Anglican
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Bishop John Jewell, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), article 3, division 29. ↩︎
Currently reading: The Caroline Divines and the Church of Rome by Mark Langham 📚
Now that developments have occurred in the Episcopal Church of North America and the Anglican Church of Canada (and, to a lesser extent, in the Anglican Church in Australia) which are unacceptable to a large number of Provinces elsewhere, what can be salvaged of the notion of communion for Anglicanism?171 Calls to strengthen the internal bonds of the communion are read by some Anglicans as a move towards imposition of an un-Anglican uniformity, and they have in reaction emphasised the diversity that, for them, essentially characterises Anglicanism. In a 2007 address outlining the polity of the Episcopalian Church, the Bishop of Lexington rejected the concept of an Anglican ‘communion’, preferring to speak of ‘a voluntary association of autonomous churches bound together by a shared heritage from the Church of England and enjoying cooperative relationships for the purpose of mission [and] nothing more’.172 Such an assertion leaves no clear role or protection for the concept of orthodoxy, and consequently undermines the case for apostolicity and catholicity. It is for this reason that at this time the writings of the Caroline Divines are particularly important, as they express a clear vision, scripturally and patristically based, and guaranteed by a clear sense of orthodoxy, of the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church. Such a teaching can provide an important reference point for the contemporary Anglican Communion in its difficulties.
Whereas the Edwardian and Elizabethan divines had been interested in the Fathers chiefly as a means of proving what had or had not been the primitive doctrine and practice, the Caroline divines went farther in using the thought and piety of the Fathers within the structure of their of their own theological exposition. Their use of the Fathers had these two noteworthy characteristics. (1) Not having, as did the Continental Reformers, a preoccupation with the doctrines of justification or predestination they followed the Fathers of the Nicene Age in treating the Incarnation as the central doctrine of the faith. Indeed a feeling of the centrality of the Incarnation became a recurring feature of Anglican divinity, albeit the Incarnation was seen as S. Athanasius saw it in its deeply redemptive aspect. (2) Finding amongst the Fathers the contrast of Greek and Latin divinity, the Anglican divines could be saved from western narrowness, and were conscious that just as the ancient undivided Church embraced both East and West so too the contemporary Catholic Church was incomplete without the little known Orthodox Church of the East as well as the Church in the West, Latin, Anglican and Reformed. The study of the Fathers created the desire to reach out to Eastern Christendom. Thus did Anglican theology find in the study of the Fathers first a gateway to the knowledge of what was scriptural and primitive, subsequently a living tradition which guided the interpretation of Scripture, and finally a clue to the Catholic Church of the past and the future: in the words of Lancelot Andrewes ‘the whole Church Catholic, Eastern, Western, our own.
– Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, “The Ancient Fathers and Modern Anglican Theology”, Sobornost, Series 4: no. 6 (Winter-Spring 1962), p. 290.
Ultimately, the future of Anglo-Catholicism lies with Orthodoxy or a reconstituted Old Catholicism because they have held to the reformed catholic identity within Anglicanism whilst rejecting its doctrinal Protestantism. The neo-Evangelicals ultimately have more in common with the Holiness and Pentecostal churches through the Convergence Movement than they do with wider Anglicanism because they share the same sort of spirituality, albeit in a moderated form. This leaves the Confessional Anglicans who share more in common with moderate Lutheran and Reformed Christians than they do the Anglo-Catholics and the Neo-Evangelicals.
Source: PETER D. ROBINSON The Greater Church
a different three Anglicanisms, where Anglicanism disbands and starts side projects.
