"And none other"

[Richard Condie]

Bishop Huggins flagged a future discussion topic for the clergy of the Northern and Western Region in his newsletter today on our liturgical life. It went like this:


Later in the year, we might have a healthy conversation about our liturgical life.

Especially how we foster ‘fresh expressions’ whilst yet honouring the Declaration we have all signed when receiving our Archbishop’s licence.

Namely that:

“In public prayer and administration of the sacraments I will use the form prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer.  A Prayer Book for Australia or another lawfully authorised form and none other.”

I have often thought about this, as I have sat in inductions around the place, including my own, and now heard a number of clergy take the oaths and declarations. Many contemporary Anglican churches, (and probably all of the ones labelled "fresh expressions") would find this promise hard to fulfill on a weekly basis.

I have long argued for an "anglican shape" to contemporary worship - ie it still has preparation, confession, hearing the word, prayers etc. Certainly in my experience most contemporary Anglican churches would still use "lawfully authorised" services for the thanksgiving in Holy Communion at the very least. But if the promise is intended that we should only be using APBA 2nd Order every week in its entirety, then I am guessing this is problematic to many of us.

It strikes me as not healthy to simply "cross our fingers behind our backs" when we say this, and go out and use whatever liturgy we like, or none at all. Nor is it missionally effective to simply "stick to the book" in all circumstances.

As the nature of Australian society changes we have to be willing to change the way we "do worship" to allow others to comprehend the gospel. I minister in a number of congregations where people are from NESB's, or are very young - the "authorised forms" require a very high degree of literacy to comprehend, and are not always appropriate. In the same way, the formality of the liturgy jars with many Australians, young and old.

If we want to be a church that lasts into the next generation, we need to find lots and lots of ways to connect. Delighted that the Archbishop can SMS his prayer 4 Melbourne, but if the next contact the SMS generation have with the Anglican church is sung evensong in 16th century English, that will probably be the last! Let alone those who come from all the nations of the world to the vast international city of Melbourne.

So we have a mismatch between our promise and our practice, and a mismatch between our promise and our missional imperative to make the gospel accessible to all.

My questions are:

What does the declaration mean?
Is it implying that this is what makes us truly Anglican?
Is there something else that makes us truly Anglican?
Should this "something else" be the thing we declare?
Will someone write a declaration for contemporary Anglicans and "Fresh expression" Anglicans that we can truly and honestly say without flinching?
Or should we just get our litugical shapes/outlines, "lawfully authorised" for use, and use them and "none other"?
 
I'd be interested in what others think.

[Tim Patrick]

Hi Richard,

Excellent discussion to open for us. Rather than give a systematic response, here are just a few thoughts to add on to yours as we take this one up.

- As I understand it, the purpose behind the Declaration is to stop us straying back into using the Catholic Missal. This is the error the Anglican Church was keen to prevent. Anglicanism is Protestant and the Declaration aims to keep us so.

- We must protect our liturgies. For Anglicans, 'as we pray, so we believe' - ie. our liturgy captures our theology. Cranmer's wise strategy for his age was to package orthodox, reformed theology into the old Catholic forms so that people could adjust to correct content without being jarred by radically new forms. But the theology was then 'locked in'.

- Having said this, Cranmer's strategy doesn't seem to be what's needed today - if anything, the call on our generation is for the opposite. We need to develop new forms of liturgy that are culturally engaging while maintaining the good, biblical doctrine of the Prayer Books. Therefore, while we must (!) protect the doctrinal purity of our liturgy, I think we do need to have other forms lawfully authorised for the sake of mission. Sydney Diocese has done this with it's little book called Sunday Services. I don't think there's any reason that our Archbishop can't do the same.

- What makes us truly Anglican is outlined in the 39 Articles. Although we often fail at this, I believe that, broadly speaking, to be truly Anglican is to be both thoroughly biblical and culturally relevant. This seems clear to me from reading the Articles. There is certainly a call to maintain traditional forms where they don't do any damage to mission - ie. the Articles don't endorse change for change's sake - but where mission demands it, tradition can be let go of. However, the Bible can never be marginalised. The essay 'Of Ceremonies' in the front of the BCP is worth reading on this too.

- Crossing your fingers behind your back when making an oath is not good at all. You might fool some people but God will not be fooled and I think it's frightening to think of the consequences of this kind of brazen dishonesty from church leaders. Integrity please! For everyone's sake.

Great topic for us to get into.

Tim

[jwhkuan]

Dear Richard

These are great questions!  And the issue is one that I raised in Christian Worship class just this week!  Let me attempt some brief answers.

What does the declaration mean?
It means what it says, that we declare that we are going to be prayer book people.  And if not using the book, we’ll be episcopal people – we must use another duly (bishop-) authorised form.  

Is it implying that this is what makes us truly Anglican?
No, but the fact that all licenses are attached to it means that it is meant to have a strong regulative effect on Anglican culture.

Is there something else that makes us truly Anglican? 
The question of Anglican identity is very vexed – hence this website and the shelves full of books on the issue in our libraries!  Identity is a function of culture and context and I can’t go into that here.

But the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia is crystal clear – at least to the lawyer in me!  It provides our legal framework, which goes, or should go, a long way towards the question of identity:

Sections 1-3 assert the primacy of the historic creeds, the Old and New Testament Scriptures, and upholds the two sacraments and three orders of ministry.  

Section 4 ‘retains and approves’ the ‘doctrine and practice’ of the BCP and Articles.  While there is ‘plenary authority’ to adapt them for our use, they are still to be regarded as the ‘standard of worship and doctrine in this Church’.  

