The Anglican Church in North America Celebrates Its Tenth Anniversary

By Robin G. Jordan

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the Anglican Church in North America. In preparing the article series on how the Anglican Network in Canada’s 1552 Order of Holy Communion in Modern English might be improved, I was confronted by the question, “What do ACNA’ers who are committed to Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism have to celebrate?” The working group that drafted the ANiC’s 1552 Order of Holy Communion in Modern English went to great lengths to conform the service to the forms that the ACNA’s Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force had developed. But that apparently was not enough to earn the service a place in The Book of Common Prayer 2019. One thing that is conspicuously absent from the proposed BCP 2019 is a contemporary language version of the Communion service that would become in its 1662 revision an integral part of the doctrinal foundation of historic Anglicanism.

If I was of a cynical frame of mind, I would be inclined to believe that the Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force had no intention of including the 1552 Order of Holy Communion in Modern English in the proposed book when Bishop Duncan encouraged the Canadians to put together a contemporary language version of the 1552 Communion service. Even with the additions and alterations that the working group made in the service, it does not conform to the doctrinal standards that the College of Bishops is seeking to foist upon the province. The College of Bishops has ulterior motives in endorsing To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism and The Book of Common Prayer 2019 and pushing their acceptance by ACNA clergy and congregations as I have drawn attention to elsewhere. They are seeking to establish a “new settlement” in the Anglican Church in North America and these two formularies will establish the doctrinal standards of this “new settlement” as the 1559 Prayer Book and the 1571 Articles of Religion established the doctrinal standards of the Elizabethan Settlement. The Elizabethan Settlement would shape historical Anglicanism.

The 1552 Prayer Book in its 1559 revision is an integral part of the Elizabethan Settlement. The 1552 Order of Holy Communion in Modern English incorporates the two changes that were made in the 1552 Communion service that were made in the 1559 revision. The 1552 Order of Holy Communion in Modern English is essentially the 1559 Communion service. The 1559 Prayer Book served as the prayer book of the reformed Church of England for almost a hundred years. The 1662 Prayer Book is the 1559 Prayer Book with some modifications. The Restoration bishops might have revised The Book of Common Prayer along the lines of the 1637 Scottish Prayer Book, which is modeled upon the 1549 Prayer Book. However, they produced what is a fairly conservative revision of the 1559 Prayer Book. Just as the 1552 Prayer Book has lived on in its 1559 revision, its 1559 Prayer Book has lived on in its 1662 revision.

In The Story of the Real Prayer Book William Sydnor argues that the 1559 Prayer Book is “more representative of Anglicanism than either of the earlier Books.” He makes a good case for this claim. If he is correct, then the exclusion of a contemporary language version of the 1559 Communion service, one adapted for use in the twenty-first century, from The Book of Common Prayer 2019 is quite significant. But it is not surprising because the Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force in the proposed BCP 2019 and the College of Bishops through its endorsement and promotion of the proposed book reject the Elizabethan Settlement and historic Anglicanism. Indeed, except for the translation of the liturgy into English, they also reject the Protestant Reformation.

As D.E. W. Harrison and Michael C. Samson point out in Worship in the Church of England, the Protestant Reformation gave back to the English Church the God and Jesus of the New Testament. The Protestant Reformation also restored to the English Church the great New Testament doctrines of justification by faith alone and the priesthood of all believers but most importantly of all it restored to the English Church the gospel. It gave Anglicans a Bible-based faith and a Bible-based liturgy. The “new settlement” embodied in To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism and The Book of Common Prayer 2019 robs the North American Anglican Church of these precious treasures and offers North American Anglicans a few cheap baubles in their place.

ACNA’ers who are committed to Biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism have little to celebrate.