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Turning the Church into the Winds: Church Discipline, Canon Law, and Women’s Ordination

#clippings #GSFA #WO

Clipped from: https://americananglican.org/turning-the-church-into-the-winds-church-discipline-canon-law-and-womens-ordination/
By [[The Rt. Rev. Phil Ashey]]

Photo by Liz Zirlewagen on Unsplash

Last week I began a series of articles in response to a letter by an Anglican and public ministry leader named Warren Cole Smith in which he identifies four “existential challenges” he believes the ACNA has yet to face.  Last week I wrote on how leadership is a fundamental without which we cannot address these challenges and about how thankful we can be that God called our new archbishop, the Most Rev. Stephen D. Wood, to help steer the ACNA into these winds. Today I’m writing about the first two challenges Smith says we face: church discipline/canon law and women’s ordination.

Smith writes, “The canons of ACNA need revision…The very real issues that have come up regarding Church discipline that caught ACNA leadership flat-footed mean the current canons are inadequate.” Smith wrote this before the “minimum best practices” for dioceses to respond to accusations of misconduct and abuse were approved at Provincial Council and Provincial Assembly 2024. You can find those changes incorporated into the ACNA Canons at Title I Canon 5 “Of Dioceses” in new sections 8 and 9 here and effective in September 2024. We also have a draft revised Title IV waiting in the wings to remedy the “clunkiness” and ambiguities in our current canons that gave way to the “dozens of ad hoc approaches” of which Smith complains. There is nothing in our Constitution and Canons that would prevent our new archbishop from calling a special online meeting of Provincial Council and Assembly in 2025 to approve the new revised Title IV—after the College of Bishops has an opportunity to review and suggest any further revisions. Finally, as we have grown over the years, we have in fact recognized the need to fill in the gaps in our canons as the needs arise. This will always be the case, and for this reason we developed a robust and transparent conciliar process of annually amending our canons that involves multiple bodies (ACNA Bishops, ACNA Executive Committee, Diocesan Chancellors, and the Anglican Legal Society), multiple drafts open to comment by every member of the province, and multiple times for delegates to Provincial Council and Assembly, and a dedicated Governance Task Force that responds to each comment with further revisions as needed.

But Smith identifies women’s ordination as the first and most significant existential challenge to the ACNA, and what he wrote contributed to the flurry of public online letters that the bishops of the ACNA received (here and here) leading up to the June meeting to elect a new archbishop. At one point Smith suggests that the differences over women’s ordination are so irreconcilable they could portend a divorce:

“If ACNA permanently bans women’s ordination, what happens to the women who have already been ordained, and their churches? There will have to be some sort of disaffiliation process that is fair and equitable. If ACNA opens the door to women’s ordination in all dioceses many—including the 300 signers of the “Augustine Appeal”—will conclude that ACNA has left the path of biblical orthodoxy. It seems many of them would leave if that happens.”

Can we take a step back and recognize the need for earnest and honest prayer, study, and conversation together? Some leaders have said that nothing short of the laicization of women who are already ordained will satisfy them. But is this really an equitable path mentioned by Smith? To laicize women clergy in our own movement who helped form the ACNA—founders and heroes like the Rev. Canon Dr. Alison Barfoot, The Rev Canon Mary Hays, the Rev Dr. Travis Boline and so many more who were as faithful and sacrificial as any others in the formation of the ACNA? Laicizing them would be a grievous affront to their legacies and ordained ministries. Likewise, there are so many leaders who share deeply held, conscientious objections to the ordination of women to the presbyterate on the basis of scripture and tradition. How can we afford to lose these defenders of the Bible and the Great Tradition? It is no wonder that those like Smith see the province as being at an impasse.

So how do we make sense of this so-called impasse? How do we pray through this and also maintain our unity?

I appeal to the ACNA Holy Orders Task Force Final Report in their concluding “Case for Anglican Unity”:

“[Within the ACNA we have] discovered at least four “families” of ecclesiologies (Anglo-Catholic, Reformed Evangelical, Revivalist Evangelical, and Charismatic]. However, we have not discovered Scriptural texts that positively require any of these models to the exclusion of others …Therefore we are uneasy about commending any one of these ecclesiologies as the only legitimate option for Anglicans…Ecclesiologies as ‘1.1 Order’ issues could very well fracture the Anglican Church in North America, and indeed in the worldwide Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans…” (emphasis added, at 245).

