Contemporary Anglican Research Articles

The Issue of Anglican Identity

Institutions and communities in the twenty-first century are experiencing identity crises, a phenomenon from which religious traditions such as Angli-canism are not immune. Contemporary Anglicanism is becoming more diverse and, therefore, more contested and difficult to define. This article offers a nuanced definition of Anglicanism as a means of enabling Anglicans to understand themselves more clearly, a self-understanding which, in turn, will facilitate any future reform.

Roman Catholic burial in 19th-century Liverpool: four vaults in the crypt of St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Toxteth, Liverpool

SUMMARY The recording of vaults in the crypt of St Patrick’s Church, Toxteth, Liverpool, has enabled the first detailed examination of Roman Catholic vault burial in England, and the first vaults of any kind in north-west England. One vault contains the coffins of four priests and a Christian Brother, the other three were built for the members of successful commercial families in the Catholic community of Liverpool during the early decades of the 19th century. The evidence indicates differences with contemporary Anglican vault burial, though some of the variations with London and Birmingham assemblages may be more related to class distinctions and regional rather than denominational traditions.

Reforming tradition: Anglican spirited continuity

For Anglicans, tradition entails continuity with a past mediated into present circumstances in ways that ever reshape understandings of God’s work in the world. Tradition is a concept with wide-ranging connotations that have changed over Anglican history. This essay highlights poignant moments that especially shaped contemporary Anglican notions of tradition, such as the medieval Conciliar Movement, the contributions of Richard Hooker, the Oxford Movement, and twentieth century ecumenism. Today Anglicanism’s global identity is reshaping its understandings of tradition, as the Holy Spirit reveals an ever wider and more intercultural picture of Christ. Through the process of handing on faith, our tradition reforms and grows.

A Phenomenology of the Liturgy of Maundy Thursday

In this article, I propose a phenomenological analysis of the liturgy of Maundy Thursday, as it is celebrated in the contemporary Anglican Church of Canada. As an example of liturgy, Maundy Thursday is particularly generative for phenomenological description because of its affective range and drama. A participant in the liturgy is given the opportunity to experience a combination of grief, lament, remorse, joy, thanksgiving, kindness and compassion, care for the body, vulnerability and humility, as well as fear and confusion. Situated on the threshold between Lent and Easter, it is a richly complex moment in the liturgical year and combines, in a creative and affective tension, celebration with mourning, order with chaos, and love and service with betrayal and repentance.

Language of Reality and Reality of Language in Francis Bacon’s Philosophy

The most important of Francis Bacon’s argument against Aristotelian syllogistic logic as a main method of investigation was his doctrine of Idols, closely connected to the contemporary Anglican theological views on imperfect human nature. In his criticism of the first notion of human mind, based on mistaken abstraction, Bacon separated “ars inveniendi”, “ars judicandi” and “ars tradendi” and argued for a new nonverbal form of communication, based on “real characters”. Bacon's conventional concept of the universal language, strongly influenced by Aristotle, was not realized by the philosopher himself, but it was of great popularity in both European rationalism and British empiricism in the middle – second half of the 17th century.

A History of Anglican Exorcism: Deliverance and Demonology in Church Ritual

A History of Anglican Exorcism: Deliverance and Demonology in Church Ritual

Anglican Identity asMestizajeEcclesiology

AbstractThis article offers a new narrative to reflect on Anglican ecclesiology through the lens of theological and cultural ‘mestizaje’. At a time of increasing signs of fragmentation in the world and the church (including the Anglican Communion), this study affirms elements that have been present in historic Anglicanism and contemporary Anglican praxis: the value of intercultural relations, dialogical processes and theological humility. While recognizing the challenges, complexity and limitations of the Anglican mestizo model, it asserts its intrinsic value as a source of ecclesial koinonia.

