Is the ACNA "the best church for American Christianity in exile?" by Alex Wilgus [VirtueOnline]

Is the ACNA "the best church for American Christianity in exile?"


By Alex Wilgus
http://thecommonvision.org/features/the-acna-church-confront-secular-age/
July 30, 2014

Alex Wilgus makes the case for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as "the best church for American Christianity in exile."

Earlier today, Christian blogger Rod Dreher asked a question: What is the best church for American Christianity in exile? In light of Christianity being consistently sidelined and devalued here in America over issues of opposition to gay marriage among other controversies, he specifically asked for readers to contribute an argument for why they believe their own chosen church is the best “ark” in which to ride out the storm. And so, under these parameters, here is my argument for the ACNA as Christianity’s best hope in the new century, which (I fully agree with Rod) certainly appears to be a long, secular winter. This argument is long but I want it to be thorough enough to be convincing. I welcome dissent or correction in the comments as usual, but here it is:

The Anglican Church of North America is American Christianity’s best hope in a state of modern exile. This is because it best understands that the challenges of modern exile do not proscribe the Church’s missionary vocation, instead it encourages it. The ACNA has three things going for it that I’ll explain at length: its missional nature inherited from the Global South, its intellectual seriousness, and a strong, battle-tested respect for biblical and ecclesiastical authority in the face of doctrinal controversy.


1. Missional: The ACNA embraces grassroots expansion within the bounds of authority. The strength of American Christianity down the ages has been its “do-it-yourself” quality. From the very beginning, American religion relied on ordinary laymen and laywomen as the primary footsoldiers of advancing the Kingdom. This is why American Protestantism can trace her foundational heritage heritage to a series of revivals rather than conquests or political coups. For some scholarly work on this thesis, see Mark Noll’s The New Shape of Global Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. This is a great strength, and it’s the reason why doomsaying about Christianity’s complete cultural marginalization, though not wrong, may be overstated in terms of actual converts. However long our exile may be, the ACNA has the materials to, not just hold out but expand in the face of it.

For instance, within the ACNA, the Greenhouse Regional Church Movement (in which I am a minister) has successfully multiplied churches in the Chicagoland area among Latinos, white urban professionals, residents of nursing homes, and apartment blocks of immigrants, while still maintaining strong ecclesiastical connections between congregations. They are currently in the process of expanding this mission to Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and even Mexico. Greenhouse takes its marching orders from the writings of Roland Allen, an Anglican missionary to China and later Africa in the early 20th Century. Allen’s book “Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?” challenged the modern notion of imperialist-informed mission work and instead advocated grassroots, local, and native-driven missionary work. His ideas, if not directly influential, proved prescient in the case of Africa which has seen the most dramatic spread of Christianity probably ever, mostly as a result of local congregations multiplying, and clergy empowering lay-ministers to go out and minister. Confounding modern Western sociological predictions that Africa would become largely Muslim as European colonies pulled out of the continent, the reverse has come to pass and Africa can almost be rightly named the first “Christian Continent.”

The ACNA has not only taken notice of this massive Christian revival but has taken courage from it, sought out real relationships with the remarkable men and women of the faith involved in it, and it is gone out in their same spirit, taking African evangelists, not only as inspiring stories, but as real spiritual mentors. It is now very common for African Anglican evangelists to travel to America for the purpose of encouraging our churches here and share their wisdom. Their approach emphasizes priests raising up gifted lay-people as “catechists” (or lay-pastors) to go out and found new congregations, preach, pastor and evangelize. They encourage catechists and even some priests to be bi-vocational and versatile, founding congregations anywhere there are a harvest of converts. Through Greenhouse, we have established healthy churches in apartment blocks, nursing homes, storefronts and even, believe it or not, actual church buildings. As America secularizes, Africa is starting to evangelize it through the ACNA. Ultimately, though the ACNA is clear-eyed about the negativity toward orthodox Christianity, we do not believe that cultural marginalization will cripple our ability to evangelize and successfully convert. In fact, the shoe may be on quite the other foot. The reasons for this are addressed in the next section.

2. Intellectually solid. While the Anglican Church intentionally does not have a catechism or a magisterium, nor has it rejected hierarchy for totally decentralized autonomous congregations, instead it believes itself to be constantly contending for the true faith and building unity around it. Anglicans believe that the Church is always fighting heresy, that it is a constant conflict, and so every generation is called on to contend for the true faith. This means that Anglicans do not shy away from learning in the way that fundamentalists in certain Anabaptist traditions did. It certainly breeds a lot of discussion and debate, but it is debate of the healthy sort. In these perilous times, it is easy for the faithful to consider discussion and disagreement as fault lines and cracks of inevitable liberalization and compromise with the culture. But I believe that it is a healthy exercise of practical reason informed by faith in Christ. Oliver O’Donovan is a good guide in these matters, and he is worth reading. To my mind he occupies an intellectual place for thoughtful Anglicans quite similar to Alasdair MacIntyre does for traditional Catholics, but he sets an opposite program: full engagement with the world. Instead of retreat into “virtuous communities” and a Benedictine Option, he advocates for a frontal assault on intellectual matters instead of either closing down debates over doctrine with unerring statements ex cathedra or giving up on reasoned engagement with the broader culture in favor of separatism. Ultimately, Anglicans still believe in the ability of faith-informed reason to persuade, and you know what? I believe him. Here’s why:

