The Boundary Markers of Anglican Belief and Practice

By Robin G. Jordan

In ancient times boundary stones and natural features of the landscape—trees, streams, ponds, rivers, lakes, and the like, were used to mark the boundaries of land which a tribe, clan, or other kinship group claimed. Moving a boundary stone or a cairn used to mark a land boundary was considered a serious offense.

The boundary markers of the beliefs and practices of the reformed Church of England may be organized into four main categories. In the first category are documents like John Jewel’s Apology of the Church of England. They represent the earliest attempt to establish the boundaries of the Church of England during what is called the “English Reformation.” In the second category is the two Books of Homilies and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. In the third category is the Prayer Book and the Ordinal. In the fourth category is the Canons of 1604.

During the nineteenth century the Catholic Revival not only moved a number of these boundary markers but also removed many of them. As one writer sympathetic to the Catholic Revival put it, the movement broke down the hedge between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. It not only revived a number of pre-Reformation medieval Catholic beliefs and practices in the English Church, but it also introduced many post-Tridentian continental Roman Catholic beliefs and practices into the English Church, beliefs and practices which had never been an element of pr-Reformation medieval English Catholicism. Their introduction would divide proponents of the Catholic Revival into two groups.

One group wished to restore a number of pre-Reformation medieval practices of the English Church, believing that their restoration would enrich the worship of the Church. They believed that these practices had antecedents and precedents in the practices of the early Church. The other group, however, wished to Romanize the English Church and to bring it back into the orbit of the Roman Catholic Church. They claimed that the English Church would have adopted the beliefs and practices that they were introducing if the English Reformation had not occurred.

The Catholic Revival movement quickly crossed the Atlantic to the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean islands. In the Protestant Episcopal Church its proponents made no distinction between pre-Reformation medieval English beliefs and practices and post-Tridentian continental Roman Catholic beliefs and practices. It would influence many American clergy to the point that they turned their backs on the English Reformation and the Protestant heritage of their church.

The mid-nineteenth century saw the emergence of the Broad Church movement which championed the acceptance of a wide diversity of opinion in the Church of England and its daughter churches. While this movement is generally associated with modernism and liberalism, its thinking is evident in a number of the breakaway churches, particularly the Anglican Church in North America and the Reformed Episcopal Church.

Among the most vocal of the members of these church we find a number of voices who advocate a continuing reformulation of Anglican beliefs and practices as the difficulties of the times may seem to require, even to the extent of discarding beliefs and practices which are integral to the Anglican Church’s Protestant heritage. ACNA’s first archbishop, Robert “Bob” Duncan has gone on record as saying that Anglicans should reject the English Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement as no longer useful or desirable and return to the beliefs and practices of the pre-Reformation medieval Church.

Other voices describe the Anglican Church as an amalgam of Protestant and Catholic beliefs and practices in which elements of disparate theologies have converged to form a cohesive whole. Their thinking is reminiscent of that of Frederick Denison Maurice, a nineteenth century Anglican minister and theologian who is associated with the Broad Church movement and whose lectures, sermons, writings elicited one of two reactions. Some regarded him with “the reverence due a great spiritual teacher.” Others took a dimmer view of Maurice.

John Ruskin regarded him as “by nature puzzle-headed and indeed wrong-headed….” Aubry Thomas de Vere compared listening to Maurice to "eating pea-soup with a fork." Matthew Arnold observed that Maurice was "always beating the bush with profound emotion, but never starting the hare." M. E. Grant Duff after hearing Maurice on 30 to 40 occasions wrote in his diary, that he (Duff) had “never carried away one clear idea, or even the impression that he (Maurice) had more than the faintest conception of what he himself meant. John Stuart Mills concluded that more intellectual power had been wasted in Maurice than in any other of his contemporaries.

Maurice proposed a more dynamic theory of the supposed Anglican via media, or middle way, than John Henry Newman's. Newman would ultimately rejected his own theory as untenable. Maurice envisioned an evolutionary process in which a future Anglican Church would come to incorporate elements from the various branches of Christianity and in which all Christians would finally be united as one body. Maurice may be considered the father of the convergence view of the Anglican Church which is popular in some quarters of the Anglican Church in North America.

A number of voices in and outside the Anglican Church in North America champion what they describe as a “New Oxford movement.” The purpose of this movement is to extend the nineteenth century Catholic Revival and its beliefs and practices into the twenty-first century. This movement has its proponents in the Continuing Anglican Churches as well as in the Anglican Church in North America.

Some voices seek to move the Anglican Church closer to the Eastern Orthodox Churches while other voices seek to move the Anglican Church closer to the more conservative Lutheran Churches. A number of voices would move the Anglican Church closer to the more conservative Presbyterian and Reformed Churches.

If they have not already moved or removed the boundary markers of Anglican belief and practice, this highly vocal segment of the worldwide Anglican Church is prepared to move or remove them. They are not satisfied to leave well enough alone and leave the boundary markers where the first two centuries of the reformed Church of England placed them.

In upcoming articles I plan to look at where these boundary markers were placed and what their location means for those who identify themselves as “Anglicans” in the twenty-first century.