The Continuum, however, holds in its hands the keys of its own restoration. These are the same keys that form the cornerstone and foundations of the worldwide Anglican Communion - namely, the Faith of Jesus Christ set forth in Holy Scripture, and the doctrines of Scripture set forth for our use and edification in the Anglican Formularies: the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and the classic 1662-1962 Book of Common Prayer together with the Ordinal. These are the teaching authority - the "magisterium" - and the unifying principle of Continuing Anglicanism, which can and will be effective - but only if honored in truth and in practice as well as in word.

The English Reformation: Key to the Continuing Church

The Continuing Church's Commitment to the English Reformation, and The Destructive Effects of Forsaking that Commitment

Virtually from the beginning, the most obvious characteristic of this part of the Christian family called the "Continuing Church" has been its divided state, coupled with its endemic proliferation of bishops with competing jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction asserts the orthodoxy of its faith and practice - its total unity with the Church of the ages, through time. But most also destroy their claim of orthodoxy by their inability to maintain the central quality of Christians for which Christ prayed most earnestly before He went to die for them - unity. Unity must reach the Church in the present as well as the past, starting with the multitudinous jurisdictions that claim the title of Continuing Anglicans.

The purpose of this Continuing What? series is not to add another denouncement of this state of affairs to the many that have been offered, but to assess the situation accurately, to identify its causes and to suggest where the solution lies.

Disunity and competition within the Continuum stem from the convergence of these two factors: 1. The old human impulse to engage in struggles for power and supremacy; and 2. Fundamental disagreement as to the character and purpose of the Continuing Church, which provides the occasion and the fuel for this ancient and ungodly contest. These things are all too likely to occur in any group. The twelve disciples, even at the Last Supper, fought over "who should be accounted the greatest." (Luke 22:24)

The issues that have kept the Continuing Church divided are many. In a struggle for supremacy, any issue will serve the purpose. The issues keep changing, while competitive plotting and division remain constant. Polity, the manner in which the Church is governed, has been a bitter point of contention. But a still deeper cause of division, less openly asserted in the past, is becoming more evident, namely, disagreement with the English Reformation, and with the Continuing Church's commitment to this central feature of the Anglican Tradition. This forces the Continuum to face and to resolve finally and authoritatively the fundamental issue of the original purpose for its existence if it wishes to avoid oblivion and to serve that purpose effectively.

Will the Continuing Church continue its received Faith and Worship, that of the English Reformation, set forth with clarity and authority in the Anglican Formularies we profess to uphold? Or will it seek to abandon this spiritual heritage for other theologies that conflict with it? This issue will be life-threatening to the Continuum until it is resolved.

The Continuing Church, Actually and by Profession, is Committed to the English Reformation

The central Formulary of the English Reformation is the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, 1552, 1559 and 1662. The faithful pre-1970's Book of Common Prayer is foundational to most branches of the Continuum that arose in the 1960's and '70's. Further, the doctrines contained in these classic editions of the Prayer Book are in total agreement with those in the Ordinal also produced early in the Reformation for clergy ordinations, and in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of 1571. To espouse the Book of Common Prayer, as do Continuing Anglicans, is to espouse also the doctrines of the Ordinal and the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. These are the three primary Formularies of Anglicanism, and are usually bound together as one book.

One of the larger segments of the Continuum on this continent, the Traditional Anglican Communion, in its Concordat binds itself to retain "the formularies of the classical Anglican tradition" that preceded the errors of the 1970's. These expressly include the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (the current English edition) and 1928. It establishes these as "the standard of Faith and Worship." The Anglican Church in America sets the same standard. It submits to the Concordat and it vows to uphold the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the 39 Articles of Religion - all three of the "classic Anglican Formularies." Churches that lack these commitments cannot truthfully claim to be continuing or traditional Anglican churches.

The Church in the Anglican tradition which this movement professes to continue ("Continuation, Not Innovation," we were assured) is both Catholic and Reformed. Its origins are neither Roman nor Protestant. It is more ancient than both its Protestant and Roman connections, having been in Britain 400+ years before Rome came in 597. Its authority is not institutional, but biblical and spiritual. It is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic (Second Office of Instruction, 1928 Book of Common Prayer, p. 291). Its biblical and also Anglican character speak through the dying words (1711) of Thomas Ken who for conscience' sake sacrificed his office as Bishop of Bath and Wells: "I die in the Holy, Catholic and Apostolick Faith, professed by the whole Church before the division of East and West. More particularly I dye in the Communion of the Church of England as it stands distinguished from all Papall and Puritan Innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross."

