I n 1839, the LCMS ousted their renegade bishop. In 2004, a Los Angeles bishop is threatening to oust renegade clergy. Church government, an "indifferent" matter according to Lutheran theology, is creating a situation that could leave nobody feeling indifferent.
In response to the consecration of an openly gay bishop, three churches in the Los Angeles area have announced that they have severed ties with the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of conservative archbishop Orombi of Uganda. The bishop of the Los Angeles area, Jon Bruno, has threatened a lawsuit to take the churches' property. The churches have countered that they own their property outright, and that the bishop does not have authority over them because he is no longer their bishop.
The ironies in this situation are interesting. The Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. is a member church in the worldwide Anglican communion. The Anglican church formed by breaking off from the Roman Catholic church during the English Reformation, and claiming that the bishop of Rome no longer had jurisdiction over them. The Roman Catholic Church no doubt made the same claims to the English church property as Bishop Bruno is making today.
In the early church, there were great struggles involved in deciding what to do when things went wrong. People often became heretics. How can we know who is preaching the truth?
Two answers seemed to arise. First, did the teaching change? If the teaching was a new innovation, then it was probably wrong. Second, did it match the teaching of the Bible? If the teaching did not match the teaching of the Bible, it could not be right.
The first answer gave rise to apostolic succession. We know the truth by historic continuity with those who held it in the past. The second answer was that of a succession of doctrine. We know that we are in doctrinal succession with the earliest church when we hold firmly to Biblical teaching, because the early church believed the Bible. The Bible is the ultimate standard of doctrine. Up to the time of the Reformation, most people assumed that apostolic succession and succession of doctrine were a package deal. If you had the first, the second came with it. At the time of the Reformation, the Protestants brought the second answer to the fore when they noticed that those who held to apostolic succession had deviated from the teachings of the Bible. It is all good and well to say "Well, if the congregation goes heretical, the bishop has the power to go in and straighten it out. That's what the church fathers recommended." But what if the congregation is orthodox and the bishop is the heretic? It seems that up to a certain point in history, that question was asked by few. In our time, it becomes an obvious question.
After the Reformation, the Episcopal church tried to have it both ways. (They are known for this!) They wanted to be better than the Catholics by having more Biblical doctrine. But they wanted to be better than other Protestants by having the apostolic succession. That is, someone who was ordained by someone who was ordained by someone . . . (and so on) . . . who was ordained by an apostle.
Now if we look at this carefully, we see that the apostolic succession was a concrete way of trying to ensure the succession of doctrine. This whole thing was to keep heretics out of the church. But how did the Anglicans get this succession? Somebody went around the system and ordained someone contrary to the rules. The Roman Catholic Church did not authorize the ordinations. The bishops who did the consecrations were considered heretics for doing so. Which made their consecrations invalid. The apostolic succession requires an unbroken line of authority. Either the Roman Catholic Church had that authority, in which case they had the right to disallow the Anglican ordinations, or they had lost the authority somehow when they began teaching false doctrine, in which case there was no apostolic succession to hand down. Somehow, the Anglicans miss this point. Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse remarked that the Anglicans were going about door-to-door selling the idea of apostolic succession, not seeing that if the theory behind it were really true, then their own priests were invalidly ordained.
In any case, today's battle places the two principles in collision. The three breakoff congregations would argue that they no longer see the succession of doctrine in the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. So they have decided to leave. But the Episcopal bishop charges that they have no right to break off. This is odd. If they had no right to break off, then how does his whole church body have a right to exist? They themselves are breakoff renegades if they choose to argue in this fashion.
I'm sure that some Anglicans are able to argue in a fashion that would straddle the border between canon-law and an Amish fight over who was the real heir and who the bastard son. Perhaps some of them even have a good point, somewhere about the historic rights of English congregations. But when the argument over the authority of bishops becomes unglued from the argument over true doctrine, it is clear that things are awry. It would be one thing to argue that times have changed and so we have to change our doctrine. While I would disagree with that, I can at least follow it. But what the Episcopal church is arguing is something more like the following. "We will use medieval absolutism to push our modern agenda." Surely a democratic polity would be a better match for the modern inclusiveness that the Episcopaleans wish to represent. Instead, as we see it now, they end up with an absolutism of power without any memory of why the power was given in the first place. I have hopes that the three congregations may keep their property.
The bishop will no doubt argue from canon law in the courts. If this is successful, the three congregations will probably have to appeal to the court of public opinion. If they make enough trouble, perhaps the bishop will cede his right to the property in order to keep from damaging his other congregations.
Historically, polity, or church government, is considered an "adiaphoron" or "indifferent matter" by Lutherans. This means that we think that when people make a case for Presbyterianism or Episcopalianism or Congregationalism from the Scriptures, they are misreading Scripture as a law book, and probably reading in technical definitions to terms that were defined only after the Bible was written. Yet a case like the one in the Episcopal church reminds us that even if all the details of church government are not spelled out in Scripture, a bad government can lead to a really big mess. Calling a form of church government an indifferent matter does not mean that how a church is governed makes no difference. What it means is that there is no arrangement of sinners such that you never end up with a mess. Give the bishop all the power, and he will misuse it if heretical. Give a congregation all the power, and if they are heretical, they will ignore the counsel of godly leaders. Any part of the system can go bad. Any part of the system may at another time prove the strong part. The point to be seen in the Episcopal church is that they were not spared grief by the polity they have been recommending to others. As a matter of prudence, it might be good for other Christian bodies to learn that their congregations should not place themselves in a position where their property rights can automatically go to the denomination during a schism. During some ages, such rules may have stopped people from breaking away over hare-brained doctrines. In our day, such rules allow for liberal churchmen to enforce the latest political agendas.