‘Neither Catholic Fish nor Protestant Fowl’: the question of Anglicanism

ABSTRACTAny claim for the ecclesiological integrity of Anglicanism seems, at the moment, tenuous. The divisions within the Anglican Communion over the issues of human sexuality and gender do not seem easily healed, despite the efforts of the current archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and his predecessor, Rowan Williams. Despite the proud assertions of Anglican apologists down the ages that the Church was positioned, following the Elizabethan ‘settlement’ of 1588, with moderation and good sense as a via media between Rome and Geneva, this new five-volume history of Anglicanism reveals a church that has been in conflict from its very origins. In seeking to be a church for the whole of England, it was naturally constituted of competing theological and ecclesiological visions, influenced by continental reformations, that could never be entirely congruent – divisions which, at certain junctions since the break with Rome almost 500 years ago, have been the source of significant aggravation and tribalism. Those politico-theological tensions, the History underlines, were exported across Britain’s expanding empire, spawning vibrant new networks and associations that only served further to disrupt the fragile unity of the Church of England after the confessional state was dismantled by the British parliament in 1828–1832. Despite the enormous vibrancy engendered by this conflict of traditions, now stretched across a global Communion and influenced as much by post-colonialism and globalisation as older theological traditions, the final two volumes pose challenging questions for any who would seek to speak meaningfully of a single entity called the ‘Anglican Church’. This article suggests that the greatest threat to contemporary Anglicanism, however, lies in a postmodern retreat from the ecumenical task as truth becomes ever more contextualised, driven by a desire for peaceful cohabitation rather than institutional coherence. These volumes might suggest, rather, that Anglicanism’s hope (and its gift to the wider Church) is to be found precisely in its conflicted quest for truth and unity in faithful response to Scripture, tradition and reason.

Social Anglicanism and Empire: C. F. Andrews's Christian Socialism

Charles Freer Andrews (1871–1940) was a close friend of Mohandas K. Gandhi and played a celebrated role in the Indian struggle for independence within the British empire. This article makes the case for understanding Andrews as a pioneering example of the evolution from nineteenth-century Christian Socialism to twentieth-century global ‘social Anglicanism’, as Andrews's career fits a form better recognized in later campaigners. The article draws attention to three beliefs or principles discernible in Andrews's life as a Christian Socialist in the 1890s: the incarnation as a doctrine revealing the brotherhood of humanity; the Church's need to recognize and minister to the poor; and the Church's call to send out its adherents to end ‘social abuses’ and achieve ‘moral victories’. These three core Christian Socialist beliefs were applied in Andrews's thought and achievements during the second half of his life, in the colonial contexts of India, South Africa and Fiji. By comparing his thought and activity with perceptions of empire traceable among contemporary Anglican Christian Socialists, Andrews's colonial career is found to have enabled Anglican social thought to take on a global frame of reference, presaging proponents of an Anglican global social conscience later in the century.

Church Planting and the Parish in Durham Diocese, 1970–1990: Church Growth Controversies in Recent Historical Perspective

AbstractThis article unearths the forgotten history of the first modern church planting scheme in the Church of England: an attempt to restructure parish ministry in Chester-le-Street, near Durham, in the 1970s and 1980s. This story of rapid growth followed by decline, and of an evangelical church’s strained relations with their liberal bishop, David Jenkins, has pertinence for contemporary Anglican antagonisms over ‘fresh expressions’ and other church planting programmes. A culture of mistrust is arguably apparent both then and now, between liberals and conservatives in ecclesiology, even as the same line divides those of the reverse tendency in broader, doctrinal theology: conservatives from liberals. Developments, decisions and, indeed, debacles in the story of Chester-le-Street parish point to the urgent need for liberals and conservatives in Anglican ecclesiology and theology to overcome their mistrust of each other by recognizing the other as valuable for the mutual strengthening and renewal of the Church.

The Oxford Movement and Polish Ultramontanes: An Unusual Example of Nineteenth-Century Interchurch Inspiration

This essay presents an outcome of the Oxford Movement that its founders did not anticipate. In 1838 Jan Koźmian, one of the leaders of spiritual renewal among Poles and a future member of the (Catholic) Resurrectionists Congregation, visited England for a year, looking carefully at its contemporary religious movements. He took much inspiration from the Oxford Movement, which affected his personal religious views and resulted in establishing the Catholic journal Przegląd Poznański, which greatly resembled Tractarian writings. In one of his texts he described the Oxford Movement and possible lessons that Polish society should learn from it. This example of a nineteenth-century Catholic movement that was inspired by a contemporary Anglican movement was not a common phenomenon.

New directions for universities?

Universities help shape individuals and societies. Contemporary Anglican theologians argue the shaping universities are involved in should be towards the common good, including by creating graduates as citizens. That is well within the mainstream of what universities have traditionally been about. It is also consistent with what other commentators are currently saying. Present higher education policy focuses on universities serving the economy and enabling social mobility. Both those are important, but society faces other and complex challenges which universities should be involved in addressing, including by helping society and graduates seek the good, and, some argue, God, in the midst of those challenges. If universities do not rise to such challenges, they will fail their students and society.

