Posting recently on 'post-Anglican' recently generated unusually high readership, a guest spot on David Virtue's website, and some circulation among clerical colleagues!
Today I am at an event where part of our time will be spent reflecting on the first chapter of Michael Moynagh's Church for Every Context - 'the' theological blockbuster on 'fresh expressions' of church. A lurking question around 'fresh expressions' as Anglicans think and act upon this 21st century missional ecclesiology is whether it is Anglican, post-Anglican or even unAnglican!
In that chapter Moynagh takes the reader through the early days of the church in which, effectively, a 'mixed economy' developed in which Jerusalem and Antioch, Jewish flavoured and Gentile flavoured churches existed side by side, sometimes with considerable tension (see the build up to the Jerusalem Council and Paul's letter to the Galatians). At one point he offers this observation:
'Yet for all its strains, the Jewish-Gentile 'mixed economy' survived by allowing space for two different notions of Christian identity to exist side by side-one with a Jewish and the other with a Gentile flavour.'
That leads to an intriguing question for Anglicans as we contemplate developing fresh expressions of church. If those fresh expressions are 'unAnglican' (at least in perception by critics), for example, because worship does not
Of course this question is rumbling away in the Anglican Communion in other perspectives, such as whether the mixed economy of those favouring blessings of same sex partnerships and those not, or those favouring a distinctive network of conservative Anglican dioceses and those not (within the same geographic area).
It is not as though the Anglican Church has never experienced mixed economy with all its tensions and potential for blowing apart. We could think back to the 19th century and the vigorous debates, sometimes ending in court, over whether the identity of Anglicanism should be Evangelical, Broad, or Anglo-Catholic. We could also think back to the identity of Anglicanism in the 18th century as it wrestled with the rise of Methodism, an undoubted 'fresh expression' of its day, a wrestling match which ended in departure (or ejection) of Methodism, almost certainly to the detriment of the development of a strong global Anglican church through the 19th century.
The most important question today for the church in these islands is not the 'mixed economy' of responses to questions of human sexuality, it is the question of whether we can be adaptive to a changing environment. A changing environment in which as secularism rises the kinds of churches Christians identify with are much more diverse than Anglicanism has traditionally included. The 'mixed economy' approach allows for the continuation of traditional Anglican life and the emergence of a different way of being Anglican. But the question as I see it which is on the minds both of those developing 'fresh expressions' of being church and of critics, is what degree of divergence from notions of 'Anglican' can be held within the one church? Associated, of course, is the question of how 'fresh expression' Anglicanism can be contained alongside traditional Anglicanism. (Additional comment: a complex question to be sure as 'fresh expression' Anglicanism would always have Christian traditions within it, such as baptism, eucharist and ordination).
Moynagh's assistance in these reflections is to remind us that the New Testament church managed to contain considerable diversity in Christian identity in one church (one baptism, one faith, one Lord). If they could do it, so can we!
Further/added comment: if this post seems to have a 'binary' quality to it when life is more complicated than that, then 'Yes' and 'No.'
Yes: life is more complicated; we are Anglicans on a spectrum; a parish may have a 'traditional 8 am service' followed by a 'family communion at 10 am which more or less follows the prayer book' and then a youth service which follows no known Anglican format!
No: I see some aspects of Anglican life as 'binary'. I find that at many Kiwi Anglican events there is only one form of worship modelled: worship according to our NZPB. This creates an environment for our church in which any deviation from NZPB is 'the other' and thus we are in a binary environment: NZPB or otherwise.
Perhaps our dilemma is this: how do we foster the unity of our church through 'common worship' (i.e. services we all use) while fostering the Christ-centred mission of our church through 'uncommon worship' (i.e. services which are shaped to fit different contexts)? Answers on a postcard ...
30 comments:
Peter,
If it were me asking this question, the first thing I would have to do is define what it is to be Anglican, or rather state what Authentic Anglicanism is.
And I would have to state what the non-negotiable theological commitments are.
What I am getting at is that authentic Anglicanism must be defined by the substance rather than the forms.
The problem occurs when we don't define Anglicanism theologically and we end up defining it by the forms rather than the substance.
" If they could do it, so can we!"
- Dr. Peter Carrell -
Yes, Peter, I agree with you. The only thing is, we ALL have to want that 'Unity in Diversity', which was once a typically Anglican charism.
The trouble today is that, if we don't agree with a particular 'fresh expression' of being Church, some of us want to bail out! This is at the root of intentional schism - which is already happening on the part of the more doctrinally rigorous.
The paralysing fear on the part of such dissenters is that, somehow, we must not be contaminated by the World into which we are called to bring God's love and forgiveness.
Surely incarnational religion means something quite different. By our presence in the world we ought to be a blessing, and not a curse.
Hi Peter,
I have just spent a week looking into Church and Change with Kevin Ward at Otago uni and so I would like to offer a few of my own observations on being Anglican and FX.
