By Robin G. Jordan
“Where there is a will, there is a way” is a saying that I
often heared as a child. But what if there is no will?
Yesterday evening I was perusing the 1929 Scottish Prayer
Book. It contains two orders for the administration of Holy Communion—the Scottish
and the English. The Scottish order is based upon the first English Prayer Book
of 1549 and the ill-fated Scottish Prayer Book of 1637—the so-called “Laudian
Liturgy.” The English order is based upon the second English Prayer Book of
1552 and the Restoration Prayer Book of 1662.The two orders embody quite
different theologies of the Eucharist.
By 1929 the Scottish Episcopal Church brought together in
one church two divergent traditions. The Scottish tradition originated with the
seventeenth century Scottish Usager Non-Jurors while the English tradition originated
with the seventeenth century English Episcopal Chapels in Scotland. The
Scottish tradition was High Church while the English tradition was evangelical.
Now if in 1929 the Scottish Episcopal Church can adopt a Prayer
Book that reflected the diversity which existed in the Scottish church at that
time, why cannot the Anglican Church in North America adopt a similar book in
2019? There is no good reason that it cannot. There is simply a lack of interest
in the Liturgy Task Force, the Bishops Review Committee, and the College of
Bishops to compile such a book.
A pressing need for this kind of book exists but those
compiling the proposed Prayer Book have chosen to ignore it. They have their own agenda.
This agenda is two-fold.
First, move the Anglican Church in North America further in
the direction of unreformed Catholicism.
While they may not be representative of the province as a
whole, a dominant force in these three bodies is a wing of the Anglican Church
in North America, which does not believe that historic Anglicanism, the
Anglicanism of the English Reformation, the Elizabethan Settlement, and the Restoration,
is “Catholic” enough.
Second, impose an ultramontane uniformity upon the churches
of the Anglican Church in North America in the areas of doctrine and worship.
The proposed rites and services that the three bodies have
produced to date do not reflect the diversity that exists in the Anglican Church
in North America. They ar e heavily weighted in favor of the Catholic
Revivalist principles and practices of one wing of the ACNA—a wing that wields
a degree of influence in the affairs of the province disproportionate to its
size. This is due to the particular structure of the province’s form of
governance and the way which that form of governance operates.
The proposed rites and services that the Liturgy Task Force,
the Bishops Review Committee, and the College of Bishops has so far produced
display an unhealthy obsession with pre-Reformation and Counter-Reformation
theology and liturgy—an obsession that has characterized the Anglo-Catholic
Movement since the nineteenth century. They are not only dangerously tilted
toward the unreformed Catholicism of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism
(as opposed to the reformed catholicism of authentic historic Anglicanism) but
also are lacking in the kind of flexibility that the twenty-first century
mission field demands. Rather than being designed to help the local church to
reach and engage the growing unchurched population of North America, they are
tailored to the preferences of one segment of the Anglican Church in North
America and to Continuing Anglicans outside of the ACNA with similar tastes.
In the local church catering to the preferences of one
segment of the congregation has been identified as a mark of a declining church.
It is essentially a slow form of suicide. As this segment of the congregation
shrinks in size due to death, incapacitation, or moving away, the congregation
shrinks with it. As can be seen from the present state of the several
Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, the same thing can and does happen at the
jurisdictional level.
I am not covering new ground in this article. These problem
areas have been evident from the outset. Former Archbishop Bob Duncan’s
original mandate to the Liturgy Task Force signaled the direction that Prayer
Book revision would be taking in the Anglican Church in North America. Duncan
now heads the Liturgy Task Force. Another leading Catholic Revivalist, Bishop Keith
Ackerman, sometimes President of Forward in Faith North America, an
organization committed to the “Catholicization” of the ACNA, serves as special
advisor to the task force.
As was the case with the constitution and canons of the
Anglican Church in North America, the catechism, rites, and services of the
2019 proposed Prayer Book need a major overhaul before their final adoption. This
includes the Ordinal.
Too often appeals to church unity have been used to mute or
silence the voicing of legitimate concerns in the Anglican Church in North
America. The cause of church unity, however, does not justify the adoption of a
flawed service book any more than it does the adoption of a flawed constitution
and a flawed set of canons. If the ACNA is going to be something more than
another diminutive Continuing Anglican jurisdiction, if it is going to realize
its full potential in advancing the gospel in North America and the larger
world, it needs to shelve the proposed book and start again.
What is at stake is not only Biblical Christianity and
authentic historic Anglicanism but the souls of hundreds of thousands, no,
millions of people in this generation and future generations.
I would like to hear from readers who have shared their
concerns with a representative of the Catechism Task Force, Liturgy Task Force,
Bishops Review Committee, and/or College of Bishops. Tell other Anglicans
Ablaze readers about your experience.
1. How do you identify
yourself from the perspective of doctrine and liturgy?
2. What are your
concerns?
3. With whom have you
shared these concerns?
4. What was the
response of those with whom you have shared your concerns?
5. Were any discernible
changes subsequently made in the catechism and/or the rites and services of the
proposed Prayer Book?
6. Were the changes
that were made substantial, minor, of no consequence?
7. What were they?
This information will be useful in gauging these
bodies’ openness to ideas and suggestions and responsiveness to feedback from
the wider church and in identifying recurrent patterns in the way that they
deal with the concerns of the wider church. It may be helpful in providing further
evidence of the need for closer monitoring of the four bodies, for a
comprehensive re-evaluation of their role in Prayer Book revision in the
Anglican Church in North America, and for the introduction of major reforms
in that process.