The Anglican Sense of “Implicit Religion”

The origin of Edward Bailey’s concern, which he came to name “implicit religion,” was his lived experience as an Anglican priest of what the Prayer Book Ordinal call the “cure of souls.” Anglican ministry is based in a pastoral concern for the ordinary lives of— in principle—all the people living in the parish. This concern has typically been expressed by the Anglican clergy and laity in the forms of verse, prose and music; Bailey attempted to give this focus a sociological form. The context of this project is described. This subject-matter has meant his ideas have been both fruitful and elusive; in particular, the many attempts to “operationalize” them and give them clearer academic focus have sometimes failed, in part because of the deliberately anti-theological cast of the contemporary sociological discipline, and in part because of the resolutely non-theological nature of contemporary Anglican thought. In this tribute, I explore some of the implications of this analysis.

Remembering and the Creation of Sacred Place

This article seeks to unravel some of the complex issues behind what are termed acts of “double remembering” at Glastonbury, particularly in Anglican Christian thought. The article will argue that contemporary Christian thinking around acts of pilgrimage are so multivalent and diverse that we cannot simply seek to understand even a fairly small scale issue like Anglican/Anglo Catholic pilgrimage to Glastonbury in terms of any general theoretical perspective, but that many conflicted, and often conflicting, acts of remembering which relate to the identity of those involved, are being enacted. This exposition is set against the context of contemporary Anglican thinking on pilgrimage, some significant theoretical constructions of pilgrimage, and the Christian and New Age understanding of Glastonbury and its meanings. Some aspects of implicit religion theory will be used to help discuss the issues.

Medievalism in The Excursion

Wordsworth's comparison of Excursion to AntiChapel of a gothic sets up an implicit contrast between contemporary Anglican values in 1814, and medieval, Catholic, or pre-Reformation past. He continues analogy by explaining that his minor Pieces. . .when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by Reader to have such connection with main Work as may give them claim to be likened to little Cells, Oratories, and sepulchral Recesses, ordinarily included in those Edifices (1814 viii-ix; Cornell ed. 38) (1) His ideal or attentive readers included Bishop of London and Anglican clergy whose high commendations he cited in a letter to his brother Christopher (MY II 171). These readers would have noted Catholic allusions: Cells and Oratories were part of Catholic churches where monks and nuns had prayed for others' souls while for Anglicans, an oratory was simply a domestic chapel. Similarly, a Recluse would have been a celibate member of an enclosed monastic order. In a poem that was to help reclaim and renovate war-weary world of 1814, Wordsworth's simile reveals contradictions between Catholic or pre-Reformation past and contemporary Anglican culture as a source of ethical value. Medievalism was only defined as a style and state of mind in Victorian period, when Ruskin divided Western history into a trinity of ages that represented not only historical moments but also cultural perspectives, namely, classicism, medievalism, and modernism (Ruskin 153): indeed, when Wordsworth wrote Excursion word medieval was yet to enter English language. (2) Examples of medievalism nevertheless appear as soon as thinkers and artists detected difference and distance between themselves and Middle Ages. Medievalism is adoption of style and / or values of Middle Ages, usually prompted by a need to find a critical distance from present. Unlike Antiquarianism, where pastness is primary source of value, medievalism looks for value by contrasting style, ethics, and society of past with present. For Wordsworth and many of his contemporaries, problem with Middle Ages was domination of Roman Catholic Church. Histories of England, even David Hume's version which is largely unsympathetic towards religion, claimed that, after Norman Conquest, William I depressed English identity (I 248), allowing his archbishop Lanfranc to promote the interests of papacy (I 226). Yet perhaps values could still be found in Middle Ages, and each of four speakers in Excursion represents a slightly different interpretation of such values. Wanderer is associated with minstrel tradition, while Solitary's retreat from world connects him with recluse or Hermit. Pastor creates a more chivalric view of Middle Ages, especially his narrative of Sir Alfred Irthing. Finally, Poet's medievalism is less distinct, but he is attracted to ideas of tradition and nationhood. In combination, these perspectives contribute to a uniquely Wordsworthian, Reformed medievalism. full expression of Wordsworth's medievalism is Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822), a sonnet sequence on history of English Church begun around December, 1820, after a walk with Sir George Beaumont through different parts of his Estate, with a view to fix upon Site of a New Church which he intended to erect (Jackson 137). The Catholic Question, which was agitated in Parliament about that time, kept my thoughts in same course; and it struck me, that certain points in Ecclesiastical History of our Country might advantageously be presented to view in Verse (Jackson 135). Wordsworth's sonnets and his notes to Ecclesiastical Sketches reveal a new, or rather re-formed, narrative about history of English Church, which Robert Southey was also developing in Book of Church (1824). …

