The Promise of Anglicanism

Robert S. Heaney, William L. Sachs

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780334058441
• eBook ISBN: 9780334058465
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

By looking at the Church through the lens of the biblical theme of promise, this book seeks to offer neither lament for a tattered tradition nor facile hope for an expanding one. It considers the key phases of Anglican history, each defined by clear intentions, from securing English national life, to mission, to finding contextual roots in various locales.

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The Meaning of Promise

Reframing the Anglican Story

What has been the promise of Anglican life? That is, what have Anglicans intended and on what basis? There is no lack of vivid suggestions, but there is a frustrating lack of consensus. The obvious marks of Anglican identity find expression in various ways in English religious life. Even the Church of England’s role as religious establishment has not resolved the matter. Within the Church of England, the idea and function of the religious establishment have been questioned repeatedly. Within strictly English bounds, ‘Anglicanism’ is a term that defies coherence. But its seeming uniformity masks theological and liturgical factions. The Church is a mix of varied expressions. No one formulation of its identity conveys the whole.

Of course, the greater problem concerns the Church’s expansion beyond England. The success of its mission can be attested by the variety and durability of churches that arose and now claim Anglican identity. But the extent of Anglican expansion deepens the sense that Anglican life is incoherent. We use the term ‘expansion’ descriptively, without particular valuation. Anglicanism became larger in its numbers of adherents, especially during the twentieth century. It has also become more dispersed across continents and cultures globally. The result has been that, across its variations, Anglicanism is defined disparately. Variation, which we see as the fruit of contextualization, set the stage for contestation. The extent of contestation now and the issues being contested belie easy assurances about Anglican identity. Promise seems forestalled, even though all sides in the recent Anglican dispute over sexuality invoke this ideal. The conflict over sexuality echoes the prior tensions over liturgy and the ordination of women, exacerbating differences of biblical interpretation and the nature of church tradition in particular. Yet it has proven more divisive than prior disputes. Differing positions on sexuality, especially homosexuality, have subsumed various other tensions and cast such differences more widely across Anglican life. This conflict alone seemingly forestalls the ideal of Anglican promise. But even amid such division, we find portents of promise.

To explain how this is possible, we take a broad perspective on the nature of religious tradition and on the meaning of conflict in religious life. Our goal is to reframe the Anglican story. That is, we intend to tell the Anglican story from a different perspective and, in so doing, to highlight both the dynamism of Anglican tradition and the possibility that contestation has been the pathway to promise for Anglicans. It should be apparent that we discount claims for the finality of Anglican identity in strictly English terms. It should also be clear that we view religious faith and tradition dynamically. We affirm the truth of Christian revelation and we honour the historic framework of Anglican life in worship and ministry. However, efforts to form the Church and to live faithfully in the midst of diffuse cultural patterns lead to variations of Anglican expression. The Church is never complete, but is ever in search of ways to incarnate more fully the faith it has inherited. It is a human fellowship journeying in the midst of realities that challenge its intention. Alert to the frictions that have arisen, how Anglicans have moved from ideals to expressions is our focus.

The development of religious life in all instances requires the creation of normative patterns of belief and practice. Religions do so through identifying core aspects of human experience of the divine. Often expressive of human origins and of the beginnings of the particular religion, these accounts, and the customs that embody them, are passed on from one generation to another. Religious life links the past to the present. For Christians, this means close attention to Jesus, to his earliest followers and to the Scriptures as witness to their words and actions. By virtue of being handed down, generation to generation, such accounts form a religious tradition. Yet religious traditions must be lived, not simply passed on. As such, a tradition readily becomes contested. What we term ‘contestation’ is, paradoxically, emblematic of the Anglican approach to a Christian tradition that ever unfolds.1

