From Episcopal to Anglican: The Beauty of Biblical Faithfulness
It was the summer of 2015. The Episcopal Church in the United States had just officially changed its doctrine of marriage, and I was coming to the realization that I would have to leave. In that moment, I felt the church’s wonderful qualities keenly: its depth of history, its grand architecture, its rich liturgical life, and, most especially, its wonderful people: educated, cultured, kind, and generous souls. If you’ve ever gone through a break-up, you know what it’s like. The break might be necessary, but real goods are in the balance, and some beauties are especially bright at the moment of their loss.
At the same time, I felt energized by the move I was about to make into the Anglican Church in North America. Where the Episcopal Church had a legacy of historic buildings, the ACNA seemed to be building for the future. It had a missional energy from its GAFCON partners in Africa and around the world, and an ethos of going out to proclaim the pure gospel to those in need. Most of all, it had a tangible commitment to Biblical doctrine, to the teaching and practice of holiness. Such holiness, shaped by submission to Biblical doctrine, would be for Anglicans the fount of a deeper kind of beauty. We would “worship the Lord,” as the psalmist says, “in the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9).
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Pursuing Ordination in the Episcopal Church
Years before, when I began to explore ordination in the Episcopal Church, there were some in my diocese who thought I was too conservative to fit amongst the clergy. They didn’t just mean my political views; far more problematic were my conservative theological views. I thought then (and still think now) that the Bible is the authoritative word of God, every person is a sinner justly deserving God’s wrath, and our only hope for salvation is repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Especially offensive to my colleagues was my belief in the biblical doctrine of marriage, of a man and a woman in lifelong union.
Consequently, it seemed that a path to ordination might be closed off until my bishop (a liberal of the old school, God bless him) convened a meeting with me and the chair of the Commission on Ministry. In that meeting, he acknowledged that I would probably be the most conservative clergyman in the diocese. He asked me how I would deal with that situation. I said I’d be happy to share my views with any clergyman who wanted to discuss! He then looked at the chair of the Commission on Ministry and said he thought it would be good to have a conservative in the diocese. With the bishop’s support, I was cleared to proceed.
Sure enough, I was the most conservative student at the seminary. There were two or three others who privately believed the more unpopular Biblical doctrines, but I was the only one willing to argue for them publicly. This challenged me to think deeply and clarify my understanding, especially on the doctrine of marriage.
The Biblical Doctrine of Marriage
I observed that marriage runs throughout the Bible, from Adam and Eve in Genesis to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Revelation. Throughout the scriptures, it is essential that marriage constitutes a union across differences. This is why the prophets use marriage as a metaphor for the relationship between God and his people (see Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Malachi), and Paul even teaches that the union of husband and wife reflects the union of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5). Jesus himself grounded marriage in the created difference between male and female:
From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’
Mark 10:6-8
Moreover, the scriptures order marriage to the purpose of procreation, one of the chief ways in which male and female, both made in God’s image, reflect the divine character (Genesis 1). Human procreation is a powerful image of the divine Creator, because it is the means by which God creates new souls. This is the positive context that makes sense of the Bible’s repeated warnings against homosexual practice. We find such teachings in both the Old Testament (such as Leviticus 18, 20) and the New Testament (such as Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, and Jude 1).
At the time, I liked to point out that the official doctrine of the Episcopal Church was on my side of the argument. The canons of the church, the process of marriage preparation, the rite of matrimony, and the catechism: all these, at least in theory, reflected a commitment to the biblical teaching. I comforted myself with the thought that, even if the clergy had a revisionist view, the church’s doctrine would not change. In retrospect, I realize that I was naive. A church can and will change its doctrine, especially when a supermajority of its clergy want it to.
The Oath of Conformity
Shortly after seminary, I was ordained a transitional deacon in the Episcopal Church. Like every ordinand, I was required to take the oath of conformity:
I do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church.
BCP 1979, p 538
At the time, I could take the oath in good conscience. But everything would change the following year.
The Summer of 2015
Public intellectual Aaron Renn has identified the summer of 2015 as a major hinge for American Christians. Renn identifies this moment as the transition from the neutral to the negative world, the moment when Western culture and Christianity came into opposition. For Renn, the hinge was the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
For those of us in the Episcopal Church, Obergefell was only the prelude to an even more fundamental change. In my naïveté, I had thought that the church would hold to Biblical teaching, even and especially when our political culture was moving in another direction. But less than two weeks later, our General Convention officially changed the church’s doctrine of marriage, adopting a canonical change to allow for gay marriage in the church.
A Crisis of Conscience
Certainly, my relationship with the Episcopal Church had become strained over time. I had always been staunchly pro-life, at odds with the church’s increasing support for abortion. I had also observed, with alarm, pockets of skepticism regarding the exclusivity of Christ and a general disregard for our doctrinal heritage and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.
But it was the change to the marriage canon that forced me to make a decision. Previously, I felt I could tolerate a practical diversity of views, as long as the church officially committed itself to Biblical doctrine. After the change to the marriage canon, I lost even that support. And in my upcoming priestly ordination, I would have to take the oath of conformity again, this time affirming a very different doctrine.
Therefore, I faced a fundamental question: could I vow to conform to this new doctrine? Could I pattern my life according to this new wisdom? Could I become a teacher and advocate for the progressive ideas of the sexual revolution, against the explicit teaching of God’s word and the whole history of his church?
Framed this way, it was clear to me that I could not take the oath of conformity in good conscience. Though there was so much to love in the Episcopal Church, I realized that I had no choice but to leave. I informed my rector and bishops, and they received my decision with grace. We cancelled my priestly ordination, and I went through the canonical process of resigning my diaconal orders in the Episcopal Church.
The Gathering of the Remnant
The Anglican Church received me and put me to work. Ordained to the priesthood on a Saturday, I held the first Sunday service of our Anglican church plant the next day! Though I had felt isolated in seminary, I soon learned that I was not the only one on a similar journey. Like Elijah, who complained that only he was left, I learned that God has a remnant, a group of believers, young and old, who hold by grace to the pure gospel of Christ under the authority of God’s word.
It was also striking to me that these believers came from all denominational backgrounds and none: Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Agnostics, and Atheists. For us, Anglicanism began not in a shared denominational tradition, but rather as a shared fidelity to Biblical doctrine as reformed and catholic Christians.
Rebuilding the Ancient Ruins
As an Anglican priest and church planter, my goal was not to establish an institution to compete with the Episcopal Church. That would be a mistake for two reasons. First, from a merely tactical level, new Anglican churches will rarely have the inherited resources of the Episcopal Church. If we try to be like the Episcopal Church, we’ll often end up as worse versions of it. But at a deeper level, opposition is rarely a good foundation for building something new. It’s quite easy to become defined by the thing you are most strenuously against.
Instead, my approach has been to draw from the deep wells of the long Anglican tradition. Rather than being defined by the controversies of the 20th century, how about we draw from the wisdom of the previous 1900 years?
Most of all, we should build the church on the foundation of God’s word. We should trust that there is a deep beauty in Biblical doctrine. When we believe it and practice it, we will see the glory of God. In this way, we will fulfill the promise of Isaiah, that God’s people, by his Spirit, will be strengthened for such work:
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
Isaiah 61:4
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.
Photo of the author, courtesy of Trinity Lafayette. Digital editing by Jacob Davis and Peter Johnston.
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