For years, whenever the subject of the reunion of the churches has come up, the discussion has invariably been terminated with the appeal, "Wait for Lambeth." The reason for this is that the Anglican family of churches, which as a result of emigration and evangelization now extends to the ends of the earth, occupies a unique position in relation to the various groupings of divided Christendom.
At the one extreme is Rome, claiming to be the true church and appealing to all separated Christians to return and join herin combating the forces of godlessness, and seeking to establish a Christian order among the nations.
At the other extreme are the churches which broke away from Rome in the Reformation movement. They too are conscious that the church should be "one" in its witness to an increasingly secularized world, but they are equally convinced that unity would be valueless and even harmful if it were achieved at the expense of truth. These churches, therefore, are in no way disposed to yield to the appeals of Rome, which they believe to have departed in many ways from the faith and to be flagrantly arrogant in its claim to be the one true church.
They are convinced, moreover, that if that church were to secure again the paramount power that it had in the Middle Ages, it would set up a spiritual totalitarianism as far removed from the kingdom of God as the godless totalitarianism which it regards as the world's spiritual enemy number one.
In between Rome and the Free churches stands the Anglican Communion. It is not a "separated" church like the Free churches, as it claims to trace its ministry back by visible "apostolic succession" to the first apostles. Yet at the same time it claims also to be "reformed," in the sense that it has purged itself of the errors which led Rome into grievous apostasy.
In actual fact the Anglican Church is not one church but two : the right wing, or Anglo-Catholic section, clinging to many papal errors and hankering for reunion with the "mother church"; and the left wing, holding firmly to the great truths emphasized in the Reformation movement, and which would fain join hands with the Free churches in the faithful proclamation of the pure gospel of Christ.
For this reason successive Lambeth conferences have been followed with deep interest and concern—on the one hand by Rome for any signs of "repentance" and disposition to return to the "mother church"; and on the other hand by the Free churches for indications of resolute adherence to the great Protestant principles of the Word of God as the supreme rule of life, justification by faith, and direct access of the believer to the sanctifying grace of God.
Lambeth "on the Spot"
The 1948 Lambeth Conference was recognized as likely to be a decisive one, because in the interval since the 1930 Lambeth Conference one regional group of Anglicans (in South India) had, after protracted negotiations, actually consummated a union with the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches in the same region, associating one million Christians of these confessions in a united Church of South India.
Among the Free churches this union had been hailed as an indication that the Anglican Church was moving toward an uniquivocal evangelical position. It was hoped that Lambeth, 1948, would formally establish intercommunion with the Church of South India and pave the way for reunion in the homelands.
Within the Anglican Church, however, the Ang-lo-Catholic party viewed the South Indian union with alarm and were determined that Lambeth should not extend intercommun ion to it. If their urgings prevailed, it would reveal that the Lambeth fathers were more anxious about reunion with the Catholic churches of Rome and the Orthodox East than with the Protestant churches of Christendom.
After five weeks of private discussions, in July and August, 1948, following the spectacular opening services in Canterbury Cathedral and St. Paul's Cathedral, London, the 329 bishops at Lambeth published their findings on a wide variety of subjects. In a closely printed report of 120 pages many important things are said upon such diverse subjects as Communism, the relation of church to state, gambling, marriage, baptism, and confirmation. But here we must confine ourselves to the subject of widest interest upon which Lambeth deliberated—that is, church unity. On this matter its most momentous decision was that there can at present be no intercommunion between the Anglican communion and the Church of South India.
A Catholic Decision
The reason given for the refusal is stated to be that "we have never yet entered into full communion with any church which does not possess a fully unified ministry, episcopally ordained," which means to say that this great family of churches has decided that at all costs it must safeguard its Catholic connections, even if this means widening the gap between itself and the Protestant section of the Christian church.
It means also that no plans for reunion with any of the Free churches will henceforth be considered unless the negotiating churches are prepared to become Catholic, and re-enter the episcopal system which links the Anglican Church with the Orthodox East and Rome.
That this is a true deduction from Lambeth's attitude on South India is borne out by the fact that while administering this rebuff to the South India Church, Lambeth evidences the greatest satisfaction in the progress toward intercommunion with other Catholic churches and an eagerness for further approaches.
It records its "particular pleasure" that intercommunion has been established with the old Catholic churches on the Continent, whi'ch in doctrine are unreformed and differ from Rome only in their refusal to accept the supremacy of the pope. It recommends that "a new joint commission be set up with a view to continuing" discussions with the Eastern Orthodox churches, and it declares that if there is "elucidation from the Roman Catholic side" on the possibilities of cooperation, "no effort will be wanting on the side of members of the Anglican Communion."
No Longer a Protestant Church
If the things that Lambeth has said indicate clearly its future spiritual orientation, the things which it does not say are no less significant. It has been noted that nowhere in the Lambeth report is the Anglican Church stated to be a Protestant church. One paragraph of the encyclical letter, in fact, clearly implies that it is not Protestant, for it says, "We feel more and more keenly the rift between the different parts of the Anglican Communion and the Protestant churches; and we have a great desire to find a way forward to closer unity with them."
Again, it is most significant that there is no reference in the report to the "Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion," which have hitherto been the criterion of the faith of the Anglican Church, and which so clearly show that, in Reformation times at least, its spiritual leaders conceived it to be a Protestant church.
