Ft. Worth’s Bishop Declares Impaired Communion with Women’s Ordination Supporters

By Robin G. Jordan 

At the Diocesan Synod of the Diocese of Ft. Worth earlier this month Bishop Jack Iker in his annual address declared a state of impaired communion between the Diocese of Ft. Worth and several dioceses of the Anglican Church in North America over the issue of women’s ordination. He told the synod that at the September conclave of the College of Bishops, he had informed the other bishops that he would “no longer give consent to the election of any bishop who intends to ordain female priests, nor would he “attend the consecration of any such bishop-elect in the future.” He also told the synod that he had notified Archbishop Foley Beach of his resignation from all the committees to which he had been assigned; that he had taken this action to show the College of Bishops that it could no longer be “business as usual” in that body due to the refusal of those who support the ordination of women to adopt for the sake of unity a moratorium on what he characterized as a divisive practice. He described as “signs of disunity and division” the bishops who “continue to ordain women priests in spite of the received tradition.”

After reading Bishop Iker’s address which comes on the heels of the Statement from the College of Bishops on the Ordination of Women, I must wonder whether what we are seeing here is the beginning of the unraveling of the Anglican Church in North America.

Bishop Iker mentions the statement in his address, drawing attention to the bishops’ acknowledgement of women’s ordination as “a recent innovation to Apostolic Tradition and Catholic Order” and their recognition of the lack of a convincing scriptural warrant for the acceptance of women’s ordination to the priesthood as standard practice throughout the Province. But he does not mention the bishops’ acknowledgement of the constitutional authority of the individual dioceses to ordain women, except in a roundabout way in calling for the amendment of the Province’s constitution to remove the provision permitting women’s ordination. The statement was adopted unanimously by the College of Bishops.

If the other bishops who are opposed to the ordination of women follow Bishop Iker’s lead and refuse to consent to the election of any bishop who intends to ordain women priests and to attend the consecration of any such bishop-elect and resign from all committees to which they are assigned, Bishop Iker’s address will indeed mark the beginning of the unraveling of the ACNA.

But Bishop Iker’s declaration of a state of impaired communion has other implications beside this one. Whether he is speaking for the Diocese of Ft. Worth or for all the dioceses that are opposed to women’s ordination, he has tacitly declared a state of impaired communion not only with the supporters of women’s ordination in the ACNA but in GAFCON and the Global South, with a number of dioceses and provinces that have recognized and supported the ACNA.

Bishop Iker has never been an enthusiastic supporter of GAFCON and the Jerusalem Declaration. When he returned from the first GAFCON conference, he reassured Anglo-Catholics that the new Province would not be guided by the Jerusalem Declaration but by the Common Cause Statement. The principles of doctrine and worship outlined in that statement would be incorporated into the new Province’s Constitution as its Fundamental Declarations, with one important exception. The new Province’s affirmation of the Jerusalem Declaration was relegated to the Preamble of the Constitution where it is incidental to the Constitution’s account of the formation of the new Province and is not binding upon the Province. When evangelical representatives in the Provisional Provincial Council sought to amend the Fundamental Declarations, Bishop Iker maintained that any substantive changes to the declarations would cause the unraveling of the new Province before it was established, essentially threatening a walkout by the Anglo-Catholic representatives in the Council.

Based on what has happened in the past, I believe that there is more going on here than meets the eye. The first Anglican Church in North America fragmented not just due to the personalities of its leaders but also because of theological divisions within that ecclesial body. One group, those whom Douglas Bess describes as Anglican “Loyalists,” thought that historic Anglicanism was sufficiently catholic while another group, those whom Bess describes as Catholic “Revivalists,” did not believe that historic Anglicanism was Catholic enough. They wished to reshape the Anglican Church along the lines of the supposedly undivided church of the eleventh century before the East-West schism. The same divisions are discernible within the second Anglican Church in North America. The way the ACNA is governed, its ordinal, its catechism, and its proposed 2019 Prayer Book show the influence of the Province’s Catholic “Revivalists.”

These divisions are not going to go away once the issue of women’s ordination is resolved in the ACNA. Catholic “Revivalists like Bishop Iker see women’s ordination as a major obstacle to the Catholicization of the Province to their liking. Once this obstacle is removed, they can be expected to focus upon other areas of the common life of the Province that are not to their satisfaction. This is bound to lead to tension and conflict with those who do not share their views.

I also wonder what part the accord reached by the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church in America,  the Anglican Catholic Church, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross early last year played in Bishop Iker’s decision. All four jurisdictions are involved in Forward in Faith North America, an organization that promotes Catholicism with a capital "C;" all of them subscribe to the Affirmation of St. Louis, and all of them trace their origin - at least in part - to the first Anglican Church in North America. Where will Bishop Iker lead the Diocese of Ft. Worth and the other dioceses that are sympathetic to his views if the Provincial Council and the Provincial Assembly does not bar women from the presbyterate? Will they join with these four jurisdictions to form an independent Catholic province?

For those who may be curious, my own views on women’s ordination are reflected in the following statement:

“While affirming the spiritual gifts of women and the vital contribution of women to the life and ministry of Christ’s Church, we find no support in Scripture for women presbyters and women bishops and only very weak support for women deacons, and consequently we cannot affirm the ordination of women due to the lack of clear and convincing evidence that the practice is agreeable with the holy Scriptures.”