Thanks very much for your reply.
I do realize that the Kingdom is not based in democracy. And while I agree that doctrine should not be settled through majority vote in an ideal world, even the creeds developed out of a conciliar process that was vote based.
It is not clear to me that Evangelicals democratic intentions were motivated by a desire to settle doctrinal issues in that way. Rather it was more of a reaction against the monarchy, which is also what led to the American Revolution.
I believe that there are many issues in the church--largely matters of what the Windsor Report defined as "adiaphora" and not core doctrines--that are legitimately settled through majority vote. Perhaps the best situation this side of Heaven is a republican form of governance--democracy that is not a mere polite form of mob rule, instead it is governed through majority vote but interpreted through the lens of a guiding document--in this case Scripture. Even God warned against the pitfalls inherent in a monarchical system, desiring that Israel view Him as king.
It strikes me that the current problem in the Episcopal Church is not a matter of democracy gone bad, but of Bishops gone bad. Those who are sworn to protect the received faith have become active enemies against it. Surely the average Evangelical stands against the kind of decisions that have come out of the HOB and GC in recent years. The majority of Anglo-Catholics I know have tended to support the heretical bishops.
In the interest of full disclosure: I was raised Presbyterian--hence my democratic sensibilities. 11 years ago I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church and attended the most Anglo-Catholic parish in my dioceses until I could stand it no longer. As a result I am too Evangelical for many and too Catholic for many others. And I fervently look forward to the time when these labels disappear.
My dear newheart, I have meditated long and very seriously on what you have written, which is well thought-out and I believe entirely sincere.
I was guided to a source from within our Anglican heritage whose work I am not sure many now take any comfort, but I thought to try to summarize what he said.
In his first volume, +Charles Grafton (Bp, Fond du Lac) examined the claims of Rome as against the Scriptural data, the testimony of the ancient Fathers and the facts of history. He also considered those claims in respect of our own and he came to the conclusion that our own claims are authentically Catholic, Apostolic and as sure reservoir of Christ's saving grace and the way of salvation.
However, he did not arrive at this conclusion easily. One aspect he was particularly careful to examine was our tendency to break into factions, notably what are called 'low', 'broad' and 'high'. I myself tend to the high side, but in my own limited development as a churchman I interpreted this to be the same as being Catholic in terms. This does not appear to be a reasonable equation. Rather, when I review what I have preached I find myself taking elements of all three parties into my professed theology.
Bp Grafton writes: "Every school, high, low, or broad, has its own danger. The subjective or low church system, unbalanced by the objective side of religion, leads to a denial of the visible Church, its priesthood, and the sacraments as instruments and effective signs of grace; the broad, or rationalizing, to a denial of all that is supernatural in God's Word, and of authority, and the Church's inherited dogmatic faith. The extreme Catholic or pro-Roman one, by his devotion to Western scholasticism, centralization in government, mistaken interpretation of Scripture, impatient with the condition of the English Church, turns in faint-heartedness to the papacy."
From this we see the essential need for all three elements at once. If one neglects any of the three, one falls eventually into fatal error and may imperil one's salvation. When I speak against Evangelicals, then, I am not speaking against evangelicalism as part of a lively faith, but against those who rule out the objective truth of the threeford ministry, the efficacy of the divinely-appointed sacraments and the authority of the Church to carry on the work her Savior gave into her hands. It is democracy in church matters shorn of any other restraining force that has worked majority-rule mischief, as I see it.
Now, that does not rule out that it may well be bishops themselves moving into this position. There have always been such prelates, I think, and you say rightly when you say that there have been great reformative forces in congregations that call for the restoration of Catholicity.
As to the majority of your Anglo-Catholic acquaintance, I cannot speak. I think that the great danger in Anglo-Catholicism is a tendency to assert divine authority for oneself, to search for a programme for salvation as a kind of protocol of redemption. This is what one might call mechanical Christianity. When I see that in myself, I rebuke myself because salvation is a free gift growing out of faith. All the good I do, all the repentance to which I may be called only serves to prove that I am and can be no more than an unworthy servant who cannot do his full duty by his Lord and Savior. My own inadequacy must be supplied by His perfection. So it is just as false to assert strict pro-Romanism as to utterly reject it.
My own Anglo-Catholic acquaintance have rejected the heretical drift of the Episcopal Church, preferring to worship in the wilderness than to populate buildings now turned to the aggrandizement of Man and the endorsement of his worldly ways.
So, I grant your point, but I thought I might say in my defense that the situation is not that we can do without the parties, but that the truth is maintained by the best that is held by every party. Each left to its own wanders from the right way, but the diligent inquirer can take from all what is right and true.