Issues and Concerns in Contemporary Anglican Liturgical Studies

The academic field of liturgical studies, like many areas of focused research, has expanded in the past 25 years to encompass an increasing interdisciplinarity with regard to topics and relationships, as well as the ongoing pastoral application and reception of these research interests in more diverse contexts. All of this is as true for the concerns of Anglican liturgical studies as it is for the larger ecumenical engagement in liturgical expansions and challenges.

For roughly the past 50 years, liturgical studies has generally encompassed the subfields of liturgical history, liturgical theology (including sacramental theology), and ritual studies, the latter often including pastoral liturgy – the application of said history, theology and ritual to lived liturgical events at various levels of church practice.Footnote ¹ This internal expansion growing from an earlier focus on philology and a desire for a single progressive history of liturgical developmentFootnote ² has of necessity meant historically growing in attentiveness to the differentiation between history, historiography, and tradition in a broad array of diverse cultures and languages. Liturgical theology, once limited in Anglicanism to liturgics (the relationship between the texts and practices of the Prayer Book as they are found in liturgical history) has increasingly become a conversation partner with all the sub-branches of systematic theology, especially in sacramentality and sacramental theology in far broader scope than a study of the ecclesial sacraments. And the newer field of ritual studies brings the social sciences into conversation – particularly sociology, anthropology, psychology, as well as the arts, to help articulate how liturgy is performed and received in its participants. The related field of pastoral theology has developed as an essential way of doing theology in ritualizing communities that have no set liturgy or official books. Rather than texts, the focus of study is the actual doing of rites and rituals in real time, and the development of the techniques of participant-observers and new tools to interpret meaning.

At the same time liturgy has ceased to be an either/or topic in which it was understood as either a catholic systematic theological issue or a protestant pastoral ministry issue, bringing the essential both/and of the field together in teaching situations. The recognition of liturgical studies as both an academic and an applied field has been particularly helpful in Anglican conversations. The lived liturgical experience, however, may not be quite as integrated, leading to two contemporary concerns within Anglicanism.

An Overview of the Strengths and Challenges of the Field of Anglican History

It is a complex task to summarize the field of Anglican history in such a consolidated manner. For the sake of brevity, I will confine my survey to works published within the last five years. I apologize in advance for important scholarship overlooked. As part of my methodology I consulted with Anglican scholars in regions outside North America.

Significant in its scope is the recent publication of The Oxford History of Anglicanism (2017–18), a five-volume project covering five centuries of history. Widely reviewed, this series is the most comprehensive history of Anglicanism to date. Its publication underscores the importance of the study of Anglicanism as the third largest communion in the world, and as a unique form of Christianity with a distinctive history. As series editor Rowan Strong notes, ‘Anglicanism has, therefore, been an expression of the community of diverse social groups situated in the differing contexts of the past five centuries – monarchs, political elites, and lower orders; landowners and landless; slave-owners and slaves; missionaries, settlers, and indigenous peoples; colonizers and colonized – and by their enemies and opponents, both within and without their Church.’Footnote ¹

The impressive list of international contributors found in The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies Footnote ² further establishes the distinctiveness and the diversity within Anglican Studies, including historical perspectives. The issue of Anglicanism as a distinctive tradition is particularly noticeable within the narrative of global/world Christianities where we are commonly subsumed under the category of ‘Protestantism’. One series where the history, demographics, themes, movements, and trends of Anglicanism are included as distinctive is the ‘Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity’ series. The regions studied presently include Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa, Christianity in North Africa and West Asia, Christianity in South and Central Asia, and, Christianity in East and Southeast Asia. Footnote ³ Essays include history, worship, spirituality, theology, mission, evangelism, gender relations, interfaith relations, monastic movements, and ecclesiology. Not all the essays on Anglicanism are written by adherents, but authors are from the region.

Other current sources of Anglican history include historical commemorations over the last five years, including the King James Bible, Anglican chaplains in the Great War, the Reformation(s), and John Henry Newman. In the ‘Reformation(s)’ category, there is a stream of revisionist works on the English Reformation and its relationship to the formation of Anglican identity, including monographs written by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Margaret Ashton, Alec Ryrie, and Peter Marshall.Footnote ⁴ In 2013, Arthur Stephen McGrade published a new critical edition with modern spelling of Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Footnote ⁵ In a similar vein, the Davenant Institute publishes ‘modernized’ translations of his work.Footnote ⁶

Several scholarly presses sponsor series related to Anglican history. ‘Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History’Footnote ⁷ is published by Brill and edited by Paul Avis and focuses on history and theology from the Reformation to the present. An older series with a wider scope is published by Peter Lang and edited by C.K. Robertson, ‘Studies in Episcopal and Anglican Theology’. This series publishes history, ecclesiology, historical theology, and other works.Footnote ⁸ Biographical histories of the Archbishops of Canterbury are the focus of a series from Routledge, co-sponsored by the Lambeth Palace Library Archives with extensive original source material.Footnote ⁹

Presently, the strength of Anglican historiography is in the northern hemisphere, with notable exceptions. Jesse Zink’s book on the South Sudan is a critical study of Anglican transnational religious identity at the grassroots level: As Zink writes, ‘Rather than offer a history of global Anglicanism that is, at root, a chronological expansion of particular forms of English Christianity, Anglicanism needs more studies of particular churches in their context.’Footnote ¹⁰

Several other scholars are engaged in the transnational study of African Anglicanism. Robert S. Heaney is published in the ‘African Christian Studies Series’ by Wipf and Stock to situate African Christian mission within wider African history and world Christianity.Footnote ¹¹ Heaney’s more recent book, Post-Colonial Theology Footnote ¹² focuses more broadly on the ongoing impact of colonialism amid deep human conflicts told through the lens of his own formation in Northern Ireland.

Zambian priest, scholar, and human rights activist Kapya John Kaoma is the first scholar to connect ‘renewal movement’ Christians in the United States (in the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, and Presbyterian Church USA) to the rise of anti-gay legislation in Africa, specifically in Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya. In his book, Christianity, Globalization, and Protective Homophobia,Footnote ¹³ Kaoma explores the intersection of neo-colonialism, Christian history, globalization, and African sexual politics. Kaoma’s work and that of other African scholars is found in the journals Diaspora, Mission Studies, and the Journal of Religion in Africa. Anglican history in the Middle East, specifically in Palestine and in Jordan is researched by Duane Alexander Miller, an Anglican priest, and member of the Protestant Theological Faculty in Madrid. While the historiography is richer than even five years ago, the percentage of Anglicans in Africa supports a need for further critical study of this diverse region.

The history of Anglicanism in Asia is also an emergent field. Philip L. Wickeri, advisor to the Archbishop of Hong Kong for theological and historical studies and Professor of Church History at Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Ming Hua Theological College, publishes ‘Historical Studies on Anglican Christianity in China’ through Hong Kong University Press.Footnote ¹⁴ One notable title in the series, Christian Women in Chinese Society, by Wai Ching Angela Wong and Patricia P.K. ChiuFootnote ¹⁵ examines the inter-relationships between white women missionaries and Chinese women which resulted in the ordination of Florence Li Tim Oi to the priesthood in 1944, subsequently changing Anglican history.

