The following are reflections from Anthony Hunt, a young Episcopalian studying theology in Minnesota.

“Yea, I am persuaded, that of them with whom in this cause we strive, there are whose betters amongst men would be hardly found, if they did not live amongst men, but in some wilderness by themselves. The cause of which their disposition so unframable unto societies wherein they live, is, for that they discern not aright what place and force these several kinds of laws ought to have in all their actions. Is there questions either concerning the regiment of the Church in general, or about conformity between one church and another, or of ceremonies, offices, powers, jurisdictions in our own church? Of all these things they judge by that rule which they frame to themselves with some show of probability, and what seemeth in that sort convenient, the same they think themselves bound to practice; the same by all means they labour mightily to uphold; whatsoever any law of man to the contrary hath determined they weigh it not. Thus by following the law of private reason, where the law of public should take place, they breed disturbance.” Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity – I.xvi.6
The ideas were liberating: “We don’t have a Luther or a Calvin, just a Prayer Book;” “It’s not so important that in all things we agree but that we worship together;” “Anglicanism is a Via Media between (insert whatever two things you want);” “You don’t have to leave your brain behind (or another wonderfully condescending phrase);” etc… These are the things that you hear as you begin to approach the Anglican churches. And to a disillusioned Pentecostal who doesn’t know what he believes, they are glorious things to hear.

Unfortunately they are all false. Or at least in most ways confused, or interpreted diversely, or forgotten. In many ways the petty arguments about “Initial Physical Evidence” or really bad eschatology between a tiny minority of youth and their elders in the Assemblies of God pales in comparison to the sheer scope of disagreements currently going on within Anglicanism. And don’t think for a second that the homosexual thing is the only thing. There is a perennial struggle for the soul of the church. Is it Catholic? Is it “biblical?” Is it Evangelical? Is baptism optional? Should laypeople administer the Sacraments? Given the homosexual struggle, was it an error to have allowed Women clergy? Are the large numbers of Christians in the Global South proof of mass Western apostacy?

Whereas these are legitimate questions to ask, we have found that there are no structures available in our various means of Communion to curb the increasingly fierce independence desirous of being expressed in our diverse bodies.

We are a hairs breadth from every Province becoming an island of theological conscience to themselves.

This for me is most terrifying possibility. “Catholicism” is not a matter of mere piety, as if praying with Icons or singing the Magnificat makes one a catholic. Even having [the] Episcopacy is not enough to qualify a church for being “Catholic.” “Catholic” is a matter of the structure and vision of a Church. I began attending an Episcopal parish largely on account of C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright, but I stayed because of Michael Ramsey, Rowan Williams, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, Radical Orthodoxy and the Oxford Movement. I could compose my own Prayer Book, I could plant a church that sung the Divine Liturgy, but I could not make from scratch a Catholic church structure and history. If Anglicanism splits into a looser federation, I’m not really sure where I’d be, but I’d be a wreck.

At every turn I’ve been confronted by contradictions. Many liberals aren’t really inclusive but of their own kind; many evangelicals are deeply unaware of their Anglican history and doctrine; there isn’t much of a Via Media but an intolerable and systematic diversity from low church Reformed Protestants to Anglo-Papists; few know or care why we have Bishops and a Prayer Book instead of a Presbytery and Confessional, unless of course not having a confessional becomes permission for doctrinal indifference or iconoclasm; many conservatives are completely unaware that their highly determined systematic theology influences their “biblical” readings and quite a few liberals don’t yet realize that the academy doesn’t give a rats ass about Tillich anymore.

Not that I’ve not found glimmers of hope. I’ve found a great many reflective priests and there are a number of stupendous Bishops (mostly in the Church of England) and Anglican academic theology is currently without peer in most of the world.

But may I say, in keeping with an open and honest tone, that I’m truly terrified. I know it would be more pious and faithful of me to say that I’m hopeful but I’m not really not. I feel as if I walked into the middle of a Family Feud that I’m not much interested in taking to the grave, and while I hold on in trust, I’m still at a point where I’m apprehensive as to how it will turn out. I say this because I don’t feel as if enough people are saying it even though it’s not very constructive. Of those whom I respect many must put on a good face while many for whom I have less respect are declaring the triumph of their “side.” “Winning,” is not something at this point that can happen and constancy is for those stronger than I.
Posted with permission from Theophiliacs.
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Matt Gunter - 04 January 2010 04:36 PM

“You don’t have to leave your brain behind (or another wonderfully condescending phrase);” etc…

“Catholicism” is not a matter of mere piety, as if praying with Icons or singing the Magnificat makes one a catholic. Even having [the] Episcopacy is not enough to qualify a church for being “Catholic.” “Catholic” is a matter of the structure and vision of a Church.

