“Don’t give me a jar of piss and then tell me it’s Memaw’s sweet tea.”
My East Texas-raised father uttered these words when I tried to explain away my failing grade in freshman high school biology.
I told him I just needed more time to submit my missing assignments. I had been faithful in going to class, I insisted.
He would have none of it.
David Bumgardner
“I don’t care about politics, your deadlines, or what you say you will do or have done. I care about what I see in the paper in front of me.”
I did not have a counterargument, for I knew deep down he was right.
Instead of tending to my homework, I had been playing video games, wasting time on Twitter (which had become the place to be in 2013-2014), and otherwise being a standard responsibility-loathing teenager.
I was asking him to believe the unbelievable. I was asking him to believe my lack of effort was an impeccable work ethic. I was asking him to accept that my waste products were actually the delicious and traditional beverage of my late grandmother.
More than a decade later, I find myself as a Prayer Book Christian in my father’s shoes.
There is no easy way to put this. The Anglican Communion is on fire.
The receipts
In November, the historic “first among equals” of bishops in the Anglican Communion resigned in disgrace following the release of a bombshell independent investigation detailing the horrific physical and sexual abuse of children and teens at church camps, which the former archbishop failed to report to authorities.
“The Anglican Communion is on fire.”
Eight priests and another bishop have been implicated in the scandal, and disciplinary proceedings are forthcoming.
In neighboring Scotland, the Anglican province there continues to derail over a bullying controversy surrounding its first female bishop, with countering accusations of harassment creating a cacophony of claims.
In the United States, the Episcopal Church has seen multiple bishops accused of various forms of misconduct, all while the previous presiding officers overseeing the probes will now have to apologize to another previously suspended bishop over allegations of domestic abuse because the claims and investigations were not appropriately handled.
Such controversy doubtlessly grieves the heart of God, although it’s also worth noting that not every bishop in the Episcopal Church has believed the Almighty even exists. Such is to be expected of an ecclesial body that long has abandoned the creed it professes in worship every Sunday, opting instead for a Hippie theology that would make Norman Greenbaum seem like a conservative, because to “be maybe a little bit heretical” is perfectly fine as long as people are “together in love.”
With such incompetence and theological incoherence, is it any wonder that the Episcopal Church is losing 40,000 members a year and that the modal age of a parishioner is 69?
But wait, there’s more
But lest my conservative kinsmen are tempted to pile on, I have a word of rebuke even stronger.
The Anglican Church in North America was the result of fed-up parishioners, disenfranchised clergy and wearied conservatives (like myself) who grew so tired of progressive talking points replacing homilies and unqualified clergy being given charge of parishes that they circumvented traditional processes of episcopal oversight to seek guidance and a blessing from the Global South to launch their own Anglican province.
At its founding, the project was invigorated by an influx of youth from historic evangelical institutions such as Wheaton College. It was even “cool” to be Anglican/Episcopal or at least Anglican/Episcopal adjacent for a while. Popular Christian folk and worship artists like Fernando Ortega, Josh Garrels, Andrew Peterson, and others had all “walked the Canterbury Trail.” There were boasts that Anglicans would “save evangelicalism.” Even the late Pope Francis sent a greeting to the convocation of the ACNA’s consecration of one of their former archbishops.
“It would take less than a decade from the date of that greeting for things to implode.”
It would take less than a decade from the date of that greeting for things to implode.
First, a terrible abuse crisis erupted, with stories recounting horrific details of sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual abuses flooding the internet. On the heels of the #MeToo movement, #ACNAToo was born.
One detail from that horrible scandal that continues to boil my blood was that a lay minister at a parish not far from Wheaton College used leftover consecrated Communion wine (and, in Anglican belief, the true blood of Christ, although perspectives differ on how exactly this is the case) to intoxicate his victims before sexually assaulting them.
The response to all these revelations? Flailing and skepticism and lament from survivors.
Second, the ACNA soon found itself in the crossfire of a despicable and ungodly comment from one of their bishops from the African continent who described LGBTQ people as a “deadly virus” which must be “radically expunged and excised” — comments that drew condemnation from the then-Archbishop of Canterbury in 2021.
Third and finally, the ACNA has, since its inception, been savaged by division on the question of women serving in the diaconate and priesthood because of its “dual integrities” position. Egalitarians are displeased at the lack of full equality, and complementarians are furious over what they see as an inroad to theological liberalism.
Tensions were not eased when a renegade priest from the UK thought it would be a good idea to publicly criticize the ACNA for even allowing women to serve as deacons and priests in the first place at a conference, although he had been tasked with addressing a different topic. (As an aside, the same priest has faced criticism not just for his culture war and political activities, but for his deeply Romanist sympathies, which, until the last century and a half, have been deeply repugnant to Anglicans.)
Indeed, just weeks ago, Calvin Robinson was defrocked by yet another breakaway Anglican group for his deliberate, conscious and provocative use of a gesture strikingly similar to a Nazi salute in a nod to Elon Musk (among many other reasons listed by his bishop).
As if the ACNA hadn’t been punished enough by its own abuse crises and foolish choices, one of its bishops decided just this week to grant the disgraced cleric a ministry license, drawing a statement “of concern” from the current Archbishop. Suppose the ACNA’s college of bishops revokes the license. In that case, the professional provocateur will make himself a martyr. At the same time, if they do nothing, the risk of countless clergy and laypeople deciding they have had enough with the ACNA will be palpable.
All the while, the oft-proclaimed counter-narrative of the hypothetical parish priest or small church pastor faithfully serving his small flock of five little old church ladies is supposed to draw our attention away from a five-alarm fire. Things may be bad, but what about Father Bill and the Trinity/Christ/Redeemer/Apostles’/St. ___________ Anglican/Episcopal Church?
Or, to cut to the heart of the matter: Why can’t you be content to drink a giant jar of piss and call it Granny’s sweet tea?
Enough is enough.
Change is needed
The church that gave us the Book of Common Prayer — with its unforgettable phrases like “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and “’til death do us part” — the church that gave us the King James Bible, the Coverdale Psalter, the soaring hymnody of Charles Wesley and Isaac Watts, and the evangelical revivals sparked by one of its own clerics, John Wesley, is now, officially and irrevocably, dead in the Western world.
Indeed, leaders from the Majority World already have said as much.
With tremendous grief in my heart, I must now issue the same exhortation that was famously uttered by Martyn Lloyd-Jones nearly 60 years ago to the chagrin of one of my heroes, the late Anglican evangelical John Stott:
It is time for Western evangelicals (and I mean that in the theological sense of the word) to forsake the flailing denominations with ties to the Church of England and enter independent and voluntary ecclesial and sacramental associations free from the scourges of abuse, theological incoherence, infighting and missional drift.
Prayer Book Christianity and the Anglican heritage will live on, but no longer in the very institutions where they were first given life.
“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
David Bumgardner is a writer, theologian and educator living in Columbus, Ohio. He is a former BNG Clemons Fellow and a graduate of Texas Baptist College at Southwestern Seminary. He is a licensed commissioned pastor and holds an evangelism license through the Anglican Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Diocese of Boga, and Missio Mosaic, an ecumenical missional society and religious order. He is awaiting the conferral of his master of arts in practical theology degree from Winebrenner Theological Seminary. He is currently studying for a master of pastoral care and counseling degree at Ohio Christian University and conducting postgraduate theological research (MTh) at the University of Aberdeen in New Testament and Early Christianity.