Theologian Kwok Pui Lan continues to write widely on postcolonial Anglicanism. Other scholars of Anglican history in Asia less well known in the West, include Lin Mei-mei, researching the history of the Episcopal Church in Taiwan; Japanese scholar Renita Nishihara, Rikkyo University, Tokyo; and Tomas Maddela of St Andrew’s Seminary in Manila. There is also an active group of Anglican scholars at Sunggonghoe University in Korea, including Jeremiah Yang and Nak-Hyon Joseph Joo. Borderless Press, a project of Postcolonial Networks, is focused on publishing the work of new voices in the majority world, including Anglican history, through decolonizing the publications process – for example, the work of Church of South India scholar C.I. David Joy, who uses postcolonial historiography to interpret colonial communities and resistance movements.Footnote ¹⁶

The history of Anglicanism in the diverse regions of Oceania deserves further study. The ‘Australian College of Theology Monograph Series’ through Wipf and Stock, covers a range of sub-fields, including history.Footnote ¹⁷ Hilary M. Carey, a native of Perth now at the University of Bristol, recently published the notable, Empire of Hell, Footnote ¹⁸ a revisionist history of the role of religion in convict colonialism from Britain and Ireland.

It should be noted here that the Journal of Anglican Studies regularly publishes scholarship related to Anglicanism in the majority world.Footnote ¹⁹ Anglican and Episcopal History has expanded its coverage of Anglican majority voices in recent years – for example, scholarship on the history of Latin American Anglicanism by John L. Kater. Anglican Brazilian scholar Carlos Eduardo Calvani publishes in Portuguese. Further critical studies on the history of Latin American Anglicanism recognizing the cultural, linguistic, political, and social differences of the region is needed.

The study of Anglican women in all regions, but more specifically in the majority world is under-represented. A related issue is the presence of women scholars across the field of Anglican history. Although the situation is improving, women scholars continue to be under-represented across Anglican scholarship. Two recent titles are of note: Jane Shaw, Pioneers of Modern Spirituality, situates both Evelyn Underhill and Rose Macaulay (among others) within their historical contexts.Footnote ²⁰ In Anglican Women Novelists, Judith Maltby and Alison ShellFootnote ²¹ explore the relationship between the changing roles of Anglican women from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries.

A transnational field of historical study is Anglicanism among indigenous peoples. The Anglican Church of Canada recently released a documentary on the Doctrine of Discovery, ‘Stolen Lands, Strong Hearts’.Footnote ²² Eric Taylor Woods recently published A Cultural Sociology of Anglican Mission and the Indian Residential Schools; more work needs to be done on indigenous Anglicanism in local regions, as well as transnational networks.Footnote ²³

This limited survey of recent Anglican historiography surfaces important areas for future scholarship. On a basic level, the distinctiveness of Anglicanism within the field of global/world Christianities needs further consideration. Much more research needs to be done pertaining to Anglican history in the majority world. Research which considers the local context, including migration, generational differences, patterns of violence, and theological and religious differences will complexify our picture of Anglicanism in the Global South. The history of Anglican relationships with other faith communities is an important growth area. Research in Anglican-Roman Catholic and Anglican-Muslim relationships has already begun. The raising up of under-represented voices in Anglican history, both as authors and as subjects, is an ongoing need. The history of marginalized groups such as women, indigenous peoples, communities of color, etc. is crucial. Such research will deepen knowledge of lived Anglicanism across periods and regions.

World Anglicanism and the Future of Anglican Studies

The Anglican Communion consists of 41 autonomous and interdependent provinces and several extra-provincial areas, with members found in more than 165 countries around the globe. From a church of the British Isles, the Anglican Communion has grown to become a global, postcolonial, and multicultural church. In recent years, the controversies over women priests and bishops and homosexuality have generated poignant conversations on the identity, authority, and future of Anglicanism. Although we have several important works on the Anglican Communion, notably Kevin Ward’s A History of Global Anglicanism,Footnote ¹ more studies need to be done to better understand the histories and complexity of the Communion.

The debates about the term and methodology of ‘world Christianity’ have relevance and implications for the study of ‘world Anglicanism’. The late Lamin Sanneh has argued that ‘global Christianity’ carries vestiges of the imperial past and considers churches in other parts of the world as outgrowths of the West. In contrast, he said, ‘world Christianity’ focuses on local agency and local expressions of Christian faith.Footnote ² Within Anglican Studies, there does not seem to be such a sharp distinction between ‘global Anglicanism’ and ‘world Anglicanism’ in a similar way. For even though Kevin Ward’s book has ‘global Anglicanism’ in the title, he pays attention to the local expressions of Anglican churches in different regions and countries. In An Introduction to World Anglicanism, Bruce Kaye cites the work of Sanneh and encourages us to move beyond conceptualizing world Anglicanism as an aspect of British imperial history or simply the result of the English missionary movement. Kaye argues that we should bring ‘the non-metropolitan perspectives to the center of concern’.Footnote ³ Whatever terminologies we choose to use, there is a growing consensus that we need to attend to the diversity and complexity of the Communion, and the relation between the global and the local in future studies of Anglicanism.

Instead of a center and periphery model, world Christianity scholars have increasingly emphasized the polycentric nature of Christianity. Klaus Koschorke writes, ‘In order to understand the polycentric history of world Christianity, one has to take into account the variety of regional centers of expansion, plurality of actors, multiplicity of indigenous initiatives, and local appropriations of Christianity.’Footnote ⁴ Within Anglicanism, this means that we cannot simply focus on the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Instruments of Unity, or the work of the Anglican Communion Office. Important as these are, our present focus must incorporate regional and local diversity, local actors and expressions, and the interaction of the Anglican church with diverse cultures and societies. As the debates on human sexuality have shown, there are vast regional differences in interpreting the Bible, marriage, and same-sex relationships. There are competing discourses on homosexuality in the Church of England, the Episcopal Church, and the African provinces. As Christian demographic has shifted to the Global South, church leaders in the Global South have demanded greater say in shaping the discourses and decisions of the Communion.