Exactly.

In Protestantism liberal or conservative, apostasy (such as going unitarian) is only a convention/synod vote away. Unlike a Catholic church where defined doctrine is irrevocable.

The issues about sex and the sexes, from women clergy to gay weddings (signs of Protestantism but not apostasy from Christianity), are only surface symptoms of that big Catholic/Protestant difference.

Most Anglicans have been agnostics in a credally orthodox shell of a church - a deep freezer of latitudinarian moralism as a friend has put it - since the 1700s. But that denomination was haunted by Catholicism as the late Anglo-Catholic movement’s existence showed.

Shake off the ‘Reformation’ and come back to Catholicism.

Shake off the ‘Reformation’ and come back to Catholicism.

This is more possible now, then in the past ~500 years. But I can’t shake the notion that the “reformed Catholicism” (esp in soteriology) and “conciliar Catholicism” (eccessiology) at the heart of Anglicanism is also a true path for the Biblically minded.

I remain sad that TEC’s liberals have (primarily) abandoned the former, and TEC’s conservatives have abandoned the latter.

Thanks for the invitation, John, but no thanks. As a catholic-minded Episcopalian I find much to admire in the Roman church and am nourished by our common traditions. Many of my favorite authors and scholars are RC. But I do not find its structures particularly congenial, its theological innovations believable, or its on-the-ground lived reality any more attractive than what I know in the Episcopal Church.

To be sure, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are currently going through a tough patch. It would not be good for our spiritual health to pretend otherwise. Mr. Hunt’s piece is a poignant reminder that it is also painful. I posted Hunt’s piece as a reminder of that pain. But, that is only part of our story. God is still active in our midst and gospel ministry is being done through the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

I take offense at and reject your caricature of most Anglicans as “agnostics in a credally orthodox shell of a church”. This is a church that has shaped many saintly lives and carried the gospel to nearly every corner of the globe. As Mr. Hunt also notes, contemporary Anglican theologians are among the finest of any tradition. And it is my home where I am nourished, challenged, and where, again and again, I am gathered into the presence of God by his Son through his Spirit.

I would have said the same things as Fr. Gunter only in a far more sophmoric way.

To my mind the Reformation asked some very important questions. That is not to say the right answers always emerged. But it is important to note that at least in England the initial protest was against institutional corruption, as of course it was with Luther. When we concentrate on the questions posed we discover them to be timely. 

It is no accident, I think, that our current protests have much to do with conduct, just as it did then. Beneath the matter of how do Christians live and witness lurks the constant tendency of the institution to become self-authenticating and self-justifying. Radicals then and now want to dismantle it all and start from scratch, adopting reactive principles less anchored in Christianity than in being contra expressions of perceived error.

Invoking the answers produced by the Reformation often leads to something as wrong-headed as the errors questioned. To my mind the Covenant points to a diffused authority which ought to create questioning centers which constantly reform each other while permitting creativity.

“In Protestantism liberal or conservative, apostasy (such as going unitarian) is only a convention/synod vote away. Unlike a Catholic church where defined doctrine is irrevocable.”

By this understanding pecusa must be liberal protestantism since pecusa through convention and leadership comments don’t seem to think that much of anything is irrevocable.  This has been my argument all along in the current Anglican crisis.  Try getting the current leadership of pecusa to express support for church dogma.

Many thanks to Tony Hunt for this fine reflection—insightful and well wrought, with a welcome dash of humor (loved the line about Tillich). And thanks to Matt for introducing us to the “Theophiliacs” blog. I dig it, and am glad to be encouraged by these thoughtful, faithful young people. I also liked Tony Hunt’s piece on what he’s been reading lately—Rowan and Ephraim, in a nutshell.

