Anglicanism

A Reformed Catholic Tradition

Gerald Bray

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781683594376
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

What is Anglicanism? There are many associations that come to mind. Whether it is the buildings, the unique history, the prayers, or church government, often we emphasize one aspect against others. Is the Anglican church a Protestant church with distinctive characteristics, or a Catholic Church no longer in communion with Rome? In Anglicanism: A Reformed Catholic Tradition, Gerald Bray argues that some theological trajectories are more faithful than others to the nature and history of the Church of England. Readers looking to understand the diversity, nature, and future of Anglicanism will be helped by Bray's historical examination.

1

What is Anglicanism?

Anglicanism as we think of it today is essentially a nineteenth-century invention. The elements that make it up are much older than that, of course, but it was only from the 1830s or so that the particular configuration that Christianity assumed in the post-Reformation Church of England and its sister churches came to be regarded as something unique. Before that time, most people assumed that the Church of England was a Protestant body that had separated from Rome in the sixteenth century along with several other churches in Northern Europe. Everyone knew that the details of the separation were unusual, and that political factors had played as much of a role as theological ones, but these secondary matters did not affect the basic principle. The English church happened to have preserved a number of medieval features, like a territorial episcopate with cathedrals that continued to function much as they had before the Reformation. This gave it a certain traditionalist feel, which might look to Protestants like remnants of Roman Catholicism, but this was more in appearance than in reality. Almost all members of the Church of England saw themselves as Protestants and regarded Rome with varying degrees of enmity.

It was only when secularism began to take hold, and the bonds of church and state started to weaken, that people began to ask about the nature of the Church of England. Was it a Protestant church with distinctive characteristics or a Catholic church no longer in communion with Rome? That, in turn, raised the question of what catholicity is. Rome was quite clear that to be Catholic meant being in communion with the Holy See and accepting the pope as head of the church on earth, the vicar of Christ. English churchmen could not agree with that, and some of them pointed to the Eastern Orthodox churches, which were just as ancient as Rome but had not been in communion with it for eight hundred years. Could the Church of England claim a similar kind of non-Roman catholicity? Those who thought that it could were the first to use the term “Anglicanism.”

For these first self-conscious Anglicans, Protestantism and the Reformation were a problem. Their impact on the Church of England could hardly be denied altogether, but the theorists of Anglicanism tended to minimize their significance. They agreed that the late medieval church needed reforming, but they claimed that in England, existing abuses were corrected but no new doctrines or practices were introduced. Anglicanism was thus understood to be a kind of reformed Catholicism, better than what Rome had to offer, but not really different from what had gone before. In order to substantiate that argument, they were forced to overlook much of what happened in the sixteenth century and restrict the word Anglican to those who opposed the Puritans, whom they regarded as an alien import into the English church. As they saw it, the Puritans were eventually defeated and the Church of England was able to express its true Anglican identity.

This interpretation of English church history might have been dismissed as eccentric had it not coincided with another development that made it convenient to promote Anglicanism as a distinct form of Christianity. This was the expansion of English Christianity to other parts of the world, which took different forms. Ireland and even Scotland (for a while) had national churches that were in communion with the Church of England, though they did not refer to themselves as “Anglican” until modern times because they did not see themselves as being English. Colonial settlers took the English church to North America, Australasia, and other parts of the world, and at first were quite happy, even determined, to call themselves “English.” But as they became independent of the mother country some other designation was called for and eventually “Anglican” met this need. Beyond the settler churches, members of the Church of England planted missions across the globe, whose converts were in no sense “English.” For them it was pointless to try to re-create the Church of England in Africa or Asia, but they could not easily deny their origins. Was it possible to establish local churches in other countries that would look like the mother Church of England and be in communion with it? Could these churches be Anglican without being English?

These questions have been addressed and answered in different ways. In some places, like India, Anglican missions have joined in with other Protestants and created national churches of their own. Whether these churches are Anglican or not has been a matter of considerable discussion. In the ecumenical climate of our time, they are usually recognized as such, though their interdenominational origin gives them a character that is distinct from that of other Anglican churches that have not joined a wider ecumenical union. In most parts of the world, however, Anglican churches have preferred to retain their distinctiveness even to the point of refusing to join interdenominational groupings. For them, defining Anglicanism is an essential part of their identity, even though that identity may have little to do with the historical English church.

More recently, splits within the American Episcopal Church have created a situation in which breakaway groups are more likely to call themselves “Anglican” as distinct from “Episcopalian,” the assumption presumably being that “Anglican” indicates a form of Episcopalianism that is more authentic, more universal, and more orthodox, but not necessarily more English. In the Church of England, by way of contrast, there are parishioners who would never describe themselves as Anglican and who may not know what the term means. They are aware that the Church of England is different from other denominations, but most of them have little idea of what Anglicanism is and are not particularly interested in finding out. Their conception of what a church should be is determined by their parish, which may or may not be typical of what exists elsewhere. Many congregants will be aware of that diversity but have chosen to worship where they do because their parish reflects what they think the church should be like. The breadth of Anglicanism may thus be something of which they are conscious but of which they disapprove for different reasons and to varying degrees. To their minds, what they do (or prefer) is what Anglicanism ought to be, and often they are quite prepared to ignore, criticize, or even condemn those who do not conform to their chosen paradigm.

