Anglicans Ablaze: Proposals for the Reform of the Anglican Church in North America: The Episcopate

By Robin G. Jordan

Anglicans have historically been divided over the necessity of bishops to the life of the church. The English Reformers found no support for any particular form of church government in the Bible, either for episcopacy or for presbyterianism. The seventeenth century Caroline High Churchmen, while they viewed the episcopate as a divine institution, they refused to unchurch the Continental Reformed Churches because they lacked bishops. They recognized the orders and the sacraments of these Churches. The nineteenth century Tractarians and their Anglo-Catholic successors, however, had no qualms about unchurching all non-episcopal churches. They argued that episcopacy was of the essence of the church. Where there was no bishop, there was no church. This view brought them into conflict with evangelicals who like the English Reformers took the position that bishops were not absolutely essential to the existence of the church and recognized the orders and sacraments of non-episcopal churches.

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Anglicans Ablaze: Proposals for the Reform of the Anglican Church in North America: The Episcopate