Anglican Identity in the Age of False Narratives

Since the invention of the World Wide Web in 1990 the number of false narratives relating to Anglican Church history, Anglican beliefs and practices, and Anglican identity has proliferated. The attempts to establish parameters defining historic Anglicanism such as the Jerusalem Declaration have not stemmed the tide of false information.

By Robin G. Jordan

I have been reading a number of the articles that are posted on the Anglican Pastor website. I find a great deal of confusion about the nature of historic Anglicanism on that website—confusion that can be traced to the Catholic Revival movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Ancient-Future Church movement of the twenty-first century, and post-modernism. Here are some of the misconceptions that are promoted on that website, either in the articles posted on the website or the responses to the articles posted in the comments section.

For those who may be wondering why I singled out the Anglican Pastor website, the primary reason is that the views of its writers appear to be representative of the views which are enjoying currency in the Anglican Church in North America. A number of its writers occupy official positions in the ACNA or in seminaries training clergy for the ACNA or they are themselves training for ordination in the ACNA. The website has a number of articles that I would consider to helpful and informative but in the area of Anglican identity its articles are perpetuating what may be described as false narratives as they contain insufficient and inaccurate information.

The first misconception that is promoted on the Anglican Pastor website is that Anglicanism is like playdoh or plasticine. It is whatever shape into which a particular group of self-identified Anglicans mold it. An earlier generation would have used the term “wax nose” but younger Anglicans may not know what a “wax nose” is. However, they have in all likelihood played with modeling clay at some point in their lives. This group of self-identified Anglicans take the position that Anglicanism is whatever an Anglican church believes and practices at a particular time and place.

A related idea is the notion that Anglicanism is always evolving. This notion combines John Henry Newman’s doctrine of development with Frederick Maurice’s theory of an evolving church. This idea has its proponents in the Episcopal Church as well as in the Anglican Church in North America. The proponents of this idea in both churches use it to justify the movement of their respective churches away from authentic historic Anglicanism.

A third misconception that is promoted on the Anglican Pastor website is the myth of the Anglican via media, or middle way. Via Media was the title of a series of tracts written by John Henry Newman and published in the early 1830s. Newman propounded the theory that the Anglican Church occupied a middle ground between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. It was a hybrid of these two theological streams. Newman also maintained that in interpreting the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion the historical context and the intent of their author, Thomas Cranmer, and their reviser, Matthew Parker, may be disregarded. This approach to the interpretation of the Articles permits the interpreter to read into an Article a meaning that conflict with the Article’s meaning if it is interpreted in the light of its historical context and the intent of its author or reviser. It would characterize the approach that Anglo-Catholics subsequently took to interpreting the Articles.

Newman would eventually reject the theory of the Anglican via media as flawed and untenable and convert to Roman Catholicism. However, Edmund Bouvrie Pusey and other Oxford movement leaders would continue to promote it. Frederick Maurice would propound an adaptation of Newman’s theory in his writings that was more dynamic than Newman’s original theory and made the theory more attractive to a wider audience.

Newman and Maurice’s claims had no substance. They were not supported by the historical facts. This, however, has not prevented Anglo-Catholics and others who have been influenced by their views from repeating them. Since Newman first propounded his theory, the notion of the Anglican Church as a via media has taken a number of forms, ranging from Newman’s original theory to the claim that the Anglican Church is a middle way between extremes of all kinds. The latter view has also been propounded on the Anglican Pastor website. It is was a popular theory in the Episcopal Church in the twentieth century and its promotion on the Anglican Pastor website suggests that the ACNA has not freed itself from the influence of the revisionist thinking of the Episcopal Church.

A fourth misconception that is promoted on the Anglican Pastor website is the theory that the Anglican Church is a merging of three disparate theological streams—Catholicism, evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism. This theory is based upon Lesslie Newbegin’s description of the then newly-formed Church of South India as “three streams, one river.” Since Newbegin came up with this description of the CSI, the province has experienced splits in the church over the ownership of property, as well as a major division over the role and authority of bishops in the CSI. Whether Newbegin’s analogy describes the CSI today is debatable. Newbegin did not use the analogy as prescription for how the character of Anglican Church should be shaped. This is how the adherents of the “three streams, one river theory of the Anglican Church are misusing his analogy.

