Confessional Protestantism in Ecumenical Winter

Brad East’s First Things essay “Goldilocks Protestantism” provocatively argues both that historic, classical, and/or magisterial Protestant traditions are in decline, and that all such churches will soon either become anti-traditionalist, biblicistic, non-sacramental churches with non-denominational styles of worship, or have the high church liturgy, icons, incenses, and practices of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Perhaps East’s most surprising claim is that he would not know where to begin if were to set out to find an expression of classical Protestantism in contemporary in Abilene, Texas or West Texas in general.

As a native of Amarillo, Texas myself, who spent my childhood and college years as a Southern Baptist in West Texas, then belonged to and served in confessional Presbyterian (PCA) churches for nearly a decade, before becoming Anglican (ACNA) almost six years ago, I have followed this conversation with great interest, and some disappointment in East’s characterization of the traditions I have belonged to. Writing in Mere Orthodoxy, Daniel Williams notes that confessional Protestantism has always been numerically small, from the time of the Reformation through 1950’s America until today. Further, despite East’s suggestion that he would not know where to begin finding a confessional Protestant church today, Williams notes there are indeed several such churches well embodying that tradition in Abilene itself.

A difference that might be easy to miss by onlookers is that confessional Protestant churches, such as the bodies represented by NAPARC (“North American Presbyterian and Reformed Churches,” etc.) never once imagined their liberal, Mainline counterparts to be healthy heirs or sound representatives of the magisterial Protestant tradition. For instance, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for nearly a century has had an eminently clear sense that they are an extremely committed, embattled few offering a prophetic counter-testimony to the prestigious institutions they separated from, and hence they have worked fastidiously to plant churches, seminaries, publications, and to create an alternative culture to that of their Mainline Protestant counterparts. And though there are exceptions, a schismatic spirit by no means encompasses the complexity of these churches in their self-understanding and aims. Commendably, at its founding the Presbyterian Church in America spoke about itself as a “Continuing” church, and has continued to do so.

Crucially, when East’s opening line invites readers to “imagine a world without Protestantism,” he appears to primarily mean by “Protestantism” only a vibrant, liberal Mainline with a significant cultural influence on mainstream American society. If so, that does not require much imagination at all, since it has already been in steep demographic decline for several decades, and there are no signs of a coming rebound. Long gone is not only the America of Jonathan Edwards and Reinhold Niebuhr, but even that of Jimmy Carter.

The real concern in East’s piece appears to be that the recent “resurgence of interest in magisterial Protestantism: its theology, history, and resources,” creates an illusion: the commendable labors of a committed few to retrieve the best of Protestantism’s past is ultimately doomed because “Protestantism” has no future, given the statistical demise of the Mainline Protestant churches. But Protestantism’s future does not inexorably lead to traversing the Tiber, the Bosporos, or the non-denominational horse trough.

East regards the classical Protestant synthesis combining early Christian creeds, lower-case “c” catholic liturgy and devotions, alongside distinctive emphasis in Reformation theology such as justification by faith, and a commitment to Holy Scripture as the primary authority in the church’s life (for instance, classical Anglicanism, as represented by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Thirty Nine Articles) as inherently unsustainable, destined towards either devolution or re-direction towards other Christian traditions. He writes “there is a structural instability at the heart of the Reformation vision that undermines any attempt to strike a durable middle path between catholic and evangelical Christianities.”

It is worth asking whether East’s “Goldilocks” moniker is charitable to his interlocutors; is it a ‘steel-man’ engagement with the best of the Protestant tradition? For instance, confessional Presbyterians are hardly saying “too much,” “too little,” “ah, just right” when they keep the creeds but reject icons. Whether one likes it or not, they are extremely consistently following Presbyterian theological commitments, such as the Regulative Principle of Worship. Aware of my own potential for self-deception, I nonetheless believe that my own Anglican formation has been something deeper than a consumer at a buffet wanting a little bit of this and not too much of that, nor merely the vicissitudes and historical contingencies of sixteenth century politics that culminated in the Elizabethan Settlement. Though to outsiders confessional Anglican Christianity might appear superficially incoherent, my own sense is that it is deeply consistent and integrated, whose real depths it takes more than the fleeting zeal of a convert to reach, but is a worthwhile pursuit if done with persistence and patience over many years.

East further notes that those such as myself who undertake projects of theological retrieval within classical Protestant traditions are such a numerical minority compared to non-denominational churches that we are relatively insignificant. I do not wish to claim the ‘righteous remnant’ mantle for any specific group I am part of. But taking my cues nonetheless from Elijah in the time of bowing knees to Baal, I never assume that what is good, beautiful, and true will become widely popular in the present evil age. Cultural Christianity in America had its blessings and problems, but ‘Protestantism’ that is deeply in touch with the Protestant tradition is by no means only viable in an established or Mainline context. For my part, as an ordained priest in the Anglican Church in North America, I understand my own relatively small denomination as in continuing a Mainline-like presence in certain specific places, but our denomination as a whole pervasively understands itself as a frontline mission in a post-Christian society, since the super majority of orthodox Anglicans worldwide live in the Global South, and the synthesis of catholic liturgy and Reformation theology that East claims are unsustainable are deeply-held commitments of global Anglicans, even in contexts of real persecution.

