No Room in the ACNA for Anglican Traditionalists

By Robin G. Jordan

What is noteworthy about Archbishop Foley Beach’s State of the Province Address to the Provincial Council is what it does not mention.

First, it contains no mention of the need for the amendment of the ACNA canons permitting the continued use of the 1662 English, 1928 American, and 1962 Canadian Prayer Books and liturgical books based on them such as the Reformed Episcopal Church’s The Book of Common Prayer (2003) and the Anglican Mission in America-Prayer Book Society USA’s An Anglican Prayer Book (2008) after the finalization of the new ACNA Prayer Book. The canonical provision that all ACNA churches must use the new ACNA Prayer Book once the book is finalized is still in force.

Second, it contains no mention of the need to revise the draft ACNA Prayer Book, to eliminate a number of its undesirable features, and to incorporate alternative rites and wording for the use of clergy and congregations that adhere to the doctrinal and worship principles of the classical Anglican formularies—The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571 and The Book of Common Prayer of 1662 and the Ordinal of 1662.

Third, it contains no mention of any plan to incorporate the Anglican Network in Canada’s modern language version of the 1552 Holy Communion Service into the draft ACNA Prayer Book.

Fourth, it contains no mention of the need to revise the ACNA Catechism to bring its doctrine into line with the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine of the classical Anglican formularies.

Fifth, it contains no mention of the need to revisit the question of women’s ordination particularly in the light of the recent abandonment of women’s ordination by the Latvian Lutheran Church.

While flirting with Russian Orthodoxy and High Church Lutheranism, the ACNA leadership seems all too eager to turn its back on classical Anglicanism.