Qualified Episcopacy and the Gospel’s Primacy

A recent X post mocked episcopacy, suggesting that nothing undermines orthodoxy more quickly than bishops, pointing to the failures of the Church of England and Rome as proof. This charge is simplistic and unfair. It assumes that episcopal polity itself is the cause of doctrinal drift. But Reformation Anglicanism teaches something very different: bishops are not the essence of the church but serve its well-being when faithful to Scripture and the gospel.

Baptists often argue that their system of church government—where each congregation is fully independent—is the best guard against doctrinal drift. The idea is that without a hierarchy, no one at the top can push false teaching onto everyone else. But history tells a different story. Congregationalism in the Northern states eventually drifted into universalism and outright heresy, and many Baptist groups—even in the South—have followed the same pattern. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship openly embraces feminism and denies biblical inerrancy, and even within the Southern Baptist Convention some churches have compromised on core doctrines under cultural pressure. Far from securing unity or orthodoxy, this system has often produced division and doctrinal decay.

They believed bishops were not the essence of the church (esse) but for its well-being (bene esse), provided they remain faithful to Scripture and the Anglican Formularies.

By contrast, Anglicans in the Reformation took a different approach. They believed bishops were not the essence of the church (esse) but for its well-being (bene esse), provided they remain faithful to Scripture and the Anglican Formularies. The gospel—not a particular polity—is the true essence of the church. The gospel creates the church. The church doesn’t create the gospel. The gospel stands over the church. The church doesn’t stand over the gospel, as Paul writes in Galatians 1:8–9: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!”

The gospel creates the church. The church doesn’t create the gospel. The gospel stands over the church. The church doesn’t stand over the gospel. . .

By contrast, Anglo-Catholics treat bishops as the esse—the very essence—of the church. They understand apostolic succession as a sacramental line of bishops, so churches without historic episcopacy are not “true churches” in the fullest sense but only “ecclesial communities.”

. . . episcopacy is of the bene esse—beneficial for the good order of the church—while the gospel itself is the esse.

Reformation Anglicans, however, taught something different. For Cranmer, Jewel, and the Formularies, episcopacy is of the bene esse—beneficial for the good order of the church—while the gospel itself is the esse. Bishops serve the gospel; they do not define it. As Ashley Null explains in Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words, Cranmer did not believe the Spirit was passed down mechanically through a pipeline of bishops. Apostolic succession, for him, meant the faithful passing down of apostolic teaching. The saving truths of Scripture are unalterable, and each generation of the church is called to receive, guard, and proclaim the gospel through Word and Sacrament. In that proclamation, the Spirit goes forth afresh, renewing the church in every age.

Bishops serve the gospel; they do not define it.

Still, episcopal polity can provide helpful safeguards: it builds accountability, promotes unity across congregations, and follows the order of the early church. The Preface to the Ordinal in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer says it plainly:

“It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient authors that from the apostles’ time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s church: bishops, priests, and deacons.”

The Preface goes on to require that these offices be filled only by those who are examined, found fit, and set apart by prayer and the laying on of hands. In other words, sound, examined, qualified episcopacy is biblical and can be reverently continued for the good of the church.

The sarcastic claim that episcopacy cannot safeguard orthodoxy misunderstands the Anglican Reformation’s teaching. The problem is not bishops per se, but bishops who abandon the gospel. Properly understood, qualified episcopacy—tested by Scripture and the Formularies—can serve the church’s well-being. The gospel alone is the essence of the church; bishops serve that gospel, they do not define it.