Anglican Communion Network

Theological Charter

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Confession and Calling of the Network of Anglican Communion Dioceses and Parishes

Preface

There are times within the history of the church when Christians have been faced with threats, some internal and some external, to the integrity of their common life and faith. The recent actions of the Diocese of New Westminster and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. confront the various provinces of the Anglican Communion with just such a threat to the historic Faith and Order that defines their existence as a communion. In the face of this, obedience requires a faithful statement of belief and a renewed commitment to the practices that give expression to the saving truth of the Christian Gospel. The statement of confession and calling that follows has been occasioned by actions that have compromised the witness and mission of Anglicans throughout the world, rent the unity of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church U.S.A., torn the fabric of the Anglican Communion, and violated the trust so necessary for the fruitful relations with other churches and other faiths. It is offered with an admission of common responsibility for the dire circumstances in which the Anglican Communion finds itself, with a deep sense of penitence for shared disobedience. We are committed to amendment of life, the genuineness of which we pray shall be attested by the appearance among us of the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit. The statement is offered also with the knowledge that the spiritual health of our Communion and the authenticity of its witness and mission require of us not only fidelity to the faith of the Apostles but amendment of life in ways marked out by the path of suffering taken by our Lord.

I. Stewards of a Trust

  1. We confess, hold and bear witness before God and the world, that we have been “entrusted with a glorious Gospel” by God (1 Tim. 1:11), a “message of reconciliation” in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:19); and that as “stewards of God’s mysteries” our calling is to be “trustworthy” (1 Cor. 4:1f.), willing to “guard the truth” that the Holy Spirit has shared with us through our baptism (2 Tim. 1:14) in the Church, passed on to us from the apostles (2 Tim. 1:13). Our identity as Anglicans, whether in the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., or the Anglican Church in Canada, is founded on this trust and this calling.

  2. We confess, hold and bear witness that this “mystery of the faith” (1 Tim. 3:9) is the Church’s knowledge and proclamation of and life within the glorious reality of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This trust embraces the full knowledge of God, given for the life of the world (cf. John 1:18) and revealed in Christ through the Church’s own life and teaching (cf. Eph. 1:15–23).

  3. We confess, hold and bear witness that we are obliged to share this “mystery of Christ” even and particularly in suffering (Col. 4:3). Its form and meaning is embodied in the historical reality of God’s own self-giving, the Father “sending the Son” (1 John 4:9f.) in Jesus’ incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension (1 Tim. 3:16). It is given testimony through and for the sake of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives (1 Cor. 2:7 ff.), “sending us” in the same movement as the Father sends His Son (John 20:21f.), so that, in the end, God might be glorified (cf. Rom. 16:27). This is our mission, located in God’s own life.

  4. We confess, hold and bear witness that this sending, the work of the Holy Spirit in particular, is accomplished not through drawing us into new truths, but by binding us more fully to Scripture’s remembered word, especially the living testimony to Jesus’ very words, rooted in the Old Testament’s promises and meanings. Thus, the mystery of God’s own life as Trinity lived in mission is shared with the world through his revealed word and human lives that listen and live within the revelation of God’s own being in Christ (compare John 2:22; John 14:24ff; Acts 11:16).

  5. We confess, hold and bear witness, in particular therefore, that this trust is given to us in the Holy Scripture’s received authority: the “Word of God” making known the “mysteries” of God through the prophets and apostles by the Holy Spirit (Col. 1:25ff.; Rom. 16:25f.; Eph. 3:5; Nicene Creed). This Word is made known and rightly apprehended, furthermore, in the Church’s life as it is bound in the unity of love and truth before the eyes of the world (John 17:20–26; Col. 2:1–6), expressed in the common Creeds and Canons of the Christian churches, as they have been led in recognized council across the ages. Within the Anglican Church of which we are a part, this means that Scripture’s meaning is rightly discerned in addition through the theological ordering of our common historic formularies, including the sixteenth and seventeenth century authorized Books of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles which ground the belief and practices of our Communion’s life. “In this way the authorities, which the church needs for her mission, are defined and limited” (Barmen Declaration, Article 1).

  6. We confess, hold and bear witness finally that Scripture’s authority is fruitfully received and fulfills its formative function for the people of the Church when it is read in common, as a whole, coherently and comprehensively, Old and New Testaments together, as a single revelation of God’s mysteries which teaches and builds up the Church in truth and holiness (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19–21; 1 Cor. 10:6).

II. Trustworthy in Obedience and Communion

  1. In light of this trust, we are called by God to two primary acts and attitudes of faithfulness: obedience and communion. The preaching of Jesus Christ is done for the sake “bringing about the obedience of faith” (Rom. 16:26), and to this we submit ourselves, standing firm over against “every wind of doctrine” precisely for the sake of “growing up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together . . . upbuilds itself in love” (Eph. 4:14–16).

  2. We are called because of this to found our communion in Christ on common obedience to God’s word which requires of us not pluriformity of truth and practice, but that we be of one mind and follow the pattern of holiness marked out for us by our Lord and his Apostles (John 17:14–17; Phil. 2:2–5; 1 Pet. 2:21; 2 Pet. 1:20; 1 Tim. 1:15–16).

  3. We are called therefore to oppose assaults on the authority of the Scriptures. We are also called to oppose assaults on the way of life that the Scriptures enjoin (1 Tim. 6:3–6). This opposition comes, not from a divisive spirit, but from the precious vocation to holiness, which leads us away from sin into the clear and obedient participation in God’s own nature (Lev. 11:44; Lev. 20:26; Matt. 5:48: 1 Pet. 1:14–16; 2 Pet. 1:4).

