St. John the Evangelist - Ancient Faith, Modern Relevance

REALIGNMENT
The Archbishop of Canterbury talks about it. The Archbishops outside of North America are doing it. The Archbishop of ECUSA hates it. Many of the continuing churches in North America are depending on it. “Global realignment” is the buzz phrase of today’s Anglicanism.

As ECUSA continues its headlong moral and organizational sprint into chaos, the whimper started by the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873 has turned into a bellow of moral outrage and a plea to set right the wrongs. Many seem to believe the best way to do this is by detaching conservative parishes from ECUSA and reattaching them to some other facet of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

This approach is driven by the laudable desire is to keep as much of the worldwide communion as intact as possible. Reasons vary; from apostolic succession for the Anglo-Catholics, to political elegance for many conservatives, to the theological principles embedded in John 17, to deeply felt brotherhood and fellowship for those who rightly stand in awe of “global south” moral courage.

Now we have a hodge-podge of international investment in North America: Rwanda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, South East Asia, the West Indies, the Province of West Africa, the Southern Cone, Bolivia. Each of these Primates with - and sometimes without - their constituent Houses of Bishops have weighed in, doing - they say - what the Holy Spirit has led them to do.

The sad irony is that these primates are opposing that which Jefferts-Schori says the Holy Spirit has told HER to do. Well, we can be sure that spirits are involved in some way - but one should be cautious to accuse the Third Person of the Holy Trinity for the mess in which Anglicans now find themselves.

Most unfortunately, the original intent of unity is turning into disunity. Nigeria leads CANA and Truro goes there. Rwanda leads AMiA (”in the Americas”) and Grace Church and Pascoe have gone that way. AMiA(s) is against women’s ordination, sort of, but not really, because Rwanda is for it. CANA is for women’s ordination, but not Nigeria, at least until we “discern the mind of Christ,” or something like that. And that just one kind of disunity in only two organizations!
 
WHERE DOES IT HURT?
The answer offered for Anglicanism’s ills is structural realignment. But have we heard the question rightly? And are we fixing the problem? Or are we perhaps putting a cast on an unbroken limb? Is structural alignment the problem? Was having the wrong partner the source of North American Anglicanism’s ills?

Political relationships are the content or vessel into which the form and substance of ideas and goals are poured. This essay suggests that without a re-formation of the substance, the realignment of the parts is irrelevant. In fact, it’s worse than irrelevant. The realignment of the parts without clear substance and purpose actually exacerbates Anglicanism’s ills.

It has been observed that one of Anglicanism’s greatest weaknesses today is its refusal - or inability - to define itself. Consider the so-called four instruments of unity.

The Anglican Consultative Council (June 2005) resolved as follows: “The … Council notes with approval the suggestion of the Windsor Report that the Archbishop of Canterbury be regarded as the focus for unity and that the Primates’ Meeting, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council be regarded … as the ‘Instruments of Communion’” (http://www.aco.org/communion/acc/meetings/acc13/resolutions.cfm#s2). While this statement may warm one’s heart, that’s about the only value to be found in it. There is very little unity around any of these four instruments.

The Rev. Canon Mark Harris rightly takes note of this disunity in an essay (www.thewitness.org/agw/harris012804.html) in which he writes: “Whatever else the Anglican Communion is about, it is not, it seems, about unity based on the symbol of the Archbishop of Canterbury.” One cannot commend Canon Harris’ theology, but his clarity is wonderful.

Even a meeting of the Primates is not generating much unity these days; witness the meetings in Dar Es Salaam. There is significant rhetoric, substance is quite lacking however.

The point is that realignment, restructuring, multiple concentric circles, or whatever configuration is most popular at the moment is scratching what does not itch, binding what is not broken, and leaving the rotten limb to turn gangrenous.

ECUSA is a sickly creature. Trying to attach the dead or sick parts of it to another body will only carry the disease and death with it, which is responsible for the sickness in the first place. And that disease is disengagement from historic creedal Christianity.

TAKE THIS AND CALL ME …
A sister from a non-denominational denomination recently told me that she is excited about Anglicanism’s theological content. “You’re connected,” she said, “with clear creeds and statements of doctrine, both in your Articles and in your worship.” Out of the mouth of a low-church, no-church sister comes wisdom for the ages.

It is hoped that there is relative unity on the following assertion: being Anglican is to be somehow to be related to the church of the English reformation. So, let us ask: for what did Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer die? Realignment? “Mission”? “Living into” this, or being an entrepreneurial that?

The truth is that, by modern standards, our Anglican forefathers actually died for rather idealistic and apparently irrational reasons; things like the doctrines of justification and the sacraments. What would they think of today’s Anglicanism ignoring the very Articles of Religion they drafted? Indeed, there are so-called Anglicans today that embrace the precise doctrinal errors for which Cranmer died, without any shame or fear of correction!