In the future, we will need more local studies of the interaction of the Anglican church with culture, religion, and society, especially in the Global South. It has often been said that Anglicans are not united by theology, but by liturgy. But in fact, as The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey has shown, there is much diversity in the translation and adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer.Footnote ⁵ The revised common prayer books produced by provinces in New Zealand/Aotearoa, Kenya, and Brazil show how adaptations have been made in each of these places according to their indigenous cultures and concerns. Scholars such as Stephen Burns and Jenny Te Paa have discussed the common prayer book from postcolonial perspectives, challenging the uses of the colonial language and symbolisms in the liturgy.Footnote ⁶

Often, when we study local churches and local agency, there is a tendency to focus on the bishops and theologians, to the exclusion of the work of laity and especially female leaders. The volume Anglican Women on Church and Mission is important because it showcases the perspectives of female scholars, especially those from the Global South.Footnote ⁷ Although there are several books on women in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, there were very few resources about Anglican women in the Global South. Book-length studies that offer such information include Gulnar E. Francis-Dehqani’s Religious Feminism in the Age of Empire: CMS Missionaries in Iran, 1869–1934 and Cordelia Moyse’s The History of the Mothers’ Union: Women, Anglicanism and Globalization, 1876–2008.Footnote ⁸ Another informative volume is Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story published in 2018.Footnote ⁹ The book provides detailed information of the ordination of Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first female priest in the Anglican Communion. It also discusses the work of Bible women, Women’s Missionary Service League, and contributions of important Chinese Anglican female leaders. When we have more studies on Anglican women’s leadership roles and ministries in different societies, cross-cultural comparative studies will be possible.

The study of local histories enables us to see transnational linkages in world Anglicanism in multitudinal ways. There are many international networks and institutional relationships connecting Anglicans of one part of the world to another, and the work of the Anglican Communion Office represents only a small fraction of these relationships. Companion dioceses, mission partnerships, Mothers’ Unions, non-governmental organizations, and other networks have been formed to promote deeper understanding and carry out mutual ministries. These connections are not just from the Global North to the Global South, for they are multidirectional. African missionaries have spread the Gospel and carried out mission work in other African countries. In 1998 the initiative of South to South encounters sponsored by the mission commissions of the Anglican Communion encouraged mission collaborations and partnerships. During the heated debates on homosexuality, African clergy persons have been sent to work in North America and American persons have been ordained by African bishops. The formation of the GAFCON movement and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans have created new transnational networks to advocate a more conservative view about theology and sexuality. In addition, Anglican immigrants from different parts of the world have brought their cultures and social practices to the life of Western churches. The study of migration, refugees, and their faith expressions should occupy more attention in the study of world Anglicanism.

In the past, the study of Anglicanism has mainly been done by those interested in the history and theology of the church. However, the future study of Anglicanism’s local and transnational linkages will benefit from interdisciplinary and inter-religious approaches. The use of anthropology, sociology, ethnography, and other social-scientific methods, and cooperation with scholars in globalization and other area studies will not only enhance our understanding but aid us in generating new research agendas. For example, anthropologist Miranda Hassett’s Anglican Communion in Crisis provides detailed studies of the debates on homosexuality in Uganda and the globalization of conservative Anglicans.Footnote ¹⁰ And sociologist Paula Nesbitt’s Feminization of the Clergy in America uses empirical methods to study the career paths of female clergy, job prospects and mobility, career and family, and structural changes of ministry.Footnote ¹¹

These studies and others like them indicate that many Anglicans live and carry out their mission among people of different faith traditions. They have to work with their religious neighbors to address issues such as poverty, war, violence, climate change, and racial and religious strife. Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon has done important work on the relationship between Anglicans and Islam in Nigeria, while Judy Berinai has written on how Anglican women in Malaysia have carried out mission in a Muslim-majority society.Footnote ¹² Although the work of Christian mission in inter-religious contexts is challenging, Anglicans continue to bear witness to the Gospel and work for peace and justice in their societies. As Europe and North America have become increasingly multicultural and multi-religious, it is important to help Christians to face the challenges of religious pluralism and diversity. Anglican scholars such as Judith A. Berling and Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook have written on the principles and practice of inter-religious learning. They have criticized the assumptions of Christian superiority and urged Christians to respect and learn from people of other faith traditions.Footnote ¹³

The study of world Anglicanism not only contributes to our understanding of Anglican identity and history, but to other academic fields and disciplines as well. Postcolonial studies, for instance, benefits from the study of the encounter of the Anglican church in different parts of the world. For example, R.S. Sugirtharajah, a postcolonial biblical scholar, has discussed how the translation, printing, and dissemination of the English Bible has been used to further imperial expansion.Footnote ¹⁴ Others have examined how Christian mission has been an integral part of the ‘civilizing mission’ of the West. But Christian values introduced by missionaries also challenged local practices such as footbinding, polygamy, and concubinage. Christian mission schools trained educated elites who played important roles during and after the struggles of national independence in many societies.

The study of world Anglicanism will also contribute to globalization studies and comparative studies about health care, education, development, and politics. As a global network, world Anglicanism provides rich data, archival material, and case studies which demonstrate how ideas and practices travel across nations and regions. The mission archives of Anglican churches contain important reports and first-hand observations of local customs and practices. Though these reports may reflect missionaries’ biases, they contain important information that may not be otherwise available. When carefully used, they present how Christian missionaries and indigenous Christians adapted Western health medicine, education, and other social practices in different cultures. The digitization of some of the mission archives and the collections of books and materials from major universities will contribute to historical and social scientific studies of the Global South and continue to aid us in giving more adequate account of the diversity of world Anglicanism.

Sociological Reflections on Contemporary Anglican Polity

One question that Anglicanism faces today is, ‘Who is Anglican?’ Any investment in an overly narrow specification of membership will have profound consequences for the identity and organizational shape of Anglican ecclesiology, including performative-liturgical arenas such as baptism. The socio-cultural expectations that are invested by those outside the worshipping congregation in baptism require constant local, pastoral negotiation between churches, clergy and the communities they serve. The socio-theological vision of Anglican polity therefore needs to understand its purpose and roots more deeply. Theology and the supernatural authority of the church, which she is called to embody and proclaim, cannot simply allow its ethos, identity and practice to be replaced with what I have consistently termed ‘consecrated pragmatism’.Footnote ¹ This is particularly the case in relation to the question of how people become part of a social and spiritual body, like the church, that is fundamentally inclusive in nature and character.

The current turn toward ecclesial organization and management, focuses particular attention on how people become part of the church.Footnote ² Specifically, it presses the question as to whether the global expressions of Anglican polity are distinctive, bounded and overtly member-based organizations in character, seeking clarity of identity, or whether they are broader social and sacramental institutions to which a much wider public relates in a variety of ways. I am mindful that most ecclesial ecologies will contain both of these elements and will be a blend of those who feel a sense of strong attachment (often expressed as ‘membership’), and those whose basically affirmative relationship to the church involves a more variegated form of commitment. My concern is with the concept of membership in Anglican polity as a whole.Footnote ³ If the church is consumed with its own managerial and organizational goals, including increasing its own numerical growth and discipling its members, it will have lost its soul. I hold, in contrast, that global Anglican polity posits an incorporative model of church; a non-member-based institution that seeks to serve society as a whole, rather than a member-based organization that primarily exists for its committed subscribers.