  4. We are called in our day and place, to oppose all those actions of synods, conventions, individual bishops and priests, that contradict the apostolic and the Church’s commonly accepted scriptural teaching on marriage between man and woman as the divinely ordained, holy, and exclusive context of human sexual activity, as the privileged social sacrament of God’s covenant of faithfulness for and figure of human redemption (Hosea 2:16–21; Mark 10:5–9; Eph. 5:29–32; Rev. 19:7–9), and on chastity outside of marriage as a holy and worthy calling (Matt. 19:12; 1 Cor. 7:32). Such contradictions of Christian teaching subvert the communion of our churches within the Anglican Communion and rend relationships within the larger Church. In doing this, they represent an attack on the very mysteries of God, the evangelical trust of which we are stewards.

  5. We are called to confess our profound sorrow for how these actions have broken ecumenical trust within the wider household of faith. We are further called, then, to oppose all such actions that subvert the truth of the gospel and the unity of the church that flows from it. We recognize that this opposition will involve a struggle to discern true witness and in this struggle we seek to be governed by charity and the desire to build up and not tear down others in the integrity of their faith (1 Cor. 8:1, 9; 2 Cor. 13:10; 1 Tim. 6:11; Titus 3:9ff). For we uphold the truth that all persons are called in baptism to a life that is daily renewed in the image of Christ Jesus according to his word (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29; Col. 3:5–17). We seek always to witness to this universal gift and challenge together.

  6. We are called to preach, convince, rebuke, exhort and teach in accordance with the Scripture’s truth that draws us together in Christ (2 Tim. 4:2).

  7. Our calling to obedience in particular commits us to follow the apostolic injunction to direct ourselves to the knowledge and commending of Holy Scripture (Acts 20:27; 1 Tim. 4:13; Col. 3:16), devoting ourselves to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42). To that end,

    1. We commit ourselves to the study of Scripture, through serious, regular, and responsible discipline and scholarship;

    2. We commit ourselves to the clear explication of Scripture’s full and perspicuous meaning as apprehended within the common witness of the Church, in our preaching, writing, and witness;

    3. We commit ourselves to an obedient following of Scripture through disciplined habits of prayer, zeal to maintain the unity of the body in the bond of peace, a common life conformed to the pattern of our Lord’s, and through humble listening, conforming, and mutual correction according to the teaching of Holy Scripture;

    4. We commit ourselves to teaching the people and leaders of the Church through word and example the truths of Scripture’s mysteries through disciplined and accountable means of Christian and priestly formation.

  8. Our calling to communion in Christ in particular leads us to a commitment to engage, be formed by, contribute to, and promote the “proper working” of the “knitted joints” of Christ’s Body within the church in which we are placed by God:

    1. We commit ourselves to the primary organ of stewardship within the Church of Christ, that is, an episcopate rooted in holiness, knowledge of Scripture, and apostolic faithfulness (Titus 1:7–9);

    2. We commit ourselves to the organs of communion within the Anglican Fellowship of churches, respecting, living within, and holding accountable the representative bodies of our larger church, especially in its faithful witness to the Gospel of which she is a steward;

    3. We commit ourselves to conciliar discussion and decision-making, and reject the patterns of autonomous and sectarian self-rule that characterize the present age;

    4. We commit ourselves to the virtues of communion (cf. Rom. 12:9–21; Eph. 4:25–5:21), which embody the revealed truth of the Scripture’s witness to the very being of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the pattern of love itself;

    5. We commit ourselves to the work of healing schism and estrangement within the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 1:10), through truth-telling, testing of the faith, repentance, humility, apostolic authority, and building each other up (2 Cor. 13:5–11).

    6. We commit ourselves to the support of communion, through our ministry, mission, and the sharing of our goods and resources in partnership with those to whom God has joined us in the Body of His Son.

III. Repentance, Reconciliation, Reform, Renewal

  1. We know that the trust we have been given is ours to guard even in the face of divine judgment, and even through the midst of suffering (2 Tim. 1:11f). Our faithfulness as stewards is tied both to our own penitence and accepted affliction, “rejoicing in the sharing of Christ’s sufferings” and in the testing and justice of God, “entrusting our souls to a faithful Creator” (1 Pet. 4:12–19). Our confession and calling therefore lead us to repent (Mark 1:14–15; Luke 24:45–47); to seek reconciliation among ourselves, in the church and in the world (2 Cor. 5:18–20); to reform our lives and the life of God’s Church (Matt. 5:17–20); and to renew the church where God has placed us (Rom. 12:1–2), and to do this:

    1. through disciplined patterns, held in common among us and our leaders, of prayer, bible study, and the humility of constant repentance, gentleness, and suffering (James 4:6ff; 1 Tim. 1:15; Gal. 6:14). These patterns will be founded on a rule of life, of prayer, fasting and almsgiving as outlined by our Lord (Matt. 6:1–21) including but not limited to: the Daily Office using the Lectionary, Daily study of Scripture, weekly Communion, submission to appropriate spiritual authorities, regular fasting, and sacrificial giving.

    2. through the mission of sharing the glorious Gospel of God and teaching obedience to its revelation among all peoples (Matt. 28:18–20), that “every family in heaven and on earth” might come to know and be transformed by the “fullness” of Christ’s love (Eph. 3:14–19);

    3. through the formation of believers in the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:12–4:6), in knowledge and sacrificial service;

    4. through a unity of belief and practice that serves to expose the individualism and congregationalism that is now regnant within the Church at large and that denies the Name of Jesus (1 Cor. 1:10; Phil. 2:1–11);

    5. through our seeking of the oneness of Christ’s body for which our Lord prayed, working to overcome the fractures past and present that have marred the Church of Christ “One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic” (Nicene Creed).

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