Church Civics: TEC vs. ACNA Polity #2
Bishops, bishops, bishops
Welcome back to our Church Civics series on Episcopal Church vs. Anglican Church in North America polity! Last time, we talked about legislation. We covered TEC’s General Convention, with its bicameral legislature consisting of a House of Deputies and a House of Bishops, and which meets every 3 years. We compared this to ACNA’s Provincial Council + Provincial Assembly combination, where legislation is voted on by the first smaller body which meets every year, then ratified (or not) by the second larger body which meets every 5 years.
This time, we’ll be talking about bishops themselves — who they are and how they’re made.
Bishops are obviously central to the polity of any episcopal church, and there’s plenty to say about how bishops operate in their own dioceses, but in this post and the following post we’ll instead deal with the roles they play in TEC’s vs. ACNA’s national/provincial structures.
Who can be a bishop?
Though bishops’ foremost role is in their own dioceses, both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in North America assert churchwide power in their national/provincial structures to describe who may serve as a bishop.
To be eligible to serve as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, one must be at least 30 years of age1 (and under 72, which is the mandatory retirement age2). A person must be able to produce proof of having been ordained a deacon and a priest, as well as letters from a medical doctor and a psychiatrist that attest there is no reason he or she “would not be fit to undertake” the work of a bishop.3 In the event that a person who is already a bishop in some other jurisdiction (e.g. the Church of England) wants to transfer to the Episcopal Church, he or she must provide these as well as other background checks, character testimonials, and exams similar to what is required of other Episcopal Church clerics.4
All bishops serving in TEC must, at the time of their episcopal ordination (sometimes called their consecration), make the following declaration:
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, I, N.N., chosen Bishop of the Church in N., solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation; and I do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church.
In the Anglican Church in North America, only men are eligible to serve as bishops, and they must be at least 35 years of age. ACNA’s Constitution and Canons do not include a documentation verification process, but they do state that a person must be “a Presbyter” before being eligible for the episcopate.5 There is no mandatory retirement age for ACNA bishops.
Bishops in the ACNA make the following declaration at their ordination:
I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God and to contain all things necessary to salvation, and therefore, I consequently hold myself bound to conform my life and ministry thereto, and I do solemnly engage to conform to the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of Christ as this Church has received them.
And I do promise, here in the presence of Almighty God and of the Church, that I will pay true and canonical obedience in all things lawful and honest to the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, and his successors; so help me God.
The bold portion represents the substantial difference of this declaration vs. that of TEC: ACNA bishops vow canonical obedience to the Archbishop. Since TEC has no Archbishop, but rather a Presiding Bishop, TEC bishops make no similar vow. We’ll talk more about TEC’s Presiding Bishop vs. ACNA’s Archbishop in the next post.
Types of bishops
Just like deacons and priests, a person who is consecrated a bishop is a bishop for life. In terms of ordination status, there are no half-bishops, and no bishop is greater than another. In terms of church organization, though, bishops may be “deployed” into somewhat different offices, and the same bishop may serve in different roles over time.
There are a handful of types of roles a bishop can hold in Anglican churches. Let’s go over them now.
Bishops diocesan. This is what people usually have in mind when they think of a bishop: the one charged with with oversight of the diocese. Canonical language often also calls this bishop one with jurisdiction. Sometimes the diocesan is also called the ordinary. Every TEC and ACNA diocese — unless it is in the middle of an expected or unexpected transition period — has a bishop diocesan.
Bishops coadjutor. When it becomes clear that a bishop diocesan’s retirement is coming, dioceses may rather line up their next bishop diocesan in advance, while there is still overlap with the current one, rather than pursue a transition only after the current one retires (or becomes incapable of serving, or dies unexpectedly, etc.). This overlapping-successor bishop is a bishop coadjutor. Until the time of transition, a bishop coadjutor acts as an assistant to the bishop diocesan. The office of bishop coadjutor goes away once the coadjutor succeeds the diocesan. In TEC, there may only be one coadjutor in a diocese.6
The ACNA Constitution & Canons reference bishops coadjutor, but do not regulate them.Bishops suffragan. Especially when a diocese is large, the bishop diocesan may need assistance in carrying out episcopal duties. To help with this, the position of a bishop suffragan may be created for the diocese. Bishops suffragan act as an extension of the office of the bishop diocesan, under the diocesan’s direction. They persist in office in their own right even after the diocesan retires. Sometimes bishops suffragan may be tasked with duties pertaining to specific geographical areas within a large diocese. In TEC, there may be a maximum of two suffragans in a diocese.7 The ACNA Constitution & Canons reference bishops suffragan, but do not regulate them.