First of all is it not secularism which is doing the damage to church attendance (in fact there are some indications it make help), but it a variety of cultural shifts. Perhaps the one most effecting churches is the is the anti-institutionalism engrained in our society and it is not only the church that is suffering. For example now there are more golfers in the world than at any other time, but golf club membership is at its lowest. People no longer wish to commit to church institutions, rather than them no longer believing in God.
This leads to the fact that both the theological frameworks and forms of our church life and worship are not equipped to engage in a changed world. We have forms and theological frameworks that were developed in a time when all people called themselves Christian ,and even if they didn't go to church thought that they probably should. They now no longer serve us in a post-Christendom, post-modern, anti-institutional, anti-traditional, individualist and privatest etc era.
This whole question of who and what is Anglican frustrates me. It seems more people use the label to power grab and push their agenda. "Well that just isn't Anglican" gets used at synods with no qualification to snub others arguments. This article also changed my mind a wee bit around mixed economy too:
http://conciliaranglican.com/2012/10/23/big-tent-church/
I see a lot of traditional Anglicanism as being of 'high culture', more interested in beautiful choral music, faux medieval architecture, flowery language, and moral and theological relativism than real Christ-centred mission to the pop culture most people who ain't white and middle-class find themselves part of.
So overall I would like to say that the church needs FX. FX has endeavored to do the necessary theological thinking to defend its ecclesiology and critique its own practice. It is trying to ask the hard questions and give well thought through orthodox responses to the world the church now finds itself in. This unity in diversity thing can only work if we can agree on where we find our unity: Christ-centred mission to a sin sick world or liturgical conformity?
Greetings
“Liturgy” bashing is surprisingly popular in NZ Anglicanism. Surprising as NZ Anglicanism must have the most flexible regulations in the Communion – and even those regulations we do have are confused and confusing, and even the few that are not are ignored and regularly broken.
Not only does the word “Anglican” need definition, but so does the word “liturgy”. Unless this is clear, it is impossible to discuss what “Fresh Expressions” with “worship [that] does not conform to Anglican liturgy” actually means.
Does it mean instead of welcoming someone into the Christian community by baptism, one does it now by sharing coffee together? Does it mean that instead of sharing bread and wine as our community meal, one now grows in one’s sense of community by having a communal walk together? Does it mean that appointing leaders in the Christian community is not done by laying on hands, but by being made an admin on a facebook page?
I am saddened but not surprised if theological education in NZ sees everything in binary options and those are: either (a) Christ-centred mission to a sin sick world or (b) liturgical conformity. Is that really our level of asking the hard questions and giving well thought through orthodox responses?
Blessings
Bosco
Thank you Jethro; that's another gem from Fr Jonathan! As for me, the money quotes are:
But recusants and puritans never labored under the illusion that the Church of England had a unique theology that allowed all of them to get along. They understood that the theology of the Elizabethan Settlement fundamentally clashed with their own, which meant that they either needed to get the Church of England to abandon the Settlement, or else they needed to abandon the Church of England.
By the twentieth century, however, the remnants of classical Anglicanism were largely buried under the disparate visions of church parties that were less and less interested in connecting with classical Anglican theology. The fight for control was bitter and brutal. Catholics, Evangelicals, and the johnny-come-latelys known as Liberals hardly talked to each other within the Church of England. Meanwhile, around the world, churches had been planted not by Anglican missionaries but by missionaries from the various parties who enshrined their own visions in the DNA of these upstart Anglican provinces. Anglicanism as a theology had been reduced to an option on the menu, and it was largely one that was never ordered. Yet no other option was floating to the top. The Anglican world had myriad theological options, but no clear way forward.
[It was in] the 1960s that Anglicans began to argue that Anglicanism itself is a lowest common denominator compromise between competing theologies. ... It was a perfect PR solution to a situation that seemed so dire just half a century earlier. Instead of insisting that the Church adopt and maintain one theology, we can claim that the Church should adopt and maintain every theology and that this somehow makes us superior to those narrow-minded Christians who only manage to believe one thing at the same time. ...
The kind of mean spiritedness that has marked our separations thus far is not necessary, but the reality is that without common first principles we will pull apart, whether today, tomorrow, or a century from now. It would be helpful if we could acknowledge that reality and own it, which would allow us to treat each other with more grace and charity. From there, we can stop trying to discern whether we want to be together or apart and start actually discerning the truth.
And when that happens, perhaps classical Anglicanism will have a chance to re-emerge as a long forgotten gem from our past, a pearl of great price that was buried by our ancestors for us to find. The first principle for Anglicanism is that we come to know Christ primarily through His Word, we come to understand His Word through the witness of the early Church, and we come to be formed in this patristic and biblical faith through common worship in the prayer book tradition. We need to re-discover the beauty and truth of the formularies, particularly the Book of Common Prayer, if we wish to have an Anglican future. The classic prayer book tradition is not a catch all. It is a vibrant and living expression of the true faith.
the
Hi All
An attempt to be a bit clearer is now made by me with some revisions above.