However, with East, I too want to invite readers to “imagine a world without Protestantism,” but neither because confessional Protestantism is doomed, nor because all of its participants will inevitably become Roman, Eastern Orthodox, or non-denominational, nor because of a wishy-washy ecumenism that dispenses historic Protestant convictions. I want to invite readers to imagine and long for the future Christ prayed for in his High Priestly Prayer shortly before his death, asking that all who are in Christ may be one (John 17.21).

But to do so, we must ask: is it inherently self-contradictory to participate in both confessional Protestantism and Jesus’s prayer for the church to be one? Can one retrieve a tradition birthed in a time of division, even one that at its best sought renewal and continuing witness rather than rupture and novelty, while one also sincerely prays for the church to be one?

Robert Jenson, about whom East has written much, began the preface of his Systematic Theology with a remarkable declaration about ecumenism:

Theology is the church’s enterprise of thought, and the only church conceivably in question is the unique and unitary church of the creeds. Therefore, theology may be impossible in the situation of a divided church, its proper agent not being extant—unless, of course, one is willing to say that a particular confessional or jurisdictional body simply is the one church. To live as the church in the situation of a divided church—if it can happen at all—must at least mean that we confess we live in radical self-contradiction and that by every churchly act we contradict that contradiction. Also theology must make this double contradiction at and by every step of its way.

Jenson, rightly, insists that “no degree of theological convergence” in ecumenical dialogue “can by itself suffice to reestablish communion once broken. An Act of God is needed.” Jenson imagined his own writing as an act of waiting for that act of God, a work “deliberately done in such anticipation of the one church,” thus he sought to draw on a broad array of Christian traditions, though self-aware he did so as one shaped by and situated within Lutheran traditions.

It is not impossible, but highly unlikely, that Jenson’s context in liberal Protestantism will forge too many more thinkers like Jenson. He was not only in conversation with contemporary critical biblical scholarship but he had a profound knowledge of and love for Holy Scripture and its authority, and he read it as a sympathetic student at the feet of the church’s theological tradition. This led Jenson to immense moral clarity and a vigorous statement of traditional Christian teaching on topics such as abortion and human sexuality. Jenson was right; we need an act of God, we should pray for it, and we should write and act out the double-contradiction that is the work of theology today.

But the confessional Protestants that East believes are disappearing or doomed are actually the most promising and interesting source for the very kind of ecumenical dialogue Jenson devoted his life’s work towards. Jenson’s mainline Protestant context might be in rapid decline, or rather thinly committed to historic Christian beliefs and practices, but their confessional counterparts arguably hold enormously generative potential for the future of ecumenical work.

The foremost divides in Western Christendom for some time fell along Protestant and Roman Catholic dividing lines, from the sixteenth century well through the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But today all Christians with even the most basic (creedal) orthodox theology and shared vision of human sexuality, the sanctity of life, and more find themselves as co-belligerents in a struggle with an inhumane and secularizing Western society and progressivist religion. There is far greater good will towards one another for that reason alone than there was in the past five centuries, culminating in cooperation such as Evangelicals and Catholics Together. Gone with the vanishing Protestant Mainline is the milquetoast ecumenism wherein “doctrine divides, service unites.” Here to stay is an emerging ecumenism where the things held in common run to the core of one’s commitments in life and in death.

But alongside robust unity on the foremost theological commitments of the church there will also be new challenges to visible and institutional unity in the ecumenism of confessional Protestants, unlike their Mainline analogues. Even within Protestantism, unity remains difficult between, say, Missouri Synod Lutherans and confessional Presbyterians on a host of topics and practices ranging from Christology and the Eucharist to images of Jesus and polity. If each fragmented Protestant group each becomes even more deeply entrenched in their confessional traditions which contradict one another, how will those commitments not preclude ecumenical dialogue with one another, let alone with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox conversation partners?

Apart from everyone in the world becoming Anglican — not the worst possible outcome, in my humble opinion — any advance towards visible and institutional unity will necessarily require a willingness to distinguish between first-order, second-order, third-order, and so on commitments. But even before that, and well prior to any compromise and cooperation, an urgent priority must be simply to have better mutual understanding of one another. We need to cultivate the humility of a teachable spirit, learning how to more sympathetically and charitably learn about one another’s traditions. This is incredibly difficult, agonizingly slow work.

It takes years of dedication to learn one’s own theological tradition well; can we reasonably expect one another to expend comparable effort learning about one another’s traditions we disagree with? Yet, such labor is worthwhile because even if we remain separated brethren, we will nonetheless be able to dispel the historic caricatures that have plagued the sad divisions of Christendom. We will also ensure that there is greater clarity as to what precisely our abiding differences actually are, as well as illuminating where our agreements truly lie. However, about the fundamental commitments of the Christian faith — among them, the doctrine of the Trinity, Christology, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, there will be profound consensus that could not be assumed by the old Mainline, liberal Protestantism.

I long for the church to be one, and continue to regard the beliefs and practices of the confessional Protestant tradition as contributing distinctive gifts towards that end that can renew the church catholic today. When people see me in my clergy collar out in public and ask me what kind of church I belong to, I love to quote the creed and say Christ’s “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” before telling them I am Anglican. Precisely in that order, I am grateful for riches in the Reformed and catholic tradition to which I belong that can help me pray for the act of God that Robert Jenson said we need.

One such prayer is from Archbishop William Laud, in the ACNA’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer:

Gracious Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.