In TEC there are also assisting bishops, who may be brought in from elsewhere (at the request of the bishop diocesan and with the permission of the diocesan convention) to assist the bishop diocesan on a temporary basis. When the diocesan retires, the assisting bishop position ceases to exist.8 The ACNA Constitution & Canons neither mention nor regulate something like the position of assisting bishop.
How are bishops made?
Let’s take the case of a bishop diocesan, since the other kinds of bishops are somewhat special cases. (In TEC, the main differences in the processes for making a bishop diocesan vs. a bishop coadjutor or suffragan are related to the permissions needed to begin the process — bishops diocesan cannot unilaterally decide their diocese needs these other bishops — and in ACNA, the provincial canonical structures do not regulate them at all.) In this section, when I refer to “bishops,” I mean bishops diocesan.
So how does one become a bishop? Though TEC and ACNA share the essential concept behind a bishop, the respective procedures for making one are different.
The Episcopal Church
To become a bishop in the Episcopal Church, you must pass through two steps.
You must be elected by the diocese you hope to serve.
Once you are elected, your election must be consented to by the wider church.
Let’s take these two steps in turn.
Step 1: Election by the diocese
In the Episcopal Church, bishops are always9 elected by the diocese where they will serve, “chosen agreeably to rules prescribed by the Convention of that Diocese” (Article II Sec 1). That is, the convention of each diocese — like a small General Convention but on the diocesan level, though structures and rules differ a bit diocese by diocese — will nominate and elect a person they would like to be the bishop.
Then, the standing committee, who has the job of overseeing the election, steps in.
Quick diversion: Standing committees
What is a standing committee? It’s a diocesan structure so critical to the integrity of the Episcopal Church that it is defined in its Constitution. We’ll bullet point the relevant article here:10
Every diocese has a standing committee, elected by the diocesan convention.
The regular function of the standing committee is to act as a council of advice to the bishop. (National and local canons further explain what this means — “with the advice and consent of the standing committee” is a frequent phrase in both.) In this way, the standing committee and the bishop govern the diocese together.
In the absence of a bishop, the standing committee administers the diocese.
By tradition, standing committees have six members from the diocese excluding the bishop: three clergy and three lay.
Back to episcopal elections
After the diocesan convention has produced a bishop-elect, the standing committee will gather the relevant documents: the proof of the bishop-elect’s diaconal and priestly ordination as well as medical and psychological fitness previously mentioned, and the testimony of a majority of the diocesan convention delegates that they know of no impediment to the bishop-elect’s serving and that the election was lawful. They prepare their statement of certification of the election, and then it’s off to Step 2.11
Step 2: Getting consents
After a diocese produces a bishop-elect, the bishop-elect must earn “the consent of a majority of the Standing Committees of all the Dioceses, and the consent of a majority of the Bishops of this Church exercising jurisdiction.”12
Here we see a cooperation of two elements of TEC’s government: the church in the diocese and the church across dioceses. The diocese has the right to elect the bishop of its choice; but the wider church must agree to that choice in two important ways that the previous quote lays out:
A simple majority (1/2) of all bishops “exercising jurisdiction” — that is, other bishops diocesan — must consent.13
A simple majority (1/2) of the standing committees of all the other dioceses must consent.14
To get the necessary consents, then, there must be a broad base of agreement across bishops, non-bishop clergy (priests and deacons), and lay people — these latter two groups being included via the standing committees — from across the church about a bishop-elect put forward by a diocese. If either of these thresholds fails, the bishop-elect is not made bishop, and a new election must take place.
The Anglican Church in North America
In ACNA, the process for making a new bishop diocesan seems similar, but is different. To discuss it, first we need to introduce a concept particular to the ACNA: the College of Bishops.
This may sound similar to TEC’s House of Bishops, but is a different kind of body. While TEC’s House of Bishops is one of the two houses in the legislature, the General Convention, ACNA’s College of Bishops is simply the gathering of all ACNA bishops “in active episcopal ministry” (Article X.2). (Recall that ACNA’s bishops are included in the legislative process by virtue of their inclusion in the diocesan delegations to Provincial Council and Provincial Assembly.) The College of Bishops excludes retired bishops (as they are not “active”), but in practice has included bishops suffragan and coadjutor (though, again, these latter two are not regulated explicitly by the Constitution and Canons). About 50-60 bishops sit in the College today.
ACNA’s College of Bishops also has different powers and roles in provincial governance than TEC’s House of Bishops. We will address some of these differences in a later installment, for now focusing on the key role it plays in the making of new bishops.
