An Anglican Anchor: Hold Fast to the Faith

In all these things, the Anglican Church in North America is determined by the help of God to hold and maintain, as the Anglican Way has received them, the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ and to transmit the same, unimpaired, to our posterity. We seek to be and remain in full communion with all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Concluding Paragraph, The Fundamental Declarations

Any particular church claiming to belong to the one and holy Church must wholly confess the catholic and apostolic faith. Deviation divides one from the Church and therefore Christ. A compass is required to course-correct the erring heart of man and keep us steadfast and on course. The body of Christ moves as a ship on the course Christ has set. Plotting our own course and fooling ourselves into becoming the master of our own fate by taking the captain’s yacht and plotting a new setting will lead to wandering adrift.

Separating ourselves from the faith once delivered is the madness of cutting loose from the Ark of God, the ship that is the Church, the body of Christ. Equally tempting is our perverted desire to change the good ship’s course. We think we can captain better than the Captain of our souls. We try to whisper to the navigator and first mate a new and better course, and sow dissension and division among the crew. Such heresies cannot be tolerated, and those who do not disavow them must walk the plank, lest they wreck the ship of the Church upon the rocks of heresies.

Enter the Fundamental Declarations. The Fundamental Declarations’ strength is serving as a north star steering North American Anglicanism back to safe harbor, where she may safely anchor in the calm waters of sound doctrine.

Will anyone look up to this north star? Will anyone use it as a guide? This is what the Anglican Church in North America – laity and clergy alike – must ask and wrestle with. The Fundamental Declarations are well-worded, but they must be well-heeded, or the current generation will fail the next.

Note the concluding paragraph and its strong wording. It serves as a summarative statement that collects the thoughts of the seven enumerated paragraphs preceding it. The initial paragraph begins by stating the ACNA is “a part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” The final paragraph concludes the ACNA remains in communion “with all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” If ACNA departs from any of these qualifications, she not only severs her communion with her sister Anglican churches, she severs herself from the one true Church of Christ.

What is the Anglican Way?

It is not novel, though novelties and heresies have arisen since the Twentieth Century in Anglican churches. Yet such diversions are precisely that, diversions from the Way. The Anglican Way is the pursuit of Christ. Errant Anglicans, who are trailblazing and deserting Christ and His Church, will only find they have blazed their way to hell, unless they repent and return home. Anglicanism is not a wax nose to be sculpted as a mirror reflecting culture, but is fundamentally Christianity with convictions.

What are those convictions? The Fundamental Declarations define them as “all these things” relating in the seven numbered paragraphs. The concluding paragraph summarizes this Anglican Way as “the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ.”

Christ provided His Word and His authority to His apostles, and we walk in humble subjection to His written Scriptures. As a mark of the Church, we are called to discipline, and be disciplined by the teachings of Christ. He reigns, and we bow our heads in obedience. He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and on bended knees we worship the Living God as He is revealed through the Word preached and Sacraments rightly and duly administered. We are recipients of His grace, His Spirit, and His Life. The Lord is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Therefore, our waywardness and our self-justifying lies leading to death be damned. We need His mercy and His help; we need His Spirit and His strength; therefore, “the Anglican Church in North America is determined by the help of God to hold and maintain, as the Anglican Way has received them.”

So help us God, we pray in this last paragraph, for grace to hold fast and maintain His gift of faith. We cling to the Anglican Way not because it is Anglican; we hold fast to the Way of Christ because He alone is the Word of Life, and He holds fast to all whom He calls.

This final paragraph is full of words of action. We commit in the Fundamental Declarations to “hold” and “maintain” the “received” Way. This is not the work of academics sitting in lofty towers to pontificate upon. These are words requiring action. An active faith fit for the soldier of Christ on the march and not the slothful servant asleep upon the roadway. No, we commit ourselves “to transmit the same, unimpaired, to our posterity.” We pledge our sacred trust and our lives towards tomorrow’s sun that has not arisen yet. Our work is for this generation and the generation after us. This requires faithfully passing along the faith to the unborn generation, to the children in our pews, our godchildren, and our grandchildren whom we pledge to raise as Christians.