All religious traditions utilize interpretations of the past, especially with reference to founding figures and a period of origins. Interpretations of the past propose actions that enhance the possibility of realizing an envisioned future. Teleology is implicit in tradition; that is, tradition intends to do more than to hallow the past or to frame life in the present, as pivotal as those emphases must be. Religious traditions seek to attain certain ends; they are inherently purposeful; they are laden with forms of promise unrealized and glimpsed partially. The theme of promise is integral to all religious traditions. In Judaism, for example, promise is embodied in the covenant between God and the Hebrew people. Promise centres on the destiny of this people and the land promised to them. In Christianity, as we shall see, the scope of promise broadens beyond one people and one land. All people can become heirs of the promised redemption and receive the gift of unity in God’s eternal kingdom. Christians are called to a treasure in earthen vessels, that is, the Church, which intends to foreshadow the eternal realm. As an expression of Christian faith, Anglicanism shares the ideal of this promise. But given Anglicanism’s confusions and conflicts, it seems improbable to speak of promise among Anglicans now.

As our Introduction outlined, conflict among Anglicans is historic, and the extent of conflict and resulting division has seemingly intensified. Yet conflict, we suggested, has been a facet of building the Church, a by-product of a faith tradition that is growing and diversifying. Contestation, we will reiterate, inevitably arises, challenging Anglicans to clarify what they intend and by what means. Contestation brings needed debate that serves church growth when it is accompanied by a sense of mutuality, which lately has frayed. Paradoxically, contestation on major questions of Christian faith and life can illuminate Christian promise more vividly. The challenge is to shift the focus of contestation from what various factions in a dispute fear and oppose to what they envision and aspire to become. To be a Christian, and to be the Church, is to engage in a process of becoming, whose telos requires clarity and faithful grounding.

There is no denying the depth of recent contestation among Anglicans, nor that it concerns basic aspects of faith. The conflict that has fractured Anglicanism has an intense religious and moral focus. Division over sexuality surfaces in profoundly different approaches to human identity, moral priority and proper practice in Anglican life. This conflict reflects divergent interpretations of Christian sources and their application. Anglicans are not engaged in such conflict alone. It must be understood as part of larger tensions that afflict all world religions now. As we indicated, and as Sachs has assessed in print, this conflict pits people and factions of conservative, or ‘orthodox’, conviction against those who uphold liberal, or ‘progressive’, views. For each side, issues of religious and moral purity are at stake. As the reality of alternative Anglican factions dramatizes, people of one theological and moral ilk may refuse fellowship with those who take the opposing view. The resulting division seems insurmountable.

Yet several factors mitigate this situation. The first, as we shall describe further, is that this is hardly the first time Anglicans have faced intractable difference. We do not diminish the fact of division, but neither do we make it definitive of Anglicanism’s nature, historically or in the present. We see meaning and direction in Anglican disputes. Second, many Anglicans in the Church’s multiple contexts do not define their faith or their lives by disputes that may occur at some remove from them. We do not discount the reality of local issues arising in parishes and dioceses across the Anglican world. But issues such as sexuality that seemingly divide the Church as an institution hardly touch most people in their local domains. The contextual focus of Anglican life proves central to understanding the meaning of promise.

Lastly, division over sensitive theological and moral issues must be considered closely. What seem to be stark differences reveal common concerns and affirmations, but also different forms of emphasis and expression. In his broad assessment of divergences between religious liberals and conservatives, this is the conclusion of Jonathan Haidt. He is able to frame moral life in an all-encompassing way, citing six patterns of moral dichotomy that people generally use to frame their convictions. Thus, Haidt contrasts care versus harm, fairness versus cheating, loyalty versus betrayal, authority versus subversion, sanctity versus degradation and liberty versus oppression. His categories, reflective of research on several continents with special attention to religious groups and faithful people, prove suggestive for our argument. The very framework conveys the seriousness of moral concern for most people most of the time. Most people, Haidt concludes, tend to hold common foundations, in the sense that they reason morally in similar ways. Also, most people in their situations face personal and group challenges, testing their convictions and compelling adaptive stances in light of new circumstances. Morality does not begin in reason, he also finds. Reasoning is secondary, the product of conviction proposed by intuition, by sensitivities and perceptions, and by group affinity. Religious faith is grounded in such perceptions first, then explained in rational terms.2

