a discussion starter from Dr Peter Toon
Here I shall use the terms used by sociologists when describing different types of churches. The terms are not meant to be pejorative but to function descriptively only.
1.Ecclesia Anglicana, the ancient church in England, was and is a National, Established Church and has two provinces, Canterbury and York. It was a Church-type both before and after the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
2. In Scotland, Wales and Ireland, “the Anglican Church” eventually became a national denomination, existing alongside Presbyterian and R. C. churches. Yet is was territorial, arranged into dioceses geographically. So the Anglican Church is thus a Denomination-type in all parts of the United Kingdom, except in England.
3. In the USA what came to be called The Protestant Episcopal Church [PECUSA] was from the 1780s a Denomination-type, and so described itself in the preface to its own BCP of 1789—and repeated in later editions. Again, it was territorial, arranged into dioceses in a geographical way and united at the center through a triennial General Convention.
4. Likewise folliwing the end of the British Empire and the arrival of the British Commonwealth of Nations “The Anglican Church” was understood to be of the Denomination-type, existing as one unit alongside other units (e.g. Methodist & Presbyterian). Yet is was always understood territorially, as a national unit, with geographical dioceses, and united at the center by a synod.
5. In both the Church-type and the Denomination-type the unity was and remains in most provinces (idealistically) based upon the common formularies (BCP, Ordinal and usually Articles of Religion) with an Episcopate recognized by all (the latter has been strained very recently by both women and active homosexual persons in the Episcopate).
6. Thus it may be asserted that part of the identity and character of The Anglican Way as Reformed Catholicism is that it is a united body and society—howbeit it in a comprehensive way— using an agreed common prayer and pastored by a united Episcopal College. Thus it functions normally when it is either the Church-type or the national Denomination-type. Outside these boundaries, it tends to get “lost”!
7. For whatever reason, good or bad, when Anglicans leave the national Church or national Denomination and seek as seceders to set up Anglicanism as the Sect-type then the Anglican way goes into distress, locally and even nationally and globally. When the move into the Sect-type is small then the distress may not be immediately discernible but when the move is large then the distress is quickly felt by all. This major distress may be illustrated in the secessions from PECUSA from the 1970s to 2007.
8. The Sect-type may be said to begin in the USA for Anglicans with the secession of the Evangelicals, opposed to Anglo-Catholicism, in the 1870s, and their setting up of what they called, “The Reformed Episcopal Church” which was for much of its subsequent history extremely low-church in worship, doctrine and discipline. One effect of this secession was that there was a virtual absence of conservative Evangelicals in the PECUSA during much of the 20th century and this caused imbalance within PECUSA, especially with the absence of the evangelical school/party’s teaching on evangelism, conversion and church growth.
9. The Sect-type of Anglicanism took on a high-church form with the secession in the late 1977 of several thousands over the introduction of female clergy and new forms of worship into PECUSA. The intention of the seceders was to create a new Episcopal Church, a new Province, a viable alternative to PECUSA; but, this did not happen and they soon divided amongst themselves into various jurisdictions and thus had no alternative but to become-sociologically speaking-- Sect-type Anglicans, even though they sought initially to imitate the polity of the Denomination-type. By this secession PECUSA lost many devoted people of an orthodox mindset and thus it naturally became more prone to become more progressively liberal as the years went by—which is what happened, under its new name of TEC.
10. The Sect-type of Anglicanism—or we may call it extra-mural Anglicanism—increased in both numbers and profile from the late 1990s with the secessions that have led to the formation of several hundred new congregations outside PECUSA/TEC and alongside the variety of 1977 Continuers and the small Reformed Episcopal congregations. Much of the new Sect-type Anglicanism is loosely tied to overseas dioceses and provinces of the global Anglican Family, but, as this phenomenon exists in the USA and not in the territory of these sponsoring dioceses, it remains necessarily (sociologically speaking) of the Sect-type on US soil. [And of course the Sect-type is virtually the norm in the USA as the amazingly varied forms of religions illustrate.] With the loss of these “evangelically-minded, charismatic” types of members, PECUSA again became more militantly liberal and progressive, as is now clear to all.
11. Describing “extra-mural Anglicanism” as of the Sect-type implies no judgment on the characters and doctrines of the participants—in fact they are probably more committed as biblically-based Christians than those who remain within PECUSA. However, what the expression Sect-type highlights is that there are small groups here and there, who may want to be national organizations or part of one national grouping, but are too small to be so in any coherent way; and, further, that they exist outside what is still seen as the official National Anglican Church (PECUSA).
