As every student of Church history knows, one of the central arguments in early Christian centuries pertained to the created order. Gnostics, perhaps the earliest of heretical movements, believed that the material world was the product of either the devil or, at best, a misguided but divine being that was inferior to the Father. Ancient Catholics – those Christians who, like Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, affirmed both episcopacy and the universal intent of the Gospel – argued against Gnostic ideas. To cite Irenaeus, “Absolutely nothing has been made or is being made without reason and by chance, but on the contrary everything has been made with a profound harmony and a sublime art, and there is a wonderful and truly divine Logos, which can discern all these things and set forth their causes” (Against the Heresies, II.26.3). The apprehension of beauty within the world – however imperfectly – witnessed to the Biblical statement, first made by the inspired Israelite king David, that “the earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1; cf. I Cor. 10:26). Beauty is located, within the Christian imagination, at the threshold of divine truth. Stated somewhat differently, and a bit more broadly, created beauty witnesses to the intentional work of a good architect.
It is no secret that Anglicanism has fallen on hard times. Like many others, I lament this sad fact daily – and frequently throughout the day, at that. But the struggles within the Anglican Communion are not just theological – they are material. Perhaps we might say that the difficulties which Anglicans are currently experiencing are well mapped by the difficulties currently faced by Canterbury Cathedral, the mother cathedral of the Anglican Communion. Since 2006, there has been a concerted effort to raise £50 million for both conservation and development of the cathedral – but thus far, the project has generated just under £10 million. In terms of the wider Anglican Communion, since 2004 there has been a concerted effort to develop an Anglican Covenant for our well-being and witness; in 2005 the Primates of the Anglican Communion gave this project a definite go-ahead, and in 2007 the first draft of the Anglican Covenant was produced. The final covenant text was completed in November 2009, but like the effort to preserve Canterbury Cathedral, the effort to make the Anglican Covenant a canonical norm has a long, uphill climb to make. In both cases, those upon whom these projects primarily depend – Anglicans themselves – are too frequently indifferent.
Today, I gave $25.00 to Canterbury Cathedral Appeal. Mine is, admittedly, a modest sum – but then again, I am a graduate student, and simply don’t have that much money to give to charitable causes ($25.00, in fact, is what I budget for such gifts on a monthly basis). My donation translated into just over £15; the Appeal, however, needs just over £40 million pounds more before it reaches its goal. Dividing the total amount needed by the amount I gave yields an instructive number – 2,666,666.67 (which, for the present purposes, we will round up to 2,666,667). In other words, if I alone give $25.00/month to Canterbury Cathedral Appeal, it will take 2,666,667 months – 222,222 years and 3 months – for the Appeal’s goal to be reached. That is a very, very long time. However, I am not alone. Despite the fractured state of the Anglican Communion at present, the simple truth is that there are still more than 75,000,000 Anglicans around the world. I recognize that my own financial constraints evince a far greater amount of fiscal liberty than what is found in much of the Anglican Communion, so let us assume for present purposes that one-tenth of the world’s Anglicans (7,500,000 people) have, at present, the ability to give $25.00 (~£15) to Canterbury Cathedral Appeal. If every one of these people did so, the sum total would be just over £112,500,000 – roughly 2.8 times more than is currently requested. Such a sum would not only help preserve Canterbury Cathedral, but would beautifully exemplify the tangible benefits produced by people working together toward a common end. Using Biblical language, such a sum would beautifully exemplify the tangible benefits produced by Anglicans working together, toward a common end, as the body of Christ.
Some will protest my application of the Scriptures here. After all, Anglicans are not the whole body of Christ but a part of it, and no Anglican has ever claimed otherwise. The Apostle writes, in his letter to the Ephesians, that
Speaking the truth in love (i.e., charity), we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love (4:15 – 16).
Clearly St. Paul had something a good bit bigger in mind than just the Anglican Communion. Besides, there were neither Anglicans nor Roman Catholics in the first century, just as there were no Presbyterians, Orthodox, or Methodists, etc. A protest against my use of St. Paul, if sincere, is valid. But it is also limited. Surely, as an inspired text given for our instruction (II Tim. 3:16 – 17), the Scriptures are capable of bearing the otherwise unbearable strain of denominational fragmentation. The pedagogical end of Scripture is not, in any way, distorted by the many sins, failures, and shortcomings of Christians. Put practically, the Scriptures fully apply to Anglicans as Anglicans just as much as they apply to Anglicans as Christians. The visible fragmentation of the Church – the visible disarray of the body of Christ – in the present does not mean that, at local and denominational levels, Christians are exempt from toiling for concrete manifestations of (i.e., visible submission to) the apostolic vision.
If Anglicans applied the Apostle’s words to the Anglican Communion, and not just to a dimly apprehended vision of the eschatologically-realized Church, then the Anglican Communion would be considerably healthier than it is. The language of health, used here, is not accidental but quite intentional, for only what is living can be healthy (or not). St. Paul holds out a twofold image of the body in his letters, and this twofold image is defined by the same tension that defines the life of every serious Christian. On the one hand, he portrays the body as a single unity – a “whole body” in his words above. On the other hand, but no less importantly, this very same body is not complete but is instead called to “grow up.” In order to better comprehend the Apostle’s language of embodiment, especially as it pertains to being the Church, we should turn to his first letter to the Corinthians, where this vivid imagery is fleshed out more fully (no pun intended). There, in an imaginary dialogue, St. Paul envisions the sort of inane conversations that might occur if, for example, “the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’” or – no less inane – if “the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’” (I Cor. 12:15 – 16). Any particular body that applied this sort of logic would very quickly cease to be a body. Hence the Apostle’s simple statement, “there are many members, yet one body” (I Cor. 12:20). Applying this to the specifics of our own Anglican existence, the texts reads, “there are many Anglican members, yet one Anglican body.”
Our witness, as Anglicans, is worked out in the Anglican Communion no less (but perhaps more so) than in the wider (if less unified and coherent) body of Christ. When non-Anglicans pick up The Book of Common Prayer, they know that they are not just picking up a Christian prayer book, but one that is Anglican. When they read the poetry of George Herbert in a literature class, they know that they are not just reading a Christian poet, but one that is Anglican. When they walk into Canterbury Cathedral, they know that they are not just walking into a Christian cathedral, but one that is Anglican. When they behold Anglicans fighting like children that need, in the Apostle’s words, to “grow up,” they know that they are not just looking at Christians, but at those who are Anglicans. Some might retort that we should therefore be glad that there are other Christian churches, at present, that are less acrimonious – after all, salvation is not about Anglicanism as such, but about the Gospel. However true this may be on its face, this response is one that risks evading responsibility. Even if someone fairly unreflective – for example, one of the “new atheists” – uses Anglicanism as a reason for blowing of Christianity or even religion more broadly, the simple truth is that their justification is not caused by religion as such or even by Christianity as such, but by Anglicans in particular. Anglicans damage Christian witness not merely as Christians, but as Anglicans. If Anglicans genuinely care about the Gospel, then they must also care about their own witness – a witness that is made as Anglicans, in the context of the Anglican Communion.
But what does any of this have to do with Canterbury Cathedral? Granted, there is a curious typological relationship between the Anglican Communion and its mother church. Both are in need of repair if they are to sustain any sort of communicable witness. This, however, is precisely the point: the fact that the well-being of both can be easily joined in a simple concept – witnessing – tells us something. Giving money to Canterbury Cathedral Appeal is not just about giving money to a building project. Rather, it is about giving money to a building that sustains a particular witness at both local and international levels (and, quite simply, no other Anglican cathedral in the world has the same sort of broadly moral and spiritual gravitas). Similarly, caring for the ecclesial body known as the Anglican Communion is not just about caring for an institution. Rather, it is about caring for a church that, however imperfectly at present (and however memorably in its past!), sustains a particular witness at both local and international levels. Every institution sustains memories because every institution sustains a particular way of life. At their best, institutions offer a precious window into part of what it means to be human – that is, part of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God. By the same token, but seen more vividly, the loss of an institution is, without exaggeration, the loss of an entire world.
According to classical Christian doctrine, salvation is a material, no less than spiritual, reality. To cite the words of the Appeal while applying them more broadly, Anglicanism is “a massive but inspiring project.” By this I do not mean that Anglicanism is “a massive but inspiring experiment.” Few if any people would want to visit a cathedral that was merely an experiment. Similarly, few people will join or remain in a church guided primarily by an ad hoc administrative strategy. In part, this underscores why I support the Anglican Covenant – it gives the provinces of the Anglican Communion an explicitly shared and agreed-upon teleology, an agreed-upon end or purpose (what Richard Hooker, following Thomas Aquinas, terms a law). But law, like internationally-renowned cathedrals, and even like theology more broadly, exists not for itself but for the wellbeing of others (Summa Theologiae Ia. 1.1). That is why we, as members of the Anglican Communion, should support projects such as Canterbury Cathedral Appeal. A project, moreso than a mere experiment, is intentional; it is guided by a particular method, or logic. Borrowing from St. Irenaeus’ words above, there is a Logos, a divine and rational reason that guides and orders creation. This reason, or Logos, can be discerned by all people, however dimly, even as this same Logos fully reveals God the Father as creation’s architect (cf. John 1:1 – 18). Concrete manifestations of beauty – such as those within a cathedral, whether seen or heard, read or experienced – witness to the wisdom of their respective creators. Two thousand years into the Christian calling, we do not need to develop another theology of merely financial redistribution. Rather, we need a robust discipline that orients us toward giving freely, that is easily discerned by those who witness it, and that is equally applicable to the broader web of ethical concerns that, like a good law, both serves and guides human well-being. That discipline, I propose, is called charity.
Canterbury Cathedral Appeal may be accessed here.
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