Lance Lawton asks Is it time to disinvent global Anglicanism?
The international body known as the Anglican Communion (AC) was created by the first Lambeth Conference of Bishops in 1867. In round figures that makes it 150 years old. As such it is a modern movement within the centuries-long story of the historic church of the English people, which is variously reckoned to date to the English Reformation of the 16th & 17th centuries, the arrival in Britain of Augustine of Canterbury in AD597, or even as early as the 3rd century through Celtic missions. And even within the modern era, there were Anglican dioceses, led by bishops generally appointed from London, well established decades before 1867, in various parts of the world including of course Australia.
All of that to observe that the AC is very far from being of the essence of Anglican Christianity, whether in Britain or beyond. It is neither the beginning of nor essential to collegiality between bishops or their common “lineage” back to the English church.
Related, if rarely mentioned, is the association of Anglicanism’s global reach with English colonialism. The AC is said to be the world’s 3rd (or possibly 4th) largest global Christian “communion”, after the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy. That numerical spread and size owes more than anything to the “glories” and shames (such as settler colonialism) of the British Empire. It’s notable for instance that it was only 3 years ago that the then Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby publicly voiced regret and apology for the complicity in slave ownership in the histories of both his own family and the Church he then led.
The colonialist association owes largely to the too common virtual enmeshment of the earliest CofE missionary societies(particularly the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and the Church Missionary Society) with Britain’s Imperial project. To add a personal note – I personally seriously pursued overseas missionary service 4 decades ago (though it didn’t eventuate) and have esteemed Christian world mission most of my life, dear as it all is to my proudly evangelical heart. And yet it’s impossible to deny or forget that my own Christian faith, my decades of ordained ministry, and the wider church family I belong to, are founded upon the moral morass of British Imperial conquest and expansion.
In a day when the unflattering truths of historic dispossession and decimation of once proud sovereign peoples are being brought into the light, foundations on which Australia among other western nations has been built, and with a growing awareness among some that churches meet on stolen land – the retention of a hierarchical (albeit mostly symbolic) global church body under English headship, seems to this writer both anachronistic and morally tone deaf.
But today’s challenges to the AC’s cohesion go well beyond mere symbols of a colonial past. The greater challenges are cultural and theological. For many decades the lion’s share of numerical growth in the AC has occurred in those parts of the world now collectively styled the Global South (rather than the two-thirds world), in contrast with those of the Global North (once the West) where decline is more the pattern. Illustratively, it’s been strikingly clear since at least the 1998 Lambeth Conference that the greater number of Anglican bishops (and thus of the dioceses and churches they lead) are not of Anglo-European ethnic extraction.
Christian communities of the ’South’ exist in radically different socio-cultural contexts from those of the ’North’, in turn reflective of quite varying histories, thought worlds, and engagements with their respective societies.
A more thorough sociological analysis of North and South lies well beyond a piece like this one, not to mention this writer. But I’d like to suggest two somewhat related points of general contrast between the cultural and theological worlds of Anglican Christians of the North versus those of the South.
The first I’ll call competing Anglican benchmarks. That is to say views on what constitutes the essence of an Anglican church identity. The two benchmarks I’ll suggest are (i) the authority (or primacy) of Scripture in a broadly evangelical sense, together with adherence to the historic (English Reformation) formularies,¹ and (ii) being in communion with Canterbury. It might be observed that one is primarily doctrinal or foundational, the other primarily dynamic or incarnational. Observably, the former predominates in the South, the latter in the North.
The second is competing hermeneutics; or simply approaches to Scripture and culture. Or put another way – how the Bible is applied in contemporary contexts. Again, while acknowledging the shortcomings of binary descriptors, I have in view the predominantly “conservative” South and the “progressive” majority North. My aim here is to describe very concisely the two broad hermeneutics found within the AC, objectively, fairly and in ways their respective adherents would affirm. I welcome suggestions for improvement to that end.
The Conservative / South Hermeneutic:
Scripture read, interpreted and applied in traditional ways, emphasising its original meaning as God’s unchanging and authoritative word, standing as the ultimate authority culture must reckon with; rejecting the counter charge of fundamentalism.
The Progressive / North Hermeneutic:
Scripture read, interpreted and applied progressively (or dynamically), in dialogue with culture, emphasising Scripture’s evolving relevance; rejecting the counter charge of supplanting Scripture with the prevailing cultural zeitgeist.
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The cultural and theological differences explored here are in my view the real obstacle to the viability of a global Anglican Communion under a single head, titular or otherwise. They represent a divide much more profound than the familiar western tension between “orthodox” and “liberal”. The North / South gulf isn’t reparable either by one group repenting and returning, or by the other “catching up”. Neither of those remedies enjoined by one side or the other is at all likely to occur anywhere in the foreseeable future. Either would require a dizzying worldview shift. The gulf could almost be called epochal. Churches in the ‘North’ (or ‘West’) are engaging a culture that’s evolved and is evolving on a trajectory very different from the ‘South’. Even conservative churches of the North are engaging their surrounding cultures in ways mostly inconceivable in the South, particularly around moral questions (e.g. gay rights).
All of that and more, in this writer’s perception, is down to profound differences in cultural milieu. Not to suggest that cultures and Christian thought in the South are not evolving. But in the main, they do so in different ways, seemingly more slowly, and not necessarily in the same direction.
The first aprt of Lance Lawton’s series on “More boats for choppy sees” apeared here https://theothercheek.com.au/rough-sees-is-it-time-to-disinvent-global-anglicanism/
¹ The ‘formularies’ are those documents held to be foundational to Anglican belief and practice. With some variations in what’s included, the most significant in common would be the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, the 39 Articles of Religion, and the Books of Homilies.
First published at Fullofgraceand truth.net
Image: thge Angl;ican Compass Rose, symbol of the Anglican Communion
I suggest that all parts of the Communion are enmeshed in their local cultures and perhaps we could be more assiduous in analysis of this aspect of Anglican life and from that analysis offer each other mutual respect for the respective challenges we face to be faithful to Christ, rather than what is experienced as mutual disrespect for how we are responding to our respective contexts.