The History and Future of Anglo-Catholics (Part 3)

     In 2006 the largest Episcopal Church in the United States was not located in New England or California, but in the Diocese of Dallas, Texas. Christ Church Plano had more people in worship on an average Sunday than many Episcopal Dioceses in the country.  Christ Church Plano is an evangelical congregation with nearly 2,500 in Sunday attendance. It adheres to the 39 Articles as its statement of faith. After the General Convention of 2006, Christ Church approached Bishop James Stanton, Bishop of Dallas, and told him they were leaving The Episcopal Church (TEC). Stanton, a friend of evangelicals, worked out an amicable arrangement for the congregation to buy its building, pay its apportionments and wished them well.  Christ Church initially made a connection with the Church of Nigeria. The Anglican Communion worldwide is made up of over 32 million people. It is a very robust and growing Church. It is also a very Protestant Church and bishops from around the globe were outraged at the behavior of TEC in 2006. Some (not necessarily Anglo-Catholic) did not support the presence of a female “archbishop” in their consultations. But the more serious issue was the abandonment of the Scripture as evidenced by the authorization of homosexual ordination. Over the course of months many of these evangelical national churches outside the United States started making allowance for dissenting evangelical and orthodox congregations who were leaving the TEC to unite with them, thus preserving their ties with the Anglican Communion. Old notions of geographic boundaries to a diocese or a province became irrelevant. Thus began the Anglican Realignment. TEC harshly and energetically pursued these congregations and the four bishops who took their dioceses out of TEC.  In 2008 all the various constituent churches and bishops formed the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as a new Province for the United States and Canada.  Christ Church Plano affiliated with ACNA as have approximately 1,000 congregations and ministries in 21 dioceses with a membership of well over 100,000 people. Christ Church alone The ACNA has a goal of planting 1,000 new churches before 2014.

     Forty miles west of Christ Church Plano is the Diocese of Fort Worth, a bastion of Anglo-Catholicism, struggling to hold on to the declining number of churches it already has. The diocese is led by Bishop Jack Iker, SSC.  Iker graduated from General Theological Seminary in New York City but now serves on the Board of Directors for Nashota House.  Respected by evangelicals for his stand against TEC by withdrawing his entire diocese from the apostate denomination, nevertheless Bishop Iker is no friend to Protestant Anglicans in his diocese.  There are no congregations with any evangelical expression in his diocese. Iker has been known to support and encourage priests who have publicly humiliated, harassed and threatened evangelical members who wanted a more balanced expression of historical and world-wide Anglicanism in the church’s life and teaching. This writer served on the staff of one such congregation. Protestant Anglicans in the Fort Worth Diocese learn to keep quiet about their beliefs in light of this de-friending by zealous Anglo-Catholic priests and vestries. Six churches voted not to follow Bishop Iker out of the TEC. They formed a new TEC Diocese of Fort Worth with a new Bishop. Iker has temporarily aligned himself with the Province of the Southern Cone in South America, a member in good standing with the ACNA.

     This schizophrenic Episcopal identity in the Fort Worth Diocese has duplicated itself in several communities in which factions have left Iker-led congregations to start “real Episcopal churches.”  Lawsuits abound. TEC inhibited (removed from office) Bishop Iker and initiated legal proceedings to recover their properties. The merits of the case are not the subject of this paper. However, the Anglo-Catholics under Bishop Iker lost the first round and are now appealing the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court.  Regardless of that decision, the scandal of Christians in court is expected to drag on for years until the final verdict is rendered in the U.S. Supreme Court, depleting church coffers to pay teams of attorneys who, of course, always “remain optimistic” about the outcome.  Meanwhile, churches decline in membership and remain in buildings currently declared the possession of TEC.

     What is the future of Anglo-Catholics? Many Anglo-Catholic parishioners have left the church to join Roman Catholic congregations. Indeed, five of Bishop  Iker’s priests have joined the Roman Catholic church, including his most recent Canon of the Ordinary. At least eight churches have already expressed their intent to take advantage of Pope Benedict’s Episcopal Ordinariate of 2009. This organizational structure will allow Anglo-Catholic priests (and supposedly a bishop) "to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared." When asked about his intent regarding the Ordinariate, Bishop Iker said that decision would be delayed until the question of church property is settled, thus leaving the door open to the possibility. Although ACNA has made provisions for each congregation to own its property and each diocese to establish its own practice regarding the ordination of women, it is clear that Bishop Iker and the Anglo-Catholics will not find a long-term home in the ACNA. ACNA endorses the ordination of women, but more importantly, affirms the 39 Articles as the true expression of Anglican faith. This can only mean that Anglo-Catholics will become even more of a declining fringe group within a rapidly growing, dynamic ACNA. Before totally dying out, the last Anglo-Catholic diocese in the United States, losing influence by its rapidly declining numbers of both members and income, will unite with the Roman Catholic Church and bring to an end nearly 200 years of Anglo-Catholic revisionism in the historic Protestant Anglican church.