By Robin G. Jordan
In order to serve as a prayer book for the entire province any service book adopted by the Anglican Church in North America must meet two essential criteria. It must be genuinely Anglican and mission-shaped.
Anglican. To be genuinely Anglican, any service book adopted by the Anglican Church in North America must adhere closely to the reformed doctrine of the classical Anglican formularies. The practices that it authorizes or sanctions must also be in line with their doctrine. The classical Anglican formularies as identified by the Jerusalem Declaration are the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, the Ordinal of 1661, and the Articles of Religion of 1571. They comprise authentic historic Anglicanism’s widely-recognized standard of doctrine and worship.
If the Anglican Church in North America is to be a genuine expression of Anglicanism, its ordinal and catechism need to conform to this standard as well as its service book. At the present time none of these formularies of the ACNA come near this standard. If they can be characterized as representing any particular system of thought it is unreformed Catholicism—the very antithesis of authentic historic Anglicanism.
In The Way, the Truth and the Life - Theological Resources for a Global Anglican Future, issued preparatory to the first Global Anglican Future conference and subsequently appended to Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, its commentary on the Jerusalem Declaration, the GAFCON Theological Resource Group identifies Catholic Revivalism and progressive Christianity as primarily responsible for the erosion of the authority of the Bible and the classical Anglican formularies in the Anglican Church. It is the erosion of their authority that is the principal cause of the present crisis in leadership, theology, and morality in the Anglican Communion.
If unreformed Catholic doctrine of the ACNA’s formularies—its ordinal, catechism, and proposed service book—and the unreformed Catholic practices that they authorize or sanction are allowed to become the official doctrine and practices of the province, the Anglican Church in North America will be an Anglican ecclesial entity in name only. Like the Episcopal Church in the USA it will be a vehicle for the spread of doctrine and practices that have little to do with biblical Christianity, much less authentic historic Anglicanism. From the perspective of biblical Christianity and authentic historic Anglicanism the ACNA’s formularies are as toxic in their suppositions as progressive Christianity.
Mission-Shaped. To be mission-shaped (or missional or mission-oriented), any service book adopted by the Anglican Church in North America must have as its basis the mission of the Church—the task that our Lord entrusted to the apostles and to future generations of his disciples. This task is to actively engage in reaching all people groups with the gospel, forming them into devoted followers of Jesus Christ, baptizing them, and enfolding them into churches. It must provide clergy and congregations with the liturgical resources needed to fulfill this task.
At the same time these resources must be consistent with the Holy Scriptures and the classical Anglican formularies. They should not give expressions to doctrine that is at odds with what the Holy Scriptures teach and the classical Anglican formularies uphold. Nor should they authorize or sanction practices that are at variance with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the principles of the classical Anglican formularies.
Among the primary purposes of the Articles of Religion of 1571 is to safeguard the New Testament gospel that was lost in the Middle Ages and recovered at the English Reformation. The 1571 Articles articulate the New Testament gospel as Anglicans have historically understood it. This is one of the reasons that English clergy were required to subscribe to the Articles. If they preached or taught different gospel, they could be called to account. This is also one of the reasons why the nineteenth century adherents of the Catholic Revivalist movement objected strenuously to subscription. They were preaching and teaching a different gospel.
Among these same purposes is to serve as the standard by which the Book of Common Prayer should be interpreted. Nothing in the Prayer Book is to be construed to have any sense other than a sense that was compatible with the doctrine of the Articles. If it cannot be construed in a sense compatible with the Articles’ doctrine, it should not be included in the Prayer Book. In this regard it must be noted the proposed Book of Common Prayer for the Anglican Church in North America repeatedly falls short.
To be mission-shaped, any service book adopted by the Anglican Church in North America must also evidence a high degree of flexibility and adaptability, making allowances for the widely differing circumstances of congregation on the North American mission field and permitting these congregations to tailor their worship and ministry to their particular circumstances. It must embody the crucial understanding what may work for one congregation may not work for another congregation.
Worship in the informal setting of a living room, fire station community room, or some other non-traditional venue, for example, differs significantly from worship in the formal setting of a large parish church, cathedral, or seminary chapel. Worship with a lay reader or deacon leading the service, a cantor lead the singing, and a digital hymnal player providing the musical accompaniment differs significantly from worship with a team of clergy leading the service, a choir or music group leading the singing, and an organist or ensemble of musicians providing the musical accompaniment. Forcing worship in a province into the same Procrustean bed is a serious mistake.
An important subtask of the mission that our Lord entrusted to the Church is to form fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ. When it embodies what the Holy Scriptures teach and the classical Anglican formularies uphold, a service book can be a useful tool in the formation of disciples. However, when a service book embodies erroneous beliefs, it can do great harm to new believers. The proposed ACNA Prayer Book unfortunately falls into this second category.
When these two important criteria are used in evaluating the proposed ACNA Book of Common Prayer, it clearly does not make the grade. It is neither genuinely Anglican nor mission-shaped. Its adoption will set the Anglican Church in North America on the wrong road, a path that only will add to troubles besetting the North American Anglican Church.
Also See:
What Is Wrong with the Proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book?
A New Year, a New Prayer Book
Image: St. Timothy's Anglican Church, Spring, Texas
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