Anglican History Research Articles

Postcolonialism and Anglican Theology

As the demographics of the Anglican Communion have shifted to the Global South, it has to adopt a postcolonial and polycentric model of mutual relationships. Postcolonial theory helps us examine Anglican history and theology through the lenses of colonialism and empire. This essay offers several examples of postcolonial critique of Anglican theology and elucidates the concept of hybridity in theology. It analyzes the revisions of the Book of Common Prayer in New Zealand/Aotearoa and Brazil as attempts to contextualize liturgy and proposes visions for theology in the Anglican Communion.

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.

Thy Kingdom Come: A Photographic History of Anglicanism in Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China

Thy Kingdom Come presents a tribute to the twentieth anniversary of the Anglican province of Hong Kong, commemorating its history in Greater China in 177 photos, with the general audience in mind. It depicts the emergence of a hybrid, multicultural church, in addition to just an indigenized, Chinese church as commonly envisioned.Its first two parts, “Nineteenth-Century Beginnings (1807–1912)” and “The Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui (Holy Catholic Church of China) and the Diocese of South China (1912–1951)”, constitute more than half of the collection, reflecting an emphasis on the early history of the church, in its transition from an organic start toward organization and synodical government, and in its active societal presence through to World War II. The subsequent parts of “The Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau (1951–1981)” and “The First Hong Kong Chinese Bishopric (1981–1998)” outline postwar developments of the church as a diocese. Following the political shift in China, the last meeting of the Chinese House of Bishops in 1956 marked the end of an era, while the Hong Kong diocese soon became detached in 1951 and remained so until 1998. The separation of the latter brief section of eleven photos indicates an emphasis on the indigenization of the bishopric. The final part concludes with the establishment of the Province of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (1998–2018).At first glance, as the authors stress in the introduction, the book tells a story of indigenization, highlighting milestones of Chinese clergies in Hong Kong being first ordained as deacon (Lo Sam-Yuen), priest (Kwong Yat-Shau), bishop (Mok Shau-Tsang), and diocesan bishop (Peter Kwong Kong-Kit), who eventually established the province and was installed as the first archbishop and primate. This was accompanied by an increasing acknowledgment of women’s contribution: from being anonymous and behind the scene, to renowned socialites, and eventually priests and directors of the Church’s Welfare Council. Meanwhile, the church actively engaged in the community, providing medical, social, and educational services, leading to a disproportionately large contribution to the reconstruction of postwar Hong Kong, a result that is not fully covered in this narrative. Hence, too, regrettably, many names of early students at the Anglican schools, translation helpers, and even clergy may be lost to history. Among the first Chinese substantially exposed to Christianity and the Western world, they had much to offer in a radical era of revolution and unrest.However, closer examination reveals the hybridity of the church, most vividly seen in the highly contextualized architecture first at St John’s University in Shanghai, followed by churches and cathedrals in Beijing and Hong Kong, for example. Likewise, plurality was reflected in the outfits captured in the photos: from the missionaries’ indigenizing efforts to the wide spectrum of cross-cultural attire adopted by Chinese Anglicans and students in the 1900s–1910s, a phenomenon that continued in postwar Hong Kong during rapid westernization. Moreover, while Chinese Anglicans gradually assumed importance, Europeans remained on the scene: notably, it was the English reverend Joyce Bennett who accompanied the guest of honor at a 1978 ceremonial opening. This very book exemplifies this hybridity, being bilingual and coauthored by Philip L. Wickeri, advisor to the archbishop, and Ruiwen Chen, researcher at the Anglican Archives.The 1997 Handover seems to have brought about certain adjustments: there was a stronger presence of government officials from both Hong Kong and China, while the archbishops of Canterbury and Hong Kong entertained politicians and attended political gatherings, scenes unseen in previous photos. In this light, some translation discrepancies become awkward: regarding the colonial status of Hong Kong, “ceded” (被割讓) was translated as “reduced to” (淪為) (13); and upon 1997 the city was described as having “reverted to Chinese sovereignty” (170), which would have been more commonly termed “return” or “handover” before. Regarding the photos of the bishops at the final synod in 1947, the English caption describes them as “Chinese and citizens of the PRC” (102), but the Chinese description conflates the two.While the availability of photos posed objective limitations, this was substantially complemented by the comprehensive bibliography at the end. To conclude, this photographic history is an invaluable collection, and will be of interest to both the general public and scholars of Anglican history in the region.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume III: The Nineteenth Century