Given this situation, we must accept that however “Anglicanism” is defined, it has emerged in a particular historical context, it embraces different and sometimes conflicting perspectives, and many people who subscribe to it have a narrower view of what it is (or should be) than outside observers often do. The truth is, many Anglicans find it difficult to live alongside others who claim the same denominational label but interpret it very differently, and they are often inclined to define their church in ways that implicitly, if not explicitly, exclude those who do not share their perspective. There is no easy way around this problem, and no definition of Anglicanism that will satisfy everyone. The best we can do is revisit the history, try to understand how we arrived where we are, and ask ourselves whether some theological trajectories are more consistent and more faithful to the ongoing Anglican tradition than others are.

To do this, we must begin with the origins of English Christianity and consider to what extent modern Anglicanism can be said to be in continuity with it, and then look at each of its historical phases and assess their contribution to modern Anglicanism.

THE PRE-REFORMATION CHURCH OF ENGLAND

It is generally agreed that a distinct form of Christianity that might be called Anglican emerged out of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. But the Church of England, known in Latin as the Ecclesia Anglicana, had already been in existence for nearly a thousand years before that. Missions to the English had been sent from Ireland (in the north) and Rome (in the south) in the sixth century, and these fused into what became the Anglo-Saxon church. Its great chronicler was Bede (673–735), who lived and worked in the monastery of Jarrow, now a suburb of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Anglo-Saxon and Irish missionaries were responsible for the conversion of Germany and Scandinavia to Christianity, a process that was complete by about AD 1000. By the sixteenth century, this period had largely been forgotten, apart from the names of missionary saints to whom a number of parish churches were dedicated. But after the break with Rome, there was a desire to recover the sources of English Christianity, of which modern Anglicanism has seen periodic revivals of interest, amounting in some cases to a claim that in its Irish (Celtic) dimension, the Church of England had an origin independent of the papacy. That claim was always dubious and is now generally rejected, but traces of it can still be found in some modern Anglican writers.

In 1066, William of Normandy conquered England and ushered in a new era. The Church of England’s administrative structure was thoroughly reformed, and much of it survived the Reformation to become characteristic (though not definitive) of modern Anglicanism. In particular, a parish system was introduced and tithing regulated. Parish priests were appointed, and after 1215 they were given “benefices” or “livings,” a source of income based on tithe revenue that was supposed to be enough to sustain them. Appointments to parishes were technically in the hands of the diocesan bishop, but very often the right of nomination belonged to local landowners, the king, or other lay people, who could present a man of their choice for the bishop to institute to the church. The man so appointed would normally be the receiver of the tithe, or “rector,” a title that is still in regular use in Anglican circles today. In slightly more than a third of all English parishes, however, the right of presentation fell into the hands of various monasteries, whose abbots became the rectors. Since they could not reside on the benefice themselves, they sent substitutes, or “vicars,” who performed the duties of the parish priest. Today, “rector” and “vicar” are treated as synonymous. Both terms are still in use, but neither has anything to do with ordination or ecclesiastical status. The tithe system no longer functions, but its legacy survives in the titles given to the incumbents of parishes, both in England and in the wider Anglican Communion. It is an example of how a tradition can metastasize and become fossilized within Anglicanism, even to the point of acquiring a religious significance that it did not originally have.

The medieval English church produced some outstanding scholars and theologians, but for the most part they are not usually regarded as Anglican now. Some were not even English. Anselm of Canterbury, for example, was archbishop there from 1093 to 1109 and one of the greatest theologians of all time, but he was originally from northern Italy, had been abbot of the monastery of Bec in Normandy, and probably did not speak a word of English. On the other hand, there were Englishmen who made careers in France, especially at the monastery of St. Victor in Paris. Richard and Andrew of St. Victor were leading theologians and biblical scholars in the twelfth century, as were men like Stephen Langton and Robert Grosseteste. The latter two returned to England, the first as archbishop of Canterbury and the second as bishop of Lincoln, and although their legacy is remembered in some circles, neither they nor any of their contemporaries can be called Anglican in any sense that would be meaningful today. The same must be said of William of Ockham (1287–1347), whose European reputation is beyond question but who left England fairly early on and made his career in France and Germany, where he died. These men and others like them were part of the universal respublica Christiana, the “Christian commonwealth,” as it is sometimes called, and they cannot be said to have represented a distinctively Anglican form of Christianity.

