Robin Jordan is spot-on. Duplicity or, if you prefer, conscious fudging by Anglo-Romewardizers is the way of the ACNA leadership. This scribbler is not going down that avenue any time soon.
http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com/2009/09/call-for-independent-fellowship-of.html
A Call for an Independent Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in North America
By Robin G. Jordan
On September 14, 2009 the Reverend Philip Ashey, Chief Operating Officer of the American Anglican Council, announced the formation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in North America. He went on to state that the FCANA has applied to become a “ministry partner” of the Anglican Church in North America.
Under the provisions of the ACNA Canons a “ministry partner” must subscribe without reservation to the modified version of the Common Cause Theological Statement embedded in Article I of the ACNA Constitution. The Common Cause Theological Statement differs in its position on a number of key issues from the Jerusalem Declaration. For example the Jerusalem Declaration states, “We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.”
On the other hand, the Common Cause Theological Statement declares, “We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief."
In other words, the ACNA accepts the Thirty-Nine Articles as “holding doctrine appropriate to the time of its composition” and still giving expression to some principles consistent with “authentic Anglicanism.” It also regards as normative the “the premature-post-modernism” of John Henry Newman’s Tract 90. Newman took the position that Charles I’s enjoining of the “literal and grammatical” sense relieved interpreters of the Thirty-Nine Articles from “the necessity of making the known opinions of their framers a comment upon their text.…”
It does not, however, receive as true the position of the Jerusalem Declaration that the Thirty-Nine Articles contains the true doctrine of the Church agreeable to the Word of God and is as authoritative for Anglicans worldwide in the twenty-first century as it was for the Church of England in the sixteenth century.
As Ephraim Radner notes in his article, The ACNA Constitution: In Line with the Covenant, the ACNA’s affirmation of the Jerusalem Declaration is “general and … loose in its meaning.” It has also been moved to the Preface to the Constitution and is no longer identified as being “characteristic of the Anglican Way and essential for membership” in the ACNA.
In an interview on July 11, 2008 Bishop of Fort Worth Jack Iker, a prominent Anglo-Catholic leader in the ACNA, stated that in regards to the differences between the Common Cause Theological Statement and the Jerusalem Declaration, “we” would be looking primarily to the Common Cause Theological Statement. Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA would “continue to regard the 1662 Prayer Book, the 39 Articles, liturgical practices, and the Councils of the patristic church just as the Oxford Movement did under Pusey, Keble, and Newman,” their fathers in faith.
The Common Cause Theological Statement, not the Jerusalem Declaration, would determine the direction of the ACNA. The FCA and the ACNA are not moving in the same direction. Unreserved subscription to the Common Cause Theological Statement precludes full commitment to the Jerusalem Declaration. A Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in North America that subscribed without reservation to the Common Cause Theological Statement would be the FCA in name only.
In his announcement the Reverend Ashey envisioned the yet unformed FCANA as operating as an auxiliary body to the ACNA and helping that ecclesial body in carrying out its mission. This is not the role envisioned for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
In the United Kingdom and South Africa the FCA is described as “a spiritual movement and fellowship for renewal, reformation and mission.” A FCANA committed to this vision might seek not only to bring about reform in the Anglican Church of Canada and The Episcopal Church but also the Anglican Church in North America. A large segment of the ACNA membership has drifted away from the Reformation roots of Anglicanism. A FCANA committed to the same vision might work to establish more confessing Anglican congregations and to train more confessing Anglican clergy and lay church leaders in the ACC and TEC to counter the influence of liberalism.
All confessing Anglicans in North America are not a part of the ACNA nor do they support the ACNA. They include congregations and clergy in the Continuum jurisdictions and Communion Partner dioceses. While a number of confessing Anglicans like myself recognize the need for a new province in North America, they have serious reservations about the Common Cause Theological Statement and other provisions of the ACNA Constitution and Canons. A FCANA tied so closely to the ACNA as the one Ashey envisions would be ineffectual in bringing together confessing Anglicans from across the conservative spectrum in North America. If the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in North America is to be truly “a spiritual movement and fellowship for renewal, reformation and mission” in Canada and the United States, it must be independent of the Anglican Church in North America and the organizations affiliated with the ACNA. It must be a separate autonomous organization with its own leadership under no obligation to the ACNA or any of these organizations. Without this kind of independence it cannot hope to be a spiritual movement and fellowship for all confessing Anglicans in North America.
# posted by Robin G. Jordan @ 8:05 AM
Comments:
Robin, though I am not spending too much time trying to deconstruct the finer points of whether the ACNA and the FCA beliefs are mutually consistent, or even compatable, I do agree that the FCA errs in tying itself too closely to the ACNA.As an orthodox, Anglo-catholic member of TEC that: 1) is not convinced that departing TEC at this time is the best course of action; 2) is not convinced that the ACNA, as it is presently constituted, will survive a number of internal struggles that loom just below the surface of their "image" of unity (a unity that is largely driven by their desire to supplant TEC as the "authentic" Anglican presence in North America); 3) does not see the value in jumping from one troubled church into another; 4) has serious doubts as to whether the ACNA will ever be recognized as a province of the existing Anglican Communion; 5) does not want to abandon TEC (and of course I refer to the TEC that I joined 28years ago and whose "beliefs" are still reflected in the official prayer book of the church even if not practiced by some of her clergy), but who is painfully aware just where TEC's current leadership is driving the train and that I may one day be forced out; and 6) that believes deeply that part of the mission of all orthodox Anglican Christians is to continue to serve as a reflection Christ's light either in, or to, TEC, even as she is falling deeper and deeper into darkness, I tend to agree that the role for the FCA should not to take up the cause of the ACNA or any other church structure, but rather to be an orthodox Anglican "safehouse" to which orthodox Anglicans can come for refreshment and support, and from which they can go back into the world, even the world of darkness into which TEC has fallen, to be the light of Christ in dark places.God's peace, Robin.Joe <><
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