Timothy Larsen and Mark Noll are to be warmly congratulated for persuading Oxford University Press to complement its five-volume Oxford History of Anglicanism with a parallel series on Protestant Dissenting Traditions. The present substantial book is the first of the series to appear, expertly edited by Timothy Larsen and Michael Ledger-Lomas, of King's College, London. Their team of twenty distinguished contributors, drawn from North America and Great Britain, cover the subject in five sections. In Part One of the volume, traditions within Britain and Ireland are considered, with chapters on Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Unitarians and Presbyterians, Methodists and Holiness, and Restorationists and New Movements. In Part Two a similar approach is taken to traditions outside Britain and Ireland (mostly North America, with a concluding chapter by Joanna Cruickshank on ‘Colonial Contexts’). In Part Three, Mark Noll explores the Bible and scriptural interpretation, David Bebbington discusses theology, and Robert Ellison draws on the Lyman Beecher and other lecture series to consider preaching and sermons. In Part Four examples of Dissenting activism are surveyed, with chapters on evangelism, revivals, foreign missions, and social reform. Part Five looks at ‘Congregations and Living’, through gender (S. C. Williams); ministerial training (Michael Ledger-Lomas); and spirituality, worship, and congregational life (Densil Morgan). Each chapter has its own select bibliography, so there is no overall bibliography for the volume.Two chapters deal specifically with Methodism. In Part One, Janice Holmes traces the history of Methodism and holiness in Britain and Ireland, exploring the numerical expansion of the movement in the first half of the nineteenth century, its steady institutionalization, and the schisms that divided the Wesleyan Connexion after 1791. This chapter covers a great deal of ground, picking up such major topics as Methodist worship and piety, attitudes to politics, and the ‘new Methodism’ of the late nineteenth century, particularly associated with Hugh Price Hughes, and drawing on the recent work of Ted Royle and Kate Tiller on church attendance and of Sandy Calder on Primitive Methodism. The section on ‘Varieties of Methodism’ notes that histories of Methodism tend not to include the Calvinistic Methodists; the point that perhaps needs to be made here is that ‘Methodist’ was used generically in the eighteenth century to describe all those associated with the Evangelical Revival, whether Arminian or Calvinist, conformist or dissenting, while later histories have differentiated between the Arminian heirs of the Wesleys, Whitefield's Calvinistic successors, and evangelicals who continued to conform to the Established Church. By the early nineteenth century, relations between these groups were very strained. It might be added that Wesleyan Methodists resisted alignment with Dissent, disagreeing with its Calvinist theology, its Congregationalist ecclesiology, and its antagonism to the Church of England.The parallel chapter in Part Two, on ‘Methodists and Holiness in North America’, is contributed by Jay R. Case, who notes that the ‘dissenting’ and anti-elite approach of Methodists enabled them to grow exponentially in the early years of the Republic and thus become effectively an ‘establishment’ in the nineteenth-century United States. Professor Case deftly handles the tensions over respectability and the issues that divided the Methodist Episcopal Church in the years before the Civil War. He writes thoughtfully on black Methodists, noting that despite the greater financial resources of the MEC, it was the black-led denominations that proved most effective in reaching the black population in the South. A section on the holiness movement traces the development of independent holiness institutions, sowing the seeds of new denominations. The separate history of Methodism in Canada, where British and American streams converged, is considered briefly.As well as these two dedicated chapters, Methodists feature in some of the other sections of the book, particularly in S. C. Williams's chapter on gender, Michael Ledger-Lomas's chapter on ministerial training (though it should be noted that A. S. Peake was tutor at Hartley College, but never its principal [491]), and Densil Morgan's chapter on spirituality. Morgan's assertion that Sunday worship was ‘led, almost invariably, by the minister’ (513), although true for most Dissenting denominations, was emphatically not the case in British Methodism, where most services were led by local preachers. In addition to these references, Andrew Holmes's luminous discussion of revivals and revivalism will also be a valuable resource to historians of Methodism, while David Bebbington's mapping of the theological terrain of evangelicalism, enlightenment, and romanticism sets the intellectual and cultural context for the whole period.As a learned and concise summary of key themes in the history of the Protestant Dissenting traditions, distilling the work of established scholars and incorporating the latest research, this is a very welcome volume, and the rest of the series is awaited with eager anticipation.

