THE LION IN WINTER: Portrait of a Faithful Anglican Bishop
By David Virtue, Virtueonline.
Interview with Bishop FitzSimmons Allison.
At 97, Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison is the oldest living Anglican bishop in North America. He resides with his wife Martha, to whom he has been married for 74 years, on their 900-acre residue of a rice plantation in Georgetown, SC. His son and daughter-in-law live nearby and keep an eye on them both. They are surrounded by a lifetime of family, relatives, friends, and clergy.
GEORGETOWN SC: Sitting in the living room of this distinguished, scholarly former Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina, I realize I have come to the home of one of the greatest Episcopal bishops of the twentieth century.
Bishop C. (stands for Christopher) FitzSimons Allison is an evangelical theological bishop with a distinctive and remarkable history. He is a rare breed of scholar, leader, pastor, author, and southern gentleman. As a thoroughly orthodox bishop in faith and morals he has held the line on faithfulness to scripture, to the creeds, the 39 Articles of Religion and the historic episcopacy; standing against the steady encroachment of revisionism in his beloved church.
He is one of the most educated Episcopal bishops in North American Anglicanism, holding a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University. He studied at Virginia Theological Seminary. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1953 by Bishop John J. Gravatt. He then taught church history at the School of Theology at the University of the South and at Virginia Theological Seminary.
A life-long Episcopalian, in 2022 he renounced his orders in The Episcopal Church and joined the Anglican Church in North America no longer able to go along with the theological revisionism that was slowly but surely eroding his beloved church.
It was a defining moment; the then 95-year-old bishop officially resigned his position; his status as an Episcopal bishop, making his departure official. He wrote U.S. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to clarify that he had been received into the Anglican Church in North America — a body recognized as valid by many Anglican bishops in Africa, Asia, and the Global South, but not by the Archbishop of Canterbury or The Episcopal Church.
A humbling moment for sure, but necessitated by truth. The acceptance of heresy was no longer sustainable to his scripturally-faithful educated mind.
He is a living legend. He is a theological scion standing on the shoulders of great orthodox Anglican bishops who determined the course of Anglican history in their own times. He has lived through all the changes from Prayer Book revisions to the ordination of women and the consecration of a practicing homosexual to the episcopacy in the person of V. Gene Robinson; an act that broke his heart. He has authored five books.
They are; The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter, New York, The Seabury Press, 1966;
Guilt, Anger, and God: The Patterns of Our Discontents, New York, The Seabury Press, 1972;
The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy, Harrisburg, Morehouse, 1994;
Fear, Love, and Worship, Regent College Publishing, 2003;
Trust in an Age of Arrogance, The Lutterworth Press, 2009.
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