In her prescient book, The Precarious Organisation,Footnote ⁴ the Dutch sociologist and ecclesiologist Mady Thung suggests that national churches in Northern Europe have come under increasing pressure in the postwar years to become self-consciously ‘organisations’, marked by ‘nervous activity and hectic programmes … constantly try[ing] to engage’ their members in an attempt to reach ‘non-members’. She contrasts the ‘organisational’ model and its frenetic activism with the ‘institutional’ model of the church – the latter offering, instead, contemplative, aesthetic and liturgical models that take longer to grow and are often latent for significant periods of time, but which may be more culturally resilient and conducive than those of the activist-organizational model. Thung concludes her book by suggesting that the model being adopted by many national churches – a kind of missional ‘organisation-activist’ approach – is what drives the population away. It leads, logically, to sectarianism.

Church-going in Anglican polity has generally been a matter of relating to and inhabiting a complex institution, where the idea of ‘membership’ of a subscriber-based organization is seen as a more ‘Congregationalist’ kind of ecclesiology. I mean no disrespect to Non-Conformist chapels and congregations here. I simply draw attention to the fact that a parish church exists for the spiritual well-being of the whole community, and it serves that community independently of any subscription or support that the people in the community might provide. This is by no means a unique characteristic of Anglicanism. It is the form of ministry exercised by ecumenical chaplains in prisons, hospitals, schools and colleges, the armed services and other arenas, where the ministers elect to serve the whole body, not merely the committed minority. And amid the general anxiety about apparently declining numbers of attendees at regular Sunday worship in the Church of England, at least one group of churches has bucked the trend: the cathedrals. Consistently, the numbers worshipping in English Anglican cathedrals have been resilient, immune to the decline seen elsewhere. Indeed, many cathedrals report an increase in the number of worshippers. But what do these numbers actually show?

As with much statistical analysis, it is the story behind the numbers that tells us how to interpret the bare arithmetic. To understand the growth of worshippers in cathedrals, one needs to have some grasp of the nuanced ecology of English church-going. Social exchange theory can help with such interpretation. Classic cathedral worship is typically a ‘low threshold’ pursuit – that is to say, anyone can come, without any need or pressure to join a rota, group, class or any other supplementary activity. However, ‘low threshold’ is most likely combined with ‘high reward’: the music will invariably be superb, the preaching of a consistently high calibre and the liturgy predictable and elegant. In contrast, the dominant preferred ecclesial model in the Church of England today is ‘high threshold and high reward’. The justification for this formula is usually the priority of ‘discipleship’, which is preferred to anything that smacks of vicarious religion, or a lack of clarity in matters of belief. ‘High-threshold/high-reward’ churches will offer attendees a rich menu and a variety of groups and activities that will be expected to join. The committed can be identified easily enough – by the range and scale of their involvement in groups and activities. Those who are less involved will be deemed to be, by the same token, less committed. Thresholds for joining and participating are therefore set deliberately high, and this often manifests itself in areas such as restrictive practices in respect of baptisms and marriages, and can even extend, occasionally, to restricting funerals to ‘members’.Footnote ⁵

The problem with the ‘high-threshold-high-reward’ churches is that, while there is a stress on discipleship and commitment, the model of church being offered is unavoidably narrow. Moreover, the concentration of resources and monies in these ecclesial paradigms means that other churches – I do not include cathedrals here – can quickly develop into ‘High-Threshold-Low-Reward’ churches. By that, I mean that the instinct of affirming the church as being for everyone in the community, while laudable, comes as a cost that falls only on a few. The quality and quantity of worship, pastoral ministry and more besides, can only operate if a few will fund this for the many. This is by no means certain.

There is a further complication to be mindful of here. The emerging millennial generation increasingly characterize themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’, and when asked to describe their nascent religious or denominational roots or ‘home’, choose to say ‘none’. The rise of the ‘Nones’ is a significant challenge to all forms of ecclesial polity and expressions of theology. Despite being, as a generation, more sensitive to faiths than previous eras, ‘Nones’ are often characterized as insouciant and indifferent towards the church, which then plays into the hands of those who want to turn all church attendees into explicit ‘disciples’ – preferring the ‘high-threshold-high-reward’ pattern of polity. This takes the church further way from public life, and tends toward sectarianism. Slow, ‘low-threshold’ churches that might appeal to the young as epiphanies of spirituality and transcendent encounter are at risk here, as their engagement with ‘Nones’ does not quickly seek to convert them – but does offer a viable base and resource from which to continue to be ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’.Footnote ⁶ Emerging concepts of membership and belonging in relation to churches are now patently more complex.

That said, the neo-conservative revolution of the last fifty years has seen both the High and Low wings of Anglicanism entirely out-narrate the middle ground (i.e. Broad Church), and then move on to rebrand the moderate-middle as ‘liberal’. In turn, the very term ‘liberal’ was swiftly allotted a consistently negative value in ecclesial climes. For Catholic conservatives, and a handful of conservative Evangelicals, this arguably began with ‘Gender Wars’ (i.e. the debate on the ordination of women). The vast majority of clergy and laity who desired (and eventually voted for) women priests found themselves repositioned as ‘liberals’. On sexuality, a gradual acceptance of lesbian, gay and bisexual Christians, and an eventual (still growing) acceptance of same-sex marriages has also led to the Broad Church and middle ground being labelled, once again, negatively, as ‘liberal’.

What is intriguing in all of this is that the Broad Church element within Anglicanism normally holds sensible, moderate and accommodating views on gender, and progressive (note, not radical or liberal) views on sexuality.Footnote ⁷ The Broad Church, such as it is, tends to be entirely orthodox on creeds, doctrines (e.g. the physical resurrection of Jesus), articles of faith, liturgical proclivities, church polity, Christian practice and canon law. It practises what many term ‘generous orthodoxy’. The Broad Church elements within Anglicanism tend to be, if anything, theologically conservative. And they view the High and Low elements of the church as rather more sectarian – and inclined towards ‘membership-speak’ – than the more inclusive, ‘public’ ministry that they would seek to embody and practice.

In terms of membership of the church, therefore, the postwar story of English Anglicanism has witnessed the slow accretion of greater density towards the wings: a density, moreover, consisting not merely of numbers, but also of theological and ecclesiological intensity. Both wings – depending on whether one refers to them as high and low, evangelical and catholic – have tended to be more prescriptive about what constitutes ‘membership’ (not only of their own respective groups and societies, but also wider membership of the church), have been zealous on areas such as liturgy, reform and divisive debates, such as those on sexuality and gender. In this, ‘baptism’ as a means of incorporation within the church, and symbolically too in being named to wider society, has become a rite that has attracted wider ecclesial collateral. Specifically, is ‘Christening’ a shared social-sacramental covenant between church and world, and God and people? Or, rather, as the high and low, or evangelical and catholic wings tend to claim, a private rite, performed in public, that inducts individuals into something more obviously bounded, organizational and contained? In addressing this issue, we remain mindful of studies that speak of baptism differently, namely as the rite performed by and in the church that confers a name and social status on the child in question. So, through baptism and naming, the child becomes not only a member of the church, but also a member of the broader social community.Footnote ⁸

Thung concludes her work with something of a prophetic warning to churches, and here I include global Anglicanism. She notes the inevitability of churches needing to become more organized, and more like organizations, replete with plans for numerical growth and measurable impact. But Mady Thung also sounds a note of caution, namely that every step churches take towards the tighter and clearer forms of organization, coupled to overt mission and evangelism, is one further step away from the public at large, who, she claims, are looking for more open forms of institutional life, which offer more by way of obliquity than clarity. Ultimately, Anglicanism’s pastoral practice, mission and ministry does not have its identity rooted in being an eclectic and selective member-based organization, requiring detailed confessional subscription from believers. Anglicanism is, rather, far broader: an institutional body that has many kinds of support and supporters, though with room still for those who want to regard themselves as insider-subscribers. Anglicanism offers itself to the world on these terms, and in so doing, is an oblique foretaste of the inclusive Kingdom of God, embodied in Jesus Christ.