Two ways to make a bishop
Like in the Episcopal Church, making a new bishop in the ACNA is a generally two-step process: the first step involves the diocese that needs the bishop declaring who they would like, and the second step involves a larger organ from the wider church approving or disapproving. Beyond this general similarity, the two churches again diverge.
Step 1: Selection
Let’s look at that first step in detail, as ACNA’s canons lay it out:
Bishops shall be chosen by a Diocese in conformance with the constitution and canons of the Diocese and consistent with the Constitution and Canons of this Church.
An electing body from the Diocese shall certify the election of a Bishop for consent by the College of Bishops, or may certify two or three nominees from which the College of Bishops may select one for the Diocese.
Where the originating body is newly formed, that body shall normally nominate two or three candidates, from whom the College of Bishops may select one.
We can see here that there are actually two ways to make a bishop: the diocese may choose one, or may send the names of two or three people directly to the College of Bishops and let them choose.
On the first way, we should notice that it is left very free how a diocese may choose its bishop, unlike in TEC where it is specified that it is the diocesan convention who does the electing. Indeed, the ACNA Constitution & Canons leave internal diocesan structure almost entirely up to the dioceses, requiring each to have a standing committee,15 but not mandating or presupposing the existence of a diocesan convention.16
On the second way, it is helpful to know that the language used to be stronger. The relevant part used to read:
An electing body from the Diocese shall certify the election of a Bishop for consent by the College of Bishops, or may certify two or three nominees from which the College of Bishops may select one for the Diocese. The latter practice is commended to all Dioceses in this Church.
In other words, this second method was not envisioned to be exceptional, but usual. It was encouraged to invite the College of Bishops to play this critical role in the selection of a bishop, and to invite the diocese to submit to the College’s discernment of the matter. Since the ACNA is so new, we can readily quote from the framers of its government by way of explanation:
… The College of Bishops may prayerfully consider [the result of a diocesan election between three candidates] as part of their discernment. In this way, there is both a democratic participation in the process, and a prayerful submission that can minimize the kind of deceitful politicking that has characterized episcopal elections in North America.
… While this may seem a radical innovation and departure from our “democratic” election processes in North America, it also reflects lessons learned from the culture wars. Prior unfortunate experiences have taught us that the laity and clergy of a diocese can be deceived through the typical political “vetting” processes and speeches into electing a bishop whom they think is orthodox and who subsequently betrays them. The provision for final election by the College of Bishops is a safeguard against this kind of politicking and outright deceit…
Today, the bolded portion above is no longer in ACNA’s canons, and ceding of an episcopal election directly to the College of Bishops is a minority position: of the ACNA dioceses whose canons are accessible online, some 33% of them exercise this method.17
Step 2: Consent of the College
This leads us to the second step, which is very simple in ACNA: the candidate for bishop (whether singularly elected by the diocese or sent in a slate of candidates directly to the College of Bishops for their choice) must garner the consent of 2/3 of the College of Bishops. If the College of Bishops do not consent with this supermajority, the candidate is not made bishop.
That’s it! The concentration of consent in ACNA’s College of Bishops is simpler than the consents being spread across bishops and standing committees in TEC, but necessarily garners a less broad base of consensus about the candidate.
Two more things to note before we wrap up this post. First, notice that while in both TEC and ACNA bishops from across the church are involved in the consent process when making a bishop, TEC restricts the set of bishops giving consent to bishops diocesan. This means that bishops suffragan, coadjutor, etc. do not count toward the number required for the bishop-elect to pass the “majority of bishops must consent” threshold, and dioceses cannot be double-counted. ACNA instead requires its 2/3 supermajority to come from the College of Bishops writ large — all those in “active episcopal ministry.”
Second, given the newness of ACNA and the fact that many who formed it are still its active bishops today, sitting in the College of Bishops and consenting (or not) to the elections of new bishops, it is worth remembering that this subset of bishops did not go through the above-described ACNA process themselves. Some of this subset are a product of the TEC process, and some are a product of more ad-hoc consecrations performed by bishops of other Anglican provinces. As ACNA moves into its second generation, more bishops are starting to be “homemade,” though still subject to the approval of the first generation.
That’s all for now! Next time, we’ll continue with what the bishops actually do, and that burning question of who is in charge of them anyway, if anyone.
