A discussion starter from Peter Toon.
In order to make my points in this short essay, I shall deal with generalities and not supply footnotes to explain nuances, paradoxes and exceptions.
The point I wish to make is that in the USA both those who claim to be orthodox Episcopalians within the ECUSA, and those who claim to be orthodox Anglicans outside the ECUSA, share one common characteristic. It is this. That they appear to be more committed to what may be called additions to or extras of the Anglican Way than that which is the very essence of the Anglican Way. In short, they have closed their minds to what may be called the classic Anglican Mind.
Put another way, they go out of their way to distance themselves from that which historically may be called the key commitments and affirmations of the clergy and people who have been called Anglicans and Episcopalians.
Please note that I am referring not to the progressive liberal elite which runs the “National Church” and many dioceses of the ECUSA, although this group does clearly portray a total rejection of the classic Anglican Mind and received Episcopal Faith. I am referring to those who claim to be “orthodox” within and outside the ECUSA.
Whatever do I mean? Have I gone crazy? Maybe. I am living after all in the progressive state of Washington on the West Coast and I was born and bred in England!
I mean this. Many of those called “Continuing Anglicans” seem at first sight to be truly Anglicans when in reality they are not so. When you look closely you find that they have committed themselves to (a) a path that will end in union with the See of Rome – this is the expressed policy of the TAC & the ACA; (b) a form of Liturgy for the Eucharist that includes the most “Roman” parts of the classic Tridentine Liturgy of the Mass – see the Anglican or American Missals; and (c) a doctrinal commitment to the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which require the veneration of icons.
Let us be clear. Historically, since the late 19th century not a few Anglo-Catholics have inserted into the Anglican BCP service parts of the Tridentine Mass and they have held to the doctrine of the Icons; but, very importantly, they have recognized these additions as extras and belonging not to the classic Anglican Mind as such but to that particular late development of it called the Anglo-Catholic Mind. And they have not made these things a test of fellowship with the Evangelical and Broad-Church Schools of Anglican churchmanship.
Today, in the USA we have the situation where not a few Continuing Anglicans are truly defined by their Additions and Extra for they have made these into essentials, and into a test of fellowship. They define the Anglican Way primarily in terms of what were once seen as the special emphases of a school of thought within Anglicanism, and what they are producing is no longer truly the Anglican Way, but the Canterbury route to Rome.
Let us recall that the essentials and standards of the Anglican Way are set forth in her Formularies (the classic BCP, Ordinal and Articles of Religion) which identify It as Reformed Catholicism, and these are based upon the basic 1,2,3,4 & 5 as taught by the standard divines of the Church of England in the seventeenth century. One Canon of Scripture, with its Two Testaments as God’s Word written, doctrinally summarized in Three Creeds [Apostles’, Nicene & Athanasian] and given form by Four Ecumenical Councils [from Nicea 325 to Chalcedon 451], and Five Centuries and development.
Of course, God was at work after the year 500 but this statement of the 1 to 5 is intended to indicate the basis and the essentials of the Anglican Way as Reformed Catholicism, with its Ministry and Liturgy based upon the developments and teaching of the Early Church.
If the Continuing Anglicans reveal a tendency to err in one direction, then the Charismatic/Evangelical Episcopalians inside and outside the ECUSA reveal a tendency in the other direction. They can be described as imitating what may be called generic evangelical [or charismatic/evangelical], American Protestantism. [See e.g., the general program for The Network Congress in Pittsburgh in November 0.] And they certainly give the impression that what they receive from this source is of greater importance than what they receive from within the classic stream of the Anglican Way. This is seen, for example, in how they talk of the Lordship of Christ and the Authority of Scripture (as if these were not most adequately proclaimed and explained in the classic Formularies!). They make it clear that they regard much of the inherited Anglican form of worship as “dead” and “out of touch” and the received expression of doctrine and discipline as being out-of-date and irrelevant.
They delight in using the most modern of Anglican liturgies (produced in the main by progressive liberals) and they adapt them so as to make them like the worship-style of the generic evangelical/charismatic found widely in the USA. Their quarrel with the present ECUSA is primarily focused on one thing – its sexual deviations and innovations – and they are little concerned with the apostasy in doctrine, worship and discipline that had occurred incrementally from the 1970s onwards. In fact, they give the impression of thinking that some of this apostasy is OK if in safe evangelical hands.
For them, to be Anglican is to use the structure/shape of a Liturgy supplied by modern liturgists and to insert into it their own choices, which are in fact the generalities of generic evangelical/charismatic Protestantism. If they can keep the homosexual agenda and lobby at bay, then they are happy. They have no plans or intentions to recover the classic Anglican Way for they enjoy too much what they have now. It is difficult to find the Anglican Mind in their midst!
Thus both the Continuers and the Stay-in-ers major on the extras to the Anglican Way and each group in its own way has lost much if not most of the Anglican Mind by this commitment to extras. Will either side recover it? At a deeper level is there any chance at all of recovering a unified, comprehensive Anglican Way, based on the historic Formularies and received Traditions, in the USA in this generation?
In your charity, do visit www.anglicanmarketplace.com in order to obtain CDs, books and booklets to extend this discussion starter. And do also visit www.episcopalian.org/pbs1928 to read more. Thank you.
October 13, 2005
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
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