Pursuing the Decolonial Agenda: A Future for Anglican Studies

Anglican Studies, as an academic endeavor, is a multidisciplinary examination of a worldwide network of Christian churches that was produced by the confluence of a very specific set of geopolitical and economic histories with an equally particular set of theological commitments and practices. Because the Anglican expression of Christianity was spread throughout the world largely, though not entirely, by the British Empire, because British colonialism has largely, though not entirely, now come to an end, and because the relationship of Anglican churches outside of England with the Church of England and to one another is largely, though not entirely, conditioned by the colonial legacy, to do Anglican Studies is also to do postcolonial studies.

This is hardly a novel statement. That Anglicanism, as a worldwide phenomenon, is in a postcolonial phase has been an explicit theme in Anglican Studies for a number of years. A tremendous body of work on how the Anglican Communion as a whole and Anglican churches in various contexts have come to terms and continue to grapple with the implications of their postcolonial condition has been produced over the last 25 years or so.Footnote ¹ I do not see that focus changing any time soon. I do, though, wonder if the postcoloniality of the object of Anglican Studies is in the midst of a shift. I wonder whether the shape of its postcolonial reality has become so apparent, not only to Anglican scholars but to Anglicans, people around the world practicing Anglicanism, that the resulting forms that Anglicanism takes demands approaches to Anglican Studies that are designed to apprehend and interpret worldwide Anglicanism slightly differently than up to now.

Before explaining what I mean by this, it is important to issue a caveat or two. First, I take Anglican Studies to be a subset of the wider discipline of Religious Studies, and I have only a working knowledge of the theory and methods of that area of inquiry. Second, I am an Anglican theologian, not a scholar of Anglicanism. My grounding in Anglican Studies, properly speaking, is not as firm as it is in the doing of Anglican theology. Where my work intersects with Anglican Studies in the formal sense is that I am concerned with Anglican forms of ecclesiality, what they communicate about us, how they form us, and how they can unite or divide us. All of this is to say that I am not exactly qualified to assess the current, let alone future, shape of Anglican Studies. I am making a turn toward that discipline, here. And I am doing so precisely because, as one who teaches in an Anglican seminary and as one who writes on and thinks about Anglican ecclesiality, I myself need to better understand the implications of Anglican postcoloniality, what it means for me, my students, and my church, in order to provide better seminary formation and to do better theology. It is in that spirit that I suggest what the future of Anglican Studies might be, especially where the particular case of how Anglican ecclesiology is studied is concerned.

My overall question about the future of Anglican Studies from an ecclesiological perspective has to do with whether Anglican Studies needs to shift slightly, from describing Anglicanism’s postcolonial reality to examining its decolonizing processes. I realize that this is probably too crude and unnuanced a distinction, but what I’m asking is whether Anglican Studies could emphasize not quite as much where Anglicanism finds itself in its post colonial condition as what Anglicanism is doing to carry through its decolonial project.

What do I mean? As Robert Heaney points out in his new book on Post-Colonial Theology,Footnote ² the process of decolonization has two broad components. The first is geopolitical. It has to do with the cessation of colonial status, when an imperial power relinquishes its control of a colonized people and territory, which are then granted a sovereign autonomy that establishes them as an independent nation-state among the other nation-states of the world. Once this first movement in the decolonization process has taken place, the former colony can be said to find itself in a postcolonial condition, with all that Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhaba, Kwok Pui-lan, and many others have so crucially said that entails. The second movement in the decolonization processes of those in the postcolonial condition concerns the ways in which a people decolonizes itself that is, the ways in which it seeks to divest itself of the vestiges of subjection as colonial subjects: internalized cultural marginalization; suppression of traditional languages, arts, and lifeways; subjugation of local epistemologies to those of the former colonizer; and so forth.Footnote ³ These are messy, unruly processes. They do not proceed in a uniform or straightforward way. They do not even always proceed in a conscious way. But they do proceed.Footnote ⁴ And the implications and impacts of them are wide-ranging and powerful.

It seems to me, therefore, that the task of the field of Anglican Studies going forward, as distinct from the production of its theology, ecclesiastical history, ethics, or liturgies – though certainly in close conversation with those disciplines – will be to focus on how and with what effects those processes are unfolding in Anglican contexts. I think this is important not only because there is hardly a more pressing need facing the study of Anglicanism at this moment, but because practitioners in the Anglican world – theologians, historians, ethicists, clergy – are all contending directly with the effects of these processes in the work they do, regardless of the degree to which they are conscious of this.Footnote ⁵ To the extent that a theologian’s or ethicist’s or bishop’s or liturgist’s or parliamentarian’s work is an Anglican project and is identified as such and is intended for an Anglican audience, that work will almost of necessity be an encounter with the legacies of colonialism and with the effects of decolonization. The immediate future of Anglican Studies, it seems to me, is to detail the specific forms that decolonizing Anglicanism is taking, to name the effects they are having, and, in so doing, to make explicit what up to now has been largely implicit in the Anglican context.Footnote ⁶ As an academic endeavor, this will make a signal contribution to understanding better the dynamics of decolonizing processes in postcolonial contexts, a valuable piece of work for the wider field of Religious Studies. As a theologian, I think it would also inform work in constructive Anglican ecclesiology and help us better understand what we, those of us who look at Christian communities theologically, are actually seeing in them.

Let me draw out what I mean by this by way of a few ecclesiologically shaped examples. Christopher Craig Brittain and Andrew McKinnon, in their recent study The Anglican Communion at a Crossroads,Footnote ⁷ report on a number of matters around which Anglicans in various locales have come into conflict in recent decades. Their extensive interviews surface, for example, great concern among Anglicans with matters of orthodoxy and heresy. As a perennial issue, this is perhaps not immediately noteworthy. However, Brittain and McKinnon demonstrate how the language of orthodoxy and heresy gets mobilized along fault lines in the Communion that are themselves the products of decolonializing processes and they examine the theo-political purposes they are made to serve. This, it seems to me, is both enlightening and worth deeper investigation and theorization.

