The Revisionist Treatment of Marriage in the Canons of the new Anglican Church in North America

A Critique of ACNA’s Initial Report of the Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force

By The Rev' d Gavin Dunbar, President, Prayer Book Society, USA

It is no surprise that the newly-formed Anglican Church of North America has begun already to consider the question of worship. And the “Initial Report” of the “Prayer Book and Common Liturgy Task Force” is now in circulation. Its task was to “develop a ‘theological lens’” through which a “thoroughly orthodox prayer book” might be composed. Although not without some strengths, in that it sets forth some of the chief questions to be considered, as a whole the Report is disappointing: both confused and confusing, polemical, and sometimes contradictory.

For a start, the document is too complex (a much simpler numbering system would make references easier) and somewhat disorganized. There is a confusing mismatch between what the preamble promises and what the body of the report delivers.

Such confusion suggests hasty or careless compilation, and at times the Initial Report sounds like the minutes of a disjointed, unfinished, and inconclusive discussion, rather than a coherently worked out statement. This would be reasonable, if the Initial Report confined itself to raising questions for study and discussion. In some places it does so, but in others it reaches premature conclusions, based on highly tendentious and polemical argumentation. And much of the discussion is sketchy and unfocussed.

The criticisms of the Report that are offered below may seem rather blunt, but there is no intention to pick a fight. The questions which the Report raises are too important to be reduced to point-scoring and polemic, and I apologize to its authors if my own comments seem harsh. It is my hope that the criticisms will spur and perhaps assist the Task Force in its further work.

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Prayer Book Society Mission Trip to Africa

On August 3rd, two Prayer Book Society Board members, the Rev'd Jason Patterson and the Rev'd Edward Rix, will begin a 2 week trip to East Africa. They have been invited by the Right Reverend Jackton Lugumira (Diocese of Lweru, Tanzania), the Right Reverend Sadock Makaya (Diocese of Tabora, Tanzania), the Right Reverend David Njovu(Diocese of Lusaka, Zambia), and the Right Reverend Patrick Klayagonza (Diocese of Ruwenzori, Uganda) to conduct a series of seminars and workshops to benefit local Anglican clergy and laity.

The Prayer Book Society feels that invitations like these are excellent opportunities to further the mission of the society, which exists to serve Christ and his Church by means of explaining, defending and commending the theology and use of the historic Book of Common Prayer (in its English 1662, American 1928 and Canadian1962 editions).

The seminars, to be conducted in 4 dioceses and 3 countries, will address the history of the Book of Common Prayer, and the theology upon which it rests and in which it shapes the worshipper. In each location, the contents of the seminars will be in response to specific requests by our hosts.

The Tanzanian bishops have expressed a special interest in the BCP's theology of marriage and family, which is rooted in the Christian understanding of what it means for man to have been made in the image and likeness of God. We are hopeful that our time in Tanzania will lay the groundwork for further collaboration between the PBSUSA and the Tanzanian house of bishops who have expressed an interest in adopting a new Swahili translation of the historic Book of Common Prayer for use in their Province.

In Zambia, the Bishop of Lusaka has specifically asked for lectures on the subject of the ordination of women. In particular we are to explain and defend our conviction that both the Scriptures and tradition allow for men only to be admitted to the three-fold order of deacon, priest and bishop. In keeping with the bishop's request, we will focus almost exclusively on the reasons for men only to be ordained deacons. (Fr. Patterson has written an essay on this topic, reacting against his own jurisdiction's (Anglican Mission in America) decision to allow for the ordination of women deacons. His essay is available as a free pdf download).

Fr. Rix will continue from Lusaka to Fort Portal, Uganda and conduct a clergy workshop on the use of the BCP (1662). Through the generosity of our Sister Society in England, the Cathedral congregation in that city recently received 700 copies of the BCP (1662).

Please remember to keep this trip in your prayers.

Frs. Patterson and Rix will have limited access to the internet during their travels, but as opportunity presents itself, they hope to post updates on their activities via our Blog.

If you would like to make a contribution to defray the costs of this most important missionary endeavor, please send your check or money order to the Prayer Book Society, P.O. Box 35220, Philadelphia, PA. 19128-0220, noting in the memo that it is for "African Missionary trip."

The Memorial Service for the Rev'd Dr Peter Toon

On Friday, July 24th the Order for Holy Communion for the Repose of the Soul of the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon was celebrated at the Parish of All Saints' Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Dr. Toon's widow, Vita, and doughter Deborah attended, as did many family, students, colleagues, friends and admirers.

The Rev. Graham Eglington preached the homily, which is available at the link below as an mp3 file, as is the anthem sung at the service; the order of worship is available as a pdf file.

