Does the Episcopal Church share the faith and order as generally held by the Angican Communion churches?

As reported by George Conger, Canon Kenneth Kearon, the General Secretary of the Anglican Communion, believes that - by virtue of being Episcopalian, members of The Episcopal Church do not share the faith and order of the church as generally held by Anglican Communion Churches. For this reason they were bounced from formal membership in ecumenical dialogues.

Here is what George Conger wrote:

"On June 7, 2010 ACC general secretary the Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon announced that he had written to the American participants, including Dr. Petersen “informing them that their membership of these [ecumenical] dialogues has been discontinued.”

Speaking to the press during the Canadian General Synod in Halifax last year, Canon Kearon explained that: “If they don’t share the faith and order, then they shouldn’t represent the Communion on faith and order questions.”

The Americans had been stood down as “at the very minimum to be honouring to our ecumenical partners so that they know who they are in conversation with,” Canon Kearon said.

The subsequent appointment of an American priest and a Canadian bishop whose diocese had formally instituted gay blessings to the ARCIC team was permitted, the ACC explained as the Canadian national church had not endorsed gay blessings, and the American priest—through still canonically resident in the Diocese of Chicago—was teaching in the UK.

The reappointment of one of the dismissed Americans to the ALIC, with the same role in the dialogue as before but with the new title of “consultant” further diminished the credibility and integrity of the ACC staff, one Global South leader told CEN."

The whole article can be read HERE.

"Faith and Order" is not simply a set of three words bandied about for fun. "Faith and Order" has its references back to a movement, one begun in the latter part of the 19th and beginning part of the 20th century. The World Council of Churches describes the focus of this work as follows:

"The desire to heal or prevent Christian division is as old as Christian division itself, which, as the New Testament testifies, dates to the very origins of Christianity. Yet in the modern ecumenical movement of the past century, the attempts to heal have quite broadly taken two complementary forms, which might be characterized as "discussing together" and "doing together." In any human division, whether on the level of a family, a friendship or an institution, reunion needs to be a combination of discussing -- what happened to bring about the division, what is it that really divides us, what can be done to bring us together, and doing -- beginning already to act in some way together and build, or rebuild, some kind of common life.

The movements which arose at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, movements which spawned the modern ecumenical movement, reflected these forms. The doing was represented by the Life and Work Movement, while the discussing was the task of the Faith and Order Movement. One needs to emphasize once again that these two areas of activity and their concerns were always seen as complementary: the discussing is about what Christians do and what they are, and the doing involves a great deal of cooperative discussion!" (See the discussion HERE.)

"Faith and Order" is then primarily a hoped for unity in faith and order, not a realized hope. The movement is towards unity, not descriptive of unity. So when Canon Kearon stated, "“If they don’t share the faith and order, then they shouldn’t represent the Communion on faith and order questions” he misspoke. What he meant was "If they (The Episcopal Church) don't share the same faith and order perspectives as do all or most Anglicans, they shouldn't represent the Communion perspective in faith and order questions."

Is it the fact that The Episcopal Church does not share the same faith and order perspectives with other Anglican Churches?  What precisely constitutes a matter of faith and order so central as to divide member churches of the Anglican Communion into two camps - those who believe one way and those who believe another - and lead the good Canon Kearon to proclaim that people in group A do into hold the same perspectives on faith and order as people in group B and therefore should be excluded from ecumenical conversations?


I gather almost all Anglicans, in The Episcopal Church and everywhere else, maintain the elements of the Lambeth Quadrilateral to be central: Scripture, Creeds, Sacraments, and Episcopal oversight, are all there. 

How we understand the morality that is informed by Scripture is an issue, but that we believe morality is so informed is not. How individuals in the various churches of the Communion come to understand creedal doctrine is a matter of some controversy, but the fact is, we all say the creeds regularly, and with good heart. We pretty much take the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist in the most ecumenically well attested way. We vary considerably in our understanding of the episcopate as it works its way in our various contexts. But still, over all, we are much more in unity of faith and order than one might expect from a loosely gathered community of churches that we call the Anglican Communion.


So the differences that would lead Canon Kearon to say that we "don’t share the faith and order"?  

Well, The Episcopal Church has been further than some on the route of believing that Christians can divorce and later remarry, that women can be in Holy Orders, that children not yet confirmed can receive Communion, that women can be bishops (oops...that's simply one of the Holy Order things, but you can't tell it by talking to some folk), that blessing relationships other than heterosexual marriage is OK, and that gay and lesbian persons in committed relationships can be ordained, and of course ordained bishops. 


Of course it turns out that not all Episcopalians hold these views, but over the years the Church in General Convention has affirmed all of the above. The question is, are these differences about "faith and order" as concerns basic Christian doctrine and common life, or are these differences that arise and require us to remember that "new occasions teach new duties"? 

New occasions do not arise for all at the same time. Even the great dividers in Christendom were insights that have been more freely incorporated across barriers of ages as time goes by. No, "faith and order" is a not a matter of Anglican Churches, as a collective, having a set "faith and order" and then taking that set of positions to other Churches who have other faiths and other orders. "Faith and Order" are about our hope for the future, not about the separations of the moment.

