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Vol I No. 9

What's in a Name?

by Peter D. Robinson

I have a liking for names that describe what is in the packet, and the old name for the Anglican franchise in the USA was a prime example of that ‘Protestant Episcopal.’ Before the Tractarians and the Liberals came along and mucked with it you had a denominational name that defined what it was in two words – ‘Protestant’ and ‘Episcopal.’

Even without the Thirty-nine Articles there is no mistaking the theological orientation of the 1789 Prayer Book. Unlike the more ambiguous service of 1928, the 1789 service retains the flood prayer and the exhortations which make it quite clear that Baptism is the rite by which we are incorporated into the Covenant of Grace. This is one of the central tenets of the old Reformed theology with the analogy being drawn between the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and Baptism, as well as the deliverance of Noah and his family. The Communion Service is equally in the moderate Reformed camp with ‘thy Word and Holy Spirit’ making the faithful communicant a spiritual partaker of Christ’s Body and Blood – a point heavily underscored by the old Communion exhortation. The text also retains Cranmer emphasis on justification by grace through faith which he shared with the other Reformers. In the early days of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the sort of exclusivist claims that were later to be heard from the Tractarians were a distinct rarity, and figures such as William White, the first and fourth Presiding Bishop, worked happily with their Lutheran and Reformed neighbors on projects of common Evangelical interest.

The second descriptive – ‘Episcopal’ – describes the form of government – by bishops. Actually, as the PECUSA was originally constituted it might be better defined as ‘possessing bishops’ as the constitution of the Church places it at several removes from the sort of monarchial episcopacy that has become the justification for many an ecclesiastical petty tyranny. The constitutional spirit is well to the fore in the way in which Episcopal governance was defined in the 1789 Constitution. In the General Convention, the bishops were a chamber of Review with a limited veto, whilst in their dioceses they were as much constitutional officer as successor of the Apostles. In truth, the polity of the Church was best described as ‘Synodical – with bishops.’

I do not think that Anglicanism in America has been improved by straying from this simple self-understanding. Anglicans today seem to struggle with defining who and what they are – reformed Catholics, Anglo-Catholics, three streamers, Anglo-Calvinist – I have run into all of them. Perhaps there is something to be said for the simplicity of Protestant Episcopal after all!