Homily by the Rev. Graham Eglington (29 min, mp3, 6.6 mb)
Blessed be the God and Father (S.S. Wesley, 8 min, mp3, 1.9 mb)
Order of Worship (pdf, 0.7 mb)

A Sermon for the Sunday after the Ascension of Our Lord

By Gavin Dunbar, President of the PBS

This Sunday finds us on the cusp between two of the major festivals of the Christian year: the feast of the Lord’s Ascension into heaven, this Thursday past, and next Sunday’s feast of Whitsunday or Pentecost, the feast of the Spirit’s coming on the Church, and the first publishing of the gospel. So this Sunday we give thanks for the Lord’s going up in glory, and we pray for the Spirit’s coming down to comfort us. For his ascension marks not only the end of his visible appearances upon earth and the completion of his mission; it also demonstrates the completeness and fullness of what he accomplished, the return of man to God.

In Christ, the human nature which he has assumed from Mary, has not only been rescued from sin and death, thus recovering all that was lost under divine judgment; it also gains what it never possessed before, it advances into heaven, into communion and fellowship with the Father in glory. Nothing else remains to be done, his triumph is complete: it only remains for it be made universally manifest. As Saint Peter remarks in today’s lesson, “the end of all things is at hand”. And so the angels tell the apostles, who are gaping at the sky, “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

It is important that we grasp the paradox here: on the one hand, as the ascension indicates, all things are accomplished in Christ: in him, man’s return to God is complete; indeed, in him, we are already in heaven. On the other hand, however, all things have yet to be accomplished in us. We are still in the world, still being reconciled to the Father, we have yet to complete our return to God in Christ. So in this interim between Christ’s ascension and his coming again in glory, he has sent us the Spirit, as the spoils of his total victory, and in anticipation of the coming kingdom.

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Peter Toon, 1939 – 2009

Tributes to and remembrances of Dr Toon will be found on the PBS blog site.

Peter, son of Thomas Arthur and Hilda Toon, was born in Yorkshire, England, soon after the start of World War II. After him came Paul, David and Christine. He attended Hemsworth Grammar School, Cliff College, Sheffield; King’s College, London; The University of Liverpool and Christ Church, Oxford University. He held three Masters’ degrees and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford.

He was married to Vita for forty-seven years and they have one daughter, Deborah, who lives in California, and is married to Michael, a Naval Officer. Vita is a graduate of London and Oxford Universities, while Deborah is a graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Texas at Austin.

After teaching religious studies in a College, Peter was ordained in the Church of England in 1973 in the Diocese of Liverpool. Since then he has served in parishes in both England and the U.S.A. and also as a theologian in theological houses in the U.S.A. and in England. In the last decade of his working life, he served the Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A. as its President and C E O.

Peter wrote and had published over twenty-five books, together with booklets, essays, articles. He also wrote many opinion pieces for the web. He edited Home Words in England from 1985-2001 and The Mandate in the U.S.A. from 1995 to 2008. He was much committed to The Anglican Way as Reformed Catholicism, and to the importance of the historical Formularies—Articles, BCP and Ordinal. The woes of the Anglican Communion in recent days much distressed him.

As he died on Saturday, April 25th in San Diego, and as virtually all Vita’s and Peter’s relatives and friends are thousands of miles away, there was no public funeral in California, only a service for the family based on the classic BCP. It is hoped that his remains may be interred in the family grave in Yorkshire.

The address for Vita and Deborah in CA is: 2522 Boundary Street, San Diego, CA 92104.

Published Academic Writings of Peter Toon, 1964-2009

Web versions of many of Dr Toon's books may be found at the website Anglican Books Revitalized.

Obituary of Dr Peter Toon

The Death of Dr. Peter Toon
Saturday April 25, 2009

Roberta Bayer, PhD, Editor of the Mandate

Tributes to and remembrances of Dr Toon will be found on the PBS blog site.

Dr. Peter Toon, priest and theologian, passed away on the evening of the feast of St Mark the Evangelist, in San Diego, California, where he and his wife have resided for the last months. He will be sorely missed by all those who love the Anglican Way. Dr. Toon has been, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most vocal and prolific defender of the theology of the Anglican Reformation and the traditional Book of Common Prayer over the last decades. The absence of his voice on so many issues facing the church today will be an irreparable loss. Clarity of mind, depth of knowledge, and vigor of presentation marked his work, making his arguments both distinctive and convincing. An evangelist like St Mark, he was a lion of the faith.

During the last year, Dr. Toon has been suffering from a rare disease called amyloidosis. Diagnosed last spring, he underwent various treatments that were intended to slow the progress of the disease. Sadly, the disease was stronger than the medications, and we have lost him sooner than was hoped.

