Equipped by the Historic Episcopate (Jerusalem Declaration 7.1)
Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh in a series of articles by Dr. Stephen Noll, titled “The Jerusalem Declaration: A Personal Commentary.” Dr. Noll draws on decades of experience in the GAFCON movement, especially his role as Secretary of the Statement group that drafted the Jerusalem Declaration and its accompanying Statement.
Along with Prayer Book worship, church governance by a threefold order of ministry “in historic succession” marks Anglicanism off in important ways from other historic churches. Likewise, an ordered communion of churches has posed a distinctive challenge to Anglicans in the past and to their global future. In this essay, I focus on the “historic succession” of bishops, the pastoral shape of the Anglican Ordinal, and the praise of good bishops that prepared the way for the Global Anglican Communion.
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Clerical Orders: Ministry in Historic Succession
In 1550, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, as part of his reform project, produced the rites of ordination, or Ordinal, which opened this way:
It is evident unto all men, diligently reading holy scripture, and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time, there hath been these orders of Ministers in Christ’s church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons…
When the Ordinal was reissued in 1662 and bound with the Prayer Book, it kept precisely the same phrasing. Since then, “the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted,” as stated in the Lambeth Quadrilateral, has remained a staple of Anglican identity and the teaching of the Jerusalem Declaration:
We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.
Defending the Doctrine of Holy Orders
Cranmer’s doctrine of holy orders hardly had smooth sailing in the intervening century. Under the Roman Catholic Mary (1554-1558), authorities burned Cranmer and his fellow bishops at the stake, imprisoned them, or drove them into exile; during the Commonwealth period (1649-1660), presbyterian and independent bodies replaced episcopacy.
At the mid-point of this period, Richard Hooker (1554-1600) produced the classic work, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, with “polity” referring to the comprehensive ordering of the church. Hooker positioned himself between two “extremely opposite” views, both making absolute claims about church order: Rome, claiming ordination as a sacrament on the authority of divinely revealed tradition; and the Puritans, claiming presbyterian order on the authority of “Scripture alone.”
Hooker’s defense of the threefold order of historic episcopacy provides a striking example of his interpretive lens for reading Scripture (see my commentary on clause 2). He infers from various New Testament texts that the apostles appointed delegates to continue their oversight of the church (episkopē) and that the church fathers confirmed apostolic succession through their unanimous reception (“the voice of the church”). Hooker, however, does not treat ordination as sacramental or immutable; historic succession is not a Gospel essential (esse) but a providential good (bene esse) hallowed by apostolic origin and antiquity.
Churches with other orders of ministry may have their own charisms and share in Gospel ministry, but Anglicans maintain that their church order is distinctive (the “best” according to Hooker). One contemporary example of ecumenical reordering is the Church of South India, which adopted historic episcopacy without reordaining non-episcopal clergy.
The Heart of the Ordinal: Pastoral Ministry
While church governance frames the Ordinal, pastoral ministry lies at its heart. All three orders reflect Jesus’ own ministry as servant of all and shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep (Mark 10:28; John 10:11; 1 Peter 5:1-5). The call for frail human beings to pattern our lives and teaching on Jesus is daunting, which is why the rites require a sense of divine call, thorough education in the faith, and demonstrated gifts for evangelizing and equipping others for the Church’s work. When I look back at my ordination as a priest, I remain awestruck and humbled by the Bishop’s exhortation:
You have heard, during the Church’s discernment of your vocation and in the Holy Scriptures themselves, how weighty is this Office to which you are called. I now exhort you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be a messenger, watchman, and steward of the Lord. You are to teach, to warn, to feed, and to provide for the Lord’s family, and to seek for Christ’s sheep who are in the midst of this fallen world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever.
Remember how great is this treasure committed to your charge. They are the sheep of Christ for whom he shed his blood. The Church and Congregation whom you will serve is his bride, his body. If the Church, or any of her members, is hurt or hindered by your negligence, you must know both the gravity of your fault, and the grievous judgment that will result. (from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer, following the 1662 Ordinal)
In this awesome context of feeding and equipping, clergy receive the Holy Spirit and authority to read and teach the gospel (deacons), to preach the Word of God and administer the sacraments (priests), and to perform the work of a bishop in God’s church (bishops).
There can be no higher calling than to be a minister in Christ’s church. Yet at the end of the day, we recall his word: “when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10).
Let Us Now Praise Good Bishops
Some quip that the ubiquity of bad bishops proves God’s institution of the episcopate. More seriously, Ephraim Radner wrote “Bad Bishops: A Key to Anglican Ecclesiology.” Insert “bad priests,” “bad deacons,” and “bad laypersons,” and we have stumbled into a biblical truth (Rom 3:22-24).
