Reformation Anglicanism (The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, Volume 1)

A Vision for Today's Global Communion

Ashley Null, John W. Yates III

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781433552168
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A Clear Vision for What It Means to Be Anglican Today

Conceived under the conviction that the future of the global Anglican Communion hinges on a clear, welldefined, and theologically rich vision, the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library was created to serve as a go-to resource aimed at helping clergy and educated laity grasp the coherence of the Reformation Anglican tradition.

With contributions from Michael Jensen, Ben Kwashi, Michael Nazir-Ali, Ashley Null, and John W. Yates III, the first volume in the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library examines the rich heritage of the Anglican Communion, introducing its foundational doctrines rooted in the solas of the Reformation and drawing out the implications of this tradition for life and ministry in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1

How the Anglican Communion Began and Where It Is Going

Michael Nazir-Ali

The Missionary Birth of the Church of England

Under Roman rule, the island of Britain was a provincial backwater on the very edge of civilization.1 No cultured Latin, Greek, Syrian, or Egyptian was terribly interested in what happened out on that rain-drenched, druid-filled frontier, let alone in writing down its history. Consequently, the origins of the church in England are now lost in the mists of time.

It seems only logical that Christians who came to Britain with the Roman occupiers first brought the faith to the island. Whether they arrived specifically as missionaries or came primarily for business and ended up sharing their faith with those around them, no one can say. Nor does any information survive as to how quickly their efforts produced local congregations. The story of the conversion and martyrdom of the native Briton Saint Alban, who perished perhaps as early as the beginning of the third century, indicates the presence of Christianity in the country at that time, albeit in a situation of severe persecution. Even after the withdrawal of Roman military protection and the subsequent Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries, vestiges of the Christian church survived among the Britons, as is clear from the writings of the Anglo-Saxon historian Bede (673–735).2 However, having felt the sting of their rivals’ swords, the island Christians did not feel any obligation to share the faith with their new pagan Germanic neighbors.

That missionary impulse was to come from much farther away, all the way back to Rome, now no longer a ruling imperial city, but still the home of the leading bishop of the Western church. Pope Gregory the Great plucked Augustine from leadership of a comfortable monastery in Rome and sent him to the shores of England, now beyond the edge of civilization, in 597. A reluctant missionary, Augustine had to be encouraged by Gregory to persist in what he had been sent to do. However, his monastery at Canterbury eventually became the mother church for an emergent Anglo-Saxon Christianity throughout the island. Even as the Church of England felt forced to purge itself of medieval corruption and weakness during the sixteenth century, the English Reformers and monarchs continued to respect and honor their missionary debt to the Church of Rome.

At the same time, however, the Reformers pointed out that the church had existed in Britain before the arrival of Augustine and his fellow monks. Archbishop Matthew Parker is typical in claiming a mythic apostolic pedigree for this church.3 Of course, it is only pure legend that Joseph of Arimathea came to Glastonbury as England’s first missionary bishop during the first century. Nevertheless, Augustine soon learned that the Celtic church, established long before his arrival, was still active among the British people who had been driven back to western and northern parts of the island by the Anglo-Saxon invaders.

The struggle between Roman and Celtic forms of Christianity, as well as between Britain and Ireland, is often described as if each was mutually exclusive of the other. The usual polarizations, however, are not accurate. After all, Patrick, the founder of Christianity in Ireland, was himself a British Christian. The son of a deacon and the grandson of a priest, he was kidnapped from the west coast of Britain and made a slave to serve across the sea among the pagan Irish. After escaping and returning home six years later, he felt God’s call to return to the land of his captors and, since he now spoke Gaelic, preach the gospel to them in their own language. Moreover, during his religious training in Gaul, he became familiar with Roman custom, and this seems to have been the form of the Christian faith that he preached in Ireland. He remained, nevertheless, sensitive to Irish spirituality, acknowledging the significance of woods, springs, and wells, as well as the importance of dreams and visions.

Patrick’s missionary zeal and method became part of the spiritual DNA of the Celtic church. As a result, at about the same time that Augustine was arriving in southeast England at Canterbury, the Irish monk Columba had not only settled on the Scottish island of Iona but also made it a center for missionary work in northern England. Paulinus of York and Rochester, a bishop who had been sent out from Canterbury, had converted King Edwin of Northumbria to Christianity. After Edwin had been killed in battle, Paulinus returned south, but left many Roman converts behind. A year later, Oswald, Edwin’s nephew, became king of Northumbria. In his youth, Oswald had taken refuge in Scotland, where he was converted to Irish Christianity. When he became king, he invited Aidan to come from Iona and found a monastery on Lindisfarne Island as a base for evangelizing his kingdom.

As a result, in Northumbria the Roman and Celtic churches directly collided. Their competing forms of mission had many aims in common: evangelization, baptism, and Christianization. However, significant differences still divided them. Most importantly, the Roman mission emphasized organizational stability for long-term growth. They fostered a strong institutional life for the church by establishing bishops with specific dioceses, holding synods, and insisting on a common liturgy marked by the same feasts and fasts. The Celts, on the other hand, saw themselves as pilgrims for Christ. Their primary motive was giving up everything, even their homeland, for the sake of following Christ. Their bishops lived in monasteries and made missionary trips out and about to pastor their flocks and increase them.

In short, the Roman missional strategy was to stress founding structures capable of shaping a message, whereas the Celtic way was to proclaim a message with the power to create a community. Yet, even these differences can be emphasized too much. Although the Roman mission placed its highest value on institutional rootedness, pilgrimage remained very important for the progress of the Roman mission in early medieval Northern Europe. Indeed, such Anglo-Saxons as Boniface, who left his homeland in England to become the apostle to Germany, emulated the Irish example.4

Because of their substantial differences, however, it should be no surprise that these two ways of living out the life of the church came into conflict. This tension came to a head at the Synod of Whitby (AD 664) and was, according to Bede, largely resolved in favor of Roman customs. Nevertheless, the tension between mission as enduring structure and mission as traveling message has recurred throughout the history of the church. For example, enclosed monasticism like the Benedictines (founded about 530) emphasized stability. During the Middle Ages, however, the new mendicant (i.e., begging) orders arose. As exemplified by the Franciscans and the Dominicans, these new groups emphasized traveling, teaching, and preaching among laypeople.

Of course, these were not the only tensions in the church. Another key issue was the proper relationship between the church and secular governments. Bishops were important figures in society, since they controlled the revenues from large amounts of land given to the church. Who, then, should appoint them: the king or the pope? After much struggle, Rome generally prevailed in this dispute, which became known as the investiture controversy (i.e., Who should “invest” a bishop with his office?). Even a section of the Magna Carta, the first ...