So, to be Australian Anglican, is to be BCP and 39 Articles people.

Should this "something else" be the thing we declare?
Yes, I believe we should declare this.  And we do declare this already, but it could be made clearer and more explicit.  

Will someone write a declaration for contemporary Anglicans and "Fresh expression" Anglicans that we can truly and honestly say without flinching?
1. We should not release ourselves from our commitment to the BCP and Articles.  If we do, what will we commit to instead?  Will it be any better?  

Every church and denomination has some form of considered collective polity, and even if it is not perfect, it gives some practical expression to what we hope has been seen correctly in Scripture.  We should work towards a better understanding of what Scripture says about our collective life, and have that expressed in our declaration and documents; but let’s not kid ourselves, that’s a very costly long term project that pragmatic Christians aren’t often up to (too busy converting and discipling).  

2. But we do need something that nevertheless gives us more freedom in liturgical life.  It’s easy to police use of prayer book (you’re either using it or you’re not), but how do you police the theological form of a liturgy and whether it fits with the BCP and Articles?  What are the necessary components, sequence, structure?  How do you have a declaration that gives enough freedom to innovate for the sake of mission, but not so much freedom that you end up with heresy every week?

Or should we just get our liturgical shapes/outlines, "lawfully authorised" for use, and use them and "none other"?
This is my practice and recommendation.  It is a useful pragmatic measure to keep our consciences clear and make it our bishops’ problem as to what they’ll authorise and what they won’t!  It shifts the burden of leadership and responsibility for the problems I’ve identified above to the ranks of the episcopate.  That’s the job of pastoral-theological leadership isn’t it?  I certainly use this and recommend it to all law-abiding clergy!  It might be nothing more than a letter from the bishop approving your parish practice of having one prayer book service per week, and other contemporary but still theologically- and structurally- prayer book shaped services.

The reality is that Melbourne bishops can’t possibly keep track of absolutely everything that happens in every service in their regions.  What we really need is bishops who exercise their authority in way that gains them moral and persuasive authority, so that they can exercise real leadership in helping local churches innovate for the sake of the Gospel while being faithful to the inheritance received from the saints who have gone before.  

Hope that helps, stimulates, encourages.
WH

[Matt Williams]

I find myself in basic concord with Wei-Han's answers, but have a few thoughts.

On the question of 'what does the declaration mean', a lot hangs on the understanding of the word 'form'. Is the 'form' the basic theological pattern of the liturgy, or is it the printed liturgies themselves? I suspect the intended sense of the declaration was the latter; and this does indeed put us in a difficult position if we belong to those churches that have adopted less liturgical forms. We really need to expand the reach of what is 'duly authorised' if we are to accomodate the real-life practices of substantial parts of the church. We must ask, though, whether they (we?) should be thus accomodated, or if we should pull into line instead!

I think a strong case could be made that the liturgical forms we have at present, while there is much about them to be commended and not given up lightly, often fail us at the coalface. Those in ESL contexts and those trying to reach people without higher education feel this acutely, because the liturgy is often too advanced in vocabulary and grammar to communicate clearly to those people. If we are a missional church in a multicultural city, surely we need liturgy that can be understood by those people before we can ask their pastors to use it (or be authorised to develop their own - such as the liturgy at St Jude's Estates Church, for example).

But we may extend this argument beyond failure on the question of intelligibility to failure on the question of style - the very formality of our liturgy could be construed as culturally insensitive or alienating in itself to certain sections of Australian society - asking all people to become as we are that they may be saved, without any stylistic accomodation on our part.

We also need to ask:
a) what the original purpose of mandating liturgy was;
b) the degree to which that purpose is still currently relevant;
c) what social currents have led to the disuse of liturgy in some Anglican churches, what benefits and dangers are inherent within that disuse, and what cost would come with reinstating formal liturgy in those contexts;
d) the degree to which mission and ministry is facilitated and hindered by liturgical constraints and possibilities;
e) and what creativity ought to be facilitated with regard to liturgy.

As I see it, the main danger of liturgical disuse is heresy. It is ironic, then, that liturgical disuse is most prevalent in the theologically conservative sectors of the church.

We should note that the intention of the APBA is to facilitate a significant degree of freedom in constructing liturgical services - it is quite a flexible set of resources if used well.

One could argue that a biblically and theologically literate clergy (setting aside the question of whether we have such a thing!) perhaps ought to be given more latitude with regard to liturgical patterns and forms than could be afforded at the time of the reformation. That latitude should be driven by the cultural context they are trying to reach (and not, as many priests of all stripes seem to suppose, by their own stylistic preferences).

But even as I say that I worry about what those patterns and forms will be (indeed are) reduced to in many parish contexts; and I personally think most of those default liturgical forms are vastly inferior to what is offered in the prayer books...

M

[jwhkuan]

Quite so Matt. And indeed it is one of the ironies of Anglican history that theological conservatives took theological liberals to court over their liturgical innovations from about the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, but are now themselves anti-book.  See for example the Bathurst vs Sydney Red Book Case.  In most cases they won, but it had next to no effect on the growth of liberal Anglo-Catholic liturgical  innovation.  The impact of this was to destroy confidence in the ability of our canon law process to control liturgy.  Ultimately, theological conservatives themselves, for pragmatic reasons, abandoned the prayer book and the situation today is almost completely the reverse as it was not so many decades ago!

BUT.. it is still true that the BCP is the theological standard, not the APBA or AAPB.