With great ignorance or disingenuousness, many claim that what Cranmer et al. worked for was not creedal or doctrinal, but political in nature. They claim that Cranmer was just compromising. Perhaps – and perhaps not. Don’t we find it a strange thing that a compromising politician uncompromisingly burnt the hand that signed his earlier recantations while tied to a stake, saying: “This hand hath offended”?

We need to remember that Cranmer and his kin died for ideas, theology, truth! They did not give their lives for “global realignment.” He had the opportunity to work toward exactly that. Cranmer was very sympathetic to the causes of Calvin in Switzerland and Luther in Germany. It is well known that Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr were protégés and friends of the Archbishop and had significant roles to play in work of the Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion.

Cranmer could have configured himself and the reformation of the English church around these various relationships and hoped that it would later bear fruit. Instead, he pressed forward with prayer book revision, a confessional statement modeled on continental reforms, and the Elizabethan Homilies, no matter what alignments seemed propitious for the moment. He did not set aside the unpopular changes to the BCP to keep portions of his country happy, waiting to “discern the mind of Christ” - or the mind of the populace.

For Cranmer and others, the substance of theology was far more important than organizational card shuffling. They were not immune to their own intrigues and attempts at political elegance, but the products of their labors were a national church framed around the Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Elizabethan Homilies.

And yet in our day, there is a shyness about holding to these instruments. The reason for such shyness (one suspects) is that these instruments are not the instruments of unity for which a misdirected church would seek. Instead of tickling the theological senses, such instruments could divide and offend. And God forbid that one should offend! We might divide the church, lose our properties … oh, wait, that’s right, we already have done - but WITHOUT a concomitant unity of purpose and mind.

In the aforementioned essay by Canon Harris, he complains about the statement from the Anglican Communion Network called “Confession and Calling …” He writes: “What is sought is confessional allegiance based on the statement … which supposedly promotes ‘unity of belief and practice that serves to expose the individualism and congregationalism that is now regnant within the Church at large and denies the Name of Jesus.’ All free thinkers and all members of the ecumenical community in which congregationalism is rampant take note - these people want you and me out because they think we deny the Name of Jesus.”

For those not familiar with the document to which Harris refers, “Confession and Calling …” is a statement by the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes (aka The Anglican Communion Network) that serves as a theological charter statement, noting (among other things) that “Scripture’s meaning is rightly discerned … through the theological ordering of our common historic formularies, including the sixteenth and seventeenth century authorized Books of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles.”  (see http://anglicanchurch.net/?/main/page/about#theo-stmt)

It appears that Canon Harris fears theological re-formation a great deal. And he’s not alone. Oh the howling from Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh regarding the document. The Diocese of Central Florida is afraid that it’s divisive.

Why the forceful opposition to another seemingly harmless document? The opposition is based on the upset that a re-formation of theology could cause. As Harris indignantly points out, there will then be a basis on which some are in and some are out! As he further warns, one simply cannot propose this kind of solution, since it would be entirely out of keeping with the spirit of the age: “It is appalling that at the close of the modern era that religion has once again become the rallying point for the warrior’s courage.” Ah, the frightening prospect of courage on the horizon, it simply chills the soul, does it not?

AND IN CONCLUSION
Enough of realignment! It’s time for reformation! Instead of the imprecise - if not intentionally misleading - language of “mutual affection” and the guidance of whatever kind of “spirits” there are, let us brave the risk of stating our positions clearly. Let us purify this portion of Christ’s bride by washing it in the unmuddied waters of “truth” and “lie,” “right” and “wrong.” “Jesus is just OK with me” religion barely passes as sound Christianity, never mind as a kind of vigorous reformation-working faith for our time.

Loyalty to the former instruments of unity - the Anglican formularies - is just the medicine that will save this patient. They are a ‘regula fidei’ which provides a common language and framework for our work as Anglican Christians. Will there still be questions and problems to solve? Surely, but at least we may approach them with a common vocabulary.

Let us play the man, dear church, and perhaps - just maybe - the now guttering candle lit so long ago will again shed a comforting light in this world. Let us return to the warrior spirit that sent our fathers to fire and jail, drowning and exile - before such extremes for defending the faith become necessary for our progeny in this part of the world.

Lord have mercy on your Bride, the Church.

PS: I encourage readers to consider such organizations as The Society for the Propagation of Reformed Evangelical Anglican Doctrine (SPREAD a http://www.anglicanspread.org) and the Prayer Book Society of the USA (http://pbsusa.org) as being committed to “standards based” and “confessional” Anglicanism.