The promotion of these false narratives on the Anglican Pastor raises questions about what the Anglican Studies programs of US seminaries are teaching future Anglican clergy about the history of the Anglican Church, the impact of the Protestant Reformation upon the Church of England, and the distinctives of authentic historical Anglicanism. The description of the Beeson Divinity School’s Anglican Studies program on its website suggests that it is promoting one of these false narratives. The Trinity School for Ministry is the home of the Robert Webber Center for an Ancient Evangelical Future which is advertised as reclaiming the Christian tradition for the life of the church today and is a frequent site of so-called Ancient Evangelical Future conferences. Ashbury Seminary also appears to be teaching revisionist theories of Anglicanism.

The historical facts, however, are incontrovertible. By the end of the Elizabethan phase of the English Reformation the reformed Church of England was thoroughly Protestant and Reformed. The reformation that was begun during the reign of Edward VI and interrupted by the reign of his older sister Mary was begun again during the reign of Elizabeth I. The 1552 Book of Common Prayer authorized during the last year of the reign of Edward VI was reauthorized with three minor changes in the third year of Elizabeth’s reign. The alterations did not change the doctrine of the book, which was Protestant and Reformed. The Catholic bishops who refused to use the book were imprisoned and deposed.

During the Elizabethan phase of the English Reformation the striping of English parish churches of the ornaments associated with medieval Catholicism begun in the Edwardian phase of the reformation was completed. High altars were dismantled, rood screens and reliquaries torn down, and crucifixes, images of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, and holy water stoops removed. The interiors of English parish churches were white-washed. Altars were replaced with portable wooden communion tables that were moved into the entrance to the chancel or the body of the church for celebrations of Holy Communion. Clergy stood at the north side of the table where they could be seen and heard. During the celebration of Holy Communion the congregation gathered around the table. Some congregations knelt to receive communion; others stood. A number of congregations sat at the table.

Until the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion received the royal assent in 1571, John Jewel’s Apology for the Church of England in which he defends the reforms in doctrine and practice made in the Church of England at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign served as the position statement of the English Church on a number of key issues. During the Elizabethan phase of the English Reformation several Reformed catechisms were used to instruct university and grammar school students in the Christian faith—the Heidelberg Catechism, John Calvin’s Genevan Catechism, and Alexander Nowell’s three catechisms. University students who wished to learn more about the Christian faith were advised to read Jewel’s Apology; Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades, a series of fifty sermons explaining Reformed doctrine; and Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Archbishop Matthew Parker required the systematic study of the Bible and Bullinger’s Decades under the supervision of an archdeacon for clergy who wished to obtain a license to preach. Bullinger’s Decades would become the reformed Church of England’s first theological textbook.

The Catholic Revival movement in the nineteenth century would claim that the reformed Church of England’s retention of episcopacy, vestments, the daily offices, and liturgical texts from the pre-Reformation service books were evidence of a Catholic tradition. However, the reformed Church of England was not alone in retaining the old where it might be well used. Several Lutheran churches retained episcopacy, eucharistic vestment, and the daily offices. The reformed Church of England, however, retained only choir vestments—the surplice and the cope—which could be worn by lay persons and had no association with transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign the cope had fallen into disuse. A number of early Lutheran and Reformed liturgies were basically reforms of the medieval Mass. The aim of the reformers in England and Europe was to reform the church, not to replace it. They kept what they believed was compatible with the teaching of Scripture. Only in Geneva did John Calvin go further than the other reformers in abandoning the practices of the pre-Reformation church. It is a misinterpretation of the historical facts to claim that the other reformers were more Catholic on the basis of their retention of some pre-Reformation practices.

Up to a point the Lutheran and Reformed churches were in agreement on doctrine. Doctrinally the Reformed churches did not differ from each other. Where they did differ and principally from the Church of Geneva was on such matters as the relationship of the church and the secular authorities. The reformed Church of England differed from the other Reformed churches in its retention of episcopacy and the surplice. It did not retain episcopacy out of the belief that it was divinely-ordained but was, in the words of John Jewel, “ancient and allowable.” 

