Good Luck, North American Anglicans, on the Third Try!

By Robin G. Jordan

I have met Anglo-Catholics outside of the Anglican Church in North America who are far more tolerant of other schools of thought than those in the ACNA. Now all Anglo-Catholics are not cut from the same cloth and I am not so naïve as to believe that Anglo-Catholics outside the ACNA have a monopoly on tolerance. But the ACNA does have a particular element that is not satisfied to share the province with other schools of thought except on its own terms. It is set on determining the direction of the province, shaping its doctrine and practices, and otherwise molding the province to its liking.

Although I am describing this element as Anglo-Catholic, Anglo-Catholic may not be an accurate description for it. Part of this element has been influenced by the Anglo-Catholic movement which emerged from the nineteenth century Oxford movement and the Ritualist movement which followed closely on the heels of the Oxford movement. Part of it has also been influenced by the convergence movement (or the Ancient-Future movement) which was an offshoot of the twentieth century charismatic movement and Pentecostalism.

The part that is influenced by the Anglo-Catholic movement chose not to join an earlier exodus from the Episcopal Church, which included Broad Church and Low Church Episcopalians as well Anglo-Catholics, but joined a more recent exodus of charismatic Episcopalians and those who are more difficult to classify. This part includes former evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Pentecostals who have never been Episcopalians but who identify with the Anglo-Catholic movement rather than the convergence movement. Their notions of what is Anglican have been shaped by the Anglo-Catholic movement.

The same element contains Anglo-Catholics who identify themselves as traditionalists. Anglo-Catholic traditionalists in the Continuing Anglican churches, however, do not share their view of themselves. From the point of view of these Anglo-Catholic traditionalists, the self-identified traditionalists in the ACNA are not traditionalist enough.

The part that is influenced by the convergence movement typically are not former Episcopalians. The convergence movement had its origins outside of the Episcopal Church. Its originators were charismatics and Pentecostals attracted to the ambiance of the Episcopal Church, to the liturgy, the sacraments, the vestments, the candles, and the ceremonial. The beliefs and practices that they adopted were not those of historic Anglicanism but of the nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic movement and the twentieth century liturgical movement. The convergence movement had its proponents and sympathizers in the Episcopal Church, one of whom was the worship guru Robert Webber who had originally not been an Episcopalian. The Trinity School for Ministry, which experienced a brief evangelical revival in the 1970s, a revival that was overshadowed by the charismatic movement, is the home of the Robert Webber Center which promotes his ideas. It also hosts an annual Ancient-Future conference.

Catholic revivalist may also not be an accurate description of this particular element. While some of its members lean toward Roman Catholicism and others toward Eastern Orthodoxy, a number of its members subscribe to a mishmash of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox beliefs and practices, which is really a form of quasi-Catholicism. The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize it as Catholic; the Eastern Orthodox Churches do not recognize it as Orthodox. While some of its members may have Roman Catholic leanings and others, Eastern Orthodox, they are unwilling to fully embrace either form of Catholicism and entertain fanciful notions that they are the heirs to a third great strand of Catholicism or represent the future of Christianity. From a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox perspective they are Protestants playing at being Catholics.

It may be that Anglo-Catholics who are tolerant of other schools of thought may have enough confidence in the rightness of their beliefs and practices that they do not feel an urgent need to impose them upon others. They have discovered that if they take a low-key approach, others may come around to their point of view over time.

The Anglican Church in North America could have produced an ordinal that respected the doctrine and practices of the classical Anglican ordinal. The ACNA could have produced a catechism that was really agreeable to all schools of thought in the ACNA rather claiming to be agreeable to these schools when it was not. It could have produced a Prayer Book that all schools of thought could have used with equanimity. But it chose not to and the only reason that it chose not to is because one particular element in the province was not satisfied to share the pond with other fish. It wanted to be the only fish in the pond—it and its progeny.

I have weighed other possible explanations. But none make as much sense as this one. One way humans have discovered to eliminate pests is to prevent them from propagating offspring. A population, whether mosquitoes, human beings, or adherents of a particular religion, that is unable to reproduce itself takes a nosedive.

One way to eliminate rival schools of thought is to prevent them from passing on their doctrine and practices to another generation. How do you do that? It is very simple. You do not make any room for their doctrine and practices in the official formularies of the denomination. You may not want to be too obvious so you may permit a practice here and there, especially if the practice also has a place in your own tradition. But these seeming concessions to other schools of thought are just cosmetic. Where it matters most you make no room for their doctrine and practices.

A number of plants secrete chemicals from their roots, which inhibit the growth of other plants in their vicinity. This enables the plants to monopolize the nutrients and moisture in the ground surrounding them. You can retard the growth of rival schools of thought in a similar way. You can produce official formularies for the denomination, which have the same effect as the growth-inhibiting chemicals that these plants produce, formularies that facilitate the spread of your beliefs and practices but not those of rival schools of thought.

