Orthodox Anglican Identity

The Quest for Unity in a Diverse Religious Tradition

Charles Erlandson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781532678271
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

While the postmodern world we inhabit is highly fragmented, contested, and conflicted, we all have one thing in common: we are experiencing identity crises. Religious traditions are not immune to these crises, and orthodox Anglicans have been experiencing their own issues with identity since the 2003 consecration of an openly homosexual man. Orthodox Anglicans want to say who they are as both orthodox and Anglican, but they are also finding it difficult to articulate a clear and coherent identity, especially an Anglican one. This orthodox Anglican pursuit of a renewed sense of self in a complex and fragmented world is a microcosm of our postmodern context, and an examination of their quest holds enticing clues to our own urgent searches for meaning and identity. Think of this book as a kind of story: the story of a worldwide church who, when its identity was threatened, took counsel together to renew and revitalize its sense of self. In the process, it not only faced many dangers and difficulties but also learned much about who it was and who it wanted to be.

Introduction

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

This famous opening of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities serves well as an introduction to the complexities and ambiguities of religious identities. Christians (and adherents of other religions) desire to see and experience God clearly in their lives. They usually look back to a Golden Age of the church when things were better: when Christians had true faith and were willing to die for it; when Christians had all things in common and lived in peace and harmony; and when the church was integral to all parts of life. But when they look at the church in their own lives, they are dismayed by the weakness and coldness of faith they observe, the irrelevance and impotence of the church, and, perhaps, the seeming absence of God in their lives. Some are tempted to tell the story of the church in terms of a long period of decline since the purported Golden Age. It’s easy to look at Western Christianity and compare it to either the early church or the medieval church and wonder what went wrong.

But what if there’s another way to tell the story? What if the church has always simultaneously experienced both the best of times and the worst of times? And what if religious identities, including Christianity, are inherently complex entities, which encompass contrary trends at one and the same time? My own belief is that you could take your finger, randomly run it up and down the timeline, stop anywhere along the line, and you would find that the church’s experience was both positive and negative. And if you spun a globe and stopped it with your finger at any given nation, you’d find much the same thing.

Maybe the church in the New Testament was the Golden Age of the church for which we should all long. Who cannot be moved by Luke’s account of the early church in Acts 2? But when we read about the church at Corinth, under the oversight of the great apostle Paul, we discover a church filled with sexual immorality, pride, and divisions. Is this the Golden Age for which we are to yearn?

Or maybe it’s the High Middle Ages, where the church, state, and culture were unified under the authority and legal influence of the pope. But you don’t have to be Martin Luther to know the manifold abuses and corruptions that often prevailed in this mythical Golden Age.

When we grasp the truth that religious identities are inherently complex and that the expressed ideals of Christendom are never fully realized, an opportunity for hope emerges. When we come to the realization that the church as a whole, as well as specific Christian churches, can both say with confidence who they are and at the same time have trouble defining themselves, we may discover a strange sense of peace. How can hope and peace emerge from a complex and ambiguous identity? Because we realize we’re not alone in this circumstance and that the church has always had to work out its salvation with fear and trembling.

This book is a personal one. I am a self-professed orthodox Anglican and one who has spent years searching for my Anglican identity beyond the tidy ones I read about in other books. I originally wanted to study Anglican revival but soon realized that to revive or reform people or things you had to have some idea of who they are supposed to be. And so I felt compelled to descend into the maelstrom of Anglican identity. It was not an easy journey, and I was surprised and dismayed at the complexity and confusion I frequently encountered.

Certain fundamental truths emerged from my journey, ones I want to share especially with the Christian and Anglican world. People and institutions experience identity crises in times of great change and transition, such as our own day. Change itself is not an enemy, and identities in organisms require constant renewal. On the one hand, the organism has to establish and defend its identity against the environment outside it. On the other hand, the organism must interact with and partake of the world outside if it is going to continue to survive and thrive. The church is a divine organism. It needs to know who it is, and yet it cannot be who it is without participating in both the life of God and also the world God created. If the church restricts its identity too much, it risks being incapable of ministering to the larger world. But if the church is too tolerant of diversity, it risks losing its identity, becoming like the culture, and also being incapable of ministering to the larger culture.

Organisms other than unicellular organisms have another inherent identity issue: the relation of the parts to the whole. In the church this relationship is played out not only between the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church and its constituent members but also between the expressed identity of individual churches and the diversity of members, theologies, and practices in that church. This unity in diversity is at the core of ecclesiastical identity crises. Too much coerced unity within a church results in cults and heresies. Too much diversity results in a church nearly indistinguishable from the culture, as well as heresies. Churches must, therefore, on the one hand have a clear idea of who they are, while on the other hand allow for a certain degree of healthy diversity within established norms. A diversity deemed unhealthy to the church is at the heart of the Anglican identity crisis, as well as the renewed orthodox Anglican identity that has emerged.

Undesirable diversity, if unchecked, may eventually lead to the loss of a meaningful identity in continuity with past identities. But undesirable diversity has the unintended benefit of provoking from the church a deeper examination of conscience, as well as a revitalized reassertion of self. The heresies of the first few centuries of church history provoked the great ecumenical councils of the church and confident clarifications of christological and trinitarian theologies. What renewed orthodox Anglican identity might emerge from the challenge of a progressively liberal Anglicanism in the West?

