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The Significance of the declaration of assent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2008
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The Bishop of Chester chaired the working party which produced the report Clergy Discipline (Doctrine). The report's recommendation that a draft Measure be introduced into General Synod, based upon the working party's proposals, was narrowly defeated in the House of Clergy in the General Synod in July 2004. The House of Bishops has subsequently resolved to return in due course to the matter, with a view to introducing revised proposals. At the heart of any process will be the interpretation of the current Declaration of Assent. The Bishop's address on this subject delivered at the 2004 Ecclesiastical Law Society Day Conference (before the Synod's rejection of the immediate proposals) is here reproduced, with minor modifications. The paper explores the primacy of Holy Scripture in the determination of the doctrine of the Church, as expressed in the Declaration of Assent and the Church of England (Worship and Doctrine) Measure 1974. Possible recourse to formal doctrinal discipline is considered in this context, in relation both to the current Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 and any proposed revision. The nature of the judgment which a court or tribunal would need to make in relation to an issue of doctrine is then assessed. This leads to the conclusion that while an up-to-date procedure for such cases is required, they are likely to continue to be at least infrequent, and quite possibly, as in the twentieth century, non-existent.
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References
1 By 1968, when the Doctrine Commission published Subscription and Assent to the Thirty-nine Articles, the only Church in which it was required that the Articles should be read aloud on a public occasion was the Church of England. The Report rather trenchantly argued that ‘nobody could claim that they are now descriptive of the doctrinal positions of more than a minority’ (p 32).Google Scholar
2 Podmore, C, ‘The Church of England's Declaration of Assent’, (1999) 5 Ecc LJ 241.Google Scholar
3 According to Doe, N, Canon Law in the Church of England (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998) p 206:Google Scholar ‘It remains unclear whether “assent” means a complete adherence to every doctrinal proposition, or acceptability of their main tenor, or preference for them as opposed to any other doctrinal statement, or else their acceptance as portraying the identity of the Church of England’.
4 A report of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission.Google Scholar
5 The corporate character of believing was set out in perhaps the most creative recent report by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, Believing in the Church (SPCK, 1981).Google Scholar
6 This is a reference to a formative experience from my youth, when I often ate Weetabix for breakfast. The different manufacturers of the limited range of cereals which were available then sought to encourage their clientele by offering a range of free gifts, and in the case of Weetabix it was stereo photographs. There was one in each packet, and if you saved up the requisite number of packet tops, you could send for such a special viewer.Google Scholar
7 The Ecclesiastical Courts: Principles of Reconstruction (SPCK, 1954).Google Scholar
8 In the debate in General Synod when the Measure received final approval, Archbishop Ramsey reminded the Synod that in the summer of 1928, after the second rejection of the revised Prayer Book, the bishops of the Church of England unanimously passed a resolution ‘that it is in the last resort the inalienable right of the Church, namely, the bishops, clergy and laity, to declare the doctrine of the Church and to control its embodiment in public worship’ (Proceedings, 20 February 1974, p 96).Google Scholar
9 Acts 5: 39.Google Scholar
10 Doe Legal Framework p. 214 comments that ‘Informal resolution of doctrinal controversies, by institutions of a quasi-judicial nature, is begnining to appear in church law’. His examples refer outside the Church of England, but in effect the House of Bishops adopted just such an apporach when producing The Nature of Christian Beleif (1986) although the Bishop of Durham, whose views generated the controversy, contributed to the report itself.Google Scholar
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