Pigs, Protestants, and the Anglican Church in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

I spent my teen years in what was then rural Louisiana. The area in which I lived was mostly pine woods with a few scattered farms and houses. Wild pigs roamed the pinewoods along with deer, foxes, raccoons, opossums, and other wildlife.

Every year the local residents would round up the pigs on horseback with the help of dogs. They would pen the pigs and feed them on corn and table scraps. This served two purposes. It fattened the pigs and rid them of parasites. They then slaughtered the pigs.

Everyone knew it was pig sticking time because the loud terrified squeals of the pigs could be heard for miles in the otherwise quiet countryside. The pigs were hoisted up by their hind legs and their throats were cut. Until that day arrived, the pigs had no suspicion of their fate. While they had lost their freedom, they were given plenty to eat. In their pens they looked and sounded content.

I cannot say the same thing of ACNA'ers who are fully committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglican beliefs and practices. By “historic Anglican beliefs and practices” I mean those beliefs and practice that are in step with the Articles of Religion of 1571, The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, the two Books of Homilies, and what J. I. Packer calls “the central Anglican theological tradition.”

Anglo-Catholic and liberal Anglicans make no effort to conceal their designs on the Anglican Church. They are pretty upfront about their intentions.

In my last article I mentioned a 2012 Anglican Rose article, “Catholic International.” It is lengthy article but it documents the aims of the Catholic wing of the Anglican Church within the Communion and outside it.

By now they should realize that Anglo-Catholic and liberal Anglicans do not have their best interests at heart. They cannot look to the global South bishops for help. A number of these bishops appear to be too willing to compromise on the theological integrity of historic Anglicanism. They can look only to God and themselves.

Focusing upon parish ministry to the neglect of important areas of the life of the province has been a historic weakness of such Anglicans. On the other hand, Anglo-Catholic and liberal Anglicans have paid more attention to these areas, recognizing that what happens at the provincial level has impact at the diocesan and parish levels.

A pastor who is fully committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglican beliefs and practices may establish and build up a congregation that shares these values. However, unless the pastors who succeed him share the same values, all the work that he did will be for nought.

If he does not recruit and mentor pastors and other church leaders who will inculcate these values in their congregations and who, in turn, will recruit and mentor more pastors and other church leaders, who will do likewise, his labors will be in vain.

Even if he does establish an effective leadership pipeline in the church in which he is ministering, the province and the diocese can create significant obstacles to the pastors and other church leaders that it produces playing a leadership role in the church. The province and the diocese set the standards for pastors and other church leaders in the province and the diocese. At the diocesan level the bishop and his appointees enforce these standards.

If the pigs knew what was coming, they might have broken out of their pens and fled back in to the woods. One or two do escape from their pens, preferring the freedom of the woods to the confinement of the pen.

ACNA'ers who are fully committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglican beliefs and practices do know what is coming. They can hear the knife being sharpened on the whetstone. They can see the block and tackle dangling overhead. They have watched the barrel in which their carcass will be scalded rolled into place. They know what these things mean.

Pigs are intelligent animals. The smarter ones may sense that things are not right. Rather than allowing a full trough to lull them into a false sense of security, they test the weak points of their pen and when they find one, they take advantage of it. They make a break for the freedom of the woods. They are usually the older ones who have roamed the woods for most of their lives. The younger ones who have known little else than the pen are the ones most likely to fall victim to the butcher’s knife.

Human beings are supposed to be more intelligent than pigs. This makes the seeming apathy of these Anglicans to their survival not just as a legitimate theological school of thought in the Anglican Church but as the one such school which stands the most in continuity with the English Reformers and historic Anglicanism even more puzzling. The Catholic and liberal wings of the Anglican Church have organized to further their respective causes and are exploiting every opportunity to do so. They are making use of whatever leverage is available to them.

These Anglicans, on the other hand, appear to be content to sit on their hands. Their indifference to their self-preservation boggles the mind. Perhaps they have convinced themselves that things are not as bad as they might seem and that they do not need to do anything about the state of the Anglican Church in North America. Perhaps the younger pigs, when they bury their snouts in the trough overflowing with food think the same thing. Things are not so bad in the pen. They do not have to forage for food as they did in the woods.

The Catholic wing of the Anglican Church has certainly taken note of this passivity and is turning these Anglicans’ acceptance of things as they are to its advantage.

Perhaps the same Anglicans do not really value the Holy Scripture and historic Anglican beliefs and practices as much as they claim to value them. They certainly stand to lose a great deal if the Anglo-Catholics whose views are mentioned in the aforementioned Anglican Rose article have their way. Yet this does not appear to trouble them. Perhaps they are over-confident in the security of their position in the Anglican Church. If that is indeed the case, I for one do not see on what they are basing that conclusion.

The Catholic wing of the Anglican Church has historically proven to be quite adroit at achieving its aims. One New Tractarian, for example, was able to change the doctrinal foundation of an Anglican province by taking on the hefty responsibility of drafting a new set of canons for that province. See my article, “The Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper of the ACNA’s Catechism: What It Is and Where It Comes From.” The Anglican Church’s Catholic wing has always been willing to do the grunt work if such tasks further its cause.

