An admittedly hyperbolic and presumptuously declarative question: are you even a Covenant student if you’ve not yet flirted with Anglicanism? Before I begin, I will apologize to Covenant’s PCA loyalists for suggesting they would ever be so wayward. I am sorry. Forgive me, I guess.
Anyway, I would be so wayward. Obviously. As a born and bred child of the PCA, I have spent the last three years noticing piece by piece the things about this denomination that unsettle me — I know that many of you have done the same. After all, the song of the young adult is disillusionment. We none of us can help from joining in the chorus of post-adolescent angst, at least from time to time.
My own disillusionment began when I realized that after nearly two years of attendance, I had fallen through the cracks (as Henry Krabbendam would say) of a beloved PCA church in Chattanooga. This led me to visit an ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) church with an Anglican friend of mine. After a few more visits and a series of discussions with some recently Anglicanized family members, I realized that the Anglican church rights a few of the key qualms I have with the PCA.
The overarching theme is that the Anglican church seems to have a posture of deep humility; a spiritual discipline that Presbyterians have been known to struggle with, the gaggle of overly cerebral idolatrous nerds that we are.
Being Presbyterian has made it hard for me to realize that my faith and my intellect are not as inextricably linked as I grew up thinking they were. This is not to disparage the Reformed tradition’s commitment to practicing a robust theology of all things — it’s actually something I’m profoundly grateful for.
However, I know I am not alone in my conviction that the PCA is guilty of practicing an alternate version of the works-based faith for which we make fun of Mormons and Quakers: I like to call it an intellect-based faith. I believe it is equally sinful and dangerous. Sinful, because it is self-righteous; dangerous, because it lures us into a belief that what we know is what will save us. We profess that this is not true. Why do we act like it is?
What this looked like in my life was at least a decade of salvation anxiety; asking Jesus into my heart over and over again because every time I corrected a theological fallacy, I could not believe that I was a true Christian prior to my new understanding. Nobody meant to teach me this. Nonetheless, it was something that I learned.
A helpful example of how vastly differently the ACNA approaches spiritual humility lies in the question of paedocommunion.
And now, welcome, reader, to my hot take. It’s really more so a provocative assortment of questions that I do not know the answer to. Call me uninformed, if you will. I apologize for this also.
The first time I visited an Anglican church, I was shocked to see that the pastors distributed communion to little toddlers. Actively shocked. Triggered fight or flight, tummy ache, literal tremors — I was viscerally frightened for the wee babes who were surely eating and drinking judgement on themselves. Perhaps rightfully so. Nobody is above taking Paul’s warning seriously.
While this did give me the impression at first that the ACNA distributed communion too freely, it also made me wonder if maybe the PCA is a little stingy with it. After months of deliberation, I would now like to report that this has become my official opinion. The PCA is a little stingy with the elements!
The anxiety about not distributing communion to people it would hurt is justified. The withholding it from children who are baptized members of the covenant and children of faithful believers is... debatable at best? Specifically so in context with our deep passion for paedobaptism. And also considering that the PCA professes to believe in communion as a means of grace. If we believe communion is a means of grace, why do so many PCA churches only distribute once a month?
The way I have understood the PCA’s stance on why children are barred from communion is this: children just aren’t developed enough before about fifth or sixth grade to understand why they need salvation. I find this particularly interesting considering that the PCA teaches children biblical and theological literacy so fervently, and from such a young age.
More troubling to me than this are the cases I have heard of adults with developmental disabilities being barred from the table in the PCA. Whether or not this is consistent with the PCA’s book of church order, and is by no means a persistent habit of the PCA, it has happened. I hope this makes clear how dangerous it is to conflate cognition with faith.
Children so often understand more than adults think they do. And how bold and presumptuous are we as adults to assume our own understandings are as vastly above a child’s as we think they are? We do not know as much as we think we do. Not even close.
All this to say, I think the humility (or whatever it may be) that leads the Anglican church to open communion to their members’ children is admirable.
And here, I will close with another question. A real one this time — I don’t know the answer: has the PCA’s guard over the eucharist been too staunch? And worse, are we the ones eating and drinking judgement on ourselves by withholding it from those who may need it?