Think of this book as a kind of story: the story of a worldwide church who, when her identity was threatened, took counsel together to renew and revitalize her sense of self. In the process, she not only faced many dangers and difficulties but also learned much about who she was and who she wanted to be. It is the story of losing oneself and finding oneself: a story of identity. The story is told by one who may be considered one of the official storytellers of the church in question, which explains the objective tone of what is, beneath the argumentation and evidence, a very personal story.

The story begins on 2 November 2003, when The Episcopal Church (TEC)1 consecrated Vicki Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. While many who consider themselves “orthodox” or “conservative” Anglicans had been concerned about the growth of liberalism within Anglicanism for several decades before this action, it was especially TEC’s consecration of Robinson that provoked a strong and negative response from many orthodox Anglicans. This response was supported in part on the basis of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, at which a clear majority of Anglican bishops voted for a resolution that rejected homosexuality as incompatible with the Bible. The response of orthodox Anglicans has been both theological and practical, but underlying these responses is the idea of an orthodox Anglican realignment predicated upon a specifically orthodox and Anglican identity and articulated in contrast to a liberal Anglican identity. So sharp are the disagreements over TEC’s action that individual provinces have declared themselves out of communion or in impaired communion with TEC over Robinson’s consecration.

Since 2003, orthodox Anglicans have responded with a process of ecclesial and theological realignment. The virtues and vices of this realignment have been examined both by those who favor it and those who dislike it, but neither group has given adequate attention to the underlying identity that orthodox Anglicans assume in such a realignment.

Anglicans on all sides of the current crisis generally assume that an entity called “Anglicanism” exists, and discussions of the Anglican identity crisis continue to be written. What is especially lacking, however, is an extended discussion of the nature of the emerging orthodox Anglican identity that orthodox Anglicans are asserting and on which they predicate their realignment. This orthodox Anglican identity has rarely been articulated by orthodox Anglicans themselves in any detail and has largely remained an unexamined assumption.

Given the importance of this orthodox Anglican realignment and the diversity among these orthodox Anglicans, the question, therefore, remains: “How clear and coherent is this orthodox Anglican identity?” The thesis of this book is that while orthodox Anglicans desire and seek an identity that is clear and coherent, in actuality, they will live out an identity that is much more ambiguous and messier. This thesis is an illustration of a grander claim that religious identities are inherently complex organisms who create and maintain their identities through a dynamic process of finding unity in diversity.

In chapter 1, I will present both an overview of the crisis precipitated by TEC’s consecration of Robinson and of the orthodox Anglican response to this action. I will then introduce you to some of the characters in this story, offering criteria by which we may judge who counts as orthodox Anglicans, and providing examples of key orthodox Anglicans. A discussion of how these orthodox Anglicans typically define liberal Anglicans will follow, as well as the background to the liberal actions of TEC. Chapter 1 will conclude with a discussion of the nature of the orthodox Anglican response, which may be best described as one of realignment.

Before this orthodox Anglican identity, on which the response of realignment is predicated, can be adequately assessed, I must offer some definition of Anglicanism as a whole, since orthodox Anglicans desire to retain a distinctly Anglican identity and since the clarity and coherence of this Anglican identity is the theme of this book. Therefore, in chapter 2, I will examine in turn four kinds of definitions of Anglicanism: ecclesial, normative, practical, and historical. These ecclesial, normative, and practical definitions will serve as the framework for an examination of the clarity and coherence of orthodox Anglican identity in chapters 3, 4, and 5, respectively.

Since the historical dimension is an important one in understanding how the other three relate, I will present a simplified model of religious identity, one which suggests that one way of understanding Anglican identity may be to look at the relationship between ecclesial authority, norms, and practical aspects of Anglicanism as they have developed over time. This model reveals that the history of Anglican identity has historically developed (since the time of the English Reformation) in three stages: it is also possible that the Anglican identity so described is now entering a fourth, “post-Anglican,” stage of identity.

In the remainder of the book, I will examine orthodox Anglican identity in terms of these ecclesial, normative, and practical definitions. My task is a descriptive one: rather than prescribing what orthodox Anglicanism should be, I am attempting to describe the definitions of orthodox Anglicanism that orthodox Anglicans themselves are articulating and actually living out, as well as the challenges to these articulated definitions that are often unacknowledged by the orthodox Anglicans who are asserting them.

Chapter 3 explores the idea that ecclesiastically, orthodox Anglicans desire to live together in a clear and authoritative communion life but are likely to actually live in an ecclesial identity that may not be any clearer than the present ecclesial identity. Ecclesial definitions of Anglicanism involve an equation between Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion, which, however, presents twin dangers. Staying within the structures of the Anglican Communion will only perpetuate t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Anglican Identity Crisis and Realignment
• Chapter 3: Definitions of Anglicanism
• Chapter 4: Ecclesial Orthodox Anglicanism
• Chapter 5: Normative Orthodox Anglicanism
• Chapter 6: Orthodox Anglican Spiritualities
• Conclusion
• Bibliography