TOWARD A RESOLUTION

Part XIII

(First posted on Jan. 31, 2018).
This is the thirteenth installment in our series "Toward a Resolution" of the schism in South Carolina. See the introduction in Part 1, Jan. 5. Today we take up the last question, # 12:

WHAT IS AN ANGLICAN?

The leaders of DSC insisted during and after the schism that the diocese would continue as an Anglican church and would be in an Anglican province. They said by joining the Anglican Church in North America in 2017 they were in an Anglican province recognized and supported by most Anglicans in the world. Ever since the schism, DSC leaders have publicly repeated the words "Anglican" and "province" countless times. It would not be surprising then for the communicants of DSC to believe they are members of the Anglican Communion now just as they had been before the schism.

Let us begin with definitions.

"Anglican."

Dictionaries commonly define the word Anglican as does the Merriam-Webster (find here ):

of or relating to the established episcopal Church of England and churches of similar faith and order in communion with it.

The standard definition of "Anglican" is one in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

"Anglican Communion."

The Anglican Communion was established in 1867. It is a loose union of the Church of England and Anglican churches beyond that are in communion with it. See the Wikipedia article here . To be in the AC, a church has to be in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. At present, the AC is composed of 39 independent national and regional churches around the world called "provinces." The Episcopal Church is the one and only part of the Anglican Communion in the United States. The AC is structured with Four Instruments of Communion: 1-Archbishop of Canterbury, 2-Primates (heads of the provinces), 3-Lambeth Conferences, 4-Anglican Consultative Council. The 39 provinces are entirely self-governing; there is no central executive, legislative, or judicial authority in the AC.

As of an accounting in 2001, there were 168 separate self-styled "Anglican" denominations in the world, with at least 50 of them in the United States. They commonly call themselves "Anglican" or "Episcopal" churches. For a list see this link . Ten of these have local churches in lower South Carolina. However, only one church in the U.S. is in the Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church. All of the others who call themselves Anglican are not parts of the Anglican Communion.

In 2009, a dozen of the 50+ "Anglican" splinter groups in the U.S. came together to form the Anglican Church in North America. It was created by GAFCON, the Third World coalition of anti-homosexual rights Anglican bishops, and the four diocesan groups that split off from the Episcopal Church because of the issue of homosexuality. It was explicitly formed to take the place of the Episcopal Church as the legitimate Anglican province in the U.S. See the Wikipedia article here .

ACNA calls itself a "province." It claims around 112,000 members although it will not release any statistics. DSC joined ACNA in 2017.

GAFCON and Global South have welcomed ACNA and placed the ACNA archbishop among their leaders. Some of the GAFCON/GS provinces have broken communion with the Episcopal Church.

ACNA is not in the Anglican Communion. Officials of the AC have said repeatedly that ACNA is not in the AC. On Oct. 3, 2014, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby told the Church of Ireland Gazette editor that ACNA "is not part of the Anglican Communion," but was "a separate church" (find it here ). In 2017, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Josiah Idowu-Fearon, said: "It is simply not true that ACNA is part of the Anglican Communion...To be part of the Communion a province needs to be in communion with the See of Canterbury and to be a member of the Instruments of the Communion. ACNA is not in communion with the See of Canterbury---and has not sought membership in the Instruments" (find the remarks here ). 

ACNA archbishop Foley Beach was invited to the primates' meeting at Canterbury in January of 2016 but was not recognized as a primate and not allowed to vote. In the meeting, the primates said that if ACNA wanted to join the AC, it would have to apply to the Anglican Consultative Council. At the same time, they discouraged the ACC from admitting ACNA. When the ACC met a few weeks later, in Lusaka, there was no mention of ACNA joining the AC. Beach was not invited to subsequent meetings of the Anglican primates.

So, when DSC leaders tell their people they are in an Anglican province, they are misinforming and misleading them. ACNA can call itself whatever it wishes but it is not an Anglican Communion province. It is not in the Anglican Communion and almost certainly will never be in the AC. Beach, and all the bishops in ACNA are not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

In what sense, then, is the DSC "Anglican"? It still uses the Book of Common Prayer and generally follows traditional worship although as seen in the earlier posts here, DSC has redefined itself as a fundamentalist-oriented evangelical church far out of the mainstream of traditional and classical Anglicanism. It is what at best we could call a Quasi-Anglican church.

Short answer:

An Anglican is one in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Members of the Episcopal Church are Anglicans. In the schism, the Diocese of South Carolina withdrew from the Anglican Communion. It is no longer in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It has joined a new church that is Anglican in name only. It is not in the Anglican Communion and almost certainly never will be. Communicants in DSC today are not Anglicans in the accepted sense of the word.


In the next blog post, I will summarize our findings on the truth about the schism in South Carolina.