There is no substitute for the authority of a college of bishops exercised diligently against heresy. No system, new 501C institution, or newly drafted canon law can mitigate the loss of our bishops’ virtue.
I think this is the key to so many problems. TEC failed because the bishops would not discipline fellow bishops who veered into false teachings. TEC has "synodality" in the participation of the clergy and lay orders, and that didn't stop the slide. In some cases, it accelerated it.
The ACNA left TEC left because Gene Robinson’s consecration was outside of the boomers’ Overton Window.
The older gentlemen at the local ACNA parish think of themselves as conservatives while women in the parish routinely serve the Eucharist, give homilies, and read lessons.
They left TEC because they missed the good ol’ days of stage two cancer.
The young families I know who are interested in Anglicanism want traditional religion without giving up Protestantism. The wives veil, they want the 1928 prayer book, they want a cancer-free Anglicanism, and are seen as retrogrades and troublemakers. They know they are not welcome.
Because the ACNA is tuned to suit the conservatism of the baby boomers and not the traditionalism of the upcoming generations, many of these young would-be Anglican families (and their generations after them) will go to the East or to Rome.
Yes! My family left TEC in 1987. We wandered in that desert for 2 years before finding our home at St Barnabas Dunwoody GA.
We were there at the formation of the APA.
We sadly moved and though we have always attended an Anglican Church we have had a much different experience in our journey than most of the people where we attended.
Someone once asked our adult son how long he had been Anglican and when he replied “all my life”, challenged him by saying “you couldn’t, we didn’t exist then.” Yes, we did! lol
Many present members have no idea about the history and what those of us who left before endured.
I actually call the two years after we left TEC my time in the desert. I was very much a lost wanderer looking longingly back to Egypt (TEC). St B’s was my promised land. :)
I wish the ACNA well but I have no interest in being part of it, because I saw the potential fault lines as it was formed and even tried to caution people to set a firmer foundation but was told it would be OK.
We did attend a high church REC parish for a couple years and loved the people and priest, but our hearts remain in the APA and after another move, our last we hope, we are again in an APA parish.
I agree that there is often a difference in mentality among those who left TEC and those who came on board later. I was a "high church Methodist" in the UMC precisely because I looked into priesthood in TEC 25 years ago and found I could not "go there." The UMC - despite what looked like better structural guardrails - eventually got to a similar breaking some years later, so I feel like my sensitivities are closer to some of the folks who left TEC in the early 2000s.
I was thinking about this recently talking to a former Baptist about a book - there were things in it that set off my "modernist heresy/squishy theology senses" in a way that didn't seem as concerning to him. But, then, the church he came out of was broadly orthodox and Bible-believing, and he didn't have to constantly be on guard against some of this stuff. I wish that ACNA had done more to throw open the doors to conservative Methodists with strong liturgical/sacramental sensibilities back around 2022-ish, because I think more folks like me would have come over.
I guess I’m an outlier here. My parish is in ACNA and we’re using the 1662 Prayer Book, which I like very much apart from one or two reservations. I don’t believe in women priests, period, nor in wokeness, nor in cultural trends that weaken the authority of Scripture. But I see in Scripture indications of women serving as deacons and prophesying, which leads me to a certain shock at the criticism of women reading the lesson, serving on the altar, or even giving homilies. If God has given certain women the gifts to do these things, who are men to say that it’s not permitted? Jesus appeared to the women first after His resurrection and sent them to tell the men—in a culture where the witness of a woman didn’t count for much. He didn’t wait around for the men to show up—or go to them first where they were in hiding. Maybe He has some ideas about what women can do that men have been resisting.
Of what you mention, the only things I would have a problem with are homilies and maybe prophesying. (I have seen the latter much abused from both sexes.)
Thanks for your essay, Mark, and for reminding everyone that the REC was a “Continuum of one” for quite a while before it became the thing to do. I have one question that continues to perplex me, though: who decides what the status quo ante is to be? And what will it be? This is a tough question for us in the REC, a “founding entity” of the REC; I doubt Bishop Cummins, or even the “Presbyterians with Prayer Books” of the 1960’s REC, would understand your stance as the “resident A/C” at Stand Firm, or my own pedigree, being a graduate of the nerve center of the Biretta Belt, Nashotah House, or even the liturgical fixins and manual acts in the typical Sunday Communion service in an REC parish. So who would you have make the decision, and what do you think the “answer” is?
A good but tough question! I can only begin to answer it.
IF we withdraw, I think that would be the decision of the General Council with the support of the REC bishops. But I am no canon lawyer.
What we are now is mostly high church I think. Bishop Sutton loves the Caroline Divines as do many of us. But there are A-C pockets as well as evangelical low churchmen. And we would almost certainly remain that way were we to withdraw. Our bishops often like the term Re-formed Anglican Catholicism.
That said, I see no movement towards that at this time.