No one doubts that Cranmer, Jewel, or Hooker were deeply committed to the witness of the ancient Church and the Fathers. The real question is whether or not their reading of Christian antiquity and the Church Fathers was superior to that of the Caroline divines, non-jurors and Tractarians (the theological lineage from which Anglo-Catholicism derives). If not, the question then arises whether the Church should change, adjust, or nuance its theology and interpretation of the Formularies, or uphold Reformed doctrine over and against the witness of Christian antiquity as understood by our best scholarship. Anglo-Catholics answer yes to the first question, and then recommend adjusting the Church’s theology accordingly. In fine, you’re right that the Reformers were committed to, and saw themselves in continuity with, the ancient Church; but what matters is whether or not their reading of the ancient Church is correct. Some of the Reformation and Classical Anglicans’ arguments that our Formularies, read (so they think) according to their plain, historical sense, demand a Swiss/Rhenish Reformed interpretation, and therefore require of us Reformed theology, taken together with their subsequent pleading the English Reformers’ commitment to antiquity, seem to me an evasive attempt at not having to do any real, constructive patristics work against the Anglo-Catholics. And, if I had to place bets, a fiddle of gold against your soul to think Pusey, Austin Farrer, E.L. Mascall, et al. are better than you.
I disagree that ”The Thirty-Nine Articles are not just Protestant but distinctly Reformed in their soteriology and sacramentology.” This suggests that when the continental Protestant traditions disagree, the Thirty-Nine Articles side with ”Calvinism”. A case could be made for that if the only alternative to Calvinism in continental Protestantism was Anabaptism. It is much harder to argue that point when Lutheranism is considered as the alternative to Calvinism. Article XVII. Of Predestination and Election seems obviously worded so as to not choose Calvinism over Lutheranism. There is no affirmation of Reprobabation, which can be taken as either a refusal to choose between the Lutheran and Calvinist views, or a choice of the Lutheran. The fact that the second paragraph of the Article describes the doctrine as a comfort for the godly, but cautions against excessive preaching of it because of the various ways it can harm the not-yet-converted mind rather suggests the second possibility. Indeed, while the Articles affirm the general Augustinianism shared by Lutherans and Calvinists in Articles IX and X, absent is any affirmation of the ideas that the Grace by which God draws His elect to salvation through Jesus Christ is ”irresistable” or that Jesus died only for the elect. Article XVI. Of Sin after Baptism also walks the fence between Lutheranism and Calvinism. Both Lutherans and Calvinists affirm a form of the idea of ”The Perseverence of the Elect”. Calvinists, however, also affirm perpetual justification, the idea that initial justification is never lost (Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, and sometimes fundamentalists of other denominatiosn who have been influenced by the weight Baptist and Brethren views have in general fundamentalism often affirm prepetual justification without affirming the perseverence of the elect) and Lutherans do not (they think that after initial justification one can fall from Grace but that the elect will show their election by repeenting and returning to Grace through faith). Article XVI affirms that for sins committed after baptism, repentance and forgiveness are available and condemns the extreme views that say either one cannot sin after baptism or that one who falls from Grace cannot be forgiven. In doing so, while it does not explicitly affirm the Lutheran position, the language used strongly suggets it. ”Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable.” While this doesn’t actually say that such sins cause one to lose initial justification until he repents and is forgiven, the language of ”deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism” suggests the Lutheran conception of Mortal Sin.
When it comes to the Sacraments, at least the Eucharist, you are on firmer ground in asserting the Articles to be Reformed. ”The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith” sounds closer to John Calvin’s understanding than either the Lutheran doctrine or Zwinglian memorialism. The language excludes the Zwinglian view, although not as overtly and bluntly as the Roman. One could make a case that rather than affirming Calvin against Luther, the intention was to affirm the Real Presence in as vague a manner as possible, so as not to commit to any particular interpretation of it. Given that the Articles took their final form in the Elizabethan Settlement this seems rather likely. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the Church of England deliberately walked back from the more radical direction in which the English Reformation had seemed to have been heading before it was interrupted by the reign of Mary. In the second Edwardian Prayer Book (1552), for example, the Black Rubric had been inserted into the Order for Holy Communion. It had been intended as a compromise between what Scottish Reformer John Knox was recommending (sitting to receive Communion rather than kneeling) and Archbishop Cranmer’s more conservative position, but oddly was worded in such a way as to affirm the most radical view of the Sacrament, not Luther’s, not Calvin’s, but Zwingli’s. Elizabeth I excised the Black Rubric from the 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and when it was re-inserted into the Restoration BCP (1662) it was with the Zwinglianism, no longer compatible with the teachings of the Church of England after the adoption of the Articles of Religion in 1571 and their includsion in the BCP from 1604, removed. The direction of the English Reformation from Elizabeth’s Accession, therefore, was in a more conservative direction, which in terms of the continental Magisterial Reformers meant away from Zwingli and towards Luther, and on this issue stopping in the general vicinity of Calvin. Those who wished to push it in the other direction became, of course, further radicalized as the Puritans.
