Some years ago, at a WCC conference, I met Anglican delegates from some unexpected places like Angola and Cuba. How did there come to be an Anglican Church in Angola, I wondered, a former Portuguese territory where there had never been Anglican mission activity? And how about Cuba? Well, now I do know. Kevin Ward’s book is a treasure store of information, covering the origin and development of Anglican churches worldwide. It starts, logically, with Britain (or ‘the Atlantic isles’ — not just England), and covers the globe region by region, ending with Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Polynesia and Hawaii, Melanesia and New Guinea).
This book is not an attempt to define Anglicanism as an ecclesial system, nor does it seek to explore Anglican unity in the face of diversity of theology and practice. The diversity it explores is in other spheres — diversity of ethnicity, culture and experience. Its main contribution at the present time is to help to create a greater understanding of the growth in self-awareness and influence of non-Western Anglican churches, the so-called global South. Primarily, the author counters the view that ‘English’ language and culture still have a position of privilege and power in the world Anglican body. In order to do this, Ward has written a history, which focuses on how indigenous people encountered Anglican Christianity and how they accepted it and participated in shaping it. It is the story of how the Anglican faith has become the spiritual homeland of a wide variety of peoples who now own it by right, and share it with each other.
A factor that comes through clearly in the book is the surprising adaptability of the Anglican Church to different circumstances as it spread worldwide. The means of its spread was also very diverse. Sometimes, it was especially the church of British settlers or colonists, and had a privileged status. Often, it was spread among indigenous people by deliberate mission activity, especially through the CMS and SPG. Some surprising Anglican groups came into being, for example among French-speaking Haitian immigrants in Canada, Chinese workers in Kuching. Yet, almost always, there were some people of the land who became involved in the life of the Anglican Church and made it theirs. In some places, twin forms of Anglicanism developed side by side, the church of the British colonizers, and the church of the indigenous, colonized people, and never did the twain meet though the one bishop served both. It is an interesting corollary that in contemporary New Zealand there has been recognition of the desire of cultural groups to meet and express their faith within their grouping, and so there is one Anglican Church with three cultural streams — Maori, Pakeha (European) and Polynesian. Although former British territories have a significant part in the Anglican Communion, it was by no means tied to the Empire and some of the most fascinating accounts are of places never colonized by Britain (or the USA).
Throughout the book there is an emphasis on individuals significant in taking and fostering indigenous leadership, often only by personal perseverance in the face of official apathy. There are many cameos of people, and connections between them. These are fascinating, and yet frustrating, because in their brevity they assume knowledge the reader may not possess — who was Bernard Mizeki, the martyr of Mashonaland? That is the inevitable limitation of a book that covers a vast topic in brief form. The same is true of the comments on some countries — but that may serve as an incentive for further reading.
This is a panoramic work, and one that should find a place in every Anglican college library, and that of anyone concerned to understand the Anglican Communion and how it has come to be as a many-cultured global fellowship. There may be minor errors that people with local knowledge will pick up, such as the statement that CMS Australia has its headquarters in Melbourne — its training centre is there but not its headquarters. But this is simply a ‘must-have’ book.
While the book challenges the privilege of the ‘North’, it does not propose a shift of power to the ‘South’, but rather a coming together which appreciates a common heritage and creates an identity in which all are valued partners. In the final comments, however, Ward concludes that the current debates will mean that the Anglican Communion will never again hold together in the form it had, or sought to have, in the past. Yet, his hope is that the Communion will not fragment, but will move forward in ‘new forms of cooperation and mission on a global scale’.
