Go to Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 of this series of six articles in ecclesiology.
In the previous posts of this series I have pointed out the deep historicity of respecting diocesan boarders and I have shown that there are meaningful theological reasons for observing such respect. What are we to do then, with the ancient and Nicene admonition to avoid diocesan boundary crossings as well as our trinitarian episcopal ecclesiology now that we live after both the great Schism between the east and the west and the Reformation within the west? That is to say, how do we observe respect for ecclesiastical boundaries when more than one church claims jurisdiction in the same geographic area?
Modern critical historians are quick to point out that those institutions who have claimed to be “church,” throughout the history of Christianity as a cultural phenomenon have not always – in fact, have rarely – been in harmony and communion with one another. This is not an historical post, so I will list only a few examples of the various namable groups of Christians that were at one time or another not mutually recognized by one another, long before Nicea: the Nicolatians (of Revelation, whomever they were), the Valentinians, the Marcionites, the Ebionites – all sorts of various “-ites,” – and, over course, whatever these disparate groups once called what was to become the catholic church. So there have been divisions from the very beginning of what we would recognize as the church today. Although some critical historians present such division in the early church as shocking it really is not. The early developers of catholic Christianity regularly claimed more direct historical foundation as part of their argument. We do not need to be shocked when we find out that the groups later denied by catholicism had also claimed such historicity.
As Anglicans, nevertheless, we inherit, and to certain varying degrees uphold, a tradition that the critical historians like to call the “great church.” They call the early evolving catholic church the “great church” out of their fear of projecting later catholicism back onto the various disparate early churches. As an Anglican reflecting for the sake of the Anglican Communion and its on-going tradition I can say that we inherit and attempt to maintain the tradition of the ancient catholic church in its mutual recognition of its various local manifestations.
Even after acknowledging as a kind of leap of faith that there was some kind of early and undivided catholicism, we as Anglicans need to be careful in order to avoid romanticism in general, and especially the kind of romanticism (literally) that has formed us, for better or worse, sense the nineteenth century. One often hears romantic claims to an undivided church that endured for over one thousand years. Apparently powerful emperors with known-world dominion really can help church unity, at least historically speaking. So here we as Anglicans, especially in our current situation would do well to look at and acknowledge all of the various schisms that occurred after the desire for catholicism –and widespread use of the phrase – arose. I am thinking here, of course, of the Arians in North Africa and among the Germanic tribes that continued for centuries after Nicea. The Nestorian church endured for many more centuries after the council of Ephesus, especially in China. The so-called “monophysites” continue to this day throughout Africa and among what are sometimes called the “oriental orthodox” churches in Syria. As is now commonly known, western education allowed for a bridge over this centuries-old gap that seems now to have been fairly unsubstantial, doctrinally speaking, and mainly due to poor translation of the documents of the council of Chalcedon into the native tongues of the Copts and Syrians.
Then came the Great Schism. The date of 1054 is often given to this. Most historians today, however, would say this is more of a symbolic date. One can divine the seemingly irreconcilable cultural and linguistic differences between the theology and, more importantly, liturgy and devotional practices of those who dwelt in the western and eastern Empire, respectively, all the way back to the return to Latin as the primary language of literature in the west. On the other hand, one could push formal east and west relationships within the church well past the traditional date of the Great Schism, citing that eastern bishops were present and active and the various Lateran councils of the middle ages. A pinpoint in time that one can clearly identify is not really important. For whatever reasons, going back for however long, the simple fact of the matter is that the eastern churches deny communion to western Christians, of whatever stripe, and thus we have the “Great Schism.”
Then, of course, there is all of the fall out of the Reformation – in all its manifestations – in the Christian west. We have learned not to consider the Roman Catholic Church to be an “unreformed” church. It underwent its own reformation – and we have learned not to call it the “counter-reformation.” Luther and the other, younger reformers could not hold it together. So we have the Evangelical Protestant and the Reformed Protestant traditions on the continent. Things did not translate to the island of England perfectly either. More Reformed than Evangelical in its Protestantism, our Anglican tradition broke that mold as well in order to retain its historic hierarchy, church orders, and formal (although now, thankfully, translated) liturgy. There are also, of course, the various other “Radical” reformation traditions that came out of this time. Within Anglicanism we have our own later-day reformers, in particular the Wesley-movement that led to world-wide Methodism, and, from its holiness tradition, the ever growing Pentecostal and Assemblies of God charismatic traditions.
Now very little of this mutually incompatible diversity caused a huge problem, historically speaking, in terms of ecclesial boundary respect for those on the ground in the places where these original schisms occurred. For in Europe, Asia and Africa, these schisms often fell along fairly clear geographical lines. It is very easy to know which church is the one true church and who is in schism against it when you live in Rome, Istanbul, or Cairo. It is the Roman Catholic Church for the Romans, it is the various Orthodox Churches of the East for the Turkish Christians. It is the Holy Catholic Church (Monophysite, falsely so-called) for the Egyptians. Likewise it is the church reformed by Luther for many geographic regions of Germany. It is the church reformed by Calvin (and Knox) for the Scottish. Finally, for those who live in the southern parts of the island of Great Britain, the church would seem clearly to be the Church of England – regardless of, thanks to, or in spite of the various reforms underwent by Cranmer and others (depending upon one’s particular brand of Anglicanism).
