Future of the Continuing Anglican church

This month’s Jt. Synod was a historic event for the Continuing Anglican movement, after four decades of both standing on Anglo-Catholic principles and also seemingly endless schism. The hope is that this event — and the intercommunion agreement announced there — will mark the eventual reunification of the Continuing churches into a single jurisdiction, as originally envisioned 40 years ago.

The history of the Continuing movement is recounted in The Day-Spring from on High, a first person memoir published earlier this year by the Rt. Rev. Paul Hewett. Bp. Hewett was involved in the movement since the beginning and since 2006 has been bishop of the Diocese of the Holy Cross. The book was for sale at the synod — while I bought mine in Kindle format in July, after meeting and sitting with Bp. Hewett at this summer’s Forward in Faith assembly.

How We Got Here

In September 1977, nearly 2,000 Anglicans gathered at the Congress of St. Louis to reject doctrinal changes recently approved by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The following January 28, four new bishops were consecrated in a ceremony led by retired ECUSA bishop Albert Chambers. As Hewett explained:

We divided the United States into four quadrants, such that Robert Morse was consecrated for the Pacific West, James Mote for the Rocky Mountain States, Peter Watterson for the Southeast, and Dale Doren for the Northeast. 

However, conflicts soon arose among the four men. Hewett continued:

In October of 1978, the Anglican Church in North America had a Synod in Dallas, Texas, to vote on canons and a new name. The fault line that had been widening finally broke open. One side would call itself the Anglican Catholic Church, led by Bishops Mote and Doren. The other side consisted of two Dioceses, Christ the King, and the Southeast, led by Bishops Robert Morse and Peter Watterson.

The two factions eventually split. Today, the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions formed after St. Louis include:

• 1978: Anglican Catholic Church (ACC), founded by Doren and Mote
• 1978: Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK), founded by Morse; meanwhile, Watterson later left for the Roman Catholic Church
• 1981: United Episcopal Church of North America (UECNA), founded by Doren after splitting from the ACC
• 1991: Anglican Church in America (ACA), formed by splitting from the ACC and joining with the American Episcopal Church (established 1968 by splitting from ECUSA)
• 1992: Episcopal Missionary Church (EMC) formed from the ECUSA
• 1995: Anglican Province of America (APA), formed by splitting from the ACA
• The Diocese of the Holy Cross (DHC) (according to Hewett’s book) separated from ECUSA in 1989, joined the EMC, left the EMC for the APCK in 1995, then left the APCK in 2003 to become an independent diocese

At one point or another, all were involved or represented in the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen (FCC, est. 1973), and most in the Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas (FACA, est. 2006). Additional insight into the first three decades of the Continuum can be found in a 2009 conference paper by longtime FCC president Wally Spaulding.

Reunification: Now and Future

On October 6, the ACA, ACC, APA and DHC signed an intercommunion agreement. They have announced plans to move towards full ecclesial integration, including common canons, hierarchies and merged dioceses. These jurisdictions share the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and a common understanding of Holy Orders (i.e. opposition to women’s ordination).

As participants (unofficially) acknowledged, this cooperation was made possible by the retirement of the first generation of Continuing bishops. In Bp. Hewett’s book, these clergy come across as charismatic, visionary and stubborn — none more so than Bp. Morse (1924-2015), his former mentor and head of the APCK from 1978-2008.

The “G-4” (as they call themselves today) represent 217 parishes in the U.S., according to a joint prayer list posted in February.  Other major non-ECUSA Anglican groupings in the US include:

• Within the Continuing jurisdictions, the G-4 have prioritized three jurisdictions totaling 94 parishes: the APCK with 43, the EMC with 26, and the UECNA with 25 parishes (according to their current websites). The FCC website lists numerous other smaller jurisdictions, including the American Anglican Church, Anglican Church International Communion, Anglican Orthodox Church and United Anglican Church. 
• The largest grouping of Anglicans in the US and Canada outside ECUSA is the Anglican Church in North America, formed in 2009 which (according to Wikipedia) had 1,019 parishes in June 2017. It has its own liturgy, a modified version of the 1979 Rite II. Overall, the majority of dioceses do not (today) ordain women, but disagreements over this practice have been a source of tension within the ACNA.
• Within the ACNA, approximately 150 parishes are members of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC, est. 1873). The REC has much in common with the G-4 churches: it is a member of FACA, has many parishes that use the 1928 BCP (while others use their own prayer book similar to the 1928 BCP), and it shares a common view of women’s ordination. However, its history emphasized a more Presbyterian (i.e. Reformed) view of Anglicanism — as do numerous REC parishes today — explicitly rejecting the Anglo-Catholic movement.
• Other non-ECUSA jurisdictions include the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) and the Charismatic Episcopal Church (CEC), but neither use the 1928 BCP or could be conceivably considered to be Anglo-Catholic.

These churches both cooperate and compete for attention, parishioners and resources. The biggest challenge for consolidation of the Continuing Anglican churches is the proliferation of purple shirts, suggesting that some changes may depend on retirements of the existing bishops.

Still, there is no denying that the Continuing movement is now more unified and coherent than at any time since 1978. We pray that this cooperation continues to grow, strengthening the traditional Anglican alternatives to ECUSA.

Continuing Anglican Liturgy in Atlanta

Liturgy was at the center of this month’s Jt. Synod of four major Continuing Anglican jurisdictions — the ACA, ACC, APA and DHC. My own experience suggested both the potential and challenges of integrating this “G-4” in terms of practice, if not ecclesiology.

The heart of the Jt. Synod was the intercommunion agreement signed by the G-4 bishops, followed by a joint mass. But long before Atlanta, Continuing Anglicans have been defined by the Congress of St. Louis, their use of the 1928 BCP and rejection of the 1979 prayer book, one the late Peter Toon termed a “Book of Alternative Services.”

G-4 jurisdictions represented at this month’s Joint Synod both agreed to intercommunion, and also repeatedly worshipped together One of the things I enjoy most about'

Joint Worship at the Joint Synod

The culmination of the Jt. Synod was the “Solemn High Mass for Christian Unity” on Friday October 6. However, it was proceeded by twice daily services from October 2-5, with each day beginning with a Morning Prayer and Mass, and ending with an Evening Prayer. The worship took place in one of the hotel ballrooms, with an altar set up on a raised platform. The earlier services had a capacity of around 250 people, while for the high mass, the capacity was more like 750 (I guessed about 400-500 were in attendance).

Evening Prayer, Wednesday October 4

Fighting jet lag after the trip from California, I was unaware of the Wednesday MP, but attended the Wednesday EP, Thursday MP & Mass and joined the opening hymn of the Thursday EP. The jurisdictions took turn leading these services — the last three being led by the APA, the ACA, and the DHC. (I have uploaded scans of these service booklets for posterity).

Insights into Congregational Practice

There are often variations in the congregational practices of any liturgical church between parishes. These are generally smoothed out over time, as people get used to the culture and other norms of their home parish. Thus, joint worship with no dominant constituency highlights some of the differences in practice — and, I would argue, some of the challenges faced by newcomers to traditional Anglican worship.

We were told to bring our prayer books — but for the Daily Office a slight majority of us were reciting the familiar prayers from memory. (I would guess for communion it was over 80%). Prayer books were not needed for the closing High Mass, which had a detailed nine-page as well as a ten-page musical insert.

The greatest confusion was over standing, sitting and kneeling. There were times when the congregation was split among all three. As in other churches, the degree of kneeling was greatest on key prayers — such as on the confession. Also — as in many storefront churches — I suspect that the kneeling (on the hotel carpet) was less than might have happened if there were pews and kneelers. Still, for the psalm at the Wednesday EP, many of us remained standing until we noticed that so many others were sitting.