What distinguishes people and their groups, and can ultimately divide them, is that different moral questions arise that reflect different kinds of contextual issues. Context here can mean just the neighbourhood or local area in which one lives, but in which vexing moral questions can surface. The issues that arise, how they are framed and what are deemed proper responses can vary across diverse contexts that reflect cultures and simple local values and priorities. Haidt also finds that people can be bound in moral conviction in ways that transcend context. He traces divergent moral priorities, and even a readiness to contest different moral conclusions, to differences of temperament. Some people emphasize care, while others focus on authority. Some lift up fairness, while others value sanctity. His six dichotomies reflect how moral conviction arises for most people. But moral conviction finds divergent emphasis and expression.

Even with apparent depth of conviction, moral absolutes are difficult to sustain. Adaptive challenges arise as life changes, circumstances in one’s locale shift, new realities and insights become unavoidable. One’s moral inclination may not alter greatly, and one’s basis of moral conviction may not change. But the necessity of ongoing moral assessment means that Haidt describes a dynamic and unfinished process. It is not unlike the dynamism of Anglican life, with its contextual focus, its search for ever more faithful expression amid change. In addition, Haidt’s framing of moral conviction in a way that transcends ideology shapes our consideration of promise. In the ways that Anglicans have framed their life, and even in the ways they have disputed with one another, we see a similar dynamic. Anglicans have sought the same ends using the same theological and historical resources, albeit valuing them differently. The hope of realizing faith’s promise animates Anglican pursuits.

As we have approached the promise Anglicans have envisioned, two points of emphasis have already surfaced. The first is that Anglicans have sought to realize the Christian intention primarily in their localities, through a biblical, sacramental and pastoral tradition applied contextually. To a notable degree, Anglican theology is local theology; Anglican life is local life. At the same time, Anglicans have envisioned a larger unity that is both faithful to Christian sources and expressed compellingly in a myriad of contexts. Anglicanism is neither strictly magisterial nor entirely confessional. It claims the grounding of apostolicity understood as the continuation of gospel witness across time and cultures. Thus Anglicanism emerges in mission. Its challenges have become global on the one hand and contextual on the other. It can be vexed both by large-scale moral differences and by particular demands of resources and leadership. Anglican life occurs at various levels, and so its promise must be viewed. We now consider what the promise of Christianity has meant biblically and how it animated early Christian life, before we turn to the unfolding of Anglicanism’s journey towards promise.

Promise as a Biblical and Early Christian Theme

In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV) the word ‘promise’ occurs 72 times. Nearly half, or 34 occurrences, are in the Christian Bible, or New Testament. In Luke 1.55 the word is found once in a Gospel text. This is Mary’s song of praise, where she declares: ‘He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.’ Mary speaks of promise as fulfilled, with events unfolding that confirm it, a prominent theme in Luke and Acts. Jesus speaks of himself in this way in Luke 20.17, a reference to Psalm 118, where he uses the imagery of the stone that, once rejected, has become the chief cornerstone. Acts 4.11 echoes this reference. In part, then, the New Testament gives a message of completion: that which had been promised, from the time of Abraham, has been fulfilled in the person of Jesus.

But fulfilment of historic promise in the person of Jesus does not mean that the task of building faith has been completed. Though Jesus advises his followers to stay in Jerusalem for the time being (Luke 24.49), the implication is that further events will unfold. Indeed, the message of Luke, and of the other Gospels, is that a new promise is ...

Table of contents

• The Promise of Anglicanism
• The Promise of Anglicanism
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction:Anglicanism’s Dilemma
• 1 The Meaning of Promise
• 2 A Contested Genesis
• 3 Catholicity and Contextualization
• 4 Catholicity and Communion
• 5 Testing Anglican Coherence
• 6 Renewing Communion in Mission
• 7 Distinctive and Faithful Practice
• Conclusion
• Index