Modern ECUSA evangelicals and charismatics - not to mention some anglo-catholics - have been and perhaps remain hopeful that the majority of the Primates of the Anglican Communion will "discipline" the Province known as ECUSA and declare that it has placed itself outside of the Anglican Communion. And the reason for the petition for immediate discipline is, as we all know, because of majority votes in the General Convention of 2003 for innovation in terms of blessing "gay" couples and ordaining a "gay" priest as a bishop. In fact, many of this persuasion ( that is, those who have prioritized the homosexual issue) seem to want their own ranks to be declared to be the orthodox remnant in the ECUSA with whom alone the [majority of the] churches of the Anglican Communion should be in full communion.
But the Anglican Family as a Communion of churches has (at least as of now) no central authority or means to declare such a thing. However, it is true that individual provinces or churches, which are autonomous, have that power of declaring the anathema against the ECUSA; but, if they do so, they only speak and act for themselves, not on behalf of the whole or even part of the whole.
This kind of situation is not new! Let us recall the 1970s when the ECUSA deserved the anathema and did not receive it!
In 1976/79 the ECUSA did something which was far more serious and deadly than its actions for innovation in 2003. In fact the innovations of 2003 can be traced back to the door that was opened wide in 1976 & 1979.
At those Conventions in the late 1970s the ECUSA knowingly, deliberately and carefully set aside the very basis of its claim to be genuinely Anglican and a sharer in the Tradition of the authentic Anglican Way. It set aside the classic Book of Common Prayer (1662-1928) and the Ordinal (1662-1928) and the Articles of Religion and replaced the first two with modern creations designed in the1960s and early 1970s. And the Articles became a historic document.
What was called "The Book of Common Prayer, 1979" was not such, but was rather a "Book of Alternative Services" like those so-called in Canada and England. Inside this Book were multiple services and also new rites for ordination and they made possible the ordination of women. (Contrast England & Canada where the new book existed alongside the classic BCP - and still does so.)
The Anglican Communion had NO power to intervene in 1979 in an autonomous and wealthy province as was the ECUSA, and so it quietly allowed this major innovation in the foundations of the American Church to be made without more than a murmur.
The same Communion did the same with respect to the changing of the doctrine of marriage in the 1970s by the ECUSA. Again this was a foundational change!
Is there a way out of all this?
I suggest that the way forward for the "remnant" is to prioritize the fundamentals and the basics - the relation to the Holy Trinity through the Scriptures with the classic Anglican Formularies as the necessary foundation of the Anglican Way as Reformed Catholicism; and to see the homosexual issue as the means that God is using to bring his Episcopal children (i.e., genuine Episcopalians) back to himself and back together in true koinonia. This way forward will of course mean repenting for the commitment to the 1979 formularies for all these past years.
If the faithful remnant of the ECUSA could join with the faithful in the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Reformed Episcopal Church & the AMiA etc to recover together the best Biblical & Patristic and Reformed Tradition of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA in a genuinely comprehensive Church based on the Scriptures and the Formularies, then the Episcopal Household could be recovered and rebuilt in the USA, and this the Primates could genuinely support! A genuine province could be created by the grace and providence of the Holy Trinity that would be "worthy" for full inclusion within the Communion of churches.
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The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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