Anyone referred to as an orthodox Anglican, as found in this country, post 1978, is most likely a member of one of the Continuing Anglican Churches.
GKC,
As a matter of commonly used terminology, this is not true. The term is certainly used by many people within both TEC and ACNA. I respect your belief that the term does not appropriately apply to us, but it is certainly used.
Is your reason for denying the label “orthodox” to non-Continuers solely the acceptance of women’s ordination, or are there other reasons? We probably can’t get into the whole 79/28 BCP issue here, but if there are specific doctrinal/liturgical issues that you think make us unorthodox other than women’s ordination, could you list them?
Or is it the fact that we in TEC are in communion with people who are certainly unorthodox, and from your perspective “orthodox” cannot be applied to individuals or individual parishes/dioceses?
If women’s ordination is the only issue, then it is not true to call all those who remained in TEC after 1978 unorthodox, although it would be true to call all the dioceses presently remaining in TEC unorthodox (the non-WO dioceses are now part of ACNA–which is still not the Continuum). But if you’re combining the WO issue with the consideration mentioned in the previous paragraph, then I can see how you arrive at your stated conclusion. (In other words, all Anglicans not in the Continuum are in communion with parishes/dioceses that ordain women, even if the individual parishes/dioceses do not.) Knowing you, I am sure that you have a consistent rationale for what you said–I would just like to understand the precise parameters of your position a little better.
Any group not within the Continuum, or not a member of the Reformed Episcopal Church (which is a different sort of Anglican) is most likely marginal to any historical definition of Anglicanism.
I strongly disagree with that statement, because I weight the relevant considerations quite differently. But again, I’d like to hear more about just how you arrive at that conclusion–which issues do you consider central to a “historical definition of Anglicanism”?
. But I know what it was that caused the break with EUSA in the first place, after the St. Louis meeting, in 1978. It was the liturgy, not homosexuality.
And yet I have always had trouble getting traditional Anglicans to list the precise articles of Faith that are denied in the 1979 BCP. It always seems to boil down to questions of emphasis, and the emphases found in the older BCPs and not in 1979 do not always strike me as genuinely orthodox, often instead reflecting particular characteristics of early modern Western Christianity (such as the Cranmerian Eucharistic Prayer’s leap over the Incarnation straight to the atoning death of Christ).
As I’ve said elsewhere, I understand why those Anglicans whose position is essentially Reformed would object to 1979–there is no doubt that the Reformational doctrines are severely watered down there. But obviously that is not your position.
Also, I am not talking about which BCP is preferred, but about the claim that 1979 is actually unorthodox. (I myself would have preferred a Rite 1 that was 1928 with some Catholic elements added–I don’t have a particular problem with Rite 2, though I think Eucharistic Prayer C is an unnecessary curiosity. Even it is not, however, remotely unorthodox as far as I can tell.)
And I know what the next major issue was. It was female “ordination”, not homosexuality. And the Episcopalians who espoused the heterodox positions in question, who now own ECUSA, were revisionists. Apostates, too.
Isn’t apostasy the denial of the Christian Faith
as a whole? Aren’t we heretics at worst
Bishop Spong, now, I’ll grant you–apostate.
I would respond to the poster myself, since I also disagree with his characterization (on different grounds than you do), but he has been suspended.
Are you familiar with the work of Ephraim Radner? He would also deny that the conservatives in TEC can rightly call ourselves “orthodox.” But he does so on rather different grounds, and his argument would apply to the Continuers (and I believe also to the RCs and the Eastern Churches, though I find that far more dubious) just as well.
I responded to a number of posts in this thread without realizing how old the thread was. I’m surprised to see that I didn’t originally respond to it–perhaps it was during one of my periods of absence from the board.
I won’t delete this post, since it still seems relevant–respond or not as you wish.
Edwin