Moreover, it is part and parcel of a larger dynamic they and others perceive clearly. Ecclesiologists such as Paul Avis,Footnote ⁸ Bruce Kaye,Footnote ⁹ Ephraim Radner,Footnote ¹⁰ and Ellen Wondra,Footnote ¹¹ among others, have made very clear in recent work that the driving issue in Anglican ecclesiology – both that produced by academic theologians and that produced by church and Communion-wide bodies charged with doing so – is the question of authority: who has it, where it resides, how it is properly constellated, the way it is rightly deployed. Throughout the Anglican world, anxiety over the shape of ecclesial authority runs very deep. While most theologians perceive that this anxiety manifests itself in different ways depending upon the character of the specific postcolonial context that is in view, and some even mention the connection of this anxiety with the colonial legacy,Footnote ¹² few examine with focus and depth how the perceived crisis of authority in worldwide Anglicanism intersects with decolonizing processes, save where doing so advances specific theological – and often socio-cultural – interests of a particular ecclesiologist.Footnote ¹³ It seems to me that this is a missed opportunity. If we understood the dynamics in play better, employing the anthropological, sociological, and ethnographic tools that researchers in Anglican Studies, being Religious Studies scholars, would bring to bear on the issue, our work as Anglican ecclesiologists would be more honest, more charitable, and more useful.

Now, as you can see, I cannot help bringing all of this back to theology. It is true that my personal investment here is to deepen my engagement with Anglican Studies in order to do better Anglican ecclesiology. But that does not mean I do not see the merit of doing this work on its own terms. Anglican Studies, given the uniqueness of its subject, has the potential of supplying a rich case study of the dynamics of decolonization as they play out globally and locally. That alone makes this line of inquiry well worth taking.

The Future of Anglican Studies with Regard to Biblical Studies

When Anglicans talk about their relationship to biblical studies and what distinguishes Anglican approaches to Scripture, we primarily address what we don’t do: We are not fundamentalists, we do not have doctrines of inerrancy, we are not biblicists. Although I believe these assertions are true, they say little to nothing about the actual interpretative practices of Anglican biblical scholars and they underwrite the claim that there is no such thing as an Anglican approach. In the brief space available to me in this essay, I will speak about the future of Anglican Studies with regard to biblical studies from the perspective of a biblical scholar. I will make three points. They will be assertive, compressed, and certainly overly simple. The aim is to spark discussion rather than to write the final word.

The first point is to note that although there are many superb biblical scholars who are Anglican, there is not an Anglican style of biblical studies. The first language for Anglican and non-Anglican biblical scholars is ‘critical biblical scholarship’ in either its German or English dialect. One cannot enter the guild of professional biblical scholars without displaying a high level of skill in deploying the habits, practices, and idioms of critical biblical scholarship. This is true even as one recognizes that critical biblical scholarship was never monolithic and is even less so now.Footnote ¹

The important point to recognize with regard to Anglicanism and Anglican Studies is that no Christian confession has been as comprehensively successful in forming scholars in the way that the academy has done for biblical scholars. Even Roman Catholicism in the light of the encyclicals Providentissimus Deus and Divino Afflante Spiritu has adopted critical biblical scholarship with a vigor and speed that means there is now little interesting difference between Catholics and Protestants in this area.Footnote ² Even those, like myself, who are dissatisfied with such formation and want to move in different directions, still see value in this native tongue and can revert to it when necessary. This reality is not likely to change anytime soon. Even though there are a large number of scholars dissatisfied with various aspects of critical biblical scholarship, there are no real institutional alternatives to the formation of academic biblical scholars.Footnote ³ Even if one could identify a distinctively Anglican approach to biblical studies, there is certainly no Anglican institution that could provide formation in such a style. Recognizing this reinforces the importance of formation within institutions. It makes little sense to argue over whether or not there is a distinctively Anglican way of doing anything unless there are institutional structures to form and support the formation of the relevant habits, practices and dispositions in Anglicans. Further, even if such an institution existed, I am not sure it would be a good thing for biblical scholars. On the whole, the study of the Bible benefits from Jews, Christians, non-believers, and others from across the globe having a common way of addressing biblical texts. This is true even for those of us eager to bring theological concerns or the concerns of our specific contexts to bear on the study of the Bible. Our disagreements and dissatisfactions are always voiced against a background of our common formation.

It is crucial for Anglicans to study this common formation of biblical scholars. No other scholarly development has had as much impact on a large majority of Anglicans as the rise of critical biblical scholarship. This is the case if one looks at the debates around the rise of biblical criticism in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or its widespread acceptance in the nineteenth century.Footnote ⁴ The influence of critical biblical scholarship is even broader when one looks at the fact that the faculty of all seminaries in the USA and most other Western countries come from academic institutions where they have been deeply formed by and are fluent in critical biblical scholarship. As a result, all seminarians are introduced to this language and encouraged to learn it. The amount of training they receive, however, leaves them far from fluent. They know there is this language, but they cannot use it well. They recognize it is very different from the theological and homiletical training they receive, but they have even less formation in bringing the biblical, the theological and the homiletical together. It would be hard to overestimate the impact of this situation on preaching, and, subsequently, on congregational engagement with Scripture.Footnote ⁵

This far from adequate situation applies in the ideal case of someone doing a three-year residential program at an Anglican seminary. It is, therefore, even more worrying that in the USA the three-year residential model is under considerable pressure. There are financial pressures on many seminaries. Further, it makes less and less sense for students to take out loans for such an education when the number of full-time parish positions is in decline. It seems reasonable to expect that fewer and fewer students will have the benefit of three-year residential formation in a seminary context. Without a great deal of imagination one can foresee a situation where a diocese will have a small number of parishes that can afford clergy who have been formed in the standard residential model and a large number of parishes staffed by part-time or bi-vocational clergy whose formation will be haphazard. I am not critical of the gifts and passion such people bring to their ministries. Rather, I am recognizing the limits on their formation. I do not believe there is a distinctively Anglican way of addressing these challenges, but this situation calls out for serious reflection.

This is connected to my next point: The Episcopal Church (maybe Anglicanism more generally) will need to develop or improve the three- or four-way conversations between the church (particularly its bishops), faculty in seminaries (many of whom are ordained) and faculty who are teaching in other institutions (many of whom are lay). One can also include Anglicans on the faculty of non-Anglican seminaries as a fourth group. This point may be most applicable to the US context, but probably extends further. I believe this point is true for all theological disciplines, but particularly true for biblical studies.

