It Takes One Rotten Apple

Windfalls

By Robin G. Jordan

If anything can be learned from the history of the Anglican Church is that when a province gets on the wrong track, Anglicans who are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglicanism can do very little to return the province to the genuine Anglican Way. At best they can fight a holding action to contain the spread of whatever pernicious doctrine and practices have caused the province to get on the wrong track and to keep them from gaining any more ground.

Even then they may find themselves so outwitted and overwhelmed by the proponents of such doctrine and practices that the most they can do is establish is a few strongholds from which they may hope to recapture lost territory.

As what happened in the nineteenth century in the Church of England and more recently in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church the tide of public opinion may turn against them. They may find themselves fighting an unpopular battle.

A painful reality that they must face is that as long as human heart is corruptible, it will be corrupted.

They may eventually be forced to abandon the field as conservative Evangelicals were forced to do in the nineteenth century Episcopal Church.

As the proverb, “the rotten apple injures its neighbor,” warns us, pernicious beliefs and practices can quickly spread from one province to another, as well as from one church to another and from one diocese to another.

When I was a boy in England, I lived for a time in rural Suffolk. Rosecott where I lived in Iccleshall St. Andrew had an apple orchard. The years my family lived at Rosecott we harvested the apples and stored them in a cool, dry place for the winter months. We carefully picked over the apples before storing them and stored the “keepers,” those that had no broken skin or bruises. We made sure the apples did not touch each other as we wrapped the apples in newspaper and nestled them between layers of clean, dry straw.

If an apple was touching another apple and became rotten, the mold would spread to the other apple. One rotten apple was bad enough but two or more could spoil our entire winter’s supply of apples. No apple tarts. No apple fritters. Rotten apples are only good for one thing—making compost—organic fertilizer for the kitchen garden.

How do you know if doctrine and practices are pernicious? One test is whether they eat away at the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church—the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies like mold eats away at the substance of an apple. Sound doctrine and practices preserve and strengthen this foundation. They do not weaken and destroy it.

Incorporating pernicious doctrine and practices into its formularies as the Anglican Church in North America is doing may be compared to storing apples between layers of damp, moldy straw. The entire winter’s supply of apples is going to rot. The mold will spread from the straw to the apples.

Some apples may prove more resistant to the mold than others but sooner or later they will rot. Even wrapping the apples in newspaper will not protect them from the mold.

Anglicans who are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglicanism have their job cut out for them in the Anglican Church in North America. You can remove a single apple when it shows signs of spoilage. But if your winter’s supply of apples has been stored in damp, moldy straw, you have lost everything. You have little choice but turn the apples into plant food.

During the post-war years my grandparents and my mother lived frugally. The rationing and food shortages of the war were still fresh in their minds. We raised our own chickens and geese for eggs; kept a cow for milk, cream, butter, and cheese; grew vegetables in our kitchen garden; and made jam from the fruit of the plum trees in front of the cottage. My older brother and I gathered hazel nuts from the hedgerows and edible mushrooms from the fields.

Finding one rotten apple in our winter’s store of apples was disheartening enough. But imagine pulling back a layer of straw and discovering row after row of oozing, half-decomposed apples bristling with black, grey, and white mold.

You may be able to salvage a few apples but you will not be able store them again. You will have to use them right away. If you have been dreaming of all the things that you can make with apples, you may have to wait to next fall’s apple harvest.

Anglican who are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglicanism and who have been dreaming of establishing a genuine Anglican presence and witness in North America have little hope of realizing that dream in the Anglican Church in North America. Hopefully they will come to that realization before the rot that is consuming the province consumes them. Even the hardiest, thick-skinned apple becomes infested with mold when it is surrounded by rotting apples and the straw is damp and moldy.

Some readers may bridle at my choice of words. But “rot” can refer to any kind of deterioration, any kind of decline in standards. In the Anglican Church in a number of provinces tradition or experience is given greater weight and accorded higher esteem than the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies. These provinces have shown no sign of improvement but have gotten progressively worse.

In the Anglican Church in North America the proponents of the Catholic Revivalist movement, having come out from under the shadow of liberalism in the Episcopal Church, have taken steps to establish hegemony for themselves in that province, which they once enjoyed in the Episcopal Church, and to move the province in the direction in which they were unsuccessful in moving the Episcopal Church. The direction in which they are seeking to move the ACNA is away from the historic Anglican formularies and the Bible from which these formularies derive their authority.

The two, however, are tied together. Severe a province’s connection to the historic Anglican formularies and you severe its connection to the Bible.

When something rots, it becomes unsound or weak. When the fabric of a house becomes rotten due to neglect or poor workmanship and materials, the house cannot withstand the onslaught of wind and rain. It will begin to fall apart. Rats, mice, beetles, and other small creatures will take up residence in the house and make their own contribution to its deteriorating condition. Eventually the house will collapse.

The same thing can happen to a province when the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies are no longer treated as the province’s standard of doctrine and practice. It can also happen to a province like the Anglican Church in North America, which never fully accepted them as its standard of doctrine and practice in the first place.

The history of the Anglican Church shows that where this standard is no longer enforced or never implemented, all kinds of pernicious doctrine and practices will flourish.

Look at what happened to the Episcopal Church. In 1801 its General Convention adopted a revised version of the Thirty-Nine Articles at the insistence of the province’s bishops but did not require clergy subscription to these Articles. In 1925 its General Convention voted to remove the same Articles from its Prayer Book. In 1979 its General Convention relegated them to the historical documents section of the new Prayer Book.

In the years between these General Conventions the Episcopal Church lost its Evangelical wing. The Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church wings became the dominant wings of the church. At the time of its 1979 General Convention the Episcopal Church was well on its way to embracing gay ordination and same-sex marriage.

A province may not collapse right away. However, like a tumbledown house, it will grow increasingly unsafe.

The history of the Anglican Church also shows that where breakaway churches have become relaxed in enforcing this standard, they have also been beset by the same ills that have beset provinces which for one reason or another relaxed their enforcement of this standard. Two examples are the Free Church of England and the Reformed Episcopal Church.

In recognition of this danger the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa (Church of England in South Africa) has incorporated a unique provision into its constitution. Under this provision all clergy and lay church leaders must, in the presence of two witnesses, sign a declaration of loyalty which includes recognizing the Thirty-Nine Articles as the authoritative standards of faith and doctrine for that church and agreeing to resign from whatever position they are occupying within thirty days of a demand for their resignation from the appropriate authority if at any time after they have signed this declaration they no longer hold the doctrines contained in the Articles.

This provision conveys to those who seek a position of leadership in REACH South Africa that the church is serious about upholding the Articles as “containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.” REACH South Africa incorporated this provision into its constitution several decades before the Jerusalem Declaration.

Just as you must regularly check for spoilage the apples that you have stored for the winter, a jurisdiction must be diligent in enforcing the standard of the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies—if its bishops and other clergy and its congregations are to remain faithful to the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church. Otherwise, it may, like so many Anglican provinces and breakaway churches, founder on the rocks of liberalism or the shoals of unreformed Catholicism.