Another interesting variation was the congregational response bracketing the reading of the Gospel, which (fortunately for those of us who go to ACNA or FIFNA events), includes the same “Glory be to thee, O Lord” beforehand and “Praise be to thee, O Christ” afterward. The rubric in the 28 BCP (p. 70) says

Then, all the People standing, the Minister appointed shall read the Gospel, first saying, The Holy Gospel is written in the — Chapter of —, beginning at the — Verse.

Communion at the October 5 morning service.

Some in the congregation started the “Glory be” before the introduction was completed — suggesting at their parishes the deacon omits the chapter and verse — and perhaps even the author of the Gospel.

While the congregation was consistent in making than the threefold sign of the cross before the Gospel, there was also significant variation in the bowing and crossing at other times during the service. Lacking a communion rail, the Eucharist was (of necessity) administered standing up, although some clergy (or seminarians) knelt on the carpet — either to receive the elements or because (at least in the final service) they were being administered by the princes of the church.

Variations in the Liturgy

The worship reflected many common variations among 28 BCP parishes. Perhaps the most theologically significant is the Gloria, which in the service — as in the BCP — was recited after the Eucharist. In Rite I (of the 79 prayer book), the Gloria is said near the beginning, immediately after the Kyrie; this is also the practice of our parish (and many other California 28 BCP parishes).

Another variation is in the Prayer of Humble Access and post-communion prayer, which the 28 BCP commands to be said by the priest, but are congregational prayers in the 1979 prayer book. Many 28 parishes have adopted the latter practice — which I believe to be an improvement — and this is also what we did at the Thursday morning mass. I am guessing this practice must be common, because the booklet for Friday’s mass says “Celebrant Only” after the Prayer of Humble Access.

After carefully following the prayer book, the High Mass included two non-prayer book additions that seem common at Anglo-Catholic parishes. One was the threefold prayer “Lord I am not worthy” that references the centurion’s statement of faith in Matthew 8:8. While the prayer is a standard element of the Roman rite (Domine, non sum dignus), and also included in early 20th century “Anglo-Papalist” practice in England, it does not appear anywhere in the 28 BCP.

The High Mass also included the Last Gospel (John 1:1-14) of the Roman rite, but read in King James English rather than the Latin of the Tridentine Mass.

Finally, most of the services I attended did not use an altar bell, but it wasn’t clear whether it’s because they didn’t have one, they didn’t have an acolyte ready to ring it, or they didn’t believe it was an appropriate practice.  Although common in today’s Anglo-Catholic parishes, it’s nowhere mentioned in the BCP, but rather a medieval Roman practice codified in the Tridentine Mass and largely abandoned after Vatican II. (As a musician, I happen to like the sound — and also missed it because because at our parish the second bell helps signal when we should cross ourselves).

Unity in Ecclesiology and Worship

The G-4 are working towards a common hierarchy, one they hope will eventually include other groups as well. The Continuing churches are united by a common liturgy, even more so than the Anglicans going back to Cranmer’s day, but the reality is that today there are numerous deviations from the nearly 90-year-old American BCP. It seems as though most of these differences could be handled (for now) by supplemental rubrics.

In doing so, I think it would also good to write down and disseminate congregational practices such as standing, kneeling, crossing, ringing and genuflecting. Over the long haul, I'm hoping that parishes will indicate these into the seat booklets, particularly since word process and web pages can easily include unicode symbols (e.g. ✠, ✣) that are instantly recognizable and self-explanatory. Certainly agreeing on a supplemental document would be a better way to kick off a joint committee on liturgy than to start with the more complex (and contentious) issue of a prayer book revision.

Reflections on the 2017 Joint Synod

Last week I attended the Joint Synod of four Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, held Oct. 2-6 in Dunwoody, an Atlanta suburb. The complete program is uploaded here.

The event was timed to a few weeks after the 40th anniversary of the Congress of St. Louis, the largest of the 20th century schisms from the Episcopal Church. The 1977 congress created an Anglican Church in New America — followed by the 1978 consecration of the first four continuing Bishops by Albert Chambers. But the groups fractured repeatedly over the next decades, showing that (as often in the last 500 years) Protestants have demonstrated a unique talent for fragmenting.

Joint Communion Agreement

This month’s event featured four of the seven major continuing (pre-80s schism) Anglican groups: the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of America and the Diocese of the Holy Cross.

The most significant event was the formal agreement for intercommunion, which stated:

We acknowledge each other to be orthodox and catholic Anglicans in virtue of our common adherence to the authorities accepted by and summarized in the Affirmation of St. Louis in the faith of the Holy Tradition of the undivided Catholic Church and of the seven Ecumenical Councils.

We recognize in each other in all essentials the same faith; the same sacraments; the same moral teaching; and the same worship; likewise, we recognize in each other the same Holy Orders of bishops, priests, and deacons in the same Apostolic Succession, insofar as we all share the episcopate conveyed to the Continuing Churches in Denver in January 1978 in response to the call of the Congress of Saint Louis; therefore,

We welcome members of all of our Churches to Holy Communion and parochial life in any and all of the congregations of our Churches; and,

We pledge to pursue full, institutional, and organic union with each other, in a manner that respects tender consciences, builds consensus and harmony, and fulfills increasingly our Lord’s will that His Church be united; and,

We pledge also to seek unity with other Christians, including those who understand themselves to be Anglican, insofar as such unity is consistent with the essentials of Catholic faith, order, and moral teaching.

The heads of the four groups stood Friday after signing of the agreement.

Rt. Rev. Paul C. Hewett (DHC), Most Rev. Walter H. Grundorf (APA),
Most Rev. Mark D. Haverland (ACC) and Most Rev. Brian R. Marsh (ACA). Photo by J. West

and a video of the ceremony can be found on YouTube.

Rev. Clendenin
Photo by J. West

Other aspects of the joint synod included joint worship all week, and a closing high mass after the intercommunion agreement. A joint dinner on Thursday night featured a speech by Fr. George , who recounted the highlight of his career, his role in the 1977 Congress. A video of his talk was recorded and posted by Anglican.TV.

News Coverage

Despite its historic nature, there was surprisingly little coverage. There were brief articles on Virtue Online and Anglican Ink. By comparison, almost any story about the ACNA — about 5x-6x larger — gets widespread coverage in the US Anglican media.

Anglican.TV recorded a joint press conference with the four leaders. Perhaps even more insight can be gained from the audio recorded by Quad City Anglican Radio — a podcast by two Anglo-Catholic leaning ACNA priests. Their interviews included Bp. Hewett, PB Marsh, as well as pre-recorded interview with Bp. Chad Jones (APA), whose Dunwood parish (St. Barnabas) co-hosted the conference with Abp. Haverland’s Athens cathedral (St. Stephen’s).

39 years of Continuing Anglicanism

On this day in 1978 was the consecration of the four former ECUSA priests as the founding bishops of the Continuing Anglican movement in Denver. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but it changed American — and global — Anglicanism forever.

Fast forward 39 years. The Anglo-Catholics who stayed behind in ECUSA would have to admit the ones who left were right about how ECUSA would turn out. Those who joined ACNA on or after 2009 have now separated from ECUSA (most at great cost), and they have a liturgy that’s more like the 1928 in substance even if it’s more like Rite II in language.

But instead of a single jurisdiction — they chose the name “Anglican Church of North America” — the Continuing movement fractured again and again: the lesson of 500 years of Protestantism seems to be that once you’ve done schism – placing your own personal theological convictions over ecclesial authority — it’s easy to keep doing so. The issues that divided the Continuing churches seemed to be authority and a desire to keep purple shirt, rather than actual doctrine.

The one piece of good news is that four of the alphabet soup are having a joint synod in October. The synod will bring together (at least for a week) the Anglican Church in America, Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of America, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross. As a Californian, I’d like to see the Anglican Province of Christ the King participate, but it’s been in turmoil since the resignation and death of its founder, Bp. Robert Morse — one of the Denver four.