At the end Dr. Toon was attended by Fr Tony Noble, rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church, San Diego. Over the last weeks they have prayed together with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and his final words to Fr Noble were to the praise of God who he has served and loved so well. In his last hours, Fr Noble prayed with Dr. Toon the commendatory prayer.

O Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons: We humbly commend the soul of this thy servant,our dear brother, into thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator, and most merciful Saviour; most humbly beseeching thee that it may be precious in they sight. Wash it, we pray thee, in the blood of that immaculate Lamb, that was slain to take away the sins of the world; that whatsoever defilements it may have contracted in the midst of this miserable and naughty world, through the lusts of the flesh or the wiles of Satan, being purged and done away, it may be presented pure and without spot before thee. And teach us who survive, in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain our own condition is; and so to number our days, that we may seriously apply our hearts to that holy and heavenly wisdom, whilst we live here, which may in the end bring us to life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, thine only Son our Lord. Amen. May light perpetual shine up on Dr. Toon. May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.

Dr. Roberta Bayer
The Prayer Book Society of the United States of America

The Prayer Book Society will hold a memorial service at All Saints' Episcopal Church, San Diego, California, at a future date.

Obituary of Dr Peter Toon

Alexis de Tocqueville on Liturgical Christianity in America

Roberta Bayer, PhD, Editor of the Mandate

In Democracy in America (1838) the French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville offered insightful and occasionally wry insights into American life. He outlined the key features of the American democratic temper that shaped its religion and politics, and to my mind his observations are still relevant 180 years later. I have excerpted some comments which de Tocqueville makes about American Christianity, noting in particular his comments about the reception of liturgical traditions. In reading them, one may remark that the same features of American religion that were present in the America of his day, can be observed today, its pluralism and pragmatism, the spirit of equality which dominates all religious ideas. Of particular interest to traditional Anglicans are his trenchant comments on the lack of interest in religious 'forms', read liturgy.

On his analysis, the spirit of equality is too powerful, and liturgical forms of worship appear too external and unnecessary, to make sense to a people who think that there is nothing superior to their own immediate judgement as to the truths of the faith, and whose religion is primarily subjective. Consequently, the liturgically minded Christian finds himself something of an oddity.

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A New Shell for the Anglican Way

Peter Toon, President Emeritus of The PBS

Must Anglicans become nominal Congregationalists to survive the crisis of Anglicanism in the West from 2009 onwards—or even mild Presbyterians—in terms of general church government?

Anglicans have done it before in the 1650s and may have to do it again in the next decade if they wish to preserve for the West an authentic form of Anglicanism, which is not severely perverted by innovations based on modern powerful ideologies like rights-monism. In my book, Puritans and Calvinism, I have a long description of The Cromwellian National Church which replaced the Established Episcopal National Church of England and sought to make place for all groups except devout Anglicans, who used The BCP (1559) and lived within its liturgy and devotion. How did these Anglicans survive this imposition and retain their parishes? By not using the BCP as a text to be read aloud but a text to be quoted from memory in an extempore style

Most regrettably most of those called Anglicans today would be unable to do this for (a) they use an assortment of prayer books usually with different doctrines in them; and (b) they have lost the art of learning by heart, of committing the sacred text to memory and do not love our treasured tradition as they ought to.

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WHY RITE ONE MAY BE MORE DANGEROUS THAN RITE TWO

Peter Toon, President Emeritus of The PBS

The use of Rite 1 ought to be avoided by those who do not wish to be drawn into a relatively mild, let alone a strong, form of the revised form of Anglicanism (revisionism) espoused by The Episcopal Church since the 1970s and its chief characteristic in 2009

A Comment
The presence of services in the Episcopal 1976/79 Prayer Book using traditional language was not part of the intention of the Liturgical Commission of that period. The original plan was to abandon the received, historic, American text of 1789-1928 text, and to create a new Prayer Book along the lines of what was seen as the latest and best liturgical principles, and presenting it in contemporary language, rather than the outdated language of the seventeenth century. Thus what came be called 'Rite One services in traditional language form' were a late addition, and they were created through pressure from the Presiding Bishop (under the influence of some influential clergy and laity).

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The Book of Common Prayer as Magisterium

Roberta Bayer, PhD, Editor of The Mandate

The term magisterium comes from the latin magister which is commonly translated as teacher. Magistero, the verb, is the activity of person who holds the office of director or chief. Anglicans have a magisterial set of teachings in the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and the Ordinal, which is the service for ordaining Bishops, Priest, and Deacons. They reflect what one might call mere Christianity, a distillation of the accepted, historical teaching of the Christian church. Implied is the idea that inherited wisdom shaped by scholars steeped in God's Holy Word, and the example of the blood of the holy martyrs, was a surer foundation for the English church than the will of any particular magister, be he Pope or King.

