In his own chapter in this illuminating addition to the Oxford Handbook series, one of its editors, Martyn Percy, perceptively analyses the growing appetite for ‘Anglican Studies’ as illustrative of how ‘as [Anglican] identity weakens, and becomes narrower … the denomination becomes more self-conscious, and needs to articulate its difference to its self’ (‘The Shaping of Ordination Training’, p. 496). As this volume makes abundantly clear, not least in its section on ‘Crises and Controversies’, a shared Anglican identity shaped by the historic ‘bonds of affection’ or ‘Instruments of Unity’, seems increasingly out of reach. Even if some measure of stability has been secured by the Primates’ Meeting in January this year or the recent Anglican Consultative Council, it is evident that new sources of fellowship and conversation are needed if Anglicans are to rediscover any kind of meaningful unity. At the outset of the Handbook, the editors provocatively ask, ‘Is there in fact any meaning to the word “Anglicanism”at all?’ (p. 11).
What follows is a multifarious attempt at providing an answer. If one relishes ecclesiological tidiness and dogmatic coherence, you will be frustrated; the editors unashamedly assume that the restless and ‘unsettled nature’ of being Anglican, mirrored in this volume, is ‘part of its own rich history; and many will see it as a somewhat lustrous tradition’ (p. 13). Do not presume, however, that the volume is therefore simply the musings of a mushy liberalism, seeking to please all even as it satisfies none. Its editors have been courageous in bringing together a diverse set of voices that leave the reader frequently disorientated, often irritated, but always learning something new, and with prejudices regularly shaken.
The range of material is impressive. For instance, if you are reading the Handbook through essay by essay, you will feel the jolts that come from reading Kathryn Tanner’s patristic-rich essay on ‘Gender’ (a fine example of contemporary Anglican ressourcement) alongside Sathianathan Clarke’s somewhat bewildering essay (to this white male reader, at least), ‘Ecumenism and Post-Anglicanism, Transnational Anglican Compactism, and Cosmo-Transanglicanism’. Both essays, however, merit careful attention and rereading despite their differences and difficulty; for both, as the editors no doubt intend to show, are testimony to the wide range of methodologies that shape Anglican theology globally. Clarke’s essay, in particular, is one of a number of essays that disrupts more classical forms of theologizing that, wary of stepping outside of text and tradition, have been largely suspicious of experience as a methodological source. Unsurprisingly, the ‘three-legged stool’ of Bible, tradition and reason (is experience part of ‘reason’ or integral to all three?), comes in for regular scrutiny throughout the Handbook.
Certainly, the ‘lived’ experiences of being Anglican today will be some of the most illuminating to British readers, still somewhat prone to assuming a metropolitan hauteur towards the ‘colonial’ provinces. Jenny Te Paa-Daniel’s case study on being a Maori Anglican, and the Archbishop of Cape Town’s perceptive essay on ‘Politics’, drawing upon the Church’s role in South African life since apartheid, are both revelatory. Each bears witness to the Anglican tradition’s fruitful emphasis upon a ‘holy pragmatism’ in its commitment to wider society – Hooker and William Temple are never far out of sight – and yet both offering new insights from their very different contexts.
Many of the essays function as useful introductions or surveys. Charlotte Methuen gives a helpful history of the Anglican engagement with ecumenism; Ann Loades, a masterly overview of ‘Anglican Spirituality’ that ought to be the starting point for many an ordinand; and Alister McGrath, a typically taut account of Anglican Evangelicalism since the sixteenth century.
Other essays read as more exploratory. Jenny Gaffin’s essay on ‘Anglican Wisdom’, for example, takes up David Ford’s appeal to attend to wisdom (‘a theology of desire and discernment’), but remains – unsurprisingly, given such an amorphous title – a broadly reflective piece of writing that, like the more autobiographical reflections of the late Kenneth Stevenson or Paul Kwong, lacks the architecture necessary to enable the reader to explore the subject further.
However, the Handbook makes clear from the outset its resistance to being systematic, and succeeds as a project to open new vistas and provoke deeper conversation. In this respect, the later sections (‘Anglican Identities’, ‘Crises and Controversies’, ‘The Practice of Anglican Life’, and ‘The Futures of Anglicanism’) are more successful, not least in the ways they seek to handle the thornier aspects of contemporary Anglican identity. Andrew Goddard’s essay, ‘Sexuality and Communion’, is a very sober historical and theological assessment of the Communion’s current position. He suggests that ‘the years between 1978 and 1998 were a major missed opportunity for the Communion to address the contentious subject of sexuality theologically, scientifically, and culturally’ (p. 419) and reminds us that, by comparison with the Communion’s exploration of women’s ministry (the first resolutions being passed as far back as the 1920 Lambeth Conference), Anglican provinces have addressed the question of sexuality with remarkable haste.
Perhaps one of the most useful contributions is the ‘thicker’ description of the Anglican world in Terry M. Brown’s contribution, ‘Anglican Way or Ways?’ Largely assuming that the term ‘Anglicanism’ is indeed redundant, Brown instead offers ten ‘Anglican Ways’ of being Christian, based around the history of theology, that provides an excellent grid for interpreting the political geography of the Communion today. Much like Graham Kings’ regularly cited 2003 article, ‘Canal, River and Rapids: Contemporary Evangelicalism in the Church of England’ (Anvil 20:3, pp. 167-84), readers will be grateful for such a brief cartographical gem for making sense of their local church as much as the wider Communion. As the rest of the Handbook ably shows, such ‘ways’ or streams are only ever provisional, buffeted as they are by the diverse landscapes in which they ebb and flow, whether post-Christian England, war-torn Sudan or Aotearoa New Zealand.
Coupled with the imminent publication of the four-volume Oxford History of Anglicanism, the University Press and these editors are to be thanked for doing much to aid contemporary Anglicanism ‘articulate its difference to its self’. If the breadth, patience and generosity offered here become themselves the hallmarks of Anglican Studies, the discipline may yet help Anglicans discover the kind of fellowship that is secured not through anxious politicking, but by careful listening and genuine understanding.