Today's Newest Clergy

Clergy at end of Saturday’s ordination service
Source: Diocese of the Holy Trinity Twitter feed

Today I attended an ordination for a former classmate of mine, the newest clergy member in the Anglican Catholic Church. Sean Patrick Michael Cochran became be a bivocational deacon, the first deacon for St. Mary Magdalene in Orange, California, assisting its rector, Fr. Neil Edlin. In honor of Deacon Cochran’s heritage, at the recessional we sang all seven verses of “I bind unto myself today” (H40: 268) while the organist played preludes and postludes on Irish melodies by Charles Villiers Stanford.

The consecrations were done by Bp. Stephen Scarlett, whose see is at the Denver cathedral that was the home of Bp. James Mote; Scarlett was consecrated in 2013 by Bp. Mark Haverland (today the head of the ACC), who in 1998 was consecrated by Mote. (Today’s service was in the pro-cathedral in Newport Beach, Calif. where Scarlett spends most of his Sundays).

After Bp. Scarlett read the opening part of the 1928 BCP ordination service, he noted that the prayer book had assumed a stable church. Left unsaid was that the nature of belief, the role of the church, and the role of the Episcopal (or Anglican) church is fundamentally different than 90 years ago.

Instead, he argued, each deacon — like others in the church — needs to be a missionary. He listed three specific ways:

1. Christian witness. The customary evangelical conception is that witness is going to tell a non-believer. However, today’s Anglican cleric needs to model a deeper spiritual life of prayer that will potentially transform the life of those who find it. “As we grow in our spiritual life, that is our witness ...and evangelism is inviting others into that life of prayer"
2. Seeking out the lost sheep. Again, we think of seeking the sheep as being those who wandered off — or never set foot in the church; but, Scarlett argued, the lost may already be in the pews, but alienated. Implicitly referencing Mark 2:17, he cited Jesus’ admonition that the physician has come to heal the sick; the clergy need to look inside and outside the church to find new avenues to reach the lost.
3. Discerning one’s own spiritual gifts. Even if two people have the same order, they have differing gifts (1 Corr. 12). To be effective, clergy and laity need to honestly understand their talents so they can apply them to support the mission of the church.

The music and liturgy were great, but too often Anglo-Catholic churches are organized as museums to historic worship rather than something relevant to potential members. I hope that the path laid out by Bp. Scarlett will be effective in growing the church. Even in places where it doesn’t give us more Christians, it should give us stronger Christians — strengthening the faith of the Remnant that we have in the pews — which certainly has to be numbered among our goals even this is less exciting than attracting more “butts in seats.”

When Common Prayer Was Common

Earlier this month, we went to a 28 BCP congregation with our teen. My wife and I had been there a couple of times (it’s a long drive) but our daughter had not. I was amazed at how much she knew of the liturgy and service music: the original (vs. modified) Nicene Creed, the General Confession (vs. Confession Lite), the Scottish Gloria, the Merbecke Angus Dei and Sanctus. (None of us knew the Kyrie).

She has almost no exposure to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. She spent all of preschool in Rite I, and then in the next nine years split time between Lutheran, 28 BCP (perhaps three years) and then Rite I; for the last few years (until recently) she has been worshiping with the ACNA trial use liturgy. On the other hand, it was very familiar for my wife and I, who spent almost all of our first four decades (i.e the 20th century) with the 28 BCP and then Rite I.

To me, our experience was a powerful reminder of the brilliance of Cranmer’s vision: the Book of Common Prayer is a book of common prayer. At one point in history, you could walk into a church anywhere in the country (or perhaps the world) and fully participate in the service. The prayers you learned as a kid would be the ones you would say until you breath your last breath. Among creedal Protestants, the Anglican faith was more defined by common worship than a common confession because (as known to 5th century Christians) Lex orandi, Lex credendi.

Of course, this also applies to hymns and service music. Yes, churches need a variety of forms and setting — I'm now a fan of the penitential vs. ordinary time approach to service music — but continuity and familiarity are underappreciated virtues.

Books of Alternative Services Rather Than Common Prayer

The brilliance of Thomas Cranmer was to provide a new prayer book in the vernacular that both linked back to the Latin Sarum (i.e. Salisbury) Rite and standardized the liturgy across the entire church. From the 16th century until the latter half of the 20th century, this was the norm for the CoE and Anglicans worldwide.

In America,  the 1979 prayer book marked a break for ECUSA from a Book of Common Prayer to what Peter Toon correctly noted was an Alternative Services Book. It provides multiple services and multiple variants, and also started the process of ongoing prayer book revision. The 2015 TEC convention vowed to start a new round of prayer book revision, in part to offer a new “gender neutral” version of the 1928 BCP marriage rite for high church LGBT parishioners.

We would love to say that Mother England has avoided these liturgical and doctrinal errors, but they haven’t. Planning a future trip to London, I found that “prayer book” services listed on the CoE church locator website were a small fraction of those local parishes.

With liturgy — as with bible translations — the 21st century model seems to be that revision is an ongoing process of modernizing the language — and the theology — rather than maintaining continuity with previous generations.

Traditional Language and Process

It’s hard to tell what the ACNA will end up doing. It opted for a single unified prayer book — rather than variant services — but following the 1978 Rite II model of a radical break from Elizabethan English. (To be fair, this is exactly the model promoted by Toon himself). It’s hard to tell if this will be a one-time or ongoing process: the disadvantage of having a standing (rather than temporary) committee on liturgy or music is that they will feel a need to do (i.e. change) something.

Among ACNA member bodies, the Reformed Episcopal Church has had relatively infrequent revisions of its prayer book — in 1873 (when it broke from ECUSA), 1963 and 2003. My impression is that the latter is recommended but not universal among REC churches.

For those that left ECUSA in between REC and ACNA — i.e. those Continuing Anglicans who quit ECUSA over the 1979 prayer book — they have been defined by their use of the 1928 BCP. In retrospect, their 1977 concerns about theological and liturgical revision have proven remarkably prescient.

Despite their severe fragmentation, these Schism I jurisdictions share a single unchanging prayer book (However, their prayer book differs from 1928 in that the lectionary was revised in 1945). This is probably the only pocket of liturgical unity in all of North American Anglicanism, continuing to live out Cranmer’s vision.

Still, having a book doesn’t define a process: It is a good prayer book, but what will the process be if there is something that must be updated? How will these churches reject recent heresies of the post-Biblical church?

In the end, I was struck by how dramatically easy it was for our family to worship using the standardized rite. Our daughter had never set foot in either in this church or a church of its province (ACC); the 28 BCP parish we previously attended was APCK. In terms of liturgy or theology, there is more variance within the TEC (or ACNA) than there is between the various jurisdictions of the continuing church.

So this raises (once again) the obvious question: if it’s the same faith, same worship and same prayer book, why are there dozens of Continuing jurisdictions in the US — other than 30-year-old grievances and a desire to propagate (or retain) purple shirts?

Mending Episcopal Schism Among American Anglicans

Anglo-Catholic worship was so much easier when I was a kid. Anglican worship meant the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, so you would shop around for a place that had at least some high church worship.  But the theological innovations of the 1970s fractured Anglo-Catholics, perhaps permanently — first in 1977 with the Continuing churches formed out of the Congress of St. Louis and then the ACNA launched in this century.

ICCA made impressive progress in addressing this fracture, with the broad representation of US Anglo-Catholics across a wide range of jurisdictions. We had the Schism I (Continuing Anglicans aka Continuum), Schism II (ACNA), pre-Schism (Reformed Episcopal Church) and non-Schism (a very small number of TEC clergy). Of course, there were also at least five African bishops and one retired English bishop (Michael Nazir-Ali).