– Gerry T Neal in Commenting on Carrington’s “Response to Wilgus”
“These departures are indicative of a disconnect between two groups within the ACNA: former mainline Protestants, including former Episcopalians, standing against revisionist theology, and post-evangelicals reacting against cultural hallmarks of their prior church homes, such as complementarianism or Christian nationalism,” Walton said.
“The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others is among the largest and fastest growing dioceses in ACNA partly because it can speak to those originating from an evangelical, charismatic, or Pentecostal context. These three departing parishes were all within C4SO, but this isn’t exclusively a C4SO problem. It’s a post-evangelical problem.”
Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…… | News & Reporting | Christianity Today
the bishop of C4SO is reconsidering his role in helping these churches. For the congregations in Austin and Indianapolis, Hunter said his approach involved “giving them a lot of space” and “being very patient with their exploration.”
“Here’s what I regret and what I’ve learned: that while I’ve done a good job caring for the clergy, I don’t think I’ve done a good job caring for the people in the church who are not progressive,” he said. “By the time I’ve stepped in, everything’s too far gone.”
Going forward, Hunter is working with C4SO leaders and their canon lawyer to develop a clearer process for how and when the bishop “can have his voice in a church earlier, so that it doesn’t get to a place where it’s very far off from not only just what I teach, but what the rest of the diocese expects.”
Like other C4SO clergy, Hunter has been called out and labeled communist, Marxist, and woke for his concern for racial justice and for ordaining women. He says his willingness to engage in conversation attracts the sort of people who are asking questions and deconstructing faith.
“It’s fascinating in online and other spaces to be criticized for these things … I am thoroughly committed to orthodox Christianity,” he told CT, “but I’m equally committed to figuring out how to live that out winsomely and truthfully, without engaging in culture wars constantly.”
Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…
Eucharistica: an Anglican High Church pocket devotional for Holy Communion. Dated 1844 on bookplate.
“The American Missal” and “The Anglican Missal (American Edition)” are basically the BCP liturgy embedded in the context of the private prayers of the Tridentine Missal, which alters the theology quite considerably. Hence the old joke about the Anglo-Catholics being prepared to fight to the death for the 1928 Prayer Book provided they never actually have to use it.
Source: The 1928 and Cranmer’s Shape | The North American Anglican
A very large percentage of people were legitimately unaware of the history of the ACNA and its policies about women/sexual minorities, until the clergy started talking about it as a preface to why they felt at odds with the denomination. It seems as though many folks came to Anglicanism to heal the wounds they received in evangelical churches, stumbled into a welcoming and loving parish, and never gave it a second thought. It would be very easy to assume we were in an affirming denomination, because there are numerous openly LGBTQ folks around the church who are valued and beloved members of the community. Source: Ladies and gentlemen: we got ‘em. : r/Episcopalian
Wonderful used book find, Adolph Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life published by the [Anglican] Society of Saint John the Evangelist.
Currently reading: The Caroline Divines and the Church of Rome by Mark Langham 📚
For the Anglican theologians, the supposed identification of gazing at the monstrance or the elevated host as a form of spiritual or ‘ocular’ communion was a perversion of the intention of Christ in establishing this sacrament (Pope Clement VIII had promulgated the Quarant’Ore devotion in 1592). It took considerable subtlety and scholarship to disentangle popular devotion from genuine Eucharistic theology. John Bramhall seems to have understood the problem when he spoke of the ‘gross mistaking and misstating of the question on both sides’ and saw the nub of the controversy as the inability to distinguish ‘what is the proper adequate Body which is contained under the species or accidents; whether a material Body, or a substantial Body, or a living Body or an organical Body, or a human Body’.