In professing to "continue" in this Anglican tradition, and in solemnly adopting its truths and Formularies, the Continuing Church has committed itself to the "Faith and Worship" of the English Reformation. We can and should unite in the truths of our professed Formularies, study them and unreservedly uphold and teach them. With and under the authority of Scripture, they are the unifying principle that warrants our continued existence and which alone justifies our claim to be the standard bearer for all Christians in the Anglican tradition.

That tradition does not support the phenomenon of groups devising their own ideal church organizations and formulating faith and worship allegedly in the Anglican tradition, without submission to the established body of Anglican spiritual authority. The Anglican tradition and its Formularies provide authority in those matters. Yet some in the Continuum reject these Formularies, hope for their demise, and work against them. While this lasts, the Continuing Church will remain at cross-purposes internally and will continue to dissipate its energy in fragmentation as it has for three decades.

That such self-destructive cross-purposes are actually at work within the Continuum is indisputable.

The Continuum's Theological Rift

At a recent meeting of Episcopalians and Anglicans concerning church unity, there occurred an exchange to the following effect between a continuing Anglican bishop and an Episcopal priest.

Bishop: The Anglican Communion doesn't exist, because it has no "magisterium" [i.e., a teaching authority in matters of doctrine, like Rome's claimed authority of the Pope and his bishops]. The Emperor has no clothes. Let's face this, and not hold onto things that no longer exist.

Priest: We respectfully disagree: The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion are the magisterium. This is similar to the arrangement in Orthodoxy. There is a patchwork in Orthodoxy, this not being so legal a concept as in Rome.

Bishop: I don't think you can rebuild Anglicanism on two opposite theologies of Catholic order.

The priest, though an Episcopalian, spoke as a "continuing Anglican", one who attributes doctrinal authority to the biblical faith set forth in the Anglican Formularies he cites. He is not alone. Robert Duncan, Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh, corroborates this conviction:

"Part of Anglicanism's magisterium was its fundamental submission to the theological and moral teachings of Scripture . . . . Anglicanism's practical magisterium - its reliable teaching authority - has been its Book of Common Prayer, . . . reasserting the theological propositions of medieval Catholicism as reshaped by the English Reformation, best represented in the prayer book of 1662 . . . ." (The Mandate, Jan.-Feb. 2007, published by the Prayer Book Society, Philadelphia, Pa.) Former Bishop of London Graham Leonard has attributed the elusiveness of Anglican unity first to "an undermining of the ultimate authority of Scripture as symbolized by the loss of place of the Articles of Religion" (indicating the scriptural foundation of the Articles), and to the effective loss of the classic Book of Common Prayer; also to the ordination of women, and the "substitution of the authority of national synods for the authority previously accorded to Scripture." (Id.)

On the other hand, the continuing Anglican bishop's charge that Anglicanism has lost its magisterium negates at least the function of the Anglican Formularies as the teaching authority in matters of doctrine. Yet their authority is derived from Scripture. Thus, the Anglican Communion has its magisterium, its teaching authority, but without Rome's system of using 'infallible' decrees of popes and councils to add to the "faith once delivered unto the saints." (Jude 3) It also lacks Rome's enforcement mechanism, the Inquisition, but that is distinct from the magisterium and involves a different issue, one that is as much a matter of polity as theology.

To hold that the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Articles of Religion are the Anglican teaching authority on doctrine is the theological "opposite" of this bishop's view. These opposites, he says, cannot effectively work together within Anglicanism. The extreme terminology conveys more than a mere difference of opinion about church organization. It also implies a doctrinal dispute with the Anglican Formularies and the English Reformation.

If anyone questions whether a purpose exists within the Continuum to reverse the English Reformation, all doubt of it was cleared up recently by John Hepworth, Archbishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion, in terms that permit no mistake:

"We have no doctrinal differences with Rome which would prevent us from being in full communion with one another. . . . My broad vision is to see the end of the Reformation of the 16th century." (The Christian Challenge, September-October 2005, p. 30).

