The dominant stream’ in ACNA is Evangelical. But the fundamental question is, will that prove the dominant stream’ within a coherent identity clearly rooted in and affirming in its fullness ‘the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church’, or will it prove the ACNA’s predominant identity, with Catholics as an odd, honoured, but basically just tolerated minority outside its mainstream? ACNA may be a welcome refuge for Catholics who cannot remain in TEC or have been pushed out of it. It may offer them, for the time being, the only safe place available which is connected with the Communion? But will it prove a true and permanent home for those of our integrity, or only a stopping-point on the way elsewhere?
The divisions within ACNA at its founding, both practical and theological, are real. The leaders of ACNA are very much aware of them. So are the overseas Primates who are offering them support and guidance.
But what is remarkable about ACNA is the degree to which, despite their fractious history, the Lord’s hand resolved issues that once stood between the disparate elements of which it is composed. Where once one had seen a ‘trajectory of disintegration’ (in Archbishop Duncan’s words) there has been a will to find a way forward together at each crucial moment since 2003. But if the Lord has done this, he can continue to do it, so long as ACNA’s constituent members hold fast to that will.
But that will can hold only if ACNA’s constituent parts have time to grow together into a more consistent whole. ACNA’s focus on local mission in obedience to the Great Commission, each part supporting each other part at the local level in the common work of sharing the Gospel, Archbishop Duncan asserts, is thus also the best means by which that body can develop the coherence necessary to address the issues which divide it.
These are the classic divisions within Anglicanism itself, and it is the very nature of Anglicanism to hold in tension for the common good and the enrichment of the people within its boundaries this sort of diversity.
It is not ACNA that is in jeopardy because of division and diversity, but TEC itself who drives out all who are not adherents of or resist their new religion.
As a member of a large ACNA parish we have Anglo-catholics and evangelicals, and yes, even liberals all working together for the glory of God in a traditional Anglican parish…ought to work on larger scale easily enough as well, and my observation is, that it is.
I applaud ACNA and AMiA for their efforts to focus on mission rather than some of the divisive secondary issues, but focusing on mission does not keep the issues from having to be addressed one way or the other.
One of the ACNA/AMiA flagship parishes, Christ Church Plano, has asked one candidate to delay her ordination to the priesthood. Interesting that she’s been pursuing this for ten years yet only now, months before her anticipated ordination, she’s asked to “stand down.” You can read the official announcement here: http://leaderboard.christchurchplano.org/ordinations/
Hmmm.
But it appears to be solely for the purpose of the rector of CC Plano educating the parish further.
[blockquote]. . . .so that I can take time in appropriate ways to help all in our congregation see that this is a call from God that can be affirmed. Susan has been through the discernment process at Christ Church and continues to have my full support as well as that of our bishops in the AMiA and the Province of Rwanda. Nevertheless, I think there is a golden opportunity here to outline the nature of Anglicanism, what we think and believe about ordination and church polity, and how we see the role of the Bible in shaping our church life. . . . . It is a call that I recognize and support. I look forward to addressing this topic in the months to come, and to celebrating Susan’s ordination.[/blockquote]
Fair enough…if you are going to do something, you might as well do it for the right reasons…even some of the right things TEC has doen have been done for the wrong reasons, and then they punish people for being irritated with them…ACNA is commited to getting things right for the right reasons, not just being TEC heavy, in the way TEC is Anglicanism lite.
This is an irenic article, expressing cautious hope that the ACNA won’t splinter and scatter like the various “Continuing” churches. Time will tell, but I’m cautiously optimistic too.
However, I’m confused by a couple things here. First, I thought that Fr. Tanghe was converting to Roman Catholicism along with the sisters of All Saints’ Convent in Catonsville, MD. Yet this piece shows no indication of that.
Second, big Christ Church, Plano is part of AMiA, which allows women deacons but not female priests. Yet it appears that the rector still expects this parishioner (Susan) to be ordained a priest, eventually.
Can anyone clear up either or both of these mysteries?
David Handy+
The ACNA, unlike TEC, is living proof that you can still have disagreement and grow together as the body of Christ. I think they are good at separating what is primary and what is secondary.
A wonderful, visible example of this desire for unity happened in the Spring of 2008, during my senior year at Nashotah House. The faculty of Trinity seminary spent several days at Nashotah House with the faculty there, and it was great to see both evangelical and Anglo-Catholic coming together for common worship, and discussions regarding our future together.
Also in my senior year, my church history professor assigned to me a paper and presentation on Charles Henry Brent, who was an early stalwart for ecumenical relations in the Anglican Communion. One thing really stuck out from my research on Brent. He stated that the best way to begin ecumenical dialogue is to start with what unites you, rather than what divides you. I am glad to see the ACNA willing to engage in that endeavor.
The phase of ecumenism which emphasized what unites rather than what divides is over. We’ve moved into a more difficult ,but honest phase. BTW, I didn’t realize that dialogue within the Anglican Com. was considered ecumenical.
David Handy+ – If I recall correctly, AMiA does not ordain women but Rwanda does. Check this out, in case I am mistaken.
Frances Scott
Phil,
I would argue that you can [i]begin[/i] with what unites, but still cover that which divides in an honest way. I actually reflected on what you said about the term ecumenical – and I wonder if parts of the communion have grown so far apart, and our communion is so fractured, that an ecumenical model might be better. Haven’t fully fleshed that one out yet, but was just wondering out loud.
It’s interesting to me that so many of those who sit on the outside of ACNA keep predicting dire things for its future, without regard to the possibility that ACNA is concerned with what holds us together rather than what may separate us in our desire to serve the Lord.
desert padre
I’m going to say this without reading the above comments. Will someone explain to me why evangelicals and catholics can’t get along. Am I right? catholic = the faith once delivered – evangelical = we are to spread that faith once delivered. ok….different styles, but do not evangeilicals believe in liturgy? do not catholics believe we are to evangelize? am I just being tooooooo simple in my thinking…I really want an answer – I knwo revisionist ideas go against everything I believe, but I’ve yet to have a evangelical or a catholic say something that goes against what I believe….maybe I haven’t talked to enough of either
Ok – I’ve read the comments…..am I right – one big issue is women’s ordination? I can see the case (in the Bible) for both sides – maybe heavier on the anti WO…..Having never felt inferior because I am a woman, maybe I can let it go easier. I, for one, think men got cheated when they couldn’t give birth….sure, I’ve lived through the non equal pay bit (which still exists), and have seen abuse, physical and verbal, purley because the male is the stronger species. Old enough to have been there, done that, or at least seen it…..but I would never let this WO subject keep me from a church community. again, am I being too simple?
Frances Scott (#8),
You’re right, Rwanda does ordain women priests, but AMiA only ordains women to the diaconate. But that still leaves me puzzled, since Christ Church, Plano is in AMiA.
Anyone else got an answer?
David Handy+
Dee in Iowa:
If you’ll let a reappraiser suggest some answers to your question… WO is indeed one issue, but it’s a presenting issue that reflects deeper divisions.
One of the deeper issues between Anglo-Catholics (broadly speaking) and evangelicals (also broadly speaking) is how they regard Scripture. Both would agree that it is the Word of God, but an evangelical will typically consider Scripture to be not only the supreme authority but also the only necessary authority — the sola Scriptura of the Reformation. An Anglo-Catholic would agree that Scripture is the primary authority, but would typically add that the tradition of the church is the authoritative source for interpreting Scripture. An Anglo-Catholic is more likely to appeal to the Church Fathers, for instance, than an evangelical is (although evangelicals certainly can and do use the Fathers.)
A related difference is ecclesiological. For an evangelical, all you really need is faith, grace, and Scripture; everything else, including the formal structures of the church, are nice to have but not truly essential. To an Anglo-Catholic, the Church — by which they mean the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church referred to in the Nicene Creed — is the unique and essential guardian of the apostolic tradition handed down from the early days of the church described in Acts, and also the only valid source of the sacraments instituted by Jesus during his earthly life. Issues like apostolic succession are, generally, far more important to Anglo-Catholics than they are to evangelicals.
Now, whether this tension is so fundamental as to doom ACNA to ultimately split is not for me, as a reappraiser and therefore on the outside, to say. You can certainly find reasserters who are firmly of the opinion that it is, and others who are firmly of the opinion that it is not. Time will tell. But the differences between the two camps are certainly there, and they are not trivial.
12. In short, Dee: No, you are not.
phil (#7),
LOL. Actually, the problem is that not only is dialogue between the warring parties in Anglicanism [i]”ecumenical,”[/i] it’s downright [b]inter-faith[/b], since many reappraisers aren’t even authentically Christian (IMO).
David Handy+
Ross, #14,
I am not sure that your description of evangelicals is correct when you say the following: “For an evangelical, all you really need is faith, grace, and Scripture”.
I am under the impression that Anglican Evangelicals affirm and teach the Nicene Creed and that they also respect apostolic succession as it is practiced in the Anglican Communion.
I hope that some Anglican Evangelicals will respond to this and define their beliefs for us.
Dee, #11,
I concur with Cennydd, you are not being too simple.
bettcee, #17
I am an Evangelical Anglican. I used to be just a non-denominational Evangelical. I became Anglican because I learned to value tradition and what the church catholic had to say. “Sola Scriptura” as properly understood, means Scripture Alone as the Sole, FINAL authority, not the ONLY authority. As an Evangelical Anglican, I can wholeheartedly affirm Hooker’s classic triad of “Scripture, Reason and Tradition.”
