Growth Patterns in the Anglican Church in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

David Goodhew and Jeremy Bonner’s analysis of ACNA data offers some insights into growth patterns in the Anglican Church in North America but leave a number of questions unanswered.

Their study appears to support my observation that former Episcopalians do not make good church planters or evangelists. They are handicapped by preconceived notions of church and the attitude of indifference toward evangelism that they acquired in the Episcopal Church. These two factors hampered the church planting efforts in which I was involved in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Mission in America in the 1980s and in 2002.

The Decade of Evangelism in the Episcopal Church in the 1990s was a season of missed opportunities. It was greeted with apathy and in some cases outright hostility. In my deanery none of the Episcopal clergy and congregations showed any interest in planting new churches although the population of the deanery was skyrocketing and other denominations were taking advantage of the population boom and had started new works. It revealed that Episcopalians with a missionary mindset were the exception, not the rule.

While Goodhew and Bonner identified several growth trends in the Anglican Church in North America, the data with which they were working was missing some vital information. This included the style of worship of congregations; their use of the proposed ACNA rites and services; the type of facility that they are using, where they are on the theological spectrum; their use of the ACNA’s catechism; and the demographic and psychographic characteristics of their ministry target groups. Such information would provide a much completer picture of the growth of the ACNA.

Goodhew and Bonner did see a correlation between the growth of of Anglo-Catholic dioceses like Ft. Worth and Quinsey and the outcome of property litigation. This suggests that the outcome of such litigation has an effect upon the morale of congregations in these dioceses and in turn their growth. It also suggests that the growth of Anglo-Catholic congregations is tied to the type of facility that they are using. I have observed that Anglo-Catholic congregations using rented facilities such as store fronts do not enjoy the growth that Anglo-Catholic congregations owning their own building enjoy. They are unable to replicate in such facilities the ambiance that is a major part of their appeal.

Goodhew and Bonner also note that the four non-territorial dioceses are enjoying the most growth. Here more detailed information of the kind that I have suggested would provide insights into the factors behind this growth.

They further note that the number of people in the Anglican Church in North America who have never been part of the Episcopal Church is also increasing. Here again it would be useful to know in which dioceses and congregations these people are concentrated and to know more details about these dioceses and congregations.

Two revisionist reinterpretations of Anglicanism have a discernible influence on doctrine and practice in the Anglican Church in North America. The older of the two reinterpretations is Anglo-Catholicism which, while its proponents claim that it stands in continuity with the formative first two centuries of the reformed Anglican Church, is antithetical to historical Anglicanism that took shape during those two centuries.

The more recent of the two reinterpretations turns Leslie Newbegin’s description of the newly-formed Church of South India into a prescription for how the Anglican Church in North America should be as denomination, a church in which the three theological streams—Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism—merge into a single river, and which emphasizes practice over doctrine. This reinterpretation takes a negative view of the reformed Anglican Church’s formative first two centuries and excludes historic Anglicanism's Protestant Reformed faith from this equation.

The proponents of both reinterpretations represent their particular reinterpretation of Anglicanism as the genuine article.

Goodhew and Bonner’s study does not offer any solid clues to which revisionist reinterpretation of Anglicanism is gaining the most traction in the Anglican Church in North America. For Anglicans who are concerned about the future of authentic historic Anglicanism in North America and the proliferation of such revisionist reinterpretations, this information would be useful in weighing whether the growth of the ACNA is healthy growth.