A HISTORY LESSON: LIMITS TO DOCTRINAL INNOVATION

By Ephraim Radner

As we await the Taskforce recommendations with their proposals for common life on the basis of some set of "principles," and anticipate our own diocesan convention, with its resolutions and legal articulations, the following may be of interest.

I recently came across a declaration from the 1814 General Convention, Journal of the House of Bishops. It seems to have pertinence to our current discussions regarding the character of ecclesial authority within ECUSA, and the proper limits on our doctrinal and disciplinary self-understanding.

The declaration states clearly that the "independence" of ECUSA as a church is focused solely within the realm of "civil concerns" and does not in any way touch upon the unity of "doctrine, worship, or discipline" between ECUSA and the Church of England. In other words, although only General Convention can impose "rules" within the civil realm of the church in America, it cannot make up any rules that violate this unity of doctrine, worship, and discipline.

From the Journal of the House of Bishops, May 20th, 1814: "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America is the same body heretofore known in these States by the name of the 'Church of England;' the change of name, although not in religious principle, in doctrine, or in worship, or in discipline, being induced by a characteristic of the Church of England..."

The question remains: are the actions of General Convention and of bishops and dioceses of this church at one with the doctrine, worship, and discipline of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion? If they are not, we stand in violation of our legal identity.

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