To see the importance for Anglicanism of having all these (and other) voices in the conversation, let me offer a contrast. The list of contributors to this symposium includes many of the types of voices that should be in such a conversation. We have lay and ordained theologians; those teaching in Anglican seminaries; some from non-Anglican seminaries and a few who work in university contexts. The initial gathering that led to these articles, however, took place under the auspices of the American Academy of Religion. As far as I know there were no bishops in attendance and no other representatives of the ecclesial institution with which we are all also affiliated.Footnote ⁶

Alternatively, when I meet as a member of the House of Bishops’ Theology Committee, the ecclesial institution is front and center. Nevertheless, it is clear that most bishops have very little sense of the landscape of academic theology outside of our seminaries and the few lay theologians they happen to encounter on the committee. I think they would be surprised and pleased to learn how many top-notch scholars in our fields are lay Episcopalians. These are scholars who worship in local contexts and may serve there, but who largely work outside of any church-wide conversations. They fly under the episcopal radar. They would, if my experience is anything to go by, jump at the chance to be more involved and to bring their scholarly gifts to the service of the church. Moreover, my time on this committee has shown that bishops have welcomed the insights and work of theologians (lay and ordained) when it comes to addressing clearly theological topics. They see us as allies and resources. As a committee we have not been as successful in thinking theologically about the institutional and operational issues that must comprise the great bulk of a bishop’s time. When that has happened it is almost by accident, though the results have been good as far as I can tell.Footnote ⁷

I have contrasted two separate contexts, an American Academy of Religion meeting and the House of Bishop’s Theology Committee, where some, but not all, of the parties that should be in conversation come together. Moreover, even within those contexts, the focus of the discussions can be too truncated. There is little about these challenges that would not be improved by more time and more money. For the most part, that would have to come from the ecclesial side of things or perhaps investment from seminaries in the on-going health of theological reflection in the church.

My third and final point is that any approach to Anglican biblical studies must engage the scholarship coming from Anglicans in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. One benefit of the fact that all biblical scholars learn the language of critical biblical scholarship is that it allows for interested parties across the globe to get conversations off the ground where other disciplines might struggle. I recognize that most biblical scholarship coming out of these contexts in the global south is not standard historical criticism. Nevertheless, the common formation of biblical scholars allows for people to communicate the ways they deviate from this formation and the reasons for doing so in a manner that is more accessible to other biblical scholars across the globe.

Of course, there is a danger that biblical scholars end up only engaging the work of others to the extent that it conforms to their preferred idiom. We should avoid the situation where participation in the conversation is open only to the extent one fits within the norms of that conversation. Biblical scholarship from outside of Europe and the USA and Canada challenges us to open our eyes and ears to see and hear different things. That benefit could be stifled or lost if it must conform to the standards of critical biblical scholarship in a rigid way. The table should be large, and sitting at the table should not come at the expense of one’s distinctive identity and approach.

These then are my three points regarding an Anglican approach to biblical studies. First, there is not an Anglican style of biblical studies. Instead, all biblical scholars regardless of confession are formed in the habits and practices of critical biblical scholarship. Recognizing and engaging the power and scope of this formation is essential for Anglicanism and in particular its scholars and bishops. Second, such necessary engagement can only happen by expanding the scope and nature of the conversations and engagements between scholars from a wide variety of contexts and bishops. Finally, it is essential to recognize, and welcome on their own terms, voices from the global south.Footnote ⁸

Conclusion: Directions for Anglican Studies

It is always a complex task to respond to such a wide set of diverse reflections on a broad theme: at first sight Anglican Studies might seem relatively tightly defined, but the different contributions have shown just how rich and varied a range of disciplines and subjects are under consideration. An earlier effort to define the field of Anglican Studies in the Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies revealed that the different contributors had very different perceptions of the sorts of studies required to address the phenomena described by adjective ‘Anglican’. There are, it would seem, many Anglicanisms and many contexts in which ‘Anglican’ churches have developed and many churches that might be described as ‘Anglican’ in the sense of being included within the Anglican Communion that are in fact post-denominational ecumenical churches (as on the Indian sub-continent). There is consequently something important in the distinction between Anglicanism and Anglican Studies – ‘isms’ imply some sort of clearly defined essence whereas ‘studies’ imply something far less tangible and even contested. And some churches that are proud of the term ‘Anglican’ are not part of the Anglican Communion (as with the Anglican Church of North America). Alongside history, the study of such a diverse set of phenomena seems to require sociology, anthropology, geography, cultural studies and theology all laced with a strong dose of postcolonialism.

There are of course scholars of Anglicanism who do not have any particular difficulty with describing a reified thing called Anglicanism. Perhaps the most obvious scholar of Anglicanism as a distinctive ecclesial identity with its own form of theology is Paul Avis, at least in the Church of England, whose prolific writings have sought to identify a set of key methods that can be used to describe Anglican ecclesiology. ^{Footnote 1} It is quite clear, however, that not all Anglicans would agree with his analysis (including the author of this article). Even though their picture of Anglicanism is quite different, there are resonances in Avis’s work with Stephen Sykes’s writings from the 1970s with his quest for a distinctive theological identity for Anglicanism against what he saw as the incoherence of the ideology of comprehensiveness imposed through the influence of F.D. Maurice and Michael Ramsey. ^{Footnote 2} My own work challenged any sort of essentialism by emphasizing the contested nature of Anglican identity as based on the often competing stories Anglicans tell one another.Footnote ³

In my view, these contextual and partisan stories form the principal subject matter of Anglican Studies and require a wide range of disciplines for their proper investigation. In my own principally historical work I have deliberately sought to challenge common understandings of Anglicanism (such as the ‘three-legged stool’ of Scripture, Tradition and Reason), and consequently to deconstruct any essentialist understanding taken from one place or party or time. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the complexity and contested histories and identity of Anglicanism make any sort of clear dogmatic or ecclesiological formulations at the very best highly problematic and at worst little more than wishful thinking or attractive nostalgia (and here one might ask questions as to why it is that Richard Hooker’s theology has proved so popular among North Americans). Against any such essentialism, Anglican Studies allows for breadth and diversity and can range across the whole variety of disciplines – without prescribing or favouring anything other than an effort at some degree of academic neutrality in the analysis of a more or less tightly defined set of phenomena across time and space – which have been referred to as Anglican (although even that word is now contested, especially in North America).

That said, even if there may not be such a thing as ‘Anglicanism’ in an essentialist sense, there are nevertheless themes around which Anglican Studies coalesce, even if these are not necessarily theological. The first is context and the second is the legacy and response to colonialism or more properly colonialisms. And from these twin themes stems the common denominator which might be summarized under the heading of ‘conversation’.

