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Midweek Musings: The Logic of Separation

 

Midweek Musings: The Logic of Separatism

The ruinous exterior of the abandoned former First United Methodist Church, Terral, OK.
Photo by the author.


    When I was a teenager, fresh off of a failure in high school biology, I tried to convince my East Texas-raised father that my failing grade was merely a clerical error. He cut straight through my excuses, uttering words I now recognize as a profound theological warning: “Don’t give me a jar of piss and then tell me it’s Memaw’s sweet tea.”

    I was asking him to believe the unbelievable—that my waste products were actually the delicious, traditional beverage of my late grandmother.

    More than a decade later, I find myself as a self-proclaimed Prayer Book Christian, looking at the Anglican Communion and realizing that this fundamental deception is exactly what is being offered to evangelicals today.

    The harsh truth is this: The Anglican Communion is on fire. And it is long past time for evangelicals—i.e., those concerned with the "gospel" and in the theological sense of the word—to forsake the flailing institutions tied to the Church of England.


The Failure of the Visible Church

    The "receipts" for this failure are extensive.

    On the progressive side, the Anglican Communion has been rocked by incompetence and moral failure. We have seen the historic “first among equals” resign in disgrace following a bombshell investigation detailing horrific abuse of children and teens that was intentionally covered up. Other bishops and priests have been implicated in the ongoing scandal.

    In the United States, the Episcopal Church, which boasts some bishops who doubt the Almighty even exists, has long abandoned the creed it professes every Sunday, opting instead for a "Hippie theology" where being "a little bit heretical" is perfectly fine as long as people are “together in love.” 

    The consequences of such theological incoherence and simpering peacenikery are visible: the Episcopal Church is losing 40,000 members annually, and the modal age of a parishioner is 69.

    But my conservative kinsmen must not pile on, for the alternative is not much better. Arguably, it is worse. 

    The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), founded by weary conservatives circumventing traditional episcopal oversight (who can blame them?), imploded within less than a decade of its inception. 

    The #ACNAToo crisis flooded the internet with horrific details of sexual, physical, emotional, and spiritual abuses. 

    One particularly repulsive detail I cannot forget involves a lay minister using leftover consecrated Communion wine—believed by some Anglicans to be the true blood of Christ—to intoxicate his victims before sexually assaulting them.

    Beyond the abuse crisis, the ACNA is continually savaged by internal division, torn over its "dual integrities" position concerning women in the diaconate and priesthood. It invites contempt and scorn by its hypocrisy: bishops describe celibate same-sex attracted Christians as a "deadly virus" that must be "radically expunged." All the while, it licenses professional provocateurs and unqualified clerics.

    In the face of these intractable facts, we are told to focus on the hypothetical faithful priest serving his tiny flock of five little old church ladies—a counter-narrative meant to distract us from a five-alarm fire. 

    We are asked, yet again, to be content to drink a giant jar of waste and call it sweet tea. Enough is enough.


A Theological Mandate for Exodus

    The historical lesson of the Anglican evangelical movement is clear. When John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones debated the nature of the church in 1966, Stott argued that the faithful “remnant” should remain within the visibly mixed institution, clinging to the Reformation formularies (like the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer) as the legal "title deeds" to the Church of England. He sought "Cooperation without Compromise."

    But as history quickly demonstrated, that path swiftly degraded into “Cooperation with Compromise,” because their efforts became focused on the structures and synods of the Church of England, emphasizing Anglicanism more than evangelicalism.

    This is where the theology of the church becomes vital and instructive for us today. We must turn to "first principles" to understand what the Church truly is.

    As the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles affirm in Article XIX, the visible Church is defined not by its historic structures or subordination to a particular See, but by its function: "The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered."

    The Church is defined by its fidelity to Word and Sacrament. Our primary union is spiritual, in Christ, and is made visible where these marks are present. This conviction is the very heart of the Reformation.

    Following Lloyd-Jones, we must understand that the New Testament church (the Ecclesia, the "called out") is, fundamentally, a gathering of living people, not merely propositions written on paper. 

    We must avoid the danger of defining a church by a paper confession—like the 39 Articles—when the people and the preachers do not actually believe those confessions, rendering the document, in MLJ's words, "a living lie."

    Furthermore, the broader Reformed consensus from sources like the Westminster Confession and Calvin reminds us that the true church requires a third mark for its safety and preservation: Discipline.

    Calvin considered Discipline the "sinews of the church," binding the body together and restraining those who rage against Christ's doctrine. The utter failure of discipline in many current ecclesiastical institutions further proves their terminal decline—the "sickness unto death" (John 11:4).

    The basis of unity for the true Church must be true faith in Jesus Christ as presented in Holy Scripture (the normative source) and preserved through the Church's common confession throughout the ages (the consultative source). 

    A communion of faith logically precedes communion through relationship and partnership. When MLJ spoke on this issue, he argued that to remain visibly united to those who deny the gospel essentials while remaining visibly separated from fellow evangelicals constituted "the sin of schism."

    The church that gave the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible, and the great evangelical revivals sparked by John Wesley is now, officially and irrevocably, dead in the Western world.

    The only coherent response, biblically, theologically, and historically, is separation. 


"Wherefore come out from among them,  

and be ye separate, saith the Lord,

and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

—2 Corinthians 6:17 KJV

 

    Prayer Book Christianity and the Anglican heritage will live on, but they must find life outside the very institutions where they were first given life.

    We must leave the failing structures behind and enter independent and voluntary ecclesial and sacramental associations, free from the scourges of abuse, theological incoherence, infighting, and missional drift.


    The builder’s God, materials his Elect;
    His Son’s the rock on which it is erect;
    The Scripture is his rule, plummet, or line,
    Which gives proportion to this house divine,
    His working-tools his ordinances are,
    By them he doth his stones and timber square,
    Affections knit in love, the couplings are;
    Good doctrine like to mortar doth cement
    The whole together, schism to prevent:
    His compass, his decree; his hand’s the Spirit
    By which he frames, what he means to inherit,
    A holy temple, which shall far excel
    That very place, where now the angels dwell.

    —John Bunyan, The Nature, Excellency, and Government of the House of God



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