Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) & 39 Articles?

 

How does the Anglican Church in North America really view the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans?

While the Episcopal Church adopted its own version of the Thirty-Nine Articles, it never required its clergy to subscribe to these Articles. Episcopal clergy were not in any way bound to accept their doctrine.

In the 1920s the two dominant theological schools of thought in the Episcopal Church, the Anglo-Catholics and the Broad Churchmen, worked together to drop the Articles from the American Prayer Book. The movement would lose its steam with the adoption of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which in its doctrine and usages is at odds with the Articles.

With the adoption of the 1979 Prayer Book the Episcopal Church would relegate the Articles to the historic documents section of that Prayer Book.

The Anglican Church in North America displays the same attitude toward the Thirty-Nine Articles as the Episcopal Church. The ACNA views the Articles as a relic of the past.

The Anglican Church in North America's constitution and canons use the language of equivocation in their acceptance of the authority of the Articles. The ACNA’s liturgical commission has produced a”theological lens” to guide its work, an ordinal, and eucharistic rites that show for this commission the Articles are not authoritative in the least. ACNA’s College of Bishops not only approved the three documents but also had input into their development.

The leaders of the Anglican Church in North America, like the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Wellby, it would appear, number the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans as one voice among many and dismiss its theological imperatives.

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