1. Context: on the one hand, the idea of context is straightforward in the sense that what might now count as Anglican has developed in a huge range of different contexts, many of which are perhaps quite unexpected given the wider history of the societies in which they have emerged (as, for instance, in Brazil or the Democratic Republic of Congo). This wide range of contexts means, as Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook has noted, there are more and more studies of specific regions and countries through history and also in the contemporary situation. The emphasis on context, however, raises serious questions about the use of the term ‘global’ when applied to Anglicanism. ‘Global’ is another word which leads down the trajectory of essentialism (as noted especially by Kwok Pui-lan). ^{Footnote 4} At the same time, the particular expressions of Anglican identity in different social contexts can themselves be specific micro-contexts within the wider culture: for instance, being Anglican might be different from being Catholic in Mexico despite the same broader social and political context. And, of course, being an Anglican in Japan or another predominantly non-Christian environment is inevitably a highly complex identity. Another aspect of context is that of aesthetic milieu which has led to a number of works on the impact of Anglicanism on literary culture. ^{Footnote 5} What also emerges from a number of the contributors to this volume is the economics of scholarship in different contexts: a paucity of research funding can mean that local studies produced in some contexts are few and far between, which can easily lead to issues of financial dependency or being uprooted from context in order to research. The promotion of grass-roots scholarship in context might well become a key part of the agenda for Anglican Studies as it develops into the future; this would mean trying to work out the most effective mechanisms for enabling non-imperialist models of scholarly interchange.

At the same time, contexts do not remain distinct: one of the most important fields of research for the future will be that of ‘hybridity’ as different contexts rub alongside and influence one another. Stephen Fowl has noted this in relation to biblical studies, but similar themes can be seen within other areas of study. Equally important is the way in which the inter-relationships between contexts affect practice in such areas as liturgy, social action and even activities as apparently mundane as approaches to childcare and family relationships. Another aspect of hybridity is the way in which mass population shifts have had a massive effect on expressions of Anglicanism: in London, for instance, different Anglican contexts rub alongside one another often within the local parish church. Similarly, pan-evangelicalism and different varieties of Pentecostalism have led to huge changes in liturgical and theological expressions of different churches and factions within the Anglican Communion, which again challenge any essentialist reading: in some parts of the world Anglican liturgical practice is quite indistinguishable from charismatic evangelicalism. Liturgical identity, which might have provided a key feature of Anglican churches in earlier times, has disappeared in some parts of the Communion, including the Church of England.

2. Postcolonialism. What might be termed ‘fluid contextuality’ and hybridization are obviously closely connected to the second main theme that emerges from the papers in this volume, that of postcolonial studies. This is now hardly contested and obviously relates to the specific circumstances of Anglican missionary history and its complex relationship to the British Empire and the process of independence. Much ground-breaking work has been done both inside and outside former colonies as well as in Britain itself. Scott MacDougall’s challenge towards decolonization is crucial for Anglican Studies into the future; and yet it is important to note that decolonization is never an uncontested idea. There are complex and contested relationships with economic migration, mass movement of refugees in times of warfare, and cultural hegemony, not least of the English language, which raise enormous questions about the role of indigenous or minority languages and the place of multicultural congregations, which in some parts of the world are common (as in parts of England) but are rare in other multicultural contexts with very different histories (as in the United States or South Africa). Under-researched is the role of Anglican churches in the education of postcolonial elites, or the impact of Anglican cultural assumptions on the categorization and understandings of other religious world views or ethical codes. Here there are obvious theological questions around the authority of cultural and theological assumptions developed in Western academia and churches. In postcolonial studies there will be many presuppositions that will need to be challenged which may make such studies both controversial and contested in any effort at what is called over-simplistically as decolonizing the mind. There is a vast amount of work to be done in this area and again the question of funding will be crucial.

3. Conversation. This leads on to the third theme, which is that of conversation. The huge complexity of historical, theological, contextual and postcolonial themes will require the most highly attuned skills in conversation between many different disciplines. Historians will need to engage in dialogue with mission theologians and sociologists and demographers. As Stephen Fowl notes, there are different languages that have to be brought into debate. My feeling, however, is that we have only just begun to engage in this task and nothing will be as easy as it seems; sometimes some very raw nerves will be exposed. Conclusions might be unexpected and highly challenging. ^{Footnote 6} Anglican Studies, especially with its need to address issues in transnational histories may well find it difficult to remain dispassionate in an academy that is becoming increasingly polarized around an unnuanced applications of an increasingly globalized form of contemporary political discourse (‘culture wars’). As Mandell Creighton, possibly the greatest and certainly the wittiest Anglican bishop-historian of all, put it, nothing is wholly good and nothing wholly bad: ‘I am hopelessly tempted to admit degrees of criminality, otherwise history becomes a dreary record of wickedness. … the actors were men like myself, sorely tempted by the possession of power, trammelled by holding a representative position…. In the past I find myself regarding them with pity: who am I that I should condemn them? Surely they knew not what they did.’ ^{Footnote 7}

This challenging quotation from Creighton points to a crucial point that seems to me to be of the utmost importance for the future of Anglican Studies. There is a widespread acceptance of the polycentric nature of contemporary expressions of Anglicanism and much of the discourse of postcolonialism has emphasized this. But within decentred Anglicanism the question of power still remains central. There may be many centres but not all are as powerful (‘central’) as others. And here I think there is a need to problematize the concept of colonialism, especially as it has been applied to Anglican Studies. For obvious reasons of history the logical focus of postcolonial studies in Anglican Studies has been on churches that grew within the British Colonies and Dominions. This, however, needs to be significantly expanded. There was, after all, a significant Anglican Church that developed quite separately from 1776 and which arguably at least was as important in the formation of Anglican identity as the Church of England, especially in distancing the Anglican Communion from English and reformation formularies. ^{Footnote 8} Provocatively put, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and the Lambeth Appeal of 1920 can be interpreted as the recasting of Anglicanism in the American revolutionary mode. ^{Footnote 9}

Less controversial is the claim that the Episcopal Church was a missionary church almost from its very beginnings and was closely associated with the expansionist drive of the United States both inside and outside North America. Trying to engage with this colonialist past and neo-colonialist present will be crucial if there is an intention not simply to describe but also to decolonize Anglican Studies. There are huge flows of money between north and south which means the economics of Anglicanism cannot be under-estimated – there is much left to explore from the 1960s and the work of Stephen Bayne and the cash flows that accompanied ‘Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ’. Anglican culture wars cannot be understood without serious reflection in this area, which has been pioneered by Miranda Hassett ^{Footnote 10} and Chris Brittain. ^{Footnote 11} It would be feasible to describe much of what has happened over questions of sexuality in the past 25 years as the mutation of Anglicanism into an expression of American culture wars. ^{Footnote 12}

This brief overview has sought to describe the scene and point to ways forward. It is set against an increasingly polarized world and an increasingly polarized church which may well mean some of the lingering virtues of at least one Anglican discourse that has emphasized tolerance and comprehension will be under threat. My sincere hope is that Anglican Studies will play its part in promoting the idea of liberality and openness even to those who have very different world-views. ^{Footnote 13} Such humility and tolerance is an aspect of the inner logic of the Christian religion, but it requires jealous guarding. For this reason, Creighton could never concur with famous sparring-partner Lord Acton that ‘the moral law is written on tablets of eternity’. Anglican Studies will consequently need the humble discipline of critical and ongoing academic study lest it too become one of the competing narratives that constitute Anglican identity.