I wish to comment on the following paragraph in your Declaration in order to make suggestions by which your aims are made more specific and related specifically to the history of the Anglican Way in the USA. Here is what you have written:
I.5. We confess, hold and bear witness, in particular therefore, that this trust is given to us in the Holy Scripture’s received authority: the “Word of God” making known the “mysteries” of God through the prophets and apostles by the Holy Spirit (Col 1:25ff.; Rom. 16:25f.; Eph. 3:5; Nicene Creed). This Word is made known and rightly apprehended, furthermore, in the Church’s life as it is bound in the unity of love and truth before the eyes of the world (Jn. 17:20-26; Col 2:1-6), expressed in the common Creeds and Canons of the Christian churches, as they have been led in recognized council across the ages. Within the Anglican Church of which we are a part, this means that Scripture’s meaning is rightly discerned in addition 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 which ground the belief and practices of our Communion’s life. “In this way the authorities, which the church needs for her mission, are defined and limited.” (Barmen Declaration Article 1).
I comment on the second half of the paragraph which deals with the Anglican Way, which we believe is a jurisdiction of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
Against the background of the Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene & Athanasian) and Canons (I presume especially those of 1604 in England and from before the 1960s in the PECUSA/ECUSA) you speak of the common, historic formularies. We agree, I think, that these are (a) The Book of Common Prayer; (b) The Ordinal – services of ordination; and (c) the Articles of Religion.
What we need to agree upon next is that the classic edition of these Formularies is that of 1662 – in The BCP of 1662 there is contained all Three Formularies and this edition has been translated into over 150 languages. May I suggest that the Ordinal is a Formulary and should be stated also in your paragraph.
Since the Anglican Communion is now made up of self-governing Provinces and each one has its own particular cultural and political context, these edition of 1662 Formularies have been received in a specific manner in each Province since the eighteenth century. This means that they have been adapted to local reality. Thus in the Thirteen States of the USA in the 1780s they were received and then adapted to local reality – e.g., no longer prayer for the King but prayer for President & Governor.
So the PECUSA had specific Formularies (approved by the Bishops of the C of E) of its own by 1800 and these were of the same nature and content as those of the mother Church but adapted to local circumstances.
It would, I submit, be far better and more realistic, for your Declaration to state that you are committed to the Formularies as they were received and adapted by the General Convention in the late eighteenth century and then slightly modified in 1892 & 1928. In other words you are committed to specific edition of the Formularies, that is the USA edition. Likewise to the Canon Law as received in the PECUSA before the revolutions beginning in the 1960s.
Stating a general commitment to Formularies as you do opens the door to vagueness and misunderstanding and leaves the 1979 prayer book hanging in free space.
So I suggest that what you really need to state is that the 1979 prayer book, while called “The BCP” by the ECUSA, is not a genuine BCP in the line of the classic & historic editions of 1549, 1552, 1662, 1789, 1892 & 1928. It is of a different genre and ethos – it is a BAS, an ASB, a book of alternative services not a new edition of the classic BCP of 1662 & 1928.
You could call this new kind of prayer book “The American Book of Alternative Services” or “The ECUSA Prayer Book” as you also specifically state your commitment to the classic American Formularies, those of 1928. However, if you so declare, then I suggest that then you need to state very specifically that while the 1979 prayer book is the chief Formulary of the present, disordered ECUSA it is not so any longer for you; for you it is only a book of alternative services, even if you like parts of it very much.
If you follow my suggestion then I submit that you will be really fulfilling the citation from the Barmen Declaration. I mean “defined and limited.”
(I hardly need add what you know that the Gene Robinson affair is merely the last of a series of innovations (based usually on secular understandings of rights, individualism etc.) within the ECUSA that was given a tremendous send off in the 1970s with the daring innovation of setting aside the chief formulary of the Anglican Way and replacing it with a different one, but calling the new one by the old name! What a preposterous thing to do and so many accepted it because they were drugged by the spirit of the 1960s! Let us shake off that drug!)
May the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ give you courage, strength and wisdom to do the will of the heavenly Father.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.)
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