The theology of the Church (aka “ecclesiology”) is the necessary foundation for any discussion of ordained ministry in the Church (aka “Holy Orders”). Bishop Kevin Allen (retired, Cascadia) was one of the three bishops on the Holy Orders Task Force. Recently he wrote me, “within the Holy Orders Task Force Report are the sections on an Anglican Hermeneutic for reading and interpreting Holy Scriptures and a beginning work on Anglican Ecclesiology in the ACNA. If the College of Bishops continues to further develop and teach on these two subjects, it will have a profound effect on the unity and order of the ACNA.”

In fact, the Holy Orders Task Force Report was very limited. It was not commissioned to resolve the issue of Women’s Ordination! It was commissioned for two narrow purposes: to develop resources for understanding (1) how we read and interpret the Bible on such issues as Holy Orders in the Church and (2) how we understand the nature of the church and ordained ministry. (Report at 6, 9)  With regards to how we read and understand the Bible, the Task Force concluded that “Our interpretation of Scripture should be done in a spirit of love and humility, with prayer and diligence, in recognition of and delight in the diversity of our global fellowship.  While allowing freedom in secondary issues, we are called together to seek the mind of Christ in divisive issues.” (Report at 16) With regard to how we understand the nature of the church and ordained ministry, the Task Force agreed that deeper discussions among the bishops about the nature of the church, the sacraments, and ordained ministry “will lead toward fruitful discussion beyond the usual impasse that comes from debates about the ordination of women.” (at 9)

In other words, a truly conciliar, biblically faithful conversation among our bishops on all of the questions necessary to a decision on women’s ordination has only just begun. What would such a conciliar and biblically-faithful conversation among our bishops look like?

In Anglican Conciliarism and in the development of the Covenantal Structures of the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (Cairo Covenant 2019, Section 3), the following steps many Anglicans observe when faced with resolving a difficult and controversial issue are outlined:

This is the process that we will find in Anglican Churches like Nigeria, Southeast Asia, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere, supported by the Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion, The GSFA Cairo Covenant (Section 3), and my book, Anglican Conciliarism (at pp. 58-65, 156-160).

There is nothing preventing the archbishop and ACNA College of Bishops from following this Anglican conciliar process in addressing Women’s Ordination. It will require the College to restructure the way it does its business so that there can be a conclave-like gathering at least once a year to address such difficult and controversial issues. This is what the Roman Catholic Conference of Bishops appears to do as needed in North America. It will also involve the participation of gifted and qualified lay and clergy theologians and specialists as non-voting but fully contributing members. It will require the preparation of teaching/catechetical materials for the whole church to receive the decision of the bishops. But all of this work is exactly within the authority our Bishops have been given and cannot delegate away—to guard the faith and order of the Church.

It will also require time, patience, prayer, and diligence in a spirit of mutual humility and love. There are so many unanswered questions that must be addressed in the process. What is the nature of the sacraments and sacramental communion (especially Baptism and Holy Communion) administered by Presbyters? Do we have a sufficient overlap of the four “families of ecclesiologies” to enable the definition of sacraments and sacramental communion? When the principles of interpreting the Bible articulated by the Task Force for all ACNA Anglicans have been followed, how do we resolve differences in interpretation and application of relevant scriptures to Women’s Ordination? What is the role of the Church Fathers, the Great Tradition, and the Bible itself in resolving those differences? What does the Bible and the Great Tradition have to say about “faithful reception” of a new teaching? If not in Holy Orders, what theology of leadership for women must we commend and support among all the families of ecclesiologies?

This is a work worth doing, and doing well. Rather than writing off those with whom we disagree, pray that our bishops will do this good work. Pray for those who will help them. And while we are praying, let’s remember the Task Force’s case for unity around this issue:

We all need each other. Each of our traditions compensates in some ways for arguable deficiencies in others. Or, to put it another way, what will we gain if we win our position on Women’s Ordination, and lose our Christ-formed humility and love?