P.S. To Tony Hunt (and others): If you can dig up a copy, I’d recommend reading Ephraim Radner’s astonishing 2004 web essay (on the former ACI site but not on the new one; many fine gems were lost in the port) entitled “A vocation amid the Church’s churches; Reflections by a chastened Anglican” (dated Dec 8, 2004). I believe it to be a rather incandescent classic of the contemporary Anglican controversy in a fascinating, autobiographical mode: an argument for staying put, wrapped in Radner’s typically “high”-cultural style: syntactically, conceptually, materially. It again presents his basic view of the Church as grasped by God’s providence, a people called out, Gentiles and Jews together in the Israel of God (see Ephesians 2). In between these lines is woven a quite vulnerable autobiography. We learn, for instance, that he had to unlearn lazy “liberal” readings of Scripture in the teeth of coming, as a recent seminary graduate (Yale Div. School), to reckon with the tragedy of inter-Christian genocide in Rwanda and Burundi—through which he learned that simply triumphant accounts of the Christian life and the “unity” of the Church depend upon a culpable turning away from the hard facts of history—betrayals and much else—rather than allowing them to bring us to our knees in a renewed penance and resolve to change our habits. This took place, moreover, in the context of being a half-Jew American (don’t miss the wonderful evocation of his childhood home, gazing on photos of oddly distant Jewish ancestors) ordained in Africa, a fact that he spins out in a brilliant play on “gentes/Gentiles” that is sustained for the rest of the essay: the Gentiles of Scripture are the non-Jews; but the gentes are simply the people of the whole world, the “nations,” who in fact rage against God and one another; and yet the Lord would constrain and discipline them by the cross and the “Israel” of God (a fitting message on the Feast of the Epiphany). This is all told with a poetic subtlty that might seem obscure or convoluted on first read, but that is a love letter—to Anglicans and all Christians.

Mr John Beeler - 05 January 2010 01:01 AM

In Protestantism liberal or conservative, apostasy (such as going unitarian) is only a convention/synod vote away. Unlike a Catholic church where defined doctrine is irrevocable.

Well, if that’s what you want. But that’s a highly theoretical advantage, and it relies on the theory being correct. But part of being an Anglican is realizing that the theory isn’t correct, and that Catholic institutions are damaged as are all the rest—better on some points, worse on others. As an old (turning fifty in a month, confirmed thirty-five years ago) Episcopalian I have in some respects more to be dismayed about: I’ve gotten to watch the corruption in progress. But in the end, affiliation means picking a place to go to church. Certainty of doctrine is not a selling point for me, because, in the first place, I still need to maintain my faith in the church—and that’s the vote that matters anyway; in the second place, the theology isn’t convincing, and to be infallible you have to be correct; and finally, church-wide theology is really the least issue about actually going to church, because it’s what your parish priest is teaching and doing that you are actually confronted with.

And really, John, you’re telling me to church-shop, as long as I buy into the right church. One can see that church-shopping doesn’t result in everyone choosing the same church.

Unfortunately anglicancommunioninstitute.org has a robots.txt file which prevents the Internet Archive from archiving its articles, so I haven’t been able to find it - I’ve found one source that links it, but that link is dead - since googling the title doesn’t work, I’m afraid that it isn’t anywhere to be found on the net - could Dr. Radner perhaps put this back up somewhere, if he’s still got it?

Christopher, you have me in a fit of fine jealousy from your description of it.

Tony, thanks so much for this thoughtful article.

I think it’s significant that Tony and John pick up on the meme: “You don’t have to leave your brain behind (or another wonderfully condescending phrase);” etc… - both youngish chaps - and probably more likely to be aware of how things are being carried around in actual practice - in the media, in exchanges on the web, and in actual parishes.  This is one of the trends in Episcopalia which concerns me a great deal, and I’ve encountered it a lot in Episcopalians with whom I’m doing online ministry.  It’s almost as if people are being scared away from other churches, and from faith, with tacky ad hominems like this one.  Not to mention the horrid cognitive dissonance between the actual quantity and quality of thinking which tends to be shared within TEC as compared to other churches.  Episcopalians will be mistrusted in other churches ... their Episco-Fundamentalist behavior (e.g., making aggressive, distasteful remarks like this) will mark them as people who are tough to deal with, and thus unlikely to receive attention from people in other churches ... all in all, a very successful strategy from preventing people in one’s church from intermingling too much with people from other churches whose beliefs may prove too challenging to one’s faithful.

This is a concern I have more and more, when speaking with Episcopalians, and urging them to visit other churches, to get a more well-rounded, ecumenical view of faith, and not merely the one prevalent within their own parish walls: that they will exhibit behavior which makes them less likely to integrate well with other communities of faith - that they will make pronouncements regarding gay rights which sound too aggressive, that they will aggrandize their own church at the expense of others - and thus increase the likelihood that they will leave the other churches with smug indifference - “those people weren’t very nice to me.”

The situation is all the more distressing, since Episcopalians are likely to feel tension when they are in other churches, especially if they say they are Episcopalian. There has been disproportionate media coverage of The Episcopal Church, much like there is disproportionate media coverage of Scientology.  People of other churches are more likely to be informed of some of the things going on in The Episcopal Church, than they would of a church of a similar size, but less embroiled in media-selling controversy.

With Ephraim Radner’s permission, his essay from 2004 now appears anew at Covenant.

Just so you know, if you start searching the blog archives, we’ve had a previous author whose name was “Anthony” and he is not representative of my own views.  Just to avoid confusion.

Thanks so much, Doug!