There is no substitute for the authority of a college of bishops exercised diligently against heresy. No system, new 501C institution, or newly drafted canon law can mitigate the loss of our bishops’ virtue.
I think this is the key to so many problems. TEC failed because the bishops would not discipline fellow bishops who veered into false teachings. TEC has "synodality" in the participation of the clergy and lay orders, and that didn't stop the slide. In some cases, it accelerated it.
The ACNA left TEC left because Gene Robinson’s consecration was outside of the boomers’ Overton Window.
The older gentlemen at the local ACNA parish think of themselves as conservatives while women in the parish routinely serve the Eucharist, give homilies, and read lessons.
They left TEC because they missed the good ol’ days of stage two cancer.
The young families I know who are interested in Anglicanism want traditional religion without giving up Protestantism. The wives veil, they want the 1928 prayer book, they want a cancer-free Anglicanism, and are seen as retrogrades and troublemakers. They know they are not welcome.
Because the ACNA is tuned to suit the conservatism of the baby boomers and not the traditionalism of the upcoming generations, many of these young would-be Anglican families (and their generations after them) will go to the East or to Rome.
Yes! My family left TEC in 1987. We wandered in that desert for 2 years before finding our home at St Barnabas Dunwoody GA.
We were there at the formation of the APA.
We sadly moved and though we have always attended an Anglican Church we have had a much different experience in our journey than most of the people where we attended.
Someone once asked our adult son how long he had been Anglican and when he replied “all my life”, challenged him by saying “you couldn’t, we didn’t exist then.” Yes, we did! lol
Many present members have no idea about the history and what those of us who left before endured.
I actually call the two years after we left TEC my time in the desert. I was very much a lost wanderer looking longingly back to Egypt (TEC). St B’s was my promised land. :)
I wish the ACNA well but I have no interest in being part of it, because I saw the potential fault lines as it was formed and even tried to caution people to set a firmer foundation but was told it would be OK.
We did attend a high church REC parish for a couple years and loved the people and priest, but our hearts remain in the APA and after another move, our last we hope, we are again in an APA parish.
I agree that there is often a difference in mentality among those who left TEC and those who came on board later. I was a "high church Methodist" in the UMC precisely because I looked into priesthood in TEC 25 years ago and found I could not "go there." The UMC - despite what looked like better structural guardrails - eventually got to a similar breaking some years later, so I feel like my sensitivities are closer to some of the folks who left TEC in the early 2000s.
I was thinking about this recently talking to a former Baptist about a book - there were things in it that set off my "modernist heresy/squishy theology senses" in a way that didn't seem as concerning to him. But, then, the church he came out of was broadly orthodox and Bible-believing, and he didn't have to constantly be on guard against some of this stuff. I wish that ACNA had done more to throw open the doors to conservative Methodists with strong liturgical/sacramental sensibilities back around 2022-ish, because I think more folks like me would have come over.
I guess I’m an outlier here. My parish is in ACNA and we’re using the 1662 Prayer Book, which I like very much apart from one or two reservations. I don’t believe in women priests, period, nor in wokeness, nor in cultural trends that weaken the authority of Scripture. But I see in Scripture indications of women serving as deacons and prophesying, which leads me to a certain shock at the criticism of women reading the lesson, serving on the altar, or even giving homilies. If God has given certain women the gifts to do these things, who are men to say that it’s not permitted? Jesus appeared to the women first after His resurrection and sent them to tell the men—in a culture where the witness of a woman didn’t count for much. He didn’t wait around for the men to show up—or go to them first where they were in hiding. Maybe He has some ideas about what women can do that men have been resisting.
Of what you mention, the only things I would have a problem with are homilies and maybe prophesying. (I have seen the latter much abused from both sexes.)
Helpful explanation!
Thanks for your essay, Mark, and for reminding everyone that the REC was a “Continuum of one” for quite a while before it became the thing to do. I have one question that continues to perplex me, though: who decides what the status quo ante is to be? And what will it be? This is a tough question for us in the REC, a “founding entity” of the REC; I doubt Bishop Cummins, or even the “Presbyterians with Prayer Books” of the 1960’s REC, would understand your stance as the “resident A/C” at Stand Firm, or my own pedigree, being a graduate of the nerve center of the Biretta Belt, Nashotah House, or even the liturgical fixins and manual acts in the typical Sunday Communion service in an REC parish. So who would you have make the decision, and what do you think the “answer” is?
A good but tough question! I can only begin to answer it.
IF we withdraw, I think that would be the decision of the General Council with the support of the REC bishops. But I am no canon lawyer.
What we are now is mostly high church I think. Bishop Sutton loves the Caroline Divines as do many of us. But there are A-C pockets as well as evangelical low churchmen. And we would almost certainly remain that way were we to withdraw. Our bishops often like the term Re-formed Anglican Catholicism.
That said, I see no movement towards that at this time.