One cannot but feel that this omission bears some relation to the fact that the recent Orthodox Synod in Moscow has said that "the teaching- contained in the 'Thirty-Nine Articles' of the Anglican Church differs sharply from the dogmas, teaching of faith, and tradition confessed by the Orthodox Church," and that "the solution of the question of recognizing the validity of Anglican Orders must first of all be based upon a teaching concerning the sacraments which agrees with Orthodoxy."
Their abandonment has no doubt also been prompted by the realization that if reunion with Rome is ever to be a possibility, these obviously "Protestant" pronouncements will have to be discreetly forgotten.
"Prayer Book" Manipulation
So the Lambeth fathers, with both Orthodox and Roman criticisms in mind, have decided that "the authoritative expression" of the "faith and order" of the Anglican Communion is in its "Book of Common Prayer, together with the Ordinal."
In contrast with the Articles, the Prayer Book can be manipulated, and already has been changed in a Catholic direction by the issue of the 1928 revision, which, in spite of its condemnation by Parliament as inconsistent with the traditional position of the national church, is now in common use. And if the standpoint of Lambeth is the same as that of Newman in his notorious Tract Ninety that "we have no duties toward the compilers (of the Prayer Book) and that their views and interpretations of the formularies of the church must, in no way, be a standard for us," there will be no difficulty in making still further modifications in order to bring it back to a theological position identical with Orthodoxy and papal Rome.
In this same connection it is suggested in the Lambeth encyclical that during the year 1949 opportunity should be taken to celebrate "the growth of the English Book of Common Prayer which had its beginning in the first English Prayer Book of 1549."
Now, as J. A. Kensit has pointed out in a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the first prayer book of 1549 was a very imperfectly reformed book which had only a lukewarm reception, and that it was in the revision of 1552 that it assumed its true Reformation character and determined the "form and substance" of later books down to "the prayer book of today."
The celebration of the 5549 book may thus provide a further opportunity to the powerful Anglo-Catholic party to deprecate the Protestant emphasis in the Church of England and reassert its pre-Reformation Catholic character.
What It All Means
In their comments on the Lambeth pronouncements the evangelical papers representing the Free churches, while expressing some disappointment, have in general sought to minimize the sinister aspects of the decisions at Lambeth, and it has been left to their correspondence columns to underline the real position. Thus in a letter to the Christian World, Hubert Cunliffe-Jones, principal of Yorkshire Independent (Congregational) College, writes:
"I have read with considerable astonishment your leading article on the Lambeth Report. . . . Free Churchmen should be under no illusions as to what the section in the Lambeth Report on the unity of the church means. This indicates a new step by the Anglican Communion in the direction of rigidity and intransigence. . . .
"No one would like more than I to see the breach between the Church of England and the Free churches in this country healed. But we deceive ourselves if we do not understand that the Lambeth Report has widened rather than narrowed that breach."
Future Anglican "Strategy"
With these facts in mind as to the position which the Anglican Communion has now taken up in relation to the Protestant churches, we turn to the report of the committee on the Anglican Communion which sets forth its future strategy. This indicates that the church does not intend merely to safeguard its "Catholic" status, but that it has a clear "vision" of its vocation in coming days.
It will, on the one hand, continue its work of evangelization so as to enlarge the Anglican fellowship. On the other hand, it is ready to enter into fellowship with other truly "Catholic" churches and confessions to form larger groupings which would be "no longer simply Anglican, but something more comprehensive," so that • "there would be in every country where now exists the Anglican church, and others separated from it, a united church, Catholic and Evangelical, but no longer in the limiting sense of the word Anglican."
The Lambeth fathers, in fact, have the idea that even if reunion with Rome is impossible or at least a very distant goal, the churches which are willing should go ahead to form a Catholic yet non-Roman church which would be worldwide in extent. The readiness with which the Anglican Church has joined the World Council of Churches may suggest that they believe this new world organization of the non-Roman churches will provide the stage upon which this world-wide Catholic church may come into being.
Now, this is a situation for which the student of the prophetic Word has long been watching as one of the final signs of the end. For the Scriptures indicate clearly that in the very last day not only will the Roman "beast" attain a new preeminence among the nations after a period of obscurity and weakness, but there will also come into existence a replica, or "image to the beast," which will share with the beast itself the allegiance of a spiritually deluded world, saving only a remnant loyal to God which will have nothing to do with either the "beast" or his image." (See Rev. 14: 6-12.)
That sign is surely now appearing in the new strategy of the Anglican Church as revealed in the recent Lambeth report and in the coming into existence, almost immediately after Lambeth, of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam. Students of the Word should therefore watch these movements as closely as they watch the developing strategy of the papal church.
Rome may be expected to bend every effort to gather all who will into the fold of the "mother church," and the non-Roman yet Catholic churches will seek to consolidate their position by union with each other and by attracting the Free churches back into fellowship through a "Catholicizing" of their theological position and a reacceptance of the Catholic "episcopacy." Faced with declining memberships and an increasingly hostile world, some of these churches, who might recoil from the idea of reunion with Rome, will be captivated by the alternative prospect of restored power and influence, and will cooperate in the building up of this "image" of the great apostasy.
There will be others, however, in these churches who, when faced with the necessity of decision, will determine in no way to compromise their faith in order to secure such advantages. They will "come out" even more 'definitely than they have done thus far, and will join with all others who hold to the pure faith of Jesus and the commandments of God (Rev. 14:12), though they become, in consequence, a remnant despised alike by a godless world and a false church. Soon, very soon, this may be the greatest religious issue of our day.