The position of these Anglicans in the Anglican Church in North America is a shaky one. The deck is stacked against them. For readers who are unfamiliar with this phrase, it means that their chances of future success are limited by factors over which they have little, if any, control. All of the doctrinal standards in the ACNA—the constitution, the canons, the proposed catechism, and the proposed service book—take an Anglo-Catholic party-line on key issues.

Sometimes it is necessary to fight fire with fire, dogmatism with dogmatism. To the dogmatist those who take a conciliatory approach are perceived as weak pushovers. They can be manipulated and co-opted. The aforementioned Anglican Rose article suggests that that is the Anglican Church’s Catholic wing’s perception of those who the article described as “evangelicals.”

The Anglican Church’s Catholic wing, however, has demonstrated skill at dealing with dogmatists as it has with conciliators. In the nineteenth century it gained the sympathy of the public by provoking an overreaction from its opponents and then playing the role of underdog or victim. To this day it continues to play that role even while it is victimizing those who oppose its aims. The Anglican Church’s liberal wing was quick to learn from the Catholic wing and adopted a similar approach to its opponents.

ACNA’ers who are fully committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglican beliefs and practices, on the other hand, have yet to learn from the two wings of the Anglican Church, which have done the most to eat away at the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church—the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies.

The Anglican Church’s Catholic wing, while it is a minority in most Anglican province, has strong convictions and is vocal in expressing these convictions. It may as a consequence exercise an influence that is disproportionate to its size.

In the case of the Anglican Church in North America, it has tended to overshadow the less vocal segments of that province, creating the false impression that the province is predominantly Anglo-Catholic. This impression has, as the aforementioned Anglican Rose article points out, prompted greater willingness on the part of leaders in GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans to work with Anglo-Catholics in the Anglican Communion and the extramural Anglican churches.

The problem is that, while Anglo-Catholics may have entrenched themselves in positions of leadership in the Common Cause Partnership and subsequently the Anglican Church in North America and dominate the College of Bishops, the larger number of clergy and congregations in the ACNA are not Anglo-Catholic. The Anglo-Catholic dioceses are relatively small. Some of these clergy and congregations fall in what might be described as the mushy middle. The others are—at least on paper—committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglican beliefs and practices.

If I was an Anglo-Catholic strategist, I would push this strategy:

1. Take every step that can be taken to strengthen the impression that the Anglican Church in North America is a bastion of Anglo-Catholicism and to encourage the belief of the leaders of GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans that in dealing with its Anglo-Catholic leaders, they are dealing with the representatives of the majority of the clergy and congregations in the ACNA.

My primary aim would be to have the leaders of GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans accept these leaders in the role of mediators between the ACNA and GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confession Anglicans. In this role they would interpret what is happening in the ACNA to the leaders of GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and in turn what is happening in GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans to the clergy and congregations of the ACNA. They would not only be in the position to control the flow of information between the three bodies but also to influence the same bodies through their control of this information.

An additional aim would be to isolate ACNA’ers who are Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in their doctrinal leanings from those who share their doctrinal leanings in GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

2. Take every step that can be taken to promote the acceptance of the proposed catechism and the proposed service book as the official formularies of the Anglican Church in North America. While they may not be ideal from an Anglo-Catholic perspective, they provide tools that can be used to not only further move the ACNA in a Catholic direction but also to further marginalize ACNA’ers who are Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in their doctrinal leanings.

My ultimate aim would be to induce these ACNA’ers either to accept these doctrinal standards or to leave the ACNA.

3. Take every step that can be taken to persuade the institutionalists in the mushy middle to accept the proposed catechism and the proposed service book as the official formularies of the Anglican Church in North America.

My aim would be to appeal to their instutionalist sentiments and to convince them that in supporting these doctrinal standards, they would be supporting the ACNA. Once a critical mass of these leaders is achieved, the other leaders in the mushy middle can be expected to fall into line.

4. Take every step that can be taken to close the leadership pipeline at the provincial and diocesan level to ACNA’ers who are Protestant, Reformed, and evangelical in their doctrinal leanings.

My aim would be to prevent ACNA’ers who have these doctrinal leadings from occupying a position of influence within the ACNA.

I would not be surprised if the more dogmatic of the Anglo-Catholic leaders in the ACNA are thinking along similar lines.

ACNA’ers who are fully committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglican beliefs and practices do need to become more pro-active in safeguarding what they value. Instead of waiting to see if anything bad is going to happen to them and then responding to it, they need to take control of their situation. They can do this in a number of ways—form a distinct jurisdiction within the Anglican Church in North America, concentrate all clergy and congregations sharing their vision and values into a single body, develop their own catechism and liturgy, establish their own leadership pipeline, and network with like-minded Anglicans outside the ACNA and North America.

If worse comes to worse, and things do not improve in the Anglican Church in North America, they can, as a second alternative North American province, go their separate way. Unlike the pigs in their pens oblivious to their impending fate, they can do something. They do not need to extend their throats to the butcher’s knife.