Let's Rethink the Continuum -- II

Douglas Bess traces the dissatisfaction with The Episcopal Church that eventually led to the Affirmation of St Louis to the tendency toward secular leftist progressivism that took over in main line denominations beginning in the 1950s. The Civil Rights movement, which was not leftist-progressive in the same sense but concerned with natural law, also disturbed some Southern clerics, especially after The Episcopal Church integrated its parishes officially in 1964. Wikipedia lists the main tenets of the 1977 Affirmation of St Louis:

• Dissolution of Anglican Church structures: That the churches to which the delegates had previously belonged had ceased to have a valid ministry through the act of ordaining women to the priesthood.
• Continuation of Anglicanism: That Anglicanism could only continue through a complete separation from the structures of the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada.
• Invalidity of Schismatic Authority: That the churches to which the delegates had previously belonged had made themselves schismatic by their break with traditional order and, therefore, had ceased to have any authority over them or other members.
• Continued Communion with Canterbury: That communion with Canterbury would continue because the Church of England had not, at that time, ordained women to the priesthood. This article of the Affirmation became inoperable with the ordination of women by the Church of England in 1990s.

The Affirmation clearly concerned itself exclusively with the ordination of women by The Episcopal Church. The other bone of contention in the Continuing movement was the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It's worth pointing out that well before 1977, The Episcopal Church had adopted a course that resulted in loss of social prestige that simply isn't mentioned in the Affirmation, and Bess doesn't mention it either: in the 1930s, The Episcopal Church's position on marriage and the family was very close to that of the Roman Catholic Church. TEC had gradually dropped its opposition to artificial birth control, divorce, and remarriage, although as The Anglo-Catholic blog points out, "right down to the 1940s/50s divorce was strongly disapproved of in that church, especially for clergy, for whom, with rare exceptions like the notorious Bishop Pike, divorce alone, with or without remarriage, generally ended all hope of a 'successful clerical career.'"

A Wall Street Journal editorial from nearly 40 years ago has stuck with me: rightly or wrongly, it proposes that the Roman Catholic doctrine of Papal infallibility, promulgated in the First Vatican Council, emerged in response to the Church's final loss of all secular authority with the incorporation of the Papal States into the Kingdom of Italy. That editorial drew a parallel with the main line Protestant denominations, which abdicated their moral authority by abandoning the field during the "sexual revolution" of the 1940s and 50s, but compensated for the loss of that prestige by taking vocal leftist positions (either officially or via individual clergy) in the 1960s. The loss of main line Protestant prestige is underlined by the brilliantly satirical performance of Donald Sutherland in the 1971 film Little Murders. That performance is available on line here and is well worth watching. Sutherland in the film is not vested, as an Episcopal clergyman would almost certainly be for even a rich-hippie wedding, so he might be a Presbyterian or United Church of Christ cleric, but the implicit critique applies across the board to all the main line denominations.

The Affirmation of St Louis has nothing to say about the real cause of The Episcopal Church's loss of prestige: the ordination of women, for the general public, was an inside-baseball issue and indeed, the Affirmation was a belated and feckless rear-guard action in any case. Main line Protestantism had lost the war by the time Hollywood had portrayed its disgraceful surrender in 1971.