No doubt Rome would disagree. The statement appears to conflict with Anglican and/or Roman doctrine. That, and the rejection of the Reformation, including the English phase, present an irreconcilable conflict with the mission of the Continuing Church, and with any organization that calls itself "Traditional Anglican". This seems not to have occurred to church leaders.

When a related error appeared in the Continuing Church 25 years ago, the Church's voice of conscience spoke with clarity:

"This, then, is the crux of the problem. Are we seeking to teach the faith and to be comprehensively Anglican, or are we seeking to wrench the continuing Anglican movement out of its matrix and context and to return to the pre-Reformation Church as it existed in England before 1534, with all its errors and abuses? . . . [This is] a perversion of the spirit in which this continuing Anglican Church found form at St. Louis." (A Declaration of Conscience, June 18, 1982, by Perry Laukhuff, who presided at the 1977 St. Louis Congress; he provided his Declaration personally to this writer.)

The Continuum's first leader thus confirms with authority that the English Reformation is the matrix and context of the spiritual heritage which the Continuing Church is to continue.

Pre-Reformation "errors and abuses" and "papall innovations," although unimportant to some, were of such consequence to the Faith that the effort to right them cost Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and other faithful shepherds in the 16th century their lives. For anyone to hold the contrary commitments expressed by +Hepworth and yet remain in a position of leadership in the continuing Anglican movement is impossible to defend morally.

"Every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." (Matt. 12:25)

Any refusal of submission to the scriptural authority set forth in the Anglican Formularies negates the Church's unifying principle. If the Church lacks this ground of its own internal unity, it has no realistic hope of fulfilling its calling to unify the larger Church. Unity is spiritual. It does not arise from man-made authoritarian structures, but from general acceptance of the authority of Scripture as stated in the Formularies. Without this, the Church is, at best, an aggregation of jurisdictions with varied theological professions, under no generally acknowledged authority, having rejected the Anglican authorities it claims to uphold. This fosters a kind of "free enterprise Anglicanism," each part building a structure of its own ideal design, and ever subdividing into further competing jurisdictions.

The Continuing Church professes what it should profess - its commitment to the classic Anglican Formularies as stating the truths of Scripture. The Church has its unifying principle in these authorities, but it divides over whether, in belief and in practice, it will be as good as its word.

Tragically, that is the stalled condition of the divided Continuum now. Just when it is most needed as a credible alternative to the failing Episcopal Church, it offers nothing to the purpose. It is virtually invisible on the ecclesiastical landscape in this country, and it contributes little or nothing to the solution of current ecclesiastical and theological problems. It has faithfully served the spiritual needs of a small part of Christ's flock. Apart from this, its most noteworthy effect has been to keep Anglican Christians divided for 30 years.

The Truth of the English Reformation

To ask how the English Reformation is important to us and how adhering to its truths can heal the divisions of this troubled Church, is to ask a more fundamental question, that may be put in different ways:

What are those doctrines of our "precious faith" (II Pet. 1:1) that were in peril of being lost, and had to be recovered (not created anew) in the 16th century, and restored to the Anglican faithful, as of old? What theological truths were of such gravity and in such stark conflict with established beliefs and practices that their proclamation caused the death by fire of the compiler of our Book of Common Prayer and several other Bishops and churchmen?

What was this spiritual and theological divide that produced specifically Anglican martyrs, whose blood hallowed and confirmed their testimony and became the seed corn of the English Reformation - the tradition and heritage which we profess to continue?

---Stephen Cooper is Editor of The SOJOURNER, Ascensiontide 2007. He is a member of The Church of the Redeemer, Anglican, Fairbanks, Alaska, a Continuing Anglican parish founded in 1980. Mr. Cooper is a layman and an attorney, federal prosecutor and former state District Attorney. He was National Chancellor of the American Episcopal Church (under Archbishop Anthony Clavier) from 1987-1988 and Chancellor of the Diocese of the West (AEC and ACA) 1986-1995 and Provincial Chancellor, Province of the West, ACA 1993-1996. He is author of "Reclaiming Our Heritage -- A Call to Return to the Original Mission of the Continuing Church.