There is schism both within and between these schisms. The 19th and 20th century secessionists (i.e. REC and Schism I) don’t ordain women to any order (including deacon) and most use the 1928 or 1662 BCP.

In the final sermon Friday, REC Bp. Ray Sutton joked that they agreed on almost everything and got along on almost nothing. The Continuum is badly fractured: according to Wikipedia estimates the big four (ACA, ACC, APA, APCK) only account for 2/3 of Schism I. This ongoing fragmentation has made a running joke of the claim to be the true apostolic church: several referred to “alphabet soup” and the need to mend these division — at least within the Continuum.

Meanwhile, the chasm between Schism I and II is even more daunting. Yes, the Anglo-Catholic parishes and dioceses joined ACNA with one diocese (now several) actively if not aggressively ordaining women. ACNA’s unresolved resolution of WO was the elephant in the room. There are three possible outcomes — the current stalemate continues, the factions get a divorce or (least likely) the male clergy view wins out — and only the latter two would satisfy Schism I.

On the one hand, there seems to be jealousy among some Schism I clergy — who have toiled in relative obscurity since correctly diagnosing the ECUSA malaise almost 40 years ago — at the visibility and favorable press that ACNA has won. Having a national unified denomination certainly helps, as did ACNA’s successful efforts by Bp. Bill Atwood to build ties of communion and fellowship with the GAFCON overseas churches.

On the other hand, the Schism I clergy and laity have been proven correct. The path that TEC was on in 1978 was leading exactly as they predicted, and (in retrospect) there wasn’t much to be gained by waiting — in fact, leaving before the Dennis Canon was actually a better strategy. (This is not to deny the numerous errors in executing the Schism I strategy).

Personal Ties Among the Episcopate(s)

While at ICCA, it was clear that many of the Continuum and ACNA clergy had never met: I found myself introducing Anglo-Catholic clergy (particularly within California) who would have been close colleagues if not for the current jurisdictional mess.

The greatest opportunity came with the episcopate, i.e. the bishop from the various jurisdictions. According to the program, the 23 North American Anglican bishops almost exactly balanced between ACNA (10) plus ex-TEC (2) and Continuing (7) plus REC (4):

• ACA (Anglican Church in America) 1: Stephen Strawn
• ACC (Anglican Catholic Church) 2: Mark Haverland, Stephen Scarlett
• ACCC (Anglican Catholic Church in Canada) 1: Shane Janzen
• APA (Anglican Province of America) 1: Chandler (Chad) Jones
• DHC (Diocese of the Holy Cross) 1: Paul Hewett
• UECNA (United Episcopal Church of North America) 1: Peter Robinson
• ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) 10: Keith Andrews (Western Anglicans), Bill Atwood (International), Foley Beach (South), Bob Duncan (Pittsburgh), Bill Ilgenfritz (Missionary Diocese of All Saints), Rich Lipka (Missionary Diocese of All Saints), Clark Lowenfield  (Western Gulf Coast), Eric Menees (San Joaquin), Alberto Morales (Quincy); Stephen Leung (Anglican Network in Canada)
• REC (Reformed Episcopal Church) 4: Royal Grote, Winfield Mott, Sam Seamans, Ray Sutton
• TEC: Keith Ackerman (retired) 2; William Wantland (retired)

The other 10 bishops participating were as follows:

• PNCC (Polish National Catholic Church) 1: Paul Sobiechowski
• UK 3: John Fenwick (Free Church of England), John Hind (CoE, retired), Michael Nazir-Ali (CoE, retired)
• Global South 6: Michael Hafidh (Tanzania), Fanuel Magangani (Malawi), Brighton Malasa (Malawi), James Min Dein (Myanmar), Valentine Mokiwa (Tanzania), Stephen Than Myint Oo (Myanmar)

Co-host Bp. Keith Ackerman toiled tirelessly to get these bishops to get to know each other, through informal and formal meetings, celebrating together and serving on the drafting committee together. I counted 23 purple shirts at a quick informal gathering that Ackerman called on Tuesday morning (not include Beach).

Their number dwindled as the week went on. At the opening evensong Monday night I counted 16 bishops processing and three purple shirts in the pews. At the closing Holy Communion Friday, the numbers had dropped to 11+2 (Nazir-Ali only processed as the Tuesday morning celebrant) with many of the Continuum bishops having already left.

Some of the non-Anglo-Catholic bishops made only brief appearance. ACNA primate Foley Beach showed up to preach at Tuesday’s first communion service and then left for the airport. His predecessor Bob Duncan — of Anglo-Catholic liturgy but evangelical view of Holy Orders — stayed much longer, leaving on Thursday. While their respective sermons emphasized common aspirations and challenges of orthodox-minded Anglicans post-2003, the Schism I bishops (understandably) saw little prospect of being in communion with them.

Skunk in the Room

Some of the bishops were more used to getting along than others. Ackerman, Ilgenfritz, Lipka and Menees, Morales and Wantland from the ACNA, Sutton from the REC, and Hewett and Jones from the Continuum are all members of the FiFNA Council (i.e. governing body). Bp. Jones in particular seemed to go out of his way to be conciliar in his address to the Congress, while Bp. Sutton seemed to have the most experience working with both camps.

However, the ACNA clergy and laity couldn’t stop talking about Wednesday night’s sermon by Abp. Haverland, head of the Anglican Catholic Church. (I happened to miss this evensong because we were wrapping up our church planting session and I never made it over there in time).

The sermon (posted at Philorthodox and Anglican Continuum) began with the assertion that the path of the Schism I parishes was more theologically sound and consistent than the Schism II.  This is not particularly surprising, and in fact the ACNA defense of their delay in leaving ECUSA has emphasized the pastoral and conciliar value of their choices of the past 30+ years, not their theological purity.

However, the part that everyone was talking about the next morning was the following, particularly one key paragraph (emphasis added):

I congratulate the ACNA for leaving the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada.  Every one of you who made that change did a good thing and one, I hope, that you do not regret.  But that departure can only be a good first step.  For ACNA is really not a Church but a coalition of dioceses. The coalition is for some purposes only, and the communion of the dioceses is impaired and imperfect.  The ACNA has retained the central flaw of the recent Lambeth Communion because it permits member dioceses to ordain women to the three-fold ministry, and therefore implicitly claims that the central Tradition is not decisive and may be set aside.  ACNA is not a return to orthodox Anglicanism, but only a return to the impaired state of the Lambeth Communion that began in 1975 and 1976. 

Of course, the issue of women’s ordination has not yet been resolved in the ACNA. And the newest head of the ACNA last year defended the right of member dioceses to continue such ordination rather than wait for a resolution:

First, let me say that I think a voluntary moratorium [on ordination] would actually not ease the tension. I think it would pour gasoline in the fire. Part of that is, in our constitution and canons, we have left the issue of women’s ordination for each diocese to decide. A lot of people came into the ACNA in good faith that their perspective – including those who ordain women—would be protected and guarded. And, people who believe in ordaining women hold their position by conscience and can Biblically argue it, although I disagree with them. This issue is a very important thing to them, and so I think it would create a lot of tension.

Confirmation from the Grave

In large part, this tension within and between Anglican groups was precisely anticipated by Rev. Peter Toon in December 2008, only four months before his untimely death. He wrote a a brief summary of the two groups, published at Virtue Online:

Continuing Anglicans in America: what's the difference between "The Continuing Anglican Church" of 1977 and "The Anglican Church in America" of 2008
by Dr. Peter Toon

Here I want to compare and contrast in a very preliminary way, the two major secessions from The Episcopal Church [TEC] of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Seceders of the 1970s
The seceders from TEC of the late 1970s intended to create an expression of the Anglican Way as "The Continuing Anglican Church" which
…
Recent Seceders
To call the seceders from TEC over the last decade and specifically over the last year or two as Continuing Anglicans will be a shock and an offense to some people. However "The Anglican Church in America" came into existence on Dec 3, 2008, because of schism and secession. Within this Church are four former dioceses of TEC and many congregations which are either former TEC parishes or splits from TEC parishes. Obviously there are some participants who had not been involved in secession, the Reformed Episcopal Church for example, but the majority of the claimed 100,000 members were formerly of the TEC.
…
Conclusion
Regrettably there is very little dialogue and cooperation between the two expressions of Continuing Anglicanism in the U.S.A.

And one of his observations about the ACNA shows that the issue cited by Abp. Haverland and Abp. Beach was as true at its founding as it is today:

[The ACNA] Uses "Province" in a wholly innovatory way, causing it to mean "a hybrid of differing groups working in a specific, geographical territory in a semi-competitive way but cooperating in major matters."

I think “a coalition of dioceses” is a succinct way to summarize Toon’s point. Since the founding of the ACNA, the various dioceses seem united in their rejection of the TEC while differing over matters that divided the TEC from many in the Global South almost 40 years ago.

Looking Forward

The bishops of the ICCA seemed able to worship together, (in most cases) celebrate and take communion together, and continue the dialog that has been managed by the FiFNA leaders since the TEC’s first ordination of women in the 1970s. The Ft. Worth gathering didn’t resolve their differences, but it did introduce hundreds of clergy and laity across the aisle to people they wouldn’t have otherwise met.

As layman who has attended orthodox TEC, ACNA and Continuing parishes for the past 25 years, the differences between these groups seem exaggerated. Yes, since 2006 it is implausible for a parish (or individual Anglican) to claim to be Biblically orthodox while remaining in the TEC. But within the broad swoop of Christianity — let alone Western or global religious belief — these two groups of non-TEC Anglicans are more similar than different.

As demonstrated by the ICCA, they share the desire to retain an continuous link to the historic undivided Christian church, with beliefs and practices consistent with the Christians of the 1st millennium (if not the Nicene era). Their differences are far less than those held together by the Broad Church of the CoE for most of the past 450 years, or within the original Anglo-Catholic revival of the 19th century. So why can’t we all get along?

Anglo-Catholics gathering in Ft. Worth

Next week’s International Catholic Congress of Anglicans bills itself as the first such Anglo-Catholic gathering since the 1920s. Sponsored by Forward in Faith, the (ACNA) Diocese of Ft. Worth, the Reformed Episcopal Church and others, the speakers include Bp. Keith Ackerman, Bp. Ray Sutton (REC), Bp. Mark Harverland (ACC), and Bp. Michael Nazir-Ali, the retired Bishop of Rochester (England) who in 2002 was runner-up for Archbishop of Canterbury.

More than 250 Anglo-Catholic clergy (and a few laity) will gather in Ft. Worth at the downtown Hilton and and for services a few blocks away at St. Andrew’s Episcopal (of the DoFW). The program runs from 5pm Monday until noon Friday, and includes preaching, communion and keynote addresses by a wide range of Continuing Anglican (ACC, APA, DoHC, PNC) and ACNA bishops (including the current and founding ACNA primate). It also includes bishops from Burma, England, Malawi and Tanzania.

The breakout sessions include

• Sacred and secular views of marriage
• Media strategies (with Anglican journalist David Virtue)
• Theological education
• Anglicans for Life
• Church music (with contemporary church composer Chris Hoyt)

I am particularly excited about the two sessions on Anglo-Catholic church planting: an organizational meeting I’m helping organize on Monday night, and a presentation by Fr. Chris Culpepper (of Christ the Redeemer Ft. Worth) and Fr. Lee Nelson (of Christ Church Waco) on why Anglo-Catholics should be more in active church planting.

I‘ll be there all week, looking to meet others interested in traditional Anglo-Catholic hymnody (and planting new churches to continue the faith):

J. West
anglicanmusic <()> gmail
http://anglicanmusic.blogspot.com
@AnglicanM

The challenges and opportunities of post-Christian America

Despite the reputation of many Anglicans — especially Anglo-Catholics — of being inwardly focused (“sacristy rats”), the reality is that we need to be reaching out to reach new members, bring more people to (or back to) Christ, and fulfill the great commission of Matthew 28:18-20.

According to the headlines, the 2014 Pew “Religious Landscape Study” says Christianity is declining in America. But after listening to a May 13 interview with veteran religious journalist Terry Mattingly on Issues Etc. (especially the last half), I think the story is that the nominal Christians are no longer nominal and instead becoming vaguely spiritual or not religious at all. (Rod Dreher and Ed StetzerEd Stetzer have the same opinion).

On the one hand, this is a shame, because in my experience the raised-but-no-longer-Christian are the easiest to bring to church: they know of the faith, they often know it’s important, and they’ve just been (without knowing it) waiting for an point in their life when they realized that knowing and worshipping God is the most important thing we can do in this life. To some degree that’s my own journey. Still, Stetzer has advice on how to reach both audiences with the Christian message.

Mattingly's interview talks about his own (latest) denomination, the Eastern Orthodox, and how successful Orthodox parishes are those that can reach visitors who are “looking for a beautiful, stable, creedal version of the faith.” This seems like a goal ready-made for Anglo-Catholic Anglicans.

Finally, the headline version of survey results lists Episcopalian/Anglican as 1.2% of the country: 0.9% for TEC and 0.3% for the non-TEC Anglicans. By comparison, ELCA is 1.4%, and more evangelical Lutherans (such as LCMS and WELS) total 1.5%.

The age and education distribution seem similar (with TEC having more graduate degrees and the Anglicans having more college graduates overall). The one notable difference is that 5% of the TEC are shacking up (“living with a partner”) vs. 1% of the Anglicans. The proportion of never-married (unmarried + living together) is about the same — 20% for Anglicans and 21% for TEC — so our need to minister to those seeking to marry (and hopefully raise kids) in the church is more urgent than ever.

Principles of Anglo-Catholic worship

From page 2 of the 66-page booklet “The Order for Low Mass and Solemn High Mass,” St. Mary of the Angels:

Worship at St. Mary’s

St. Mary’s is a parish church with her roots set firmly in the Catholic tradition of Anglicanism. Our worship is centered around the Holy Eucharist (the Mass), continuing in the Tradition we have received from the Apostles, to whom the Lord JESU was “known in the Breaking of the Bread.” Our worship is that of traditional Western Catholicism, with a uniquely Anglican flavor. The ancient chant, the medieval vestments and the Elizabeth language may make our worship seems a bit strange to those unfamiliar with it, but these things are not irrelevant or old-fashioned. For 2000 years the solemn ceremonial of the Mass, the veil of incense which fills the church during the liturgy, and the stately cadences of the Book of Common Prayer speak to us (as they have spoken to many generations of our ancestors in the Faith) of the glory and majesty of God. It is to God the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, that our worship is directed. The purpose of worship is not to entertain or inform us, but to turn “ourselves our souls and bodies” to God. So if the Mass seems a bit strange to you, relax. Sit through it if you’re curious. You may catch a glimpse, even if just for a moment, of heaven.

-- Fr. Gregory Wilcox, rector

This statement by Fr. Wilcox, fourth rector of St. Mary’s (1986-2006), articulates both a general philosophy of Anglo-Catholicism and the particular Catholic-leaning interpretation that predates the Vatican’s 2009 announcement of the Ordinariate and St. Mary’s recent efforts to become Anglican rite Catholics.

True to Mrs. Alexander

Today we attended Easter Services at the most Anglo-Catholic of San Diego’s ACNA parishes, Holy Trinity Anglican Parish of Ocean Beach. The services were held in the LCMS parish across the alley from their decades-long sanctuary that they walked away from in 2010 after losing their property fight with the local ECUSA diocese.

However, today was the first major feast with their “new” hymnals.  When they surrendered their building to the rump ECUSA parish, they also surrendered their copies of Hymnal 1982. Since then, they tried to make do with the LCMS Lutheran Service Book, but it was just enough different to be confusing.

When it came time to buy their own hymnal, they had a choice — but it was no choice at all. Using Hymnal 1982 had always struck me as incongruous at the only Rite I ACNA parish in San Diego. So they took donation to buy copies of Hymnal 1940 and the solicitation was oversubscribed. (We bought five). Even today, with more than 80 in the sanctuary, they didn’t even use half their collection of brand new hymnals.

(I’d like to think this was a trend, but before the Schism II exodus in San Diego there were only two Rite I parishes — Holy Trinity in San Diego and St. Michael’s in Carlsbad — and St. Michael’s decided to split rather than leave.)

Unlike our previous visits at Christmas, the traditional language felt right in conjunction with the “bells and smells” traditional liturgy and theology. They scheduled three familiar Easter hymns: “Jesus Christ is ris’n today” (#85), “The strife is o’er, the battle done” (#91) and “He is risen, He is risen” (#90). (My wife would have liked some Vaughan Williams, but as visitors we can’t tell them what to do.)

The difference was immediately apparent when we sang the first verse of the final hymn (H40: #90), to Joachim Neander’s best-known tune:

He is risen, he is risen!
Tell it out with joyful voice:
he has burst his three days' prison;
let the whole wide earth rejoice:
death is conquered, man is free,
Christ has won the victory.

So unlike in my least favorite hymnal, Mrs. Alexander’s lyrics to her best-known hymn were presented with her original intentions preserved.

Her 1846 lyrics were published in Verses for Holy Seasons, a book of poetry for children’s christian education. It seems to have been introduced to Anglican worship in her native Ireland with the The Church Hymnal (1874) by the Church of Ireland. The Hymnal 1940 Companion says us ’Mericans picked up the hymn with Hymnal 1874 and remarks that the differences are minor except for the omission of Alexander’s second verse. The first appearance in the Church of England appears to be in 1906 The English Hymnal (#132).

Hymnal 1940 and TEH use the same words, except that TEH are missing the 4th verse. Both seem to be (as promised) minor changes to Mrs. Alexander‘s words of 166 years ago:

Verses for Holy Seasons (1846)

Hymnal 1940

He is risen, He is risen, Tell it with a joyful voice, He has burst His three days' prison, Let the whole wide earth rejoice ; Death is conquered, man is free, Christ has won the victory. Come, ye sad and fearful-hearted, With glad smile and radiant brow ; Lent's long shadows have departed, All His woes are over now, And the Passion that He bore ; Sin and pain can vex no more. Come, with high and holy hymning Chant our Lord's triumphant lay; Not one darksome cloud is dimming Yonder glorious morning ray Breaking o'er the purple East; Brighter far our Easter feast. He is risen, He is risen, He has oped the eternal gate ; We are free from sin's dark prison, Risen to a holier state, And a brighter Easter beam On our longing eyes shall stream.

He is risen, he is risen! Tell it out with joyful voice: he has burst his three days' prison; let the whole wide earth rejoice: death is conquered, man is free, Christ has won the victory. Come, ye sad and fearful-hearted, with glad smile and radiant brow! Lent's long shadows have departed; Jesus' woes are over now, and the passion that he bore-- sin and pain can vex no more. Come, with high and holy hymning, hail our Lord's triumphant day; not one darksome cloud is dimming yonder glorious morning ray, breaking o'er the purple east, symbol of our Easter feast. He is risen, he is risen! He hath opened heaven's gate: we are free from sin's dark prison, risen to a holier state; and a brighter Easter beam on our longing eyes shall stream.

Hymnal 1982 (#180) includes the full harmony for the hymn, and makes only one editorial change: due to the M-word, the first verse becomes “we are free.” Although it sticks in my craw every time I have to sing it, it is admittedly a relatively minor attack by the PC police. (Given that a woman wrote “man is free” in a children’s hymn, this would suggest her original language was intended to be inclusive, referring to the human race.)

Anglo-Lutheran worship

For the first time since they processed away from their building, today I attended Holy Trinity (ACNA) in San Diego, which now worships at the LCMS parish next door to their longtime sanctuary.

As it happens, it was also the observance of feast of Pentecost, so I was able to witness their high feast worship style. It was nothing but “bells and smells” (as my choir buddies used to call it) with full incense at the most Anglo-Catholic of the Schism II parishes in San Diego. I estimate about 75 people were in the sanctuary for the 8 a.m. service.

The choice of the opening and closing hymns were about as Anglican as you can get — both with Vaughan Williams tunes from The English Hymnal: “Hail thee festival day!” (Pentecost edition) and “Come down, O love divine.”

However, the “Hail thee” was rendered in an unusual format by the Lutheran hymnals that Holy Trinity is using while temporarily meeting at Bethany Lutheran in OB. One unusual quirk is that the Lutherans decided that RVW only gets one hymn for three feast days — Easter, Ascension and Pentecost — with 3 variants specified for the chorus, verse 1 and verse 2. Without having the hymnal in front of me, it was impossible to say what damage this did to the CoE conception of the hymn.

The other change was more obvious. Instead of the PECUSA (1940, 1982):

Hail thee, festival day! blest day that are hallowed for ever;
Day whereon God from heav’n shone in† the world with his grace.

the Lutheran Book of Worship (and also the other Bethany parish hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book) render the refrain as

Hail thee, festival day! blest day to be hallowed forever;
Day when the Holy Ghost shone in the world with his grace.

(† The English Hymnal (#630) says “shown on the world” but the refrain is otherwise the same.)

The translation of the Fortunatus was attributed to the LBW, a ELCA hymnal that was rejected by the LCMS due to doctrinal errors. But the LSB translation is no better.

As far as I could tell, the other RVW hymn was divine (with words similar to those of H40 #376).

In the middle, Holy Trinity sang as its second communion hymn “O Lord, we praise you” which was unfamiliar to these Anglican ears but with a pedigree about as Lutheran as they get: verse 1 from 15th century Germany, verses 2-3 from 16th century Martin Luther hymself, and a 1524 tune from a German hymnbook.

So in the end, this was an English-American-Lutheran blended worship service — a bit unfamiliar but better than a rock band playing 19th century hymns.

Lo he comes

We went to two Advent 4 services this morning — one our regular service, one a baptism at another. This is the last of the four weeks where we anticipating the coming of our Savior: the next time we’re in church (either Friday night or Saturday morning), it will be the Christmas season.

The two parishes are Continuing Anglicans and within driving distance of each other. Otherwise, there’s not a lot in common: one was H40 and 28 BCP, the other H82 and 79 ASB.

But the one thing they had in common was two hymns about Jesus’ coming: “O come, O come Emmanuel” (H40: 2, H82: 56) and “Lo, he comes with clouds descending” (H40: 5; H82: 57/58.) By my count, these are two of the seven hymns that form the canon of Advent — the accepted Anglican Advent hymns of the past century.

While I’ve written about Veni Emmanuel, the Charles Wesley hymn I think is underappreciated and worth further mention. (Interestingly, Hymnal 1940 Companion lists it as an Advent 2 hymn, but neither of us got it “right.”)

The 18th century text has two 18th century tunes: St. Thomas and Hemsley, and each parish chose a different tune to end their respective services. The former is the one I grew up hearing as a child in ECUSA parishes, and the voice leading makes it pretty straightforward to sing. (Episcopalian refugees today at the early service also seemed to recognize the tune.) H40 companion says it’s attributed to John F. Wade, from the same manuscript as Wade’s Adeste Fidelis.

