ACNA is Finding Out that Wokeness Leads to Alphabet Apostasy

One cannot welcome wokeness into one’s church without it leading to LGBTQIA2S+ advocacy.

Monday over at Stand Firm, I pointed out that the Anglican Church in North America’s recurring problems with clergy and parishes becoming affirming is very much related to ACNA being hospitable to varieties of wokeness. After summarizing the latest Pride blow up in the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) and praising bishops for acting quickly, I opined:

But this seems to keep happening in C4SO. That points to a deeper problem. C4SO, it is fair to say, is the ACNA diocese that most pushes applied Critical Theory and its variants. Bishop Hunter once endorsed Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory to his clergy, and he certainly gave it and related ideologies and ideologues a warm welcome when he founded and led the Center for Formation, Peace, and Justice.

At the same time, the rest of ACNA is in no position to point fingers at C4SO as a number of dioceses and the Province itself has often welcomed and enabled the promotion of applied Critical Theory, aka wokeness.

So the situation is this: largely because the Episcopal Church’s consecration of Gene Robinson, a gay man who divorced his wife then “married” his male partner, as bishop was the last straw that led to the formation of the Anglican Church in North America, ACNA does not welcome alphabet advocacy from its clergy and parishes. Yet ACNA to a large extent does welcome applied Critical Theory, even though some bishops and many clergy oppose it.

This is not feasible. It will not work and is not working. This is like building your house on the edge of a cliff and opposing rockslides. It’s like supporting Communism but being shocked when political suppression, sham elections, economic failures, and gulags result. For Critical Theory and alphabet advocacy go together and have for years. Queer Theory itself is a variant of Critical Theory.

Here is where I, of all people, agree with the concept of Intersectionality. Critical Theory and related ideologies all have an oppressor-oppressed view of society. By that logic, racial issues, alphabet issues, gender issues, “Free Palestine” etc. are at their heart one issue of oppressed vs. oppressor. So these issues intersect and are not to be separated, at least not according to Critical Theory and Intersectionality. (This is how you get the oddity of Queers for Palestine, by the way.)

So one cannot be for Critical Theory and its applications yet oppose alphabet theories or Queer Theory. Well, one can, just as one could build a nice house on the edge of a cliff, or support Communism without political suppression, but it is wishful thinking that will not work in the long run. One cannot welcome wokeness into one’s church without it eventually leading to LGBTQIA2S+ advocacy. Both work along the lines of the Critical Theory oppressor-oppressed narrative. Both are part of the same Intersectional package. They are really not a “both” but one in today’s society. And the two refuse to stay separated no matter how much one may try.

So it is no coincidence that the diocese that is the most welcoming to wokeness is also the one that has the most issues with clergy and parishes becoming affirming.

But, again, this is an ACNA problem, not just a C4SO problem. ACNA is trying to follow Christ and His word on gender, sexual morals and family issues, and is doing well for the most part so far. Yet much of ACNA accommodates the world on other woke issues. That is serving two masters, and we know what Jesus said about that.

I concluded:

Opposing alphabet ideologies while accommodating other woke ideologies can only work for so long . . . until it doesn’t.

Here, while still skimming the surface out of necessity, I want to dig a bit deeper into ACNA’s formation and DNA and why it made ACNA vulnerable to problems with wokeness and therefore problems with clergy and parishes going affirming.

The Departure from The Episcopal Church should have occurred earlier.

The timing of the formation of ACNA gets unfair criticism from both sides. Libchurchers said those who left The Episcopal Church to form ACNA left because they found gays icky. There was much more behind the departure. Trads say that ACNA just wants The Episcopal Church the day before Gene Robinson, the gay bishop, was consecrated in 2003. Again, not fair to most in ACNA, and ACNA remains much more faithful than TEC in 2003 or 1980 for that matter.

But the timing of departure still invited and, I think, deserved criticism. There were any number of enormities in The Episcopal Church that justified departure in the decades before 2003. Perhaps, the departure should have occurred when TEC refused to put heretic Bishop James Pike to trial in the 1960’s. When the Continuing Anglicans left in 1977 was another good time to leave. When Bishop Shelby Spong was not defrocked was another.

But it turned out the consecration of Gene Robinson in 2003 was the last straw. Because the departure was that put off that long, that much more of TEC’s mutations came into ACNA.

At the initial Provincial Assembly that commenced ACNA, I overheard a comment that we imported “the Episcopal virus.” In my naive optimism, I thought that was just an old cud being old cud. Now I’m the old cud and agree. Too much of ACNA really did want TEC, just with no gay bishops and no blatant heresy. Part of the Episcopal virus that was imported into ACNA was . . .

Women’s Ordination

Those churches and dioceses that formed ACNA were a mix of those who ordained women to Holy Orders and those who did not. And many were not going to budge on that issue. The compromise that was set up and remains is that there will be no women bishops. As for the priesthood and diaconate, that is determined by each diocese.

At the time of ACNA’s formation, I opposed Women’s Ordination, but it wasn’t a big deal for me. I was fine with the compromise and did not think it would cause problems.

The years since have proven me wrong and have turned me into a rather dogged opponent of WO. You don’t want to get me started. But relevant to this subject, it is hard to miss that that dioceses that harbor the most wokeness are ones that ordain women. Calvin Robinson was vilified when he stated to a Mere Anglicanism conference that WO works as an entry to import feminism and Critical Theory. But ACNA keeps proving him right.

I’m not saying that banning WO stops all wokeness. It does not. See the Church of Rome. But the correlation between WO and wokeness as a whole in American non-RC, non-Pentecostal denominations is hard to miss and is strong in ACNA. I think this at least partly causation as the woke tend to be appalled by churches banning WO.

Wanting Church Growth Too Much

The first Archbishop, Robert Duncan, called for ACNA to plant 1000 churches in its first five years. That was an unrealistic goal, but ACNA has planted hundreds of churches, mostly to its credit.

Yet in the process of pursuing church growth, the orthodoxy and even Anglicanism of those doing the planting were too often not vetted enough. Growth was made so important that faithfulness was neglected. The negligence was not intentional and the zeal for church growth was well meaning. But it is now clear that church growth was overemphasized at the expense of faithfulness.

The biggest example was bringing in Todd Hunter as a bishop early on not long after he was a Vineyard leader. He was more Church of What’s Happening Now than Anglican. Hunter was brought in largely because of his reputation for church growth. But his Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) has been the most woke and the most prone to clergy and parishes becoming affirming. And C4SO plants like Table Indy and Resurrection South Austin, both now departed to TEC, are among the most notorious.

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Now before you think I’m Monday morning quarterbacking, I freely admit I share blame for the above (except perhaps for leaving TEC too late — for a long time, TEC was no-go for me). I supported and cheered the formation of ACNA with naive optimism that was not concerned about the above.

This is one reason I am staying in REC/ACNA. I had my part in creating this mess, including the wokeness. I should do my part in cleaning it up.

I do not presume to know how ACNA should best proceed from here. But I do know that part of clean up is ACNA wising up that wokeness is not compatible with faithfulness, especially faithfulness in family, gender, and sexuality issues.

So the reality checks will continue until morale improves.