When one crosses the pond, however, and begins to look at the church-scene in the American melting pot, things do tend to get more complicated. It is well known to anyone familiar with American history that the United States of America, being grounded as it is in the history of the 13 British colonies on the east coast, was made up of, among other things, those seeking religious freedom and asylum. At first, regional differences did have meaning, and colonies, and, later, states had established churches, e.g. the congregational (“Puritan”) churches of the New England colonies and the Episcopal Church in Virginia. But people travel and bring their churches with them. And the desire to leave behind the religious intolerance that lead them to flee the Old World in the first place ultimately led to the constitutional guarantees that no religion would be established at the Federal level, culminating finally in the American doctrine of the separation of church and state. So in the United States of America we find this strange phenomenon of four churches all facing one another on Main Street, each claiming to be a true church, few claiming to be the one true church and none meddling in the affairs of the others. This phenomenon is strange, of course, in comparison to centuries of Christian observance and ecclesial discipline that came before it.
This American experience is so far from that of the ancient church as to make them almost mutually unintelligible. The churches on Main Street would baffle an ancient Christian. A contemporary American Christian often cannot make sense of why the early church worried so much about being, institutionally, one. One thing here stands out in particular: geographical location as a part of being human in this world is no longer any part of making sense of being church for most Americans. I myself attend a parish in another town than the one I actually live and vote in. And this geographical disembodiment of the church is consistent with the general “Gnostic-drift” of American Christianity.
Prior to the 1960s, it was denominational affiliation as a kind of ideological (but more likely class) identity that defined one’s church membership, rather than geographical setting. There were some exceptions of note to this, however, especially in places where whole towns or neighborhoods had imported, from the Old World, their specific national identity, and brought their church with them as part of defining themselves in this way. Over time this identification with a particular European ethnicity has in general tended to erode among those Americans of European decent. (I will take up non-European ethnicity in my next post.) I would venture to guess that such national affiliation cannot last long, for at an archetypal level, it is just un-American to continue to identify with another motherland. So as immigrants choose more and more integration as a part of gaining more and more economic mobility, defining themselves in terms of a distant motherland makes less and less sense. So then, does the denominational affiliation associated with that ethnicity. In our case, the Episcopal Church had never really been associated with those who had come from England as a shared nationality – after all, the Congregationalist pilgrims were also English – but the Episcopal Church was very early associated with the powerful and wealthy.
Following philosopher Charles Taylor’s assessment of the American religious situation in his book A Secular Age, the 1960s represented the culmination of a lot of cultural factors that came before it. It was during this decade that the nineteenth century’s Romantic-expressivist construction of the self finally fully triumphed in public culture. That Romantic and expressivist construction of identity, combined with the rabid consumerism of late modern capitalism has rendered any kind of denominational loyalty virtually unintelligible to most Americans. So, bringing it home to our situation: why should the Episcopal Church maintain unity with a world-wide “Communion” when we so obviously need to Romantically and expressively define ourselves in contradistinction to such repressive systems and structures? I do not intend to get too far off topic here, but the construction of personal identity often mirrors constructions of corporate identity and vice versa, so I could not help but draw out the connection in our own case.
What then of the ancient catholic tradition of respecting ecclesial boundaries, grounded as it is, both historically, canonically and theologically? I myself dwell in untold over-lapping, mutually exclusive claims to ecclesial jurisdiction. Just to name those churches who, like some of us Anglicans, care about the historic episcopal succession, I live in a region with an Episcopal Bishop of Texas, a Roman Catholic Bishop of Austin, An Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of America Bishop, A Greek Orthodox Bishop, an American Orthodox Bishop, and then I just begin to loose count. Which of these is my bishop? As a person who claims to be baptized, these bishops, working under the “old” view of human nature having something to do with geographic situation would all have a valid claim on including me under their “cure.” And this is, so far, saying nothing of all the various Christian bodies who do not care about historic succession or even episcopal polity. At this point, we could simply say forget about it – it is all just so much unhelpful historical baggage in our current American context. And our shared American myth of progress would justify such a shrug-off.
But, for better or for worse, we inherit that more ancient catholic tradition that includes, at its core, a theological commitment to one flock (church or diocese), one shepherd (bishop) per geographical area of human civilization (city). So how do we possibly respect and attempt to live out that tradition in our odd ecclesial context? There are no easy answers. And I will offer none in this post. In my concluding post, I hope to paint a picture of a possible, covenanted Anglican communion that could serve as an icon of the ecumenical church for which we strive, for the sake of the whole. But before that we also have to account for another layer of complexity in our American context: non-geographically grounded ethnicity, especially non-European ethnicity and culture in our contemporary situation. I will take this up in the next post.
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