The Oxford History of Anglicanism, II: Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829, ed. Jeremy Gregory

The Oxford History of Anglicanism, II: Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829, ed. Jeremy Gregory

Global Anglicanism, c.1910–2000, Volume Five of The Oxford History of Anglicanism, edited by William L. Sachs

Global Anglicanism, c.1910–2000, Volume Five of The Oxford History of Anglicanism, edited by William L. Sachs

Review on the book «The Oxford History of Anglicanism» (Oxford, 2017)

Review on the book «The Oxford History of Anglicanism» (Oxford, 2017)

Catholicity: Anglicanism, history and the universal church in 1947

ABSTRACT In 1947 a pamphlet called Catholicity: A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West was published in London. It sought to state the intellectual vision of the Catholic movement within the Church of England on the great question of Union. But this was not merely a document produced by a particular party for its own purposes. It had been invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury and would inspire at least two other comparable reports of significance in response, one by evangelicals in the church and another by leaders of the British Free Churches. This article examines the contexts which created Catholicity, its significance as a moment in Anglican history and its distinctive contribution to the intellectual life of the wider Church. It also presents a discussion of the three figures who oversaw its production: Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher; Michael Ramsey (then a Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham); and the influential liturgical scholar Dom Gregory Dix.

‘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.

“Church trailblazer Rev Pat Storey on Weight Watchers, caffeine and how she named her dog after former New York Mayor”: News representations of the first female Anglican Bishop in the UK and Ireland

The first female bishop in the Anglican Church of the UK and Ireland was consecrated on November 30, 2013. For many within the Anglican Communion, the appointment of Reverend Pat Storey as Bishop of Meath and Kildare represented the opening of a longawaited new chapter in the history of Anglicanism. It is also potentially an occasion of considerable interest for both Irish historians and discourse analysts. For, although questions of gender and language have been widely considered in recent years, relatively few studies address the intersections of gender, language and religion – and fewer still examine the nexus of gender, language, religion, and power in contemporary Ireland. In this paper, therefore, I analyze news representations of Bishop Storey’s consecration – drawing critically on both the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA), as well as relevant religious studies literature – with a view to identifying both old and new discursive construals of one of contemporary Ireland’s powerful public female figures. In sum, I observe that news reporting of Bishop Storey is broadly positive, but displays residual gender bias, with repeated references to her marital and parental status, age, education, emotions and other personal behaviours depicting her chiefly as a woman, rather than as the right person for the position. This case study also illustrates my methodological argument that DHA and PDA can be complementary analytical frameworks for investigating underlying ideologies around religious, gender and other social identifications.

The Oxford History of Anglicanism, vol. III: Partisan Anglicanism and Its Global Expansion, 1829–c. 1914 ed. by Rowan Strong

The Oxford History of Anglicanism, vol. III: Partisan Anglicanism and Its Global Expansion, 1829–c. 1914 ed. by Rowan Strong

The Age of Athanasius

The publication of the Fourth Report of the Ritual Commission in 1870 occasioned intense debate over the position of the Athanasian Creed in the liturgy of the Church of England. This article reconstructs the course of that controversy, focusing particularly on the centrality of historical argument to the speeches, letters, and pamphlets in which critics and defenders of the formulary sought to stabilise Christian orthodoxy and define Anglican identity in a progressive environment. The episode draws attention, first, to the continuing and underestimated centrality of patristic scholarship to questions of church reform in Victorian England, whilst also pointing towards the eventual decline of the textual and antiquarian approach to apologetics that had characterised Anglicanism since the Reformation. Post-Reformation Anglican history, secondly, was itself integral to participants’ articulation of religious division, suggesting that conventional understandings of “church parties” in the Victorian Church of England should accordingly be revised.

Joshua Watson: High Church Lay Activism and the Development of Colonial Anglicanism, 1814–1855

Joshua Watson (1771–1855) was a wealthy merchant who used his business acumen and administrative skills to become a key player in numerous Anglican societies that had missionary concerns, working alongside high-ranking clergy in various capacities. One aspect of Watson’s achievements was his impact on the emerging colonial church structures in Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He was heavily involved in the reform and administration of the two main High Church mission societies: the SPCK and the SPG. Watson was a figure of immense significance to the development of early nineteenth-century colonial Anglicanism. His example illustrates the importance of lay figures both to the High Church tradition and to the broader history of Anglicanism.

Anglican Confirmation: 1662–1820.By Phillip Tovey

W hile initiation issues have echoed around the Anglican Communion for 50 years or more, not least in relation to admission to communion, confirmation as a discrete subject has received less attention, except where people believed that in essence confirmation was part of a single sacrament, belonging with water-baptism as eucharistic bread does with wine. In particular, there has been till now no comprehensive history of Anglican confirmation since the weighty essay by S. L. Ollard in Confirmation or the Laying on of Hands , vol. 1: Historical and Doctrinal (SPCK, 1925); and in the 90 years since that volume was published Anglican doctrines of confirmation have followed a dizzying path, hitting inaccessible heights in Gregory Dix and his followers, and returning via slippery slopes and extraordinary bypaths to a more restrained current understanding. The actual unrolling of Anglican history contributes to an understanding of these doctrinal developments; but for a connected account students have perforce had to return to Ollard. Now Phillip Tovey has filled a large yawning gap in recent telling of the history, for he here revisits the ‘long eighteenth century’ from 1662 to 1820, and recasts through thorough research the analysis which Ollard had provided.

