As this series celebrating the strengths of different Christian traditions goes on, the smaller the scope of each post gets. Even this week we’ve gone from the larger Western Christian tradition, to the Protestant movement, and today, to the particular group of Protestants in which I was raised, and with which, for the most part, I still identify, Anglicanism.
Like a few of the terms we’ve looked at already in this series, Anglicanism is hard to define. At its most basic, it’s the church tradition that has inherited the ecclesiastical, liturgical, and theological mindset of the English Reformation. But of all the big tent Christian traditions, Anglicanism could quite possibly be the biggest and broadest tent of them all. It has historically included people who are Calvinist, Lutheran, and Catholic in their basic theology, and today one can find anything from the most elaborate ritual to the most enthusiastic charismatic manifestations in Anglican worship — often using the same basic liturgy (and, in some parts of the world, even in the same service!). To position myself within the spectrum of Anglican expressions, I’ve previously described the particular Anglicanism in which I was raised as “a ‘low church’, contemporary-leaning, but strongly Eucharistic expression of Christianity that preferred a bread-and-butter faith to theological speculation or elaborate ceremony.” I think that’s right, and if I were to picture a parish that was ‘perfect’ for me in its sensibility, I think that’s still very much what I’d be looking for.
But what is it about this biggest of Christian big tents that has shaped me and continues to resonate with me? Why am I Anglican? In this post I’d like to pull out three related ideas: the Anglican world’s focus on unity, the idea of the ‘Middle Path’, and theological comprehensiveness.
The Anglican Communion as we know it today encompasses the whole world and churches with very different contextual needs and very different theological outlooks. This unity is a very tenuous thing, and by most counts, it could have, and from a human perspective maybe even should have, disintegrated a long time ago. And yet it remains. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once commented that for Anglicans, schism is considered a worse sin than heresy. It’s a statement that repulsed me at first, but which I’ve grown to appreciate over the years. As I’ve previously commented on this:
And yet, when we read the New Testament, we see just how seriously the Apostles took unity. The more I reflect on it, the more I think Williams’s idea hits on something true about the Gospel: the very act of struggling to be faithful, to continue day by day showing up for God but also for one another in love and shared commitment to seeking truth together even and especially when ‘together’ is hard, is beautiful in God’s eyes. We would do well to make it our mission.
To paraphrase American Archbishop Michael Curry, when asked about the difficult relationships within the Anglican Communion, ‘Christ calls us to love one another, not to agree with one another.’ Over the past few decades, this unity has taken on an ever-increasing Eucharistic attitude. Brene Brown spoke of this well when she commented that one of the biggest reasons she still goes to church is because she knows it’s good for her to come to the table alongside people she greatly disagrees with.
The other two Anglican distinctives I’ll be talking about here are traditional ways Anglicans have managed to hold this unity within diversity together.
The first of these is the ‘Middle Way’ or ‘Middle Path’. This refers to the value avoiding extreme positions. To call the first decades of the English Reformation erratic would be an understatement. Because the precipitating issue for England’s break from Rome was political — a desire to keep Rome out of England’s affairs — the English Church went as its monarchs did. What this meant was a series of wild swings for the Church of England: Henry VIII was fiercely anti-Protestant, Edward VI’s regents enacted a dramatic shift towards Calvinism, and Mary I attempted a bring England back fully into the Catholic fold. Elizabeth I, ever the pragmatist, had had enough. Under her reign and the so-called Elizabethan Settlement, there was a strong avoidance of any extreme position. Very roughly speaking, one could say that the Church of England of the Settlement was moderately Calvinist in its beliefs about salvation, moderately Lutheran in its beliefs about the sacraments, moderately sacramental in its worship, episcopal — that is bishop-led — in its structure, and strongly royalist in its view of authority. Matters that were highly controversial, such as the Eucharist, were couched in language vague enough to allow for some variation in belief. While this Settlement made few people happy, its spirit has had a lasting impact. To this day, many Anglicans have a knee-jerk reaction against any position viewed to be extreme, in any direction.
This has often opened Anglicanism up to charges of being ‘wishy-washy’ and weak in its theology, and at its worst, this is probably true. I once heard Anglicanism described as primarily a liturgical, rather than a theological, tradition, and it’s hard to argue that. But at its best, Anglicanism has been able to see the strengths and weaknesses inherent in theological extremes and find ‘the golden mean’ between them, retaining the value inherent in the Catholic tradition while rejecting its more tenuous claims, and likewise enacted positive reforms while avoiding the extremes of English Puritanism. It’s not quite the idea of ‘positive-positive polarity’, but dit isn’t too far off.
But while the Settlement carried the day, the earlier mood swings prevented the Church of England from coalescing around any one figure or set of doctrines. And while its compromises were the official positions of the authorities, it’s fair to say that most English Christians weren’t on board, maintaining their Calvinist or Catholic sympathies, and working in the background to push the Church in one direction or the other. The irony of this is that it ended up giving the Anglican tradition another of its primary distinctives: the idea of comprehensiveness. Comprehensiveness understands that there are certain issues surrounding salvation and God about which Christians should agree, but that everything else is a matter of opinion, which can be accepted or rejected without harm to one’s soul or salvation. These things ought to be tolerated, but must not be required by the Church. This is to say, comprehensiveness is not about holding nothing sacred, but about ‘separating the stuff from the Stuff.’ While Anglicanism may be rightly criticised for not defining or enforcing the essential doctrines around which the Church should be united, I think it should be praised for this sensibility that says the Church should be as big and broad and comprehensive and welcoming is it can without losing its core identity.
So, why am I Anglican? I am Anglican because this is a tradition that avoids taking extreme positions, and tries to separate out what’s really important from what is secondary. And it does this in order to promote unity, to bring as many people into the Church as possible, without top-down, authoritarian enforcement. And, when dealing with a faith as old and complex as Christianity, with its Scriptures that must be interpreted and traditions that must be received and passed on in ever-changing contexts, these values are, I think, not only good, but necessary. There’s an intellectual and theological humility at here that puts Christian love ahead of our ideas and interpretations. And to that I say Amen!
Matthew Root 