In this moment in the Anglican Communion there are divisions of opinion within each Church and among the Churches in terms of polity and practice, moral interpretation and teaching. Yet across the world people are constantly called to engage Scripture, proclaim a Trinitarian faith, live sacramentally, and be guided by guardians of that faith into healthy and life giving communities. 

Canon Kearon misspoke. Members of The Episcopal Church were not booted from ecumenical conversations because they don't share "faith and order" with other Anglicans. They were booted because they don't share the same sense of the implications of faith and order that other Anglicans might have. But of course that is true for members of other Anglican churches serving on committees. There is no guarantee that a member of an ecumenical conversation who came from, say, Kenya, would be more pure and undefiled than some one from the US.

As to the matter of particular bishops, clergy or laity who speak outside the norm, no church is without such members who have what influence they have and having exercised that influence move on. 

AnglicansDownUnder has raised the question of some remarks by Bishop Gene Robinson as an example in support of just why an Anglican Covenant is a good idea.  It appears that Bishop Robinson said, " “I know Jesus to be the son of God,” he told a group of about 50 people, “but what a small, limited God we would have if that was the only manifestation."

ADU goes on to say, (and I quote at length because the argument is interesting) 

" Now this is a media reported statement not a theological essay or paper, so I am not going to declare this to be evidence of heresy. But, on the face of it, here is an Anglican bishop making a christological statement which, putting it diplomatically, falls below the Nicene and Chalcedonian par.

The least we could expect of Anglican bishops around the world is that, different and diverse though they may wish to be on human sexuality, whether Hooker meant this or that re Scripture, reason and tradition, and what robes should be worn on which occasion, they all subscribe to the common ecumenical creeds.

The statement above is not unique as a sign that not all Anglican bishops are completely convinced of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of the Father in whom the fullness of God dwells.

One reason for agreeing to the Covenant is that we recognise all the way around the Anglican globe that some common belief is needed for our communion as a Communion to have concrete meaning.

The Covenant may or may not have implications for +Gene in other respects (as some fervantly wish the Covenant to do or not to do). But I hope the Covenant, when established, would lead over the course of time to a weeding out  from the life of our Communion, bishops who fall short of theological faithfulness to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. (For clarity: church law is way too complicated to try to weed out current bishops on doctrinal grounds;, by 'weeding out' I mean that in the fullness of time Anglican dioceses guided and inspired by Covenanted Anglicanism will elect bishops adhering fully to orthodox, creedal Christianity)."

Oddly, I agree with  Peter Carrell that what makes for "orthodox, creedal, Christianity" is a continual weeding out of folks who cannot make sense of, and incorporate into their lives, the "faith and order" that we see, even through all the divisions in the church.

But I do not believe that this weeding out is a matter of covenant among Anglican Churches but internal "weeding out" of persons who can't make the connection between their personal faith understandings and the witness of Scripture, the practice of sacramental life, the creedal formation of a Trinitarian faith, and the willingness to be open to Godly admonition and guidance. Almost none of that will come from the Anglican Covenant, almost all of it will come from well formed synodical life as regional or national churches.

Oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) I also agree with Bishop Robinson.  He said, “I know Jesus to be the son of God but what a small, limited God we would have if that was the only manifestation."  Manifestation (I presume) means "manifestation of God."  I presume Jacob's dream involved a sufficiently manifested presence of God to where he knew that God was in that place.  Manifestation of God means, I suppose still small voices and the Son of Man appearing in the fiery furnace, etc.  Maybe "manifestation of God" could also mean God's appearance in people outside the Jewish / Christian confines all together.

But that does not mean that one's christology is defunct, or that saying the creed is with fingers crossed, or that one is outside the "faith and order" of the Anglican Communion. What it does mean is that the Bishop is stretching the edges of the listener's mind.

To use Bishop Robinson's remark as a reason for supporting the Anglican Covenant is very odd.  I fail to see how he could be called to account by such a Covenant (neither does Carrell).  

I do agree that if there were a Covenant and we all were guided in a more general sense by it, over the years it would become part of the "background noise" against which we would judge the worthiness of candidates for holy orders.  But we already have most of that background in place. All the "elements" of the Covenant "belief" sections are already part of the DNA of The Episcopal Church - our prayer book firmly attests to those elements of the Covenant that derive from the Lambeth Quadrilateral. We are profoundly ordered in baptismal and Eucharistic theology. We understand ourselves to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We are committed to Scripture. 

All that the Covenant can do that we don't already do, is provide some Churches of the Anglican Communion the grounds for excluding other Churches of the Anglican Communion from common ecumenical and communion wide tasks - being on committees, being represented at various Anglican Communion wide meetings, etc, and encourage a form of shunning.

I believe we need to view the Anglican Communion as a peculiar form of ecumenical life. The divisions concerning commonly held expectations about faith and order are no less to be expected within the Anglican Communion than without. 

For the General Secretary to suggest that The Episcopal Church does not share the "faith and order" of the rest of the Communion is absurd.  "Faith and Order" is the unity we seek well beyond the domain of the Anglican Communion. Within the Communion what we need to hold is a common set of core faith and order values out of which our practices will, in context, develop. Those will be quite different from time to time and place to place.  We will have to learn to live with disagreements. The Anglican Covenant will not help us much in this.