From Jamestown to Jefferson: The Evolution of Religious Freedom in Virginia

From Jamestown to Jefferson is a collection of six commissioned essays that outline the process by which Virginia transitioned from being a place with uneasy religious toleration and an established church to one of disestablishment and religious liberty. Despite a multiplicity of authors, the volume achieves a cohesiveness and integration often lacking in such collections. Brent Tarter and Edward L. Bond provide a good grounding in the new Anglican history, which documents a strong vein of spirituality and lived religion in Virginia from its earliest founding. Virginians lived in a religious culture built upon the church seasons, the Book of Common Prayer, folk customs, and an established church that overcame shortages of clergy and a scattered population to create a lived faith on terms different than the familiar New England models. Philip D. Morgan and Monica Najar pick up the story by showing that Virginia always had a diverse religious culture (thanks to indigenous populations, the importation of enslaved Africans, and the recruitment of non-English immigrants). English dissenters and the Great Awakening added further layers of diversity. The Anglican majority reacted to threats to social order and hierarchy with both legal and extralegal harassment and violence. Groups that did not seem to challenge the social order were treated with tolerance. Before 1776 Presbyterians were successful in avoiding most persecution by working within the bounds of the Act of Toleration (1689). Baptists faced persistent persecution and violence because they rejected toleration in favor of religious liberty.

‘True churchmen’? Anglican Evangelicals and history, c.1770–1850

In the first half of the nineteenth century the relationship between the Church of England and the state shifted dramatically. This influenced, and was in turn influenced by, heated debates about Anglican history in general and about the Reformation in particular. Some of the bitterest debates revolved around differing understandings of the Church’s foundational literature – the Articles, Homilies and Prayer Book – and what they stood for. These debates drove scholarly understanding of the Reformation, but they also sharpened developing party boundaries. This article examines how these supposedly unchanging texts were reinterpreted as first Evangelicals and ‘Orthodox’ churchmen then Tractarians too sought to demonstrate that they, and not their adversaries, were the ‘true churchmen’.

Whose Colonialism? Which Empire?

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A History of Anglicanism in the Caribbean and The Bahamas

A history of growth and development of the Anglican Church in the Caribbean from its beginning in the 17th century to present day.

Stephen Neill'sAnglicanism: An Anglican Classic

ABSTRACTStephen Neill'sAnglicanismhas been the classic book on Anglican history and tradition for a generation. Books which become classics endure because they exhibit timeless features. Neill'sAnglicanismsucceeds because he delineates core features of the church's tradition which originated in English circumstances and spread beyond them. The book's endurance also reflects its comprehensive narrative and objectivity. For Neill English precedent left an enduring mark without enshrining English authority. Anglicanism's genius has been its capacity to embrace local variations of expression. Yet Neill foresaw the tensions inherent in post-colonial Anglicanism. The irony of the church's adaptability and growth was the resulting strain on its consensual forms that began in his lifetime. Local variety would extend to a degree that would erode over-arching consensus and strain the structures which would enforce it, as Neill saw plainly.

The Australian Anglican Historical Documents and Images Project

The sponsoring Anglican History Seminar, which meets annually, determined to extend the collection to cover digitized documents and images from the history of the Anglicanism in Australia generally. Dr Brian Dickey joined Dr Treloar in this expanded phase of the project. The Revd Bruce McAteer, General Secretary of the ACA acts as publisher. The editors aim to include documents and images of importance to the national life of the ACA, as well as important ‘firsts’ and other items that might generally illustrate the history of Anglicanism in Australia. We have adopted a broad and inclusive approach to what will be published on the site, which will be renamed as above. Broadly the editors will avoid newspaper reports from capital city newspapers (because these will eventually be digitized by the ANL), and published books. But manuscripts, reports, pamphlets and other ephemera, as well as images, are within view. Proposals for inclusion in the collection are therefore invited at large. In making a proposal it would be helpful to have what would ideally form the basis of the editorial introduction: A precise bibliographic statement of the item’s identity: author, recipient, date, location, file number etc;