For those of us who are part of the Diocese of Melbourne it is important that we reflect on what it means to be an Anglican, or to use contemporary terminology, what is distinctive about Anglican ”˜spirituality’. We are the most diverse diocese in Australia. On the theological level we have anglo-catholic, liberal catholic, reformed evangelical, evangelicals of other persuasions and charismatic parishes well represented, growing numbers of Chinese congregations and several other ethnic parishes, as well as a complete range of ages. What we see in our diocese at a micro level is magnified on the world scene.
Today, the Anglican Communion is an association of national Anglican churches organised as dioceses in 160 countries with a membership of approximately 80 million people. Following the Reformation of the church in England in the 16th century, catholic and evangelical emphases were from this point part of Anglicanism. The theological differences were for centuries contained within a common liturgical practice grounded in English culture. However in recent times doctrinal, liturgical and cultural diversity has become more pronounced and so differing spiritualities live side by side within Anglicanism. Today the Anglican Communion embraces evangelicals and anglo-catholics (with liberal and conservative strands in both cases), theological radicals and demonstrative charismatics, all modified by the ethnic and cultural variety of the Communion….
I find this an odd article by Dr Giles, whom I’ve sparred with on another issue (in the interests of full disclosure). Is this simply description of what he sees around him? Or does it have some kind of prescriptive force – is he trying to articulate what Anglicanism should be when it is being true to itself? I suspect that it is the latter, but it is written as though it is the former.
Whichever way it is intended, it is a quite ahistorical account, that seems to focus on a snapshot of Anglicanism in the west in places like the Diocese of Melbourne for its picture of “what Anglicanism is”. As the historian Diamaird McCulloch has argued in lectures I’ve attended, the Elizabethan settlement’s theology (the Prayer Book in particular) was ruthlessly anti-catholic. So the claim that from the reformation, “catholic and evangelical emphases were from this point part of Anglicanism” is a tweak in the direction of the conclusions Giles is aiming for. It’s not entirely false, but it’s not true in the straightforward way he presents it.
Similarly, his observation that Holy Communion is normally administered weekly is arguably true now in many places, but is hardly true historically – whole centuries in post-reformation period seemed to go past with very few people in a parish taking Holy Communion even the mandated three times per year.
Then we come to the ways where the cards are stacked towards the kind of Anglicanism that Giles himself identifies with – the paragraph on Word and Sacrament includes two sentences on how involvement with the poor is part of Anglican spirituality but nothing on evangelism. The final section on the place of Scripture’s authority avoids saying anything outrightly heretical, but it puts the stress on responding to ‘new situations’ – a move anyone familiar with Giles’ support for women’s ordination will not be surprised by, and reflects the normal Anglican game of ‘my strand within Anglicanism captures the true essence of Anglicanism’, for all he’s done here is articulate his view of Scripture and called it ‘the Anglican view’.
Giles’ appeal to ‘a passionate balance’ is much like Roan Williams’ view of some kind of neo-hegelian process where all differences are preserved and yet subliminated into a greater truth if we just stay in conversation: it’s got little to do with historical Anglicanism. It’d be hard to find the majority of Anglicans from the 16th to the 19th century arguing that the essence of Anglicanism was balance between extremes.
But for someone like Giles in the Diocese of Melbourne, it’s a nice rhetorical move to paint things this way. It means that he and his allies can paint themselves as the true Anglicans (while expressing horror that anyone else, for example the Diocese of Sydney, might do so) – for they can point to liberals on one side of them, conservative evangelicals on the other, anglo-catholics on one side, and low church evangelicals on the other. They can always claim to be the ‘middle’ as though that is [i]a priori[/i] a good thing.
Just as well Athanasius and Luther and Cranmer didn’t have this view, or we would never have had the Reformation or our Trinitarian orthodoxy. None of those three were concerned about ‘passionate balance’ as the true essence of Christianity. They cared about the truth of God as revealed in Scripture as the one and only way to life.
[Dense theological language warning: apologies for what follows but I read a lot of philosophy as part of theology]:
I have never thought of Rowan Williams as a neo-hegelian but Mark Baddeley’s comment made immediate sense: apparent differences being aufgehoben through the ineluctable progress of Geist working itself out in history. I thought that Kierkegaard and then the shock of the First World War had more or less finished off that school of thought. BTW Mark sumblimated not subliminated.
He who would correct others should first get things right himself:
tweaking comment above should read sublimated … etc