Scripture, Conversation and Anglican Identity

AbstractThis editorial piece considers the implications of Scriptural Reasoning, a method of inter-religious exchange that is the subject of the present number of the journal, for contemporary Anglicanism. It suggests that the character of Scriptural Reasoning as a conversation held across and despite religious difference offers a challenge to contemporary Anglicans to maintain their own conversation about Scripture.

Reflections on the media coverage of the Anglican Church management conflict in Zimbabwe.

This paper explored the different views and dimensions that emerged during the conflict for leadership in the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe between the year 2000 and 2013. It is not disputed that the media act as a watchdog of the society, but in the Anglican conflict it is a mystery as to whose dog the media was as evidenced by a close analysis of the comments they wrote. While it is evident and undoubtedly clear that the religious conflicts for leadership dates back to the biblical days, it is still worthwhile to expound on whether the old motivations for leadership are the same as those obtaining in the Anglican conflict. An analysis is thus essential so as to draw parallels between the ancient church leadership squabbles and the contemporary Anglican crisis. Relying mainly on newspaper documentary evidence, this paper explored the media’s neutrality and role in the Anglican management conflict. The results showed that the media are active agenda setters who frame issues in a certain manner while ignoring or censoring other dimensions. From the perspectives of the public it was noted that the congregation got aligned to different media organizations, which shared their views in the unfolding disagreements. The old theories of succession and the spirit of schism slid back into place in a very glaring way; with power, priestly preeminence and prophetic authority taking the centre stage in the conflict in an interesting way.

Trends and Directions in Contemporary Theology: Anglican Theology

This article provides a map of trends and directions in contemporary Anglican Theology. It divides the main protagonists into five camps: the liberals, the conservatives, those advocating ‘mystical theology’ and ‘radical orthodoxy’, those stressing ecclesiology and culture, and finally, in a camp all of his own the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The article argues that one of the enduring legacies of Rowan Williams may be the way in which he is influenced by all the other camps and is thereby influencing Anglican theology in a highly distinctive way.

New Voices: Threat of Promise?

This article uses examples drawn from contemporary Anglicanism to raise the question of the adequate hearing and reception of new voices within the established and mainstream traditions of Christianity. Citing the Indian theologian Christopher Duraisingh, it affirms the need to move beyond the traditional privilege accorded to English and English-speaking theologians, to accept that theology is always emerging from the encounter between tradition and context, and to “break open” the traditional institutions that stifled the diversity of voices within the churches. Listening to other voices casts new light on the Christian doctrines of salvation and incarnation as well as traditional approaches to ethics and worship. It also notes the importance of new voices for raising our awareness of the global and cosmic dimensions of Christian faith and for our relationship to other religious traditions. The article concludes with a challenge to those in positions of ecclesiastical and academic authority to pay special attention to voices which may contribute to their own deeper understanding of Christian faith.

The Meanings of Communion: Anglican Identities, the Sexuality Debates, and Christian Relationality

Recent discussions of the international Anglican Communion have been dominated by notions of a ‘crisis’ and ‘schism’ resulting from conflicts over issues of homosexuality. Existing accounts of the Communion have often tended to emphasise the perspectives of those most vocal in the debates (particularly bishops, senior clergy, and pressure groups) or to engage in primarily theological analysis. This article examines the nature of the purported ‘crisis’ from the perspectives of Anglicans in local parishes in three different national contexts: England, South Africa, and the United States. Unusually for writing on the Communion, attention is simultaneously given to parishes that have clear pro-gay stances, those that largely oppose the acceptance of homosexual practice, and those with more ambivalent positions. In doing so, the article offers new insights for the growing body of literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians, as well as wider discussions about the contested nature of contemporary Anglican and other Christian identities. Key themes include the divergent ways in which respondents felt (and did not feel) connections to the spatially distant ‘others’ with whom they are in Communion; the complex relationships and discordances between parish, denominational, and Communion-level identities; and competing visions of the role of the Communion in producing unity or preserving diversity amongst Anglicans.