12. The route from Sect-type, extra-mural Anglicanism, to the Denominational-type of Anglicanism (which is necessary in order to become an alternative Province to the PECUSA in the USA) is a route that has NEVER been undertaken before anywhere in the world. In the conditions of the USA (with great emphasis on liberty and the right to express personal opinions) it will be extremely difficult even to get started on moving on this unexplored and un-chartered route. But the Common Cause Partnership has begun. And we pray that out of the many will be made the One. [Yet one wonders whether the Primates who are encouraging the creation of the Sect-type, extra-mural, Anglicanism, have thought about in any detail the immensity of the task in creating an alternative Province to PECUSA. Further, has any one of them seriously thought about the 1977 seceders and whether or not they should be consulted and involved in the route towards one Province for all seceders?]
13. There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father. Paul tells us that there cannot be truth without unity and unity without truth in his Epistle to Ephesus; and Jesus in his Priestly Prayer in John 17 prays that we shall be one for that is his will. Many of us appear not to desire to be one! We think that possessing what we regard as truth is sufficient to justify our isolated standing before God in sect-type churchmanship. Maybe we are beginning to change our minds and see that truth and unity, or unity and truth, belong always together and to claim to have truth and to shun unity is a totally false position.
Kyrie eleison (thrice)
The Revd Dr Peter Toon
President of the Prayer Book Society 2007
1 comment:
As the Episcopal Church in the newly independent United States began to organize it had three historical models at hand. One was the established church model of Virginia,Maryland, and the South. A second was the dissenting sect model of Massachusetts and Connecticut. And the third was the one-among-many model of Pennsylvaia and Rhode Island.
In Virginia from the early 17th century, in Maryland after the Glorious Revoultion of 1689, and in the southern colonies of South and North Carolina and Georgia from various times in the 18th century, the Church of England was supported by a local tax. In Virginia the tax was set by the local Vestry, a body appointed by the colonial legislature with authority to levy a per person tax for the support of the poor, building churches, and paying ministers. The amount of the tax varied with the needs of the community but typically was 30 pounds of tobacco per working person (white males 16 and older and slaves 13 and older). One worker could make between 1000 and 1500 pounds of tobacco depending on the kind of tobacco and the fertiity of the soil, so the tax was about 2 - 3 percent of income. That's about the present national average bu those who give. Every worker paid the tax for himself and his dependents.
North Carolina was first serttled by Quakers and others who objected to the tax, but later a local establishment was imposed by royal governors and provincial assemblies. Similar schemes were tried from time to time with more or less success in the other southern colonies.
As time went on and the number of dissenters increased opposition to the establishment also increased, and the early revolutionary assemblies stripped the vestries of the power to tax.
So the establishment model was not really available to the post-Revolution organizers of the Episcopal Church.
In Massachusetts and Connecticut the provincial legislatures authorized the towns to levy a tax for the support of the town minister, the town meeting house, and the poor. From the late 17th century on immigrants from England objected to this Congregational establishment and secured the right to have their tax paid for the support of the Church of England minister. In 1722 the President of Yale College and three other Congregational ministers declared at the college commencement that they were convinced of the invalidity of presbyteral ordination in opposition to episcopal. They went to England to be ordained in the Church of England and came back to serve Church of England congregations. One of these clergy, Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, trained many young men, graduates of Yale and Harvard Colleges, for the ministry of the Church of England. But the New England Anglicans were largely a sect of immigrants through the colonial period. Their clergy were generally supported by grants from the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), forunded in 1702.
New York had its own form of establishment. The legislature thought it was setting up a system to provide tax support for the Dutch Reformed, but the royal governor (Queen Anne's cousin) interpreted it to include only Church of England clergy.
In Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, no church was established. Church of England lay people, aided by the SPG, organized churches and vestries. So did Presbyterians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Moravians, and many others. Royal governors gave what support they could or wanted to.
The authority to issue marriage licenses and the fees that accompanied that power in England exercised by the church in America were considered part of the royal prerogative and exercised by the governors. When in the 1760's the Church of England clergy in New England and the middle colonies began to agitate for an American bishop they were opposed by the governors, the New England Congregational establishment, and by the non-Church of England clergy and merchants.
The context of the early Episcopal Church was more complex than Dt. Toon states.
Tom Rightmyer in Asheville, NC
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