Catholics and Orthodox continually point to the Episcopal Church as the reason why the Anglican Church has failed, but I actually see them as the strongest evidence of our success. Don’t mistake me, in the case of the Episcopal Church and even, lately, the Church of England, it is clear that the heretics have seized the reins of power, (i.e. money, property, and formal communion.) But the critics overlook us, the schismatics, and the brave bishops of the Global South who have sponsored us (incidentally, this is why the ACNA can rightfully say we enjoy communion with Canterbury, even if tangentially.) We have had our our tussles with modernizing heretics, and there were casualties: we lost buildings and money, but one look at the other guy will show that the Episcopalians came out the worse in terms of the one thing that makes a church a church–actual membership, which has lately plummeted to unsustainable levels.

The Church of England is currently experiencing the same internal hemorrhage as it liberalizes. Though the heretics appear triumphant from the point of view of mammon and their formal connections to Canterbury, they have lost their doctrinal coherence and so have lost their parishioners, and it will be their undoing. I do not know why this fact continues to go unreported and why nobody ascribes any meaning to it. The numbers prove that, even if the culture is not on the side of the faithful church, reason is–since if one accepts what the Episcopal Church teaches, one also tacitly accepts that one has no need to go to church, except to feel the somatic tinge of nostalgia, and there are other ways to get that than communion on Sunday. I relate this recent history because I actually believe it shows the not insignificant fact that even if Christianity is losing the culture, the culture is losing the Church. And this is no small loss, because with it means that the faithful will once again be in control of the church, because it will be the only church left.



Click here for the rest of the article:
http://virtueonline.org/acna-best-church-american-christianity-exile

 

There is much to commend about the ACNA, yet it is not without problems. From my experience interacting with ACNA members, the same problems exist that existed in much of the Episcopal Church, namely; many dioceses ordain women to the priesthood, while other dioceses are strongly opposed to the practice; the theology is all over the place, with Arminians, Calvinists, Charismatics of a Pentecostal orientation and Anglo-Catholics existing in the various dioceses, and it really is more of a federation of churches, not a Church. Besides the REC and other churches being members, each diocese has an enormous amount of freedom to do what they like. ACNA has taken a minimalist approach to what the basics of the faith are (and their catechism is extremely good) and in other areas each diocese can pretty much do as they please. I used to post regularly on the ACNA Facebook page, and arguments over WO, Calvinism, Cessationism, and the Charismatic movement happened all the time. In my case, I could have joined the Diocese of Western Anglicans, which was in my area, become a member at large of the more Anglo-Catholic Missionary Diocese of All Saints, or gone to the local REC parish, and in all cases would have been in the ACNA. It's a federation, not a Church as I understand a Church. The Continuing bodies left in the 70's over WO, while the current ACNA bodies left over the homosexual issue. Other than that, most would be happy to be what the Episcopal Church was in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.

 

The real question is do the ACNA, hold to the ancient teaching, Revelation, Scripture and the Seven Councils of the first 1000 years. (Holy Tradition.) As I have read it, they do not, holding only to the first four. Whilst these four deal with the Christological matters ACNA do no more than hold what every other main line Christian Sect do.

 

I look at ACNA not so much as a finished church, as a church-in-becoming. Going to their Facebook page can lead to disenchantment, because all kinds of cooks and cranks are given a voice, joined by the shared ACNA social ethics (anti-abortion, anti-sodomy), but little else. And the reason for that, as you said, is that they're a federation of several different groups that split off from the Episcopal Church over the past few decades. In all those years discipline was not enforced, and groups came to believe their own version of the truth. Of course if you hear them all talk in the same room (on a Facebook page), it can at times sound like a tower of babel.

My personal suggestion would be to find a federated group within ACNA that doesn't have this going on. REC (classical anglican), APA (anglo-catholic), or CANA (evangelical) are possibles.

ACNA is best judged not by the mix and rabble of various disparate voices who were never properly catechized by the Episcopal Church over the last 50 years. Instead judge her by the fruits of the working of the Holy Spirit, in her official documents which are great, despite this gaggle! By her consensus and trajectory. Judge even by the fact that this rabble are together, shedding their differences, opposite of the schismatic ethos that pervades American Christianity.

 

Haven't been around for a while. As someone who lives in sparsely populated western Canada, the best church is the one which ministers to you. Sometimes this ends up being someone from a tradition or ideas rather different, like Lutheran and RC. Maybe eventually we'll get back to trying to get together as one church of God, versus are current, broken, fracturing church?