I find Hemsley (by Thomas Olivers) intriguing, but more than a little challenging. The choir at the 2nd service was strong enough to carry us, but I think it would have been beyond our abilities at the 1st service with a much weaker choir.

So the Wesley words are a worthy conclusion to Advent in either form, with the choice of melody depending more on musical ability than musical merit.

Less schism in Schism I?

John Henry Newman aside, I’ve always had profound reservations about the RCC and the proposed Ordinariate that was pursued by The Anglican Communion, one of the major Schism I Continuing Anglican groups and one of the few with a significant presence outside the US.

Thursday David Virtue posted a pastoral letter from Rt. Rev. Daren Williams, one of the bishops of the Anglican Church in America (the US affiliate of TAC). His major points as I read them:

• In 3 of the 4 ACA dioceses, the bulk of the laity today do not want to exercise the option offered by the Ordinariate and become Catholic.
• Even discussing this option has created great confusion and turbulence in the ACA, with three parishes in his diocese defecting to other Continuing Anglican groups.
• Rather than Swim the Tiber, the ACA should be working to repair the historic and regrettable schisms among Continuing Anglicans, staring by entering into communion with the Anglican Province of America.

To the last point, Bp. Williams wrote:

It is my conclusion that before we can enter into significant communal relationships with larger bodies of Catholic Christendom, we need to make another effort to unite with those near to us who share the same goals in Anglicanism.

Amen! This is remarkable sanity for a Schism I bishop, given that a major problem for 1928 BCP groups has been the proliferation of purple shirts — with a widespread suspicion that egos and powers have more to do with this fragmentation than any significant theological issues.

Perhaps the most surprisingly honest passage in the letter:

Anglicans in the ACA are comparatively small in number and we often struggle to make ends meet.

Bp. Williams seems to be much more honest than the Schism I “bishops” and “primates”. Together, all the Schism I parishes probably have less than 50,000 members across all the “denominations” or “provinces” — less than a single large TEC diocese.

Personally, I think we have been long overdue for a reunification of the Schism I, 1928 Prayer Book Anglo-Catholics that began with the 1977 Congress of St. Louis and the 1978 Denver ordinations. Whether or not we bridge the gap to ACNA/Schism II — or win more allies jumping from the TEC ship — fixing this historical accident is one move that is possible today, if the clerical hierarchy will let us.

As one of the commenters on the Virtue Online site put it:

The retirements of some of the old Continuum bishops seems to be leading to this opportunity to come back together. The personalities that used to get in the way seem to replaced by younger more reasonable men, without the baggage of old grudges. My prayers are with them.

Let’s pray for this sane path forwards for Continuing Anglicans everywhere.

Discipleship in perspective

This has been a depressing summer here in California for us Continuing Anglicans, and not just because of the abnormally cool summer. At least one parish has given up its court fight (to save its sanctuary) rather than spend more money on lawyers, and another conservative parish has been wracked by artificial controversy intended to tear the parish from its roots.

At times I find that following the Schism II news — whether from friends or via websites — drains all my energies from thinking about other church activities, whether it be researching hymns, reading the Bible, inspirational books, or anything else that I might productively do.

And then there was this morning’s (RCL) Gospel reading, which reads in part:

[Jesus said] “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’”

Tied to this reading, the sermon recounted the autobiography of Lucette, a French girl who was raised by atheists Communists who hated the church with passion: when she committed her life to Christ, her father struck her and her parents disowned her. The memoir, A Memory for Wonders, talks about how Veronica Namoyo Le Goulard became a Clare nun in Algeria and eventually founded two monasteries in North Africa.

The moral of the story: no price is too high to pay for our Christian beliefs.

It would be easy to be cynical about the messenger: the speaker was a somewhat conservative Episcopal priest who either sees nothing wrong with the current direction of TEC or is unwilling to sacrifice his appointment or his pension or his status to join the Continuing Anglicans.

But then that’s the real point. Who benefits by cynicism over clerical hypocrisy, petty infighting among lay leaders, gossiping, court fights, misrepresentation of one’s true theological beliefs? It’s not the faithful, the seekers or Christ’s Church: it’s those that seek to destroy the Church, which is the work of the Devil himself.

Let’s put things into perspective. Yes, we have lost a few buildings, plaques, organs and books. Yes, we have to meet in industrial parks, do church-in-a-box, or sublet from sympathetic established churches.

But we are not going to lose our lives if we follow Christ, or even (except in unusual cases) our livelihoods. This is not Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan or any of the dozens of other countries where Christians are openly persecuted.

It’s past time to move past being anti-revisionist, anti-heretic, anti-apostasy. The people who have walked away from TEC and their buildings had the right idea: spend the time and money on saving souls — particularly inculcating the faith in the next generation — just as we were told to do almost 2000 years ago.

So yes, we do need to understand our mistakes — whether theological, personal or tactical. As cultural Catholic George Santayana said a century ago, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But our own salvation, and that of the generations to come, depends on how we use that learning to be better disciples of Christ.

Save us from the time of trial

Apparently the Virginia Theological Seminary — a center-left seminary in the increasingly liberal TEC — is having a seminar series celebrating 30 years since the creation of the 1979 not-quite-a-Book-of-Common-Prayer. This week, one of the speakers was Prof Ruth Meyers of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

I don’t know Prof. Meyers, but here in California CSDP is known by Anglicans the Berkeley seminary that vies with its counterparts in NY and at Harvard to harbor the most extreme revisionist theologians in the TEC, if not American Protestantism. Prof. Meyers also heads the TEC’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music. (Does that mean she’s blessing same sex marriage rites?)

As quoted by the Living Church, Prof. Meyers laments the ending of a brief period of English translations shared by Protestant and Catholic churches during the ascendance of the Revised Common Lectionary:

But the liturgical and ecumenical unity underpinning common texts — which flourished in the 20th century — is now losing strength, Meyers said. She cited two primary sources of weakening liturgical unity: widespread ethnic divergence in worship styles around the world, and the Vatican’s moving toward a more literal translation of the original Latin in its new Roman Missal, which is nearing completion.

The story talks about how the RCL banished the male pronoun and promoted dynamic equivalence for translation from the original Latin:

Dynamic equivalence meant that translators working with the ancient Latin texts were to use language familiar to the people. The new English translation of the Roman Missal, she said, uses the concept of “formal equivalence,” a more literal, authentic translation that places high value on the ancient Latin.

The report doesn’t seem to be inaccurate, but it shows the problems of a one-sided, single-source story. (Reporters who attend a public talk or event without doing background research are prone to these problems.)

The story doesn’t really explain the Catholic side of why they are moving away from the inaccuracies of the dynamic translations, such as “And also with you.” The new more authentic translations may be anathema to the TEC, but should be well received by Schism I, perhaps by Schism II and also other conservative Protestants — say those who favor the ESV over the political correctness of the NRSV or the dynamic translation of the NIV.

Like modern-day politicians, Prof. Meyers seems to think that change is inherently good:

Meyers said that the 1979 Book of Common Prayer offers different options for some familiar prayers, such as the Lord’s Prayer. But, she said, “The Lord’s Prayer has been the most resistant to change.”

People develop a “deep familiar attachment to old forms of prayer,” she said, and nowhere is this better illustrated than in the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, she said, some worshipers will always want to say the familiar “And lead us not into temptation” rather than the newer “Save us from the time of trial.”

I, for one, think the Lord’s Prayer being “resistant to change” is a really good thing: newer is not always better.

I am not tempted by this new liturgy. Instead, I pray for the Continuing Anglicans (particularly ACNA) to follow the lead of the RCC (and that of the late Peter Toon) to save us from the trial of theologically dubious translations.

Teach our children well

My wife and I are learning from friends and family as they prepare their children for college. At our parish, the eldest member of the youth group is a high school senior and now waiting to hear back from a variety of Ivy League and comparable schools in the Northeast and California.