"No one shall be ordained and consecrated Bishop until the attainment of thirty years of age;” TEC Article II Sec 1
“Upon attaining the age of seventy-two years a Bishop shall resign from all jurisdiction.” TEC Article II Sec 9
“The Standing Committee… shall… send… a certificate… bearing a statement of receipt of: 1. evidence of the Bishop-elect’s having been duly ordered Deacon and Priest; 2. certificates from a licensed medical doctor and licensed psychiatrist, authorized by the Presiding Bishop, that they have thoroughly examined the Bishop-elect as to that person’s medical, psychological and psychiatric condition and have not discovered any reason why the person would not be fit to undertake the work for which the person has been chosen.” TEC Title III Canon 11 Sec 3.a.1-2
“To be a suitable candidate for the episcopate, a person must: … Be a male Presbyter at least 35 years old;” ACNA Title III Canon 8 Sec 3.7
“There shall be only one Bishop Coadjutor in any Diocese.” TEC Title II Canon 11 Sec 9.a.5
“It shall be lawful for a Diocese, at the request of the Bishop of that Diocese, to elect not more than two Bishops Suffragan, without right of succession…” TEC Article II Sec 4
“Always” means “almost, almost, almost, almost always.” The diocese electing its own bishop is the historic norm for American Anglicanism and far and away the default manner of assigning bishops to dioceses in the Episcopal Church. Before 1973, missionary dioceses (otherwise out of scope of this article) were the exception that could not elect their own bishop. Missionary bishops were instead elected by the House of Bishops and confirmed by either the majority of the House of Deputies (if the election was held at General Convention) or by the majority of the standing committees (if held outside that time) (e.g. C&C 1970, Title III Canon 15 Sec 2.a). In 1973, missionary dioceses were brought into the norm by being granted the right to elect their own bishop in the usual way, i.e. by diocesan convention, if they wished (C&C 1973, Title III Canon 15 Sec 1.a). Only in 1994 was the reciprocal permitted: non-missionary dioceses could, if they desired, ask the House of Bishops to conduct an election on their behalf (C&C 1994, Title III Canon 22 Sec 1.b), with the diocese retaining the right to nominate. (They may also ask the House of Bishops of the Provincial Synod, an intermediate body, to conduct the election — but this is out of scope of this article as an edge case of an edge case.) I am only aware of this provision ever having been used one time: in 2009, when the Diocese of Ecuador Central was experiencing extreme conflict between its bishop and its standing committee which attempted to declare that bishop’s ouster. If you know of other times, please let me know!
Edit: A helpful reader has reminded me of another special case: the Bishop Suffragan of the Armed Forces may be elected by the House of Bishops. The Constitution provides:
“It shall be lawful for the House of Bishops to elect a Bishop Suffragan who, under the direction of the Presiding Bishop, shall be in charge of the work of those chaplains in the Armed Forces of the United States, Veterans’ Administration Medical Centers, and Federal Correctional Institutions who are ordained Ministers of this Church.” (Article II Sec 7)
It should also be noted that even in these edge cases, bishops-elect still must pass through the consents process, gathering a majority of consents of bishops diocesan and standing committees alike.
TEC Article IV
“No one shall be ordained and consecrated Bishop… without… the consent of a majority of the Bishops of this Church exercising jurisdiction…” TEC Article II Sec 2
“No one shall be ordained and consecrated Bishop… without the consent of a majority of the Standing Committees of all the Dioceses…” TEC Article II Sec 2
“The governing body of each Diocese shall establish a Standing Committee or its equivalent.” ACNA Title I Canon 5 Section 3
“Each Diocese may establish and maintain its own governance, constitution and canons not inconsistent with the Constitution and Canons of the Church, except as hereinafter set forth.” ACNA Title I Canon 5 Section 2
Dioceses which provide for submitting multiple nominees to the College of Bishops for their choice include: the Anglican Diocese of the Carolinas, the Anglican Diocese of the South, the Anglican Diocese of the Southwest, the Anglican Network in Canada (including Via Apostolica until its recent dissolution), the Diocese of the Upper Midwest, the Diocese of Western Anglicans, and the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast. I am unable to find governing documents for the Anglican Diocese of All Nations, the Armed Forces & Chaplaincy Jurisdiction, or the International Diocese.
These are unsurprisingly excellent (I’m fascinated by how different ACNA polity is from TEC’s). I recognize that the audience for this might be small, but if you’d ever do a TEC/ACC polity compare-and-contrast I know that I would find it inordinately helpful.
Well done! Great research. I appreciate your diligence. You might take a look at my primer for the ACNA called "The Rector, the Vestry, and the Bishop." I have a few chapters dedicated to the Five Roles of the Rector, the Vestry, and the Bishop.