Until there is such clarity, there will be no unity among those of us who like to think of ourselves as Catholic and Anglican Churchmen. There will be no unity because you cannot be a pure cup of water in a dirty puddle. That is the simple, basic message of the Continuing Church to the neo-Anglicans. You have gone a very long way down a very wrong path, and that is true even if all the time you were avoiding a still worse path. You have a journey home to make, things to unlearn and to remember and recover. We want to welcome you at home. But there can be no restored communion with us without hard decisions and firm actions from you.
Source: Anglican Catholic Church Archbishop Mark Haverland’s Sermon at ICCA
I remember talking with a bishop who attended ICCA 2015, and this presentation stuck out as singularly off-putting –especially to the international bishops– to most of those present, that “home” was to be the Anglican Catholic Church for all the other Anglo-Catholics, and ACC was setting the terms. It appeared a public assertion that everyone in the room had strayed from the way, but could be welcomed into ACC. Two years after this, the continuing groups began the “joint synods” called the G4. In 2021, DHC was absorbed into ACC, making it G3. So it did work, but just for other continuing groups. Those outside the 1979 secession from the Episcopal church remain, apparently, part of a dirty puddle.
Since the English Reformation, Anglican theologians have been keen to retain inherited liturgical practices that do not violate Scripture and have support in the tradition. Bishop John Jewel wrote, “Kneeling, bowing, standing up, and other like, are commendable gestures and tokens of devotion, so long as the people understandeth what they mean, and applieth them unto God, to whom they be due.”1 Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote a tract, dripping with Scripture and typology, called “On the Reverence due to the Altar,” that makes a biblical case for the use of our bodies in proper adoration while critiquing abuses.2 Archbishop Laud similarly insisted “‘tis no Popery, to set a Raile to keep prophanation from that Holy Table.”3 All of this is to point out that Kay’s concerns are not new and have been addressed by a number of Anglican Divines quite extensively.
The recent actions of the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), which purport to upend the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the life of the Anglican Communion, can be traced by a very clear line back to what the Episcopal Church did in General Convention 20 years ago this summer.
Source: Dealing with the Detritus of General Convention, 2003 – Covenant
Working on a project–TBA, if ever–that has encouraged me in the Anglican tradition in contrast to the ‘state of the institution.'
Feeling overwhelmed or discouraged about the church? Start ministering & working towards what supports the church you would like to see.
Forward in Faith Mission:
Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) is a fellowship of people and churches who embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who uphold the Evangelical Faith an d Catholic Order which is the inheritance of the Anglican Way. Our fellowship works, prays, and witnesses for reform and renewal of the Church without compromise of truth or limitation of love. Our fellowship includes faithful Anglicans spanning many jurisdictions and structures, with the mission to witness to the “faith and order of the undivided Church.”
In 2017 FiFNA defined its mission:
VOL: How does your message and appeal for the fullness of Catholic faith and practice within Anglicanism, address or speak to the particulars of people in TEC, the Continuing Churches, and the ACNA (and perhaps the wider Anglican Communion)?
BAUSCH: By not taking a position on jurisdictional membership, we want to be able to offer tools which can help any and all of our members to fulfill our mission in their particular context. […]VOL: FIFNA operates across North America within a number of Anglican churches, including the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America, the Diocese of the Holy Cross, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church in America, and the Episcopal Church (United States). However, FIFNA is not a diocese of the ACNA, which is predominantly evangelical in theology and ethos. Clearly there are tensions there. How do you think you can resolve them? Do you see a time when FIFNA would be a full partner (diocese) in the ACNA?
BAUSCH: FIFNA is not itself an ecclesial entity, and is not in itself within any jurisdiction. However, some of our members within the ACNA are within the Missionary Diocese of All Saints, which is comprised of FIFNA-member parishes and priests. The tensions you describe between some of our perspective and the ACNA are real, but not necessarily negative. At our Anglican best, we strive to see these as differences of emphasis rather than substance, and then continue to promote the understanding of our essential Catholic identity as particularly expressed such things as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. It is also noteworthy that, in the production of the ACNA Catechism, there were FIFNA members involved.