This is why as an Evangelical Anglican I am opposed to WO. First off I believe Scripture teaches against it and lays forth a strong principle of male headship. Reason seems to agree with there being distinctions between male and female. Finally, the weight of Tradition is wholly against WO.
So as an AMiA priest, I agree with the AMiA’s WO study several years back. This led to the AMiA adopting a policy of not ordaining women to the priesthood. However, the connection with Rwanda, which does ordain women priests, led to a change in the structure. In 2007, the AMiA set up an umbrella organization called the Anglican Mission in the America’s (it unfortunately uses the same AMiA acronym which tends to confuse things).
Under this umbrella, are 3 separate entities. The original Angliacn Mission in America (AMiA), which still only ordains male priests (this encompasses the vast majority of all the parishes). But it also includes the Anglican Coalition in Canada (ACiC) and the newer Anglican Coalition in America (ACiA). Both of these groups ordain women priests.
It appears that Christ Church Plano must be a part of the ACiA grouping. I must admit that I was not aware of this, and quite frankly, am rather disappointed to hear they are moving in this direction.
Shane Copeland+
One of the great wonders of our day, IMHO, is that evangelicals are becoming more catholic, and arguably vice versa as well. Probably the most amazing and encouraging thing to me about our whole Anglican mess is that in the middle of it, evangelicals are slowly but surely seeing the value of catholicity to a much greater degree (from my analysis, anyway) than previously. I suspect that many, though by no means all, of the typical divides between Anglo Catholics and evangelicals will have broken down in another half century — IF we keep working together and learning from each other.
This essay strikes me as quite helpful, largely accurate, and not without hope for the future of ACNA though with serious reservations.
The one point I would dispute is Fr. Tangue’s critique of ACNA’s position on women’s ordination, in claiming that “if women can be made priests, there is no theological reason why they cannot be made bishops†and therefore its position “cannot mask its misogyny.†These assertions are far from self-evident.
I am pretty sure there are several viewpoints in ACNA. One would be close to Fr. Tangue in believing that women’s ordination at all levels is impossible theologically and therefore invalid. Others believe that women’s ordination is a matter of what I might call “graded adiaphora,†i.e., that women in the diaconate is acceptable, women in the episcopacy unacceptable and women in the presbyterate problematic. Then there are those who believe that women’s ordination is theologically open to all at all levels, but is not a right, but rather a vocation that can be regulated by the Church. They may take the Gamaliel view that over the long term women may be ordained to the priesthood more widely and finally to the episcopate but that it is not theologically incoherent or misogynistic to limit access during an extended time of probation. Finally, there are those who believe that Scripture does speak clearly on the headship of men in the church and family. They think the application of this Scriptural norm may be various at some levels of leadership but not at the level of episcopacy.
Can these positions be reconciled at a theological and ecclesiastical level? Probably not, unless some proponents modify their view. But I think there may be a large middle group who can find sufficient areas of agreement to stay together over the long term as an Anglican body.
His conclusion – that there is much theological work and much intra-ACNA and intra-GAFCON dialogue to be done – is spot on. The confessions of GAFCON and ACNA – including the Ridley Cambridge Covenant if it is approved – have been drawn broadly and with plenty of room for discussion, disagreement, and yes, finally division. But he also rightly notes that there is a different spirit at work in ACNA, a centripetal rather than a centrifugal spirit, and my hope is that that is a mark of the Spirit of God.
#17 bettcee:
I did not mean to suggest that Anglican evangelicals would not affirm the Nicene Creed.
Perhaps it would be better to say that, at least according to my understanding, evangelicals are more likely to emphasize a personal relationship between each individual and Jesus, governed by Scripture as read by the individual under the guidance of the Spirit. Whereas an Anglo-Catholic is more likely to emphasize an ecclesial relationship between the corporate Church and God, governed by Scripture as read by the tradition under the guidance of the Spirit. This is not to say that evangelicals don’t value the ecclesial or Anglo-Catholics the personal; but I think each group puts the emphasis in a different place. Although as #19 Ralph Webb notes there is a fair amount of cross-pollination these days.
Stephen says that perhaps a large middle group can stay together over the long term. Isn’t this what Anglicanism has always been? . A hollow uniformity.
Far from upholding “a hollow uniformity,” Phil, Anglicanism’s greatest gift to the larger body of Christ seems to me to be holding different orthodox groups together in one body.
I am in agreement with Dr. Noll. Catholics and Protestants can reasonably agree on limits to WO that proceed from somewhat differing premises. As a Catholic, I understand that the Church celebrates seven vice two sacraments, that these are all Christ’s vice ours, and are objective vice subjective and center on imitation of Him, doing what He called His Church to do. His call of only men to be Apostles is therefore definitive and the Church has no authority to deviate from it. I believe that Protestants, although this is more Lutheran than Calvinist, see the remaining five, including ordination, as matters of good order in the Church. Since the same is not maintained if we fight over who can be ordained, then the “graded adiaphora” (nice term that) approach should work.
One thing that might help is getting away from the notion that the call to the priesthood is necessarily by God Himself vice the Church. God gave the Church ordination and set the bounds of who may be called, but there is no particuar reason that I know of to necessarily conclude that He calls every specific priest to that vocation, though certainly He calls some. It is the Church that generally calls candidates for ordination and tests their fitness for it. And so not ordaining someone is unproblematic, no matter how strong that individual’s subjective sense of “calling”. The Church is not necessarily thwarting the will of God, as our Progressive friends so often maintain.
Be that as it may, I would also note that Fr. Tanghe’s concern of unequal treatment of marriage, while worthy of attention (we can rightly be grateful that he calls it out herein), may similarly be overstated. The Church has always varied from place to place. The Medieval Church had no centralized canon law or liturgy. Christian practice has always differed from place to place. The Eastern Church has a somewhat different understanding of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony from the Western in terms of the minister of the sacrament (the priest in the East and the couple in the West) and therefore cannot issue anullments on the grounds of ministerial intention as does the West – most anullments in the Roman Church are granted based on the fact that the validity of the sacrament depends on the intention of the minister, which in the West is the marrying couple. If the couple can be shown not to have intended to enter into the sacrament as God established it, the sacrament is not valid. This has no effect on the legality of the marriage or the legitimacy of the children. This will not be the practice in the Eastern Church and I believe that it can be shown that this distinction obtained, as did clerical celibacy, during the time of the undivided Church. The outcome – 1054 and all that – is not necessarily promising, but one can still argue for variability in the treatment of marriage, or so it seems to me.
The comment in 24 seems very reasonable to me. We should be able to find agreement, even if we proceed from differing premises. It seems to me that limiting WO to the diaconate would be the solution. But what discourages me about do deeply about the intentions of Christ Church Plano, is that now AMiA (at least in the States) no longer has a uniform position on WO. (I like #18’s view that Christ Church would simply be part of ACiA and not really AMiA — but could that be so?). How do evangelicals enter ACNA who feel strongly about not ordaining women to the priesthood? I see this as a huge problem. Someone might say that I needn’t worry. No AMiA bishop would ever force a woman priest on our church. But how do I know that my own church, in time, won’t invite in a woman priest? Before I had the assurance that AMiA had a fixed position on this. So something that seemed sure and fixed is suddenly flexible and unpredictable.
Remember that there is a spectrum of Evangelicalism, and not all Evangelicals will answer the above questions in the same way. Classical Anglican Evangelicals would certainly affirm the Nicene Creed, but on the grounds given in the Thirty Nine Articles, ie that it ‘may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture’, rather than because it was approved by one of the councils of the undivided church, which ‘may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God’. Only Scripture is necessary, but the Nicene Creed is a handy way of remembering some of it.
Anglican Evangelicals have not generally accepted the doctrine of Apostolic Succession in the way that it is usually formulated by Anglo-Catholics, and do not believe that a succession of laying on of hands is essential to ministry. What is necessary is also described in the Thirty Nine Articles: ministers are to be ‘called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the Congregation, to call and send Ministers into the Lord’s vineyard’, which is why Evangelicals have never had much difficulty working with people from other denominations, as long as they accept Scripture as the final authority.
Evangelicals have not historically given equal weight to Scripture, tradition and reason, but have shared Hooker’s view of their respective value: “Scripture with Christian men being received as the Word of God, that for which we have probable, yea, that which we have necessary reason for, yea, that which we see with our eyes, is not thought so sure as that which the Scripture of God teacheth…” (Laws II:7:5) and “what Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that [i]the first place[/i] both of credit and obedience is due; the [i]next[/i] whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; [i]after these[/i] the voice of the Church succeedeth” (Laws V:8:2, my emphasis). Hooker is pretty clear, by the way, that he is talking about what we ‘necessarily conclude’ from the things that Scripture plainly delivers, not reason musing on things in general.
The differing Catholic and Evangelical ecclesiologies and views on the Sacraments are profoundly primary, not secondary.
I first posted this over at Stand Firm but I think i will post over here as well.
“What bothers me is how all these various “groups†that make up ACNA will fare over the years given the differences among them on various issues. I agree with Bishop Lawrence- ACNA Is a “confederationâ€. That is how he stated it when he was interviewed by Anglican TV after Gen Con 2009. That “confederation†approach in itself makes ACNA confusing to many. How can ACNA keep all these groups in one “churchâ€? Perhaps ACNA will grow to become a recognized provincial structure and include many Anglican entities (including dioceses like mine) within the province ?? Possible????”
Can anyone answer my concerns???