This prompted me to think: what will happen to our Anglican youth when they go off to college? As a parent, I’ve been thinking about Sunday School and youth group. Even before we were parents, we thought about what will happen to our children as teens, facing peer pressure, teen rebellion, hormones, etc. Since then, our church search has considered both aspects of Christian formation for ages of 0-18 — more recently, supplanting other concerns like music or liturgy.

However, my college thinking has been strictly about academic issues (college prep, AP, SAT, etc.) and not spiritual ones. This oversight seems particularly odd, given that I personally fell away from church in college — attending once in 4 years of college — and did not return until years later as an adult. Even worse, today’s mainline Protestant campus ministries focus on social justice and conforming to the culture, rather than traditional liturgy and doctrine.

So at church this morning, talking about college with our youth group member and a visiting diocesan dignitary, I realized that keeping even the most devout Anglican youth in the faith might be a serious obstacle. Anglican churches (Schism I or Schism II) seem to be in suburbia, which is good for educated professionals (with or without kids) but not for 18-year-olds going to college in a city or small college town.

Start with Harvard, the oldest American college (1636) which was led by Purtian ministers throughout the 17th century. Harvard Divinity School has turned out many Episcopal clergy over the decades, but (as noted in The Search for God at Harvard) Christian belief now seems to be but a distant memory among many of the faculty. According to the ACNA parish locator page, it has a parish about 3 miles from Harvard in Medford, but the mass transit option would take 55 minutes one way. The church in Waltham is 5 miles and 45 minutes away.

There is no official Schism I website for all the fragmented alphabet soup options, but (at least until ACNA was formed) the best site was ShelterInTheStorm.org. Among the Massachusetts parishes, it lists one church in Boston and 3 in the 021xx zip code (near-in suburbs). Easiest to reach is the ACC parish meeting in the Boston YMCA chapel and the Malden parish is 40 minutes by subway (the best option in Boston). SitS also shows an AMiA (ACNA) parish 45 minutes away on the subway, and an Anglican Use Roman Catholic parish a single bus away (45 minutes) in Brookline.

At Stanford (which once sold T-shirts “Harvard is the Stanford of the East”), the options are slightly better. Saint Ann Chapel — the former Stanford Newman Center for Catholic ministry that is now an Anglo-Catholic parish owned by the Schism I APCK — is only 2 miles away, an easy bike ride and reasonable walk. If you have a car — like most Californians — ACNA lists St. Luke’s Chapel in the Hills as an easy 5 mile drive. The APCK also has a parish walking distance to UC Berkeley (its seminary).

In the LA area, the options aren’t quite as good. Yes, at students at UC Irvine are near St. James, Newport Beach — lead defendant among the California cases within the TEC vs. Continuing Anglicans property fight. But there’s nothing (either in SitS or ACNA) on the West Side of Los Angeles, near UCLA. There are many parishes in driving distance — such as the historic Hollywood Anglo-Catholic parish Saint Mary of the Angels — but as in Boston, the mass transit options aren’t very attractive.

The same applies for youth attending other elite colleges, like UCSD or the Claremont Colleges (Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, etc.) The answer is going to be driving — in the case of Claremont, 25 miles to Riverside.

The Church of England, Episcopal Church of the United States, and now the various Continuing Anglican groups have been part of America’s intellectual elite since the country was first founded. While academia has become very secular and progressive — far more hostile to traditional Christian faith than 50 or 100 years ago — in my experience, the Continuing Anglicans are every bit as educated and thoughtful as the ECUSA parish leaders I knew as a kid.

Therefore, I suspect most of us will expect our kids to go to college, often to elite schools in culturally hostile locations in the “blue” states. We Continuing Anglicans in suburbia need to think about how sending our children away to college will support (or potentially undermine) their faith.

To me, the conclusion is pretty clear: if we want to keep our children as they become young adults, we need more parishes near college campuses (and eventually campus ministries). Since the Schism I churches seem to be in maintenance mode, let’s hope that the ACNA’s plan to plant 1000 parishes will include dozens if not hundreds of parishes aimed at the college demographic. Who knows, maybe we can pick up (or keep) a few college professors while we’re at it.

Transitory modern liturgy

When I was a kid, a common gift given by your godparents/relatives for baptism, confirmation or perhaps birthday or Christmas was a Bible; for us Episcopalians, it might also include the Book of Common Prayer. So when I went shopping for such a gift this month, I was struck by an unfamiliar dilemma, brought on by transitory nature of our modern liturgy, as well as the fragmentation of US Anglican worship.

For example, in my childhood, our Bible readings came from the Authorized Version (KJV), which had been the gold standard for 300+ years of Anglican worship. Yes, the 1950s-era Revised Standard Version was out — an updated version of the 1901 American Standard Version — but I don’t ever recall reading it or hearing it in the pews.

But in the past two decades, the ESV has been rendered obsolete by two separate updates to the RSV: the politically correct NRSV (1990) and the traditionalist update, ESV (2001). Even in centuries-old King James was updated in 1982 with the NKJV.

Of course, some of our modern proliferation — and dilemma — is due to the profit motives of Bible publishers seeking to crank out new translations in hopes of generating new sales. (Just walk into your local Christian bookstore to see them peddle a 4th, 5th or 10th Bible to the existing faithful.) Thomas Nelson owns the NKJV, Crossways owns the ESV, and Zondervan own rights to the mother lode of all modern translations, the 1978 NIV. (Let’s ignore the TNIV).

So with all this proliferation of Bible translations in the past few decades, it seems reasonable to expect there will be even more the in the decades to come. If you gave any of these Bibles to a child today, would they still be in use 20 years from now?

The prayer book problem is similar and different. What’s similar is the proliferation of choices and the more rapid turnover of changes. What’s different is that being a Continuing Anglican is so much more confusing than my childhood experience as an Episcopalian, as evidenced by our liturgy. When I grew up, the 1928 BCP was in use for more than 30 years. (The Brits had been using the 1662 BCP for 300+ years).

Today, the Schism I churches still use the 1928 BCP, but most of the Schism II (e.g. ACNA) parishes use the 1979 prayer book — in both cases, published by a church entity that they no longer wish to associate with. (Let’s ignore that the TEC will likely produce an even more politically correct prayer book in the coming decade, with same-sex “marriage” rites, etc. etc.) The AMiA asked Dr. Peter Toon to make a contemporary language version of the 1662 BCP, but I’ve never been to a church that uses it, and it seems like a merely interim measure.

Then there is problem I never could have imagined: what denomination will the child be attending 20 years from now? Plausibly, it could be an ACNA parish, a Schism I parish or even across the Tiber. So there’s no prayer book that’s an even remotely plausible choice.

Well, what about a hymnal? After all, today I still love and use my first hymnal, which I received as a gift for being a good choirboy. Any kid who loves our traditional hymns could sing the same hymns for decades.

The British used the same The English Hymnal from 1906-1986 — more than two generations with the same tunes. The Americans got one generation out of Hymnal 1940, although its predecessor (Hymnal 1916) lasted less than half as long.

On the one hand, I think the chances of a new Anglican hymnal (at least among traditionalists) are remote, due to the fragmented nature of the Schism I and II parishes. On the other hand, that same fragmentation means that Continuing Anglicans today use both Hymnal 1940 and Hymnal 1982. So I can’t imagine any choice holding up here.

So, between the modern conceit of updating the liturgy, the egos and greed of those promoting “new and improved [sic],” and the fragmentation of the Anglican faith, what was once a simple choice for parents and godparents has become an impossible one.

What did I do? I bought an NIV Bible. It’s the second only to the KJV in current ownership (if not sales), and seems to be a common denominator for Bible studies. Although not a literal translation, it has the added benefit of being more easy to read than most translations, thus making a good choice for a first Bible and for someone not yet in high school.