An Anglican Renaissance Movement Statement On the Bishop Edgar Situation: "We at Anglican Renaissance Movement want to officially commend Rt. Rev. Dobbs and the ACNA College of Bishops for the swift, professional, and stern action against Bishop Chip Edgar. We are pleased to see discipline being enforced while also handling the situation with the due grace and temperance we are called to have in the Church. This situation very easily could have been ignored by the province, or, possibly worse, the province could have been swept up in the online witch hunt that has been forming. We also would like to commend Bishop Edgar on his humility and honesty in this situation, it takes a strong character to be able to publicly admit a mistake of this nature in a leadership position. It is a selfless act to be able to immediately consent to discipline. We pray that this is lifted up as an example of proper church discipline and that other bishops would be inspired by Bishop Chip's humility in this situation to reflect on their own possible mistakes they have been making in the office."

Dale Partridge has gone from Baptist, to Presbyterian, and now Anglican in a few short years. But here’s the problem. As a pastor, you and your church don’t magically become Presbyterian by declaring yourself Presbyterian, and you don’t magically become Anglican by declaring yourself Anglican. The hypocrisy is especially rich because Dale is now attacking modern evangelicalism for precisely his own problem: independent ecclesiologies, autonomous pastors, lack of ecclesiastical continuity, and the absence of meaningful ecclesiastical authority. Excellent. Then submit yourself to the ecclesiastical authority you’re preaching about. You cannot spend an hour explaining how independent Protestantism is fragmented because pastors and congregations answer only to themselves, then solve the problem by changing your own denomination. Ecclesiology isn’t self-identification. It is actual church government, jurisdiction, ordination, and submission to ecclesiastical authority. Even Webbon, as holding to 1689 ought be accountable to an association, yet he too remains independent. So before Dale tells everyone he has gone from Baptist to Presbyterian to Anglican, I’d like to know when he actually became subject to a presbytery or a bishop. Where was the presbytery? If Dale was a Presbyterian pastor, where was the Presbyterian process of examination, ordination, and presbytery oversight? A Baptist pastor does not become a Presbyterian minister simply by adopting Presbyterian theology. In Presbyterian polity, ministry is recognized and governed through an actual presbytery. So if Dale never entered a Presbyterian denomination, was examined and ordained within Presbyterian polity, and placed under presbytery authority, then calling himself “Presbyterian” did not make him a Presbyterian minister. He remained an independent minister who adopted a form of Presbyterian theology while rejecting its polity. Now he’s saying he’s Anglican. Okay. Where’s the bishop? Anglicanism isn’t merely Reformed theology plus the Book of Common Prayer. It has an actual episcopal polity. If Dale is becoming an Anglican priest, where is the Anglican jurisdiction? Where is the diocese? Where is the bishop? What process has he undergone for his existing ministry to be recognized? Who has canonical authority over him? Which bishop can examine him? Which bishop can discipline him? Which bishop can remove him from ministry? Who actually has jurisdiction over his church? Because you cannot be a Baptist pastor one day, put on a clerical collar and announce that you’re Presbyterian while remaining independent of a presbytery, and then announce that you’re Anglican while remaining independent of a diocese. If autonomous pastors and independent churches are the problem, then stop being one.