Loss of confidence in Popes and Kings was common in the era in which Anglicanism was born. Anglican reformers opposed the actions of the more radical reformers on the continent who were driving the city states of Europe into political upheaval out of opposition to the corruption of the church in Rome. Some of the most extreme fell into thinking that subjective judgement, untutored opinion, was all in all.

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Becoming an Anglican Christian! Is this realistic as a convert in 2009?

The Rev’d Dr Peter Toon, President Emeritus of the Prayer Book Society

Let us imagine a small family where through one or another means (e.g., reading about Anglicanism, watching a DVD of Anglican Service, or hearing Anglican choral music) the parents have decided to become Anglican Christians, rather than say continue as members of a lively, independent Bible Church.

Let us also imagine that they are free to travel around in their search for the Anglican Way in reality to the local congregations of any of the current brands or expressions of Anglican existence in the U.S.A. Thus the whole spectrum of current Anglican Life in the U.S.A. is open to them for preliminary inspection.

Now let those of us who have been Anglican for a while, and have taken notice of this mainline “brand” in the U.S.A., recall what the options in this spectrum of Anglican expressions are and can be.

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1928 BCP Ordo Calendar

Whithorn Press publishes 1928 BCP Ordo Calendars in order to support St. Andrew's Academy, an Anglican Parochial Prep School.

The calendars are full color with a new picture for each month and are designed to be used as a family calendar, helping the family to track the Church year more effectively. The theme of the pictures/photos change each year, but usually are architectural. This year the theme is Italian Churches.

Visit the website or write to Whithorn Press: 3814 Hwy A-13, Lake Almanor, CA 96137 or email lsalvatore at whithornpress.com

Deacons and the Lord’s Supper

By Gavin Dunbar, President, Prayer Book Society of the U. S. A.

Fr Gavin Dunbar was elected in September as President of the Prayer Book Society, to succeed the Rev’d Peter Toon, who stepped down for health reasons. He is rector of Saint John’s Church in Savannah, Georgia.

“It is evident unto all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church – Bishops, Priests, and Deacons”. Thus the preface to the Ordinal: it does not go on to spell out the precise nature of the distinction between these orders, and historically the precise nature of those distinctions has not always been clear. In the Middle Ages, for instance, following the teaching of St. Jerome (who seems to have been arguing against pretensions of powerful contemporary archdeacons), the tendency was to regard the office of bishop and of priest (presbyter) as essentially the same. Bishops were regarded by many not as a distinct order but as senior presbyters entrusted with certain functions – supervision, ordination, and confirmation. In this account, the threefold Order was that of priest, deacon and sub-deacon. The English Reformers returned to the ancient and scriptural tradition, when they affirmed a threefold Order of Bishop, Priest, and Deacon. And after some initial discussion, they continued to reserve the administration of the Lord’s Supper to bishops and priests, while permitting deacons to assist in the liturgy, to preach when permitted and baptize in the absence of a priest. It is this historic distinction which the Diocese of Sydney (Australia) has now decided to set aside, by permitting deacons to administer (celebrate and consecrate) the Lord’s Supper in the absence of a priest.

The churchmen of the diocese of Sydney are muscular Evangelicals with doctrinal backbones, who have a record of standing fast amid the winds of doctrine blowing through the Anglican Church of Australia as elsewhere in the Anglican world. In this matter their decision has not been precipitate. They have long meditated, discussed, and waited before taking action on it. Moreover, the debate in Sydney is not well known elsewhere in the Anglican world. (News reports of it in the North American church press have often been poorly disguised liberal polemic against Sydney’s resistance to the ordination of women as priests.) A recent book just published in Australia - The Lords Supper in Human Hands – promises to be a helpful summary of the arguments which have led the diocese to take this action. From what we know of the Diocese of Sydney, we may expect that the argument to be based on evangelistic zeal, pastoral concern, deeply engagement with the teaching of Scripture and the Protestant reformers of the 16th century. For these reasons alone, their decision deserves careful and respectful consideration from fellow-Anglicans.

Nonetheless, the decision raises some troubling questions; objections which appear insuperable.

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The Anglican Marketplace

The Prayer Book Society sponsors The Anglican Marketplace, an online clearing house for items of interest for the traditional Anglican. We pray that this web site will help you deepen your faith by offering items for use in your personal devotional life as well as in the liturgical life of your parish. The site offers a wide array of traditional Anglican books, music, and liturgical items.

The Anglican Marketplace stocks many of the items found on the site and they can be purchased directly through our online store. Other items are available through a variety of vendors. We offer this information as a service, but are not responsible for any difficulties regarding price, availability, ordering or shipping with any of these vendors.

There is also contact information on the site for your suggestions for any additional items that should be made available.

The web address is: http://www.AnglicanMarketplace.com