The Way we transmit is not to be tampered with nor tainted. It is to be transmitted as “the same” faith once received and delivered “unimpaired” from detours “to our posterity.” This is life and death set before us. These are the fundamentals of our faith. We cannot improve upon them, and if we dare to depart from them and teach our children strange fire and hinder them, then it would be better that we tie a millstone around our necks and cast ourselves off the Way and into the depths.

The Way must be walked. The Way must be taught. The Way must be passed on so the next generation does not wander and find itself lost. We have wandered in the desert of our own making in the Twentieth Century. Let us not desert our children in the Twenty-First Century.

And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the LORD’S passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses. And the people bowed the head and worshipped.
– Exodus 12:26-27 (KJV)

In the end, we go back to the beginning paragraph and remind ourselves that to be Anglican is to be Christian, for “we believe and confess Jesus Christ to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father but by Him” (Opening Paragraph, The Fundamental Declarations). Therefore, we offer the right hand of fellowship and earnestly “seek to be and remain in full communion with all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One, Holy Catholic, and Apostolic Church.”

The ACNA extends her hands in fellowship and shares the broken bread and common cup of communion with those Anglicans who hold to these fundamentals of faith. As to those who disregard these fundamentals, we pray and ask for their repentance so we may be in communion. This charitable sentiment of speaking the truth in love is shared by all global Anglicans who subscribe to The Jerusalem Statement:

We, together with many other faithful Anglicans throughout the world, believe the doctrinal foundation of Anglicanism, which defines our core identity as Anglicans, is expressed in these words: The doctrine of the Church is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. We intend to remain faithful to this standard, and we call on others in the Communion to reaffirm and return to it.

However, “they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” (Romans 9:6 KJV). Belonging to the See of Canterbury does not an Anglican make. There are many who are sons of Abraham by birth, but they lack the faith of Abraham. So too for many a son of an Anglican by birth who lack the faith professed by Anglicanism. A faith which the Jerusalem Statement succinctly states as “grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures” (The Jerusalem Statement, GAFCON). As for sons of Anglicanism who depart from the faith of Anglicans, “We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord” (Point 13, The Jerusalem Declaration). This is why we must return to declarations fundamental to our faith.

We are grieved by the current state of brokenness within the Anglican Communion prompted by
those who have embraced erroneous teaching and who have rejected a repeated call to repentance.
– Preamble, The Constitution of the Anglican Church in North America

The Fundamental Declarations, along with the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration, are well-worded and provide us with solid ground. The question is, will we till the land and cultivate their roots so we may grow the North American Church?

If these declarations are truly fundamental for faithfully walking the Way as Anglican Christians, then we must go beyond these initial seven statements and learn the “Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline” behind them. We must incorporate them in our catechesis, craft them into sermons, and teach them in our Sunday schools.

Churchmen, whether high or low, evangelical or catholic-minded, come to the table under the Fundamental Declarations because they are good fenceposts. These godly fenceposts need to be mended and treated as firm boundaries. They should not be left to rot, untended, removed, nor neglected in favor of a tent that tramples the boundaries. If we remove our good boundaries in place for a large tent, do not be surprised when you eventually find a circus inside.

In an age without principles and where churches compromise convictions, the ACNA firmly plants her feet upon the fundamentals of the Christian life lived in the Anglican way. The pen has been put to paper. The ink encapsulating the Fundamental Declarations is dry within the ACNA Constitution, Canons, and 2019 Book of Common Prayer. Yet the underlying question is whether we shall live by the fundamental principles we profess or destroy these declarations by denying their authority in practice.

I die in the holy catholic and apostolic faith, professed by the whole church before the division of East and West; more particularly I die in the communion of the church of England, as it stands distinguished from all papal and puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the cross.
– Bishop Thomas Ken