reformation, however this new
reformation is not a spiritual movement to restore the Bible and the gospel to
their rightful place at the heart of the Church.
This vision of the Anglican Church is tied closely to that
of Catholic Revivalists in the ACNA. They are seeking to reshape the Anglican
Church on the model of the supposedly undivided Church of early High Middle
Ages in the eleventh century before the East-West Schism exposed the cracks in
the Church. Those pushing this vision of the Anglican Church see this period of
Church history as a golden age of Christianity. They ignore the fact that the
Church has experienced divisions over doctrine ad practice since New Testament
times. The existence or even widespread acceptance of a doctrine or practice in
an early period in Church history does not guarantee that the doctrine or
practice is apostolic. Indeed claiming the apostolicity of a doctrine or
practice on this basis can be a form of humanism.
ACNA leaders share with their liberal counterparts in the
Episcopal Church a sense of manifest destiny. This is the sense that they are
destined to lead the global Anglican community. They cannot imagine Americans
not in a leadership role, shaping the future of the Anglican Church.
The problem with this viewpoint is that the US Church
historically has represented a deviant tradition in the Anglican Church. Among
the characteristics of this tradition are an influential High Church and after
the 1830s Anglo-Catholic wing, a Prayer Book influenced by the Scottish Usager
Non-Jurors, no history of clerical subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles of
Religion, and the loss of its conservative evangelical wing in the 1870s. While
this tradition has fragmented into a number of sub-traditions, all of these sub-traditions
depart from historic Anglicanism. Rather than reaffirming and returning to what
the FCA believes is the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, the Anglican
Church in North America as a jurisdiction in its formularies has become another
sub-tradition of this tradition. For the former Episcopalians in the ACNA, this
may represent continuity with the past but it is a past from which the ACNA
needs to distance itself as it has distanced itself from the present situation
in the Episcopal Church.
The Anglican Church in North America needs to rediscover or perhaps
more accurately discover for the first time what it means to be an Anglican
Church at its best—to be a church
that is faithful to the Bible, the historic Anglican formularies, and to its
protestant, reformed, and evangelical heritage; is shaped by the English
Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement, is on fire for the gospel; is fulfilling
the Great Commission; is empowered by the Holy Spirit; and is living its common
life in accordance with God’s Word. The ACNA needs to become the kind of church
that has a lasting positive impact upon the lives and the eternities of a broad
segment of the unchurched population of North America and beyond. The first
step the ACNA can take in this direction is to abandon its policy of exclusion
of the teaching and practices of authentic historic Anglicanism from its
formularies and to provide a generous space for biblical Anglicanism’s
teaching and practices in these formularies.
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