ACNAtoo Builds a Bridge Too Far
by Canon Phil Ashey, AAC:
Within the last year, ACNAtoo has been subjected to the scrutiny of its leadership for statements proclaiming its goal to “take down” the ACNA and for a compromised leader who has herself been implicated in “grooming” other victims of abuse. In its approach to helping survivors, this organization has shown bias, dishonesty, and a desire to see the accused judged in the court of public opinion. If anyone was still in doubt as to where ACNAtoo stands theologically, it has now shown its cards. It has crossed a line from survivor advocacy to a bastion of progressive ideology completely at odds with the biblical worldview of the very Church it seeks to bring down. Its latest statement is a full-on frontal assault on the ACNA College of Bishops 2021 Pastoral Statement on Sexuality and Identity. Despite its attempts to cover the statement with claims of a wide ideological breadth, the phrases used clearly show that there is only one ideological camp within which this organization feels comfortable.
Our readers will remember the American Anglican Council’s defense of the ACNA College of Bishops Statement when it was publicly questioned as to the authority of bishops to teach “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), to declare the doctrine, discipline, and order of the Church on the issues of the day, and “to banish all strange and erroneous doctrine” (BCP 2019 Ordinal). You can find our defense here. We also encourage you to reread the ACNA Bishops’ Statement in its entirety which can be found here.
As you read the ACNA Bishops’ Statement on the one hand, please note the ACNAtoo Statement of Commitment to LGBTQ+ survivors on the other which states, among other things, that the bishops of the ACNA have no right to “limit or police the self-expression of sexual minorities,” including LGBTQ+ persons. The Church is also accused of perpetrating or enabling abuse, violence, murder, and other cruel and inhumane acts against “queer image-bearers” while Christians are those who “drive the culture wars that target and vilify LGBTQ+ people, enabling the spread of vitriol and hatred under a banner of theological purity.”
However, the tone and content of the Bishops’ Statement, one with which many Christian doctrinal statements on human sexuality—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox—would agree actually states:
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