The vestiarian controversy that would divide the Elizabethan church was not over eucharistic vestments but the surplice. The clergy who had been influenced by the Church of Geneva refused to wear the surplice. They wore a black academic gown or street clothes. This controversy points to what was to become a major division in the reformed Church of England. Both sides were Reformed in theological outlook. 

The Genevan party, the side that had been influenced by the Church of Geneva wanted to not only abolish the wearing of the surplice but also to revise the Book of Common Prayer along the lines of Calvin’s Form of Church Prayer, replace episcopacy with a presbyterian form of church government, and to establish a theocracy in the place of the English monarchy. 

The other side of this divide, the Prayer Book party, whose Reformed views reflected those of the other Swiss Reformed churches and Heidelberg saw no need to abolish the surplice and to revise the Prayer Book. They defended episcopacy on the grounds that the Scriptures did not prescribe a particular form of church government. The Prayer Book party also recognized that “a magistrate had a right to authority within the church, just as the church could rely on the authority of the magistrate to enforce discipline, suppress heresy, or maintain order.” This was a view that they shared with the Church of Zurich and the other magisterial Reformed churches. In the case of the reformed Church of England the magistrate was the prince of the realm. It is a view that has ancient precedents.

Both sides of this divide were churchmen, Anglicans. Both sides had Puritans in their ranks. The tensions between the two sides would simmer until Archbishop William Laud brought them to a boil during the reign of Charles I.

Up until the reign of Charles I Reformed theology enjoyed a position of preeminence in the reformed Church of England. During Charles’s reign Arminianism would emerge as competitor for that position at least among England’s upper classes. Arminianism would gain popularity among the Stuart elites for a number of reasons. Clergy who subscribed to its tenets received royal patronage and preferment. It was novel. In certain quarters it became fashionable. The more ritualistic form of worship and more ornate church interiors that its adherents favored appealed to their tastes. The dress of the Stuart elites set them apart from the plainer clothes of the Puritans and the common people. 

Arminianism, however, would not eclipse Reformed theology as the doctrine of the Church of England. After the Restoration the Church of England would retain a robust Reformed wing. This wing produced several prominent bishops and theologians. In 1689 the English Parliament passed the Coronation Oath Act, which required future monarchs at their coronation to swear to uphold "the true Profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law."

We do not encounter anyone questioning the Protestant and Reformed theological credentials of the reformed Church of England until the Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century. Its adherents went to great lengths to create a false narrative which not only gave the Church of England unreformed Catholic theological credentials but also provided justification for their beliefs and practices. In their books, tracts, lectures, and sermons, they selected passages from the works of the English Reformers and the Caroline High Churchmen that appeared to support their claims, When these passages were read in the context of what else these divines had written, however, they did not support the claims of the Catholic Revivalists were making. Selective citation of primary and secondary sources became a mark of their scholarship as did stretching the truth and distorting the facts. They not only revived medieval Catholic doctrine and practices which the English Reformers had rejected on solid biblical grounds, they also introduced post-Tridentian Catholic doctrine and practices into the Church of England. They flagrantly disobeyed the canons of the Church of England and the laws of the realm.

The false narrative that the nineteenth century Catholic Revivalists created persists to this day. It has been perpetuated in books by authors who are sympathetic to the Catholic Revivalist movement or who have not investigated the truth of Catholic Revivalist claims but have accepted them at face value. The Internet has contributed to the spread and acceptance of the nineteenth century Catholic Revivalist false narrative. So have a number of US seminaries in their Anglican Studies programs.

The Catholic Revivalist false narrative is not the only false narrative that I have encountered on the Internet. Among these false narratives was one that claimed that the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century was exclusively an Arminian movement. While John and Charles Wesley and Welseyan Arminianism played a role in the eighteenth century Evangelical Revival, Charles Simeon and a number of the prominent figures in the Evangelical Revival were Reformed. They would remain in the Church of England while John Wesley decided to leave the Church of England. While earlier historians claimed that Wesley was forced to leave the Church of England, more recent scholarship does not support this claim.

The proliferation of false narratives on the Internet is serious problem that threatens the recovery of authentic historic Anglicanism in the North American Anglican Church. It is a problem that North American Anglicans who are genuinely committed to biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism must address if they hope to arrest the theological drift in the North American Anglican Church and return it to its roots in the Bible and the Protestant Reformation.