We have seen this happen in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. We are seeing it happen in the Anglican Church of North America.

Those responsible for producing the official formularies of the Anglican Church in North America may protest that it was not their intention. But it is impossible to dismiss the doctrinal leanings of these formularies or their negative effects as coincidental.

All the ACNA’s official formularies favor the same school of thought—the constitution with its ambiguous language in regard to the authority of the historical Anglican formularies; the canons with their recognition of the Roman Catholic sacramental system; the ordinal with its authorization of practices associated with the Roman Catholic doctrines of eucharistic sacrifice and transubstantiation; the catechism with its outright rejection of the Protestant reformed doctrine of the historic Anglican formularies and its flirtation with Eastern Orthodox doctrine; and a proposed Book of Common Prayer whose doctrine and practices has the English Reformers spinning in their graves.

I have been observing for fifteen odd years a number of figures who are presently in involved in the Anglican Church in North America and who have had an active role in the development of its official formularies. These individuals have an agenda which they aggressively promote in whatever position they occupy at a particular time. This agenda is to transform the identity of the Anglican Church and make it as unreformed Catholic as possible. You might describe it as their mission in life. They have found allies in those who believe that the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement, which shaped historic Anglicanism, are no longer relevant for today.

Their goal is not to establish a culture within the Anglican Church in North America, which is broad in its orientation and tolerant of a range of views. Their goal is the Catholicization of ACNA. They seek to make the province Catholic in doctrine, worship, and order.

These individuals had precursors in the Anglican Church in North America of the 1970s. Their precursors' conflicts with the Broad Church and Low Church traditionalists who also left the Episcopal Church over Prayer Book revision and women’s ordination caused the fragmentation of that body. The two groups had conflicting visions of the new church. They became involved in a “my-way-or-the-highway” struggle which revealed the fragility of their alliance. They eventually chose to go their separate ways. Since that time what is called the Anglican Continuum has been a raft of sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating jurisdictions.

It is my considered opinion that if the Anglican Church in North America is to be more than just another Continuing church, it needs to move much closer to historic Anglicanism in its formularies and to become broader in its orientation and more tolerant of a range of views. These two goals are not incompatible.

In Old Anglicanism and Modern Ritualism Frederick Meyrick identifies two schools of thought in what he describes as “Old Anglicanism”--the doctrines and practices of the first two centuries of the reformed Anglican Church. “Old Anglicanism” is what Being Faith: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today describes as “historic Anglicanism.” Meyrick writes:

There have always been two schools of thought in the Church of England, and each of these schools has a standing ground within her which none would care to dispute. They do not differ in fundamentals. They hold the same creeds and are faithful to the same Prayer Book, the Articles, and the other standards of belief, while they have an equal reverence for the authority of Holy Writ. One school leans more to one set of favourite doctrines, the other school to another set. Evangelicals love to dwell on the great truth of the Atonement and on the need of faith; High Churchmen, professing that they do not undervalue these fundamental principles of Christianity, treat more copiously of the means of grace. Neither party denies the truths urged by the other, though each loves to occupy itself with one side rather than the other of a complex truth. The Church is wide enough for both, and she holds both in her embrace and love, and calls them both her children.

What Meyrick is describing in this passage is what J. I. Packer calls the “evangelical comprehensiveness” of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion in The Thirty Nine Articles - Their Place and Use Today. This comprehensiveness, Packer notes, does not as Bishop J. C. Ryle put it—

…declare the Church a kind of Noah’s Ark, within which every kind of opinion and creed shall dwell safe and undisturbed, and the only terms of communion shall be a willingness to come inside and let your neighbor alone….

Rather it keeps doctrinal requirements to a minimum and allows the maximum of flexibility and variety on secondary matters.

Such a comprehensiveness would not describe the present state of affairs in the Anglican Church in North America in which unreformed Catholic doctrines and practices loom large in its official formularies and Anglicans who are committed to remaining faithful to the Bible and historic Anglican beliefs and practices have very little space.

What is happening in the Anglican Church in North America, perhaps on a somewhat different scale, is the drama that played out in the original ACNA, the short-lived ACNA of the 1970s. Those who want make the Anglican Church into an unreformed Catholic Church have the upper hand and are taking advantage of their position to further their interests. What happens next remains to be seen. One thing that can be said for certain is that North America is bereft of a continent-wide organized reformed Anglican presence and witness.

This summer the Anglican Church in North America will be celebrating its tenth anniversary. The ACNA was formally established on June 22, 2009. The previous June the Primates Council of the Global Anglican Future Conference had called for the formation of an alternative province in North America and extended its recognition to the Common Cause Partnership. Ten years later and forty-two years after the St. Louis Congress and the ill-fated first ACNA, there continues to exist a need for an alternative Anglican province in North America—an alternative province to the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Anglican Church in North America. May be North American Anglicans will get it right on the third try.