The only medieval figure to be remembered today as a proto-Anglican is John Wycliffe or Wyclif (1328–1384). This is mainly because Wycliffe advocated the supreme authority of Holy Scripture in matters of faith, denied the doctrine of transubstantiation that undergirded late medieval teaching on the Lord’s Supper, and rejected the authority of the pope. In other words, it is the apparent Protestantism of Wycliffe that makes people think of him as somehow Anglican, though he would never have thought of himself in that way. Wycliffe was the moving spirit behind the Lollards, a group who promoted Bible translation into English and provided theological training for interested lay people. The Lollards survived until the Reformation, when they merged seamlessly into the Church of England. Wycliffe and the Lollards were regarded as heroes by Jan Hus and his Bohemian Brethren, who copied their works and tried to apply similar doctrines and practices in their own country. Hus later influenced Luther, and for that reason Wycliffe came to be known as the “morning star of the Reformation.” Wycliffe continues to be honored in the Anglican world as he is among Protestants more generally, but as many modern scholars have pointed out, the picture painted of him in those circles is decidedly limited and one-sided. He believed in the supreme authority of Scripture and rejected transubstantiation, but in other matters he was typical of his age and could not be called a “Reformer” in the sixteenth-century sense. Wycliffe has been an inspiration to many later Protestants, but he was not one himself and should not be understood in that way.

In the early sixteenth century, the Church of England began to feel the effects of Renaissance humanism, and the calls for reform (or modernization, as we would now call it) became louder. Monastic education gradually gave way to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, from which the parish clergy were increasingly drawn, and the presence of Erasmus in the latter university (1511–1514) had an electrifying effect on the Church. Men like John Colet and Sir Thomas More began to press for changes, particularly in the education of priests, and Thomas Wolsey, who became archbishop of York and was the king’s chief minister from 1516 to 1529, began turning monasteries into colleges in an effort to achieve this goal. None of these men can be called Anglican, and the legacy of More and Wolsey (in particular) remains contested, but in some respects they laid the foundations for the reforms that were to come. To that extent they can be regarded as forerunners of later Anglicanism, though they would certainly have rejected the Reformation had they lived to see it.

In general, it can be said that although the pre-Reformation Church of England, along with the Celtic church, plays a part in the self-consciousness of Anglicans today, it exerts relatively little influence on modern Anglican thought or practice. On the other hand, Anglicanism is deeply rooted in the Western Christianity that for a thousand years was governed from Rome. Nowadays, Anglicans usually maintain friendly relations with Roman Catholics and other Protestants. There is full communion between the Church of England and the Old Catholic Church, and also between Lutherans and Anglicans in many parts of the world. Anglicans have also tried to establish links with the different Eastern churches, like the Greek and Russian Orthodox, but Anglicanism is quite unlike those churches in its pattern of worship, form of governance, and so on. This is true even of Anglican churches in the Middle East, where Eastern Christianity is dominant, and intercommunion between them remains a distant dream.

THE LUTHERAN INFLUENCE ON EARLY ANGLICANISM

When Martin Luther (1483–1546) raised the banner of revolt in Germany, reaction in England was largely indifferent or negative. Henry VIII wrote a treatise against him (Assertion of the Seven Sacraments), which earned him the title Defender of the Faith from Pope Leo X (a title that his successors still bear) but did nothing to endear him to Luther. It was only in 1534, when Henry broke with the papacy because of the pope’s refusal to annul his marriage, that an opening to the Lutherans became realistic as the king looked around for allies. By then, William Tyndale (1494–1536) had already gone to Germany and met Martin Luther in person—probably the first Englishman to do so, and certainly Luther’s earliest English disciple. Inspired by Luther’s example, Tyndale translated the New Testament and much of the Old into English, adding prefaces at the beginning of each book (as Luther had done) to explain their teaching. It was in these prefaces that Tyndale developed what would later become covenant theology, the typical Reformed way of reading the Bible as a single message from God—salvation promised in the Old Testament and realized in the New. Tyndale also wrote a number of theological tracts that were widely circulated in England and encouraged the spread of Protestant ideas.

Tyndale would not have called himself an Anglican, but he has a better claim to the designation than anyone who went before him. His beliefs and his translations laid the foundation for later Anglican theology, which can rightly be seen as having developed from his work. He never returned to England and was eventually arrested, tried, and executed for heresy in Belgium, but even as those events were playing out, ambassadors from Henry VIII were making their way to Wittenberg, hoping to iron out a common theological position. The Lutherans had already composed a confession of faith, which they had submitted to Emperor Charles V at Augsburg in 1530. This Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana) became the yardstick by which Protestantism was measured, and the Lutherans wanted the English to sign up to it.

That the English ambassadors could not do. This is partly because Henry VIII did not agree with much of it, and partly because no English government would submit to a foreign jurisdiction, not even in theology. The ambassadors themselves, however, were largely won over to the Lutheranism of Augsburg and did what they could to introduce it into their own proposals for an English confession of faith. The Ten Articles of 1536 managed to include a more-or-less Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone and expressed serious doubts about the exi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1. What Is Anglicanism?
• 2. The Catholicity of Anglicanism (Articles 1–8)
• 3. The Reformed (Protestant) Character of Anglicanism (Articles 9–33)
• 4. The Local Articles and Matters Indifferent (Articles 34–37)
• 5. Miscellaneous Provisions (Articles 38–39)
• 6. The Book of Common Prayer
• 7. Church Government (Ecclesiology)
• 8. The Anglican World Today
• Index