Source: Canon Lawrence D. Bausch
Later that year, following the a dissapointing-for-both-sides College of Bishop’s resolution, alongside a change in finances, it refocused towards education, and as a more volunteer organization:
So as a living organism Forward in Faith’s proclamation of the historic Catholic faith of the undivided church has not changed as much as it is being refocused.
Forward in Faith is refocusing its understanding of its place in mission by putting a renewed emphasis upon the financial support of men headed for the priesthood and training already ordained priests to better evangelize and present the Gospel message in today’s world.
Source: Forward in Faith-North America changes focus
FIFNA has since refocused again under a new president, Bp Menees:
In fulfillment of our mission FIFNA seeks to be leaven in the ACNA, offering retreats, seminars, tracts and more. (Source)
It is not a church plant per se, at least not yet, but rather a space for brothers and sisters with a shared love of the Lord Jesus Christ to gather for refreshment, nourishment, and encouragement, and also a space where they can invite others to experience genuine Christian fellowship, discover the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness in the Anglican tradition.
Source: What is Church House?
ALL churches are a mess right now, doctrinal pure or no. Churches either have problems with beliefs or praxis. Very rare to find a parish healthy in both areas. Might as well make things better where you are, then to be a gyrovague and run around!
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Saint Benedict’s call to Stability, and having a Rule of Life helps in these matters. It sounds like the Author is sticking to his, and that’s commendable.
Source: COLUMBA SILOUAN, Comments in Why I Stay
Again, when modern Anglicans move on to Rome, they are following through on the logic of their position. They have been taught that they have no beliefs except for those of “the Catholic Church,” and they have been nurtured with a profusion of pre-Reformation ceremonies. Why is it surprising, then, if they embrace a church that lays claim to precisely the same inheritance, but with a more perfect unity of its pre-Reformation ceremony and pre-Reformation doctrine?
Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture
In point of fact–er, experience: lay and clergy that I know who jumped from ACNA over to Orthodoxy or Rome did so largely because of ACNA’s stalemate on female ordiantion, and either persecution for opposing such, or discouragement at the lack of direction towards a solution. The former’s explicit support alienates the classical, the reformed, the catholic; the latter’s implicit support breaks confidence there is ultimately any doctrinal core in the Anglican church, which includes consequences when doctrines are not upheld.
For example, the conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali to Rome appeared to be about the total breakdown in governance in Gafcon: Kenya consecrated two women to the episcopacy in violation of standards agreed upon, and nothing happened except “well it doesn’t matter that much anyway; it isn’t like Gafcon is a jurisdiction” 2) the issue of female consecration/ordination itself, which negatively impacts talks with Orthodoxy, Catholic, Coptic, PNCC; any Apostolic church except Anglican and liberal, affirming Old Catholics.
The above statement then is, in my experience, is inaccurate. People have been taught Anglicanism, including a rich doctrinal history of the classical and Anglo-Catholic luminaries. What they see in Anglicanism is a total lack of gumption to actually be Anglican, and may as well move on to a place that, like the post-Vatican II RC, and Western Rite Orthodox are each more “Anglican” than many Anglicans.
Zero was not the right number for ceremonies, but the number should be pretty low. And Cranmer anticipated in “Of ceremonies” that over time more ceremonies would need to be excised as they proved to be distracting or grounds for superstition.
One can see in this a very modern recognition of the scarcity of human attention: something will attract the attention of the congregation, something will occupy the rector’s explanatory time, something will be the focus of observation and remark for visitors. The traditional Anglican practice strips away much of the outward trappings, fixing the attention on the Word of God, prayer, and music (the one place where ornate elaboration in the service was most characteristically Anglican).
In short, before the twentieth century Anglicanism was a religion of the word. It appealed constantly and pervasively to the ear.
Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture
The English reformers hacked away at the medieval ceremonies with a vengeance. Archbishop Cranmer banned all of the Catholic sacramentals—no candles at Candlemas, no ashes at Ash Wednesday, no palms at Palm Sunday. He prohibited lighted candles on the Communion table. Not only did he remove all crossings in the Communion service, he even revised the text of the service to remove the places where late medieval priests had been in the habit of making the sign of the cross. The mass-associated eucharistic vestments—the chasuble and stole—were gone.
Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture