REBUILDING THE AMERICAN ANGLICAN HOUSEHOLD
May I make a contribution to the discussion about the new NETWORK within the ECUSA on your List (and congratulations to you on the energy you show day by day - as not a young man - in getting out all the material to hundreds of places and people).
To set the scene of American Anglicanism - as I see it we have now (with some overlapping and untidiness) (a) those within the ECUSA (the Network) who wish to be "a church within a Church" and to be given a stamp of approval by overseas bishops of the Anglican Communion; (b) those in the new Anglicans United loose Federation (REC, AMiA, APA, Charismatic Anglicans etc.) of Anglican Groups, and (c) the old, classic Continuers (PCK, ACA, ACC and their offshoots). (a) is talking to (b) and (b) to (a) but not as much as really is needed. Then a very few in (a) and (b) are talking to (c). Within (c) there is the beginning of talking with one another. There is need for continuing conversation within and between all groups.
On the face of it the NETWORK is simply accepting the ECUSA as it was in July 2003 before it took on board the Gene Robinson affair. That is, it is accepting the Canon Law and Formulary (the 1979 prayer book with its catechism & ordinal) as its basis.
However, I think it is true to say that there is a growing recognition that to stay within the ECUSA as a church within a church needs to be seen "as a church within an apostate church". For it is not only the accepting of same-sex relations as normal and approved by God that is the problem the Network has to face. Since the 1960s there has been an accumulation of innovations each of which has been an accommodation to the secular society and to the modern doctrines of human rights, self-affirmation and democracy. The apostasy is caused by the total effect of these innovations on the worship, doctrine & discipline of the ECUSA. Of course there are parishes which have resisted parts of this total program of innovations but all parishes in the ECUSA and all clergy are infected by the cancer even when they protest against it. They are members one of another and thus share the same bloodstream as it were.
I believe that Bishop Duncan, Canon Anderson, Bishop Ackerman and others see this picture rather clearly and they desire to move this Network from its present doctrinal position into a sounder one, and this will mean the imposition of discipline in their own Network, the like of which the Episcopalians have not known before.
So my belief is that we should encourage the Network to explore its Anglican roots within the PECUSA and while the Scriptures are read and meditated upon in its parishes. This I think will cause the members to wish to desire to be governed by a Canon Law and Polity that is free from the infections that began in the 1960s and also it will help them to move to the recognition that the 1979 prayer book is at best a book of alternative services (= ASB, 1980 & BAS 1985 of England & Canada). There is absolutely no hope for the Network as a truly Anglican body if it does not get its Formularies and Canon Law right - to something like they were before the 1960s. Protesting it is based on Scripture is not enough in 2004 for the Network since it must in its constitution and basis confess and teach sound orthodox Anglican Reformed Catholic Faith; and keeping the 1979 book as its formulary tells us that it is committed to the revision of Anglican Faith that began in the 1960s and is not much different (except for same-sex matters and a few other
things) from the ECUSA itself.
So I hope that there will be a recovery of roots and of reformed Catholic Faith in the Network, a move by the Network towards the "Federation" and also, more gently and carefully, towards the classic Continuers.
Let us remember that Anglican Way knows only in its Polity one province in one country and so if the ECUSA is by apostasy not that province any more for the USA, then the Anglicans outside it and on the edge of it in the USA need to work together to create in God's good time the replacement - together they need to rebuild the American Anglican Household. This is a holy and urgent assignment!
The Revd Dr Peter Toon December 18th 2003
A reader responds:
P.T:On the face of it the NETWORK is simply accepting the ECUSA as it was in July 2003 before it took on board the Gene Robinson affair. That is, it is accepting the Canon Law and Formulary (the 1979 prayer book with its catechism & ordinal) as its basis.
I wish people would stop trying to infer things, and actually engage the material instead. I've seen no interaction with the Network's theological statement, which seems to address this, at least in part:
"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)."
The Network does not see itself as a church within a church, but as the eventual replacement for ECUSA as the legitimate voice of Anglicanism is the US in communion with the rest of the Communion. Let me tell you, Kendall Harmon expressed his negative opinion of the '79 book in Dallas, and no one I know disagreed with him at all. There is no need for those who will likely be members of this Network to "move to the recognition that the 1979 prayer book is at best a book of alternative services." They are already there. They agree with you already. Duncan, I believe, has already said that other prayerbooks beside the '79 should be used. I think most would probably go that route.
P.T: Let us remember that Anglican Way knows only in its Polity one province in one country...
Well, I think this development was more a practical one than one founded in Christian theology or in scripture, and as such I do not think it is one that is necessary to continue. And there are, after all, provinces of more than one country. I don't think this is something that we must hold on to in order to remain Anglican.
Dear Father Kim,
May I reply to the anonymous writer below, whose comments you circulated. Kindly pass this on to your patient readers.
Will she or he tell me how many of those involved in the Network have recognized before God, before history and in their own minds that the 1979 prayer book is not and can never be The Book of Common Prayer. It is in structure and content much like the 1980 ASB and the 1985 BAS.
I know that the AAC and the Network pay lip service to the classic editions of the BCP in their statements but nevertheless they still call and treat and use the 1979 book as though it were a genuine edition of the BCP, when in fact, as all who see it can recognize, it is really and truly a book of varied services. It was called the BCP 1979 by the very ECUSA Convention which authorized later same-sex relations and approved Gene Robinson. To call it the BCP was a greater act of defiance against God than was the approval of Mr Robinson, bad though the latter was. To make it the chief formulary of the ECUSA was another act of defiance against heaven and against the Anglican Way. The Network must surely deplore and repudiate these decisions.
What I look for is a real move -- not merely in long statements at a web site hurriedly put together -- by the AAC & Network actually to make it very clear that the 1979 prayer book is wrongly named and is at best a book of alternative services, while the true BCP of the PECUSA/ECUSA is the edition of 1928. When they do this, then I think that they will show that they are really intending to be the replacement for the present apostate ECUSA.
Let the AAC and the Network declare that like the C of E and other Churches they believe it is right to have the specific classic Formularies (BCP, Ordinal and Articles) and also to have alongside them a Book of Alternative Services. In the USA the edition of the BCP that is authentically American is the 1928 (which is a revision of 1892/1789/1662). A Church cannot say it is committed to all prayer books for each is related to a place and time.
In terms of the Unity of the Anglican Way, to state that there is to be one Province in one geographical area is to state what the classic American Prayer Books have stated (1789, 1892 & 1928 editions). This idea of one united province is not a form of colonialism it is the Polity of the Anglican Way and thus in the USA what is called for is a Province uniting all the anglican household that is biblically based and desirous to be orthodox. I see this as a most important vocation for the Network for the Household is now divided into so many groupings, many of whom are outside the ECUSA and critical of those remaining in there!
I am optimistic that there will be a recovering by the Network of the roots of genuine Anglicanism that is there richly in US history and is found all over the present world. But I say again there can be no recovery that does not include dropping the 1979 prayer book from its pedestal and replacing it with the 1928 BCP as chief Formulary. If the 1979 is to be used as the book of alternative services for a while - OK - but it must not be as now for the Network (as it is in ECUSA) the official Formulary if the Network is to be takens seriously by the Extra-Mural Anglicans and by observers abroad.
When the 1979 book is put down from its pedestal there will also come with it various innovations that are supported and energized by it. But that is step 2. Step one is to get the Formulary right! Let's do that first.
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.),
Christ Church, Biddulph Moor & St Anne's, Brown Edge
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