Quips aside, I want to praise some good bishops who have shaped me and my ministry. My list is selective but representative of the historic succession that has shaped the church as a whole. The Prayer Book 2019, for instance, commemorates sixty-seven bishops—forty Anglicans and twenty-seven “ecumenical” bishops—in its Calendar. Many were not prince-bishops sitting on their cathedra, but missionaries and martyrs who spread the Gospel through sweat and blood.
Good American Bishops
I begin with my ordination in the Diocese of Virginia in 1971. Since I have already mentioned a bad bishop there, let me praise one of its founders, Bishop William Meade (1789-1862). Bishop Meade is one of ten good Episcopal bishops in the early American republic discussed in a new book, That Blessed Liberty. A tireless evangelist and disciplinarian, he built up the discredited and disestablished Episcopal church. He was what the authors call an Evangelical High Churchman, upholding episcopacy over Protestant sectarianism and Tractarian innovation. Meade set the tone of low churchmanship that I encountered in Virginia, though it had largely lost its Evangelical salt.
The Birth of Trinity Seminary
Next, I recall a 1975 meeting at Virginia Seminary that changed my life and ministry. Dr. John Rodgers introduced me to Bishop Alfred Stanway, who had just accepted a call to head Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. Alf Stanway was an Aussie who had served for thirty years as a missionary bishop in Tanganyika. He brought to this new call the same simple but authoritative spirit that drew others, including John Rodgers, to leave established posts and move to a startup seminary in Milltown, Pennsylvania. Three years later, I joined John on the faculty there.
The Birth of the ACNA
By the mid-nineties, it had become clear that the bishops of the Episcopal Church were not only deaf to the renewal movements within but also flouting the wider Communion’s call to repentance. Two years after Lambeth 1998, one rector and one seminary dean—Chuck Murphy and John Rodgers—presented themselves for consecration as at-large bishops by Global South primates from Rwanda and Singapore. This controversial act, even among its supporters, opened the way for a reluctant separation from the Episcopal Church.
Bishop Rodgers, an “Articles man” from his teen years who had joyfully taught systematic theology at Trinity seminary, spoke on “Where Do We Go from Here?” at the Global Anglican Future Conference in 2008, then passed the baton to the Bishop of Pittsburgh, Robert W. Duncan. Later that year, our diocese voted to withdraw from the Episcopal Church, and I became a priest of the Province of the Southern Cone (of South America). However, I soon transferred to the ACNA, which Gafcon had recognized as a member province, with Archbishop Duncan as its Primate.
Good Bishops from Africa
My second group of good bishops comes from Africa. In 1999, Livingstone Nkoyoyo, Archbishop of Uganda, approached me and offered me the post of Vice Chancellor at the newly established university at Mukono, the site of historic Bishop Tucker Theological College.
Bishop Alfred Tucker was the first missionary bishop to reach Uganda, after attackers had martyred the first appointee (Bishop Hannington) and malaria had killed the second en route. During his tenure (1890-1911), Bishop Tucker traveled thousands of miles on foot and by steamship, founding churches and raising funds for the fledgling church.
Echoing the Church Mission Society’s principle, Bishop Tucker stated: “It cannot be repeated too often that if ever Africa is to be won for Christ, it must be by the African himself.” On December 21, 1900, he ordained local evangelist Apolo Kivebulaya as a deacon, and for the next thirty-three years, Kivebulaya spread the Gospel to western Uganda and eastern Congo, earning the title “The Apostle of the Pygmies.”
Birthing a University in Uganda
Bishop Tucker also promoted education for local clergy, and in 1913, shortly after his retirement, the church founded Bishop Tucker Theological College at Mukono. The college had trained clergy for Uganda and East Africa for eight decades when Archbishop Nkoyoyo challenged me to come over and help found a full-service university. “But we have only been in Africa three days,” I protested. “Stephen, we have prayed, and we believe you are the right one,” was his simple reply. Livingstone Nkoyoyo had been called from fixing cars to leading a church of 10 million, and his words carried weight. The Lord graciously confirmed this call. When we built our first assembly hall, we named it after the pioneering archbishop.
In the second part of this essay, I shall move from retrospect to a prospective vision of what a church order grounded in Clause 7’s historic principle might look like for the global Anglican future.
Image: Consecration of the seventh Bishop of the West Buganda Diocese, Bishop Gaster Nsereko, Church of Uganda (Anglican). Photo by Ssemmanda Will, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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