I regret anything I wrote which implied 'bashing' liturgy. There was no intention on my part.
My intention has been to ask what Anglicans may appropriately do in and through Anglican churches in order to expand our mission in a changing environment.
Bosco I did not mean to liturgy bash. I hear and understand your concern. I used the term "liturgical conformity" for want of better words that have more to do with the church facing up to the fact that we need to rethink rather than remove the role of our traditions. What are we really worshiping? Our liturgies or our God? What is at the centre of our mission, the gift of the prayer book or faith?
Now I know that these need not be the either or that you speak of, but with the way our culture and society have changed maybe that will actually become the case.
I heard yourself say in a recent video that liturgy is like a language. Why should we have to teach someone a new language to let them worship in our churches? Surely worship must be in the vernacular if we are to do justice to our mission?
With reference to your question here, Peter, on what can we do in order to expand our mission; it might be that we could consistently practise and teach the Love of God and neighbour - through the worship tradition that has richly motivated generations of believing, practising Christians in the past.
By our careful teaching, for instance, of the priority of Jesus in His Mission; centred on Love of God, and Love of Neighbour as one's-self - with a properly- understood evaluation of one's-self, in terms of how God has created us as individuals, and howe we learn to live creatively with that; who knows what God may not do to enlarge the Body of Christ?
Love of God, and access to God, have been given to us, most palpably, in the worship service that was initiated by Jesus in the Eucharist - seeking and glorifying God together, in His Presence.
Then the importance of Baptism, and acceptance of the grace of the Holy Spirit to equip us for service in the world - fortified by access to the Eucharistic Presence - will surely be the very best basis for expanding the company of believers.
Once we are formed - By Christ, 'en Christo', and share together in a regular commemoration of His Presence amongst us - to feed us with 'The Bread of Life', we become equipped to show God's Love, Acceptance, and longed-for Forgiveness to others.
Only with loving-kindness and mercy can we, God's servants, ever expect to 'win souls for Christ'. "This is the way of the Gospel, walk ye in it!" - That's my only solution!
Yes, Ron, but the question which is not tackled by your comment is Jethro's one: what 'form' does the eucharist which nourishes us take?
We have ditched the Latin mass because it is not our 'vernacular' and, to a degree, we no longer use BCP (save at 8 am, mid-week services), because its language is not 'vernacular.' In some contexts NZPB, recent as it is, may also be deemed not 'vernacular' (perhaps less because of actual words used and more because the formality of a written service may not fit the occasion). What is an Anglican to do?
Thanks, Jethro, for your helpful clarification.
I’m pleased you listened to my talk on liturgy. [For those here who haven’t, my model of liturgy as a language sees the environment, people, actions, music, lighting, signs, symbols, and so on as the nouns, the verbs, the adjectives, the adverbs of the language of liturgy].
Why should we have to teach someone a new “language” to let them worship in our churches? Precisely because what Christ brings so often is new and news and good news at that. If the “language” we Christians “speak” (ie our actions, culture, lifestyle, symbols,…) is merely the same “language” as outside the Christian community – why would anyone bother making the shift from outside the Christian community to inside it? Where the “language” outside the Christian community is the “language” of Christ – by all means use that inside the Christian community too. Christ was countercultural where his life and message conflicted with his context, and used and celebrated the culture where it agreed.
Blessings
Bosco
Well, Peter; my only answer on this subject of "What liturgy, or words,do we use to keep company with Christ in the Eucharist?" - is that - even if we were silent, but completely in tune with one another 'en Christo' at the Holy Communion, as long as we follow the 'story-line' - creation and redemption through Christ, and the expectation of rising with Him in glory, we couldn't go too far wrong.
What our NZPB offers us is various ways of 'Doing This' - some more involved than others, but each helpful in their own context. I do love the access to different liturgies, but tend to use those most familiar with the congregation concerned with celebrating it.
Thus, like at the 1662, we learn to
read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Dominical Work Done.
Me, I'm off to Celebrate the 1662 8am P.B. Liturgy at St. Michael's this morning; with about 20 Faithful; and then will be back to assist as liturgical Deacon at the 10 Solemn Mass for Laetare Sunday.
ntsAnd then, of course, to 'Stations of The Cross at 5.30, and maybe to Solemn Evensong at 7pm. This will herlp gear me up for a week of witnessing to the Love of God in Christ.
Yours is a hard gospel Bosco for people who are not good at learning languages.
I hear your point of being counter-cultural and people making a shift, but do you really believe that the adoption of traditional liturgies are what should mark out this shift from unbelief to faith? And what is the point of being counter-cultural when the culture around you doesn't recognize it? Does the Gospel not transcend culture, church or otherwise?
Your argument sounds a lot like the Jewish Christians in the early church demanding that gentiles be circumcised (culturally Jewish) as a sign of their adoption into the people of God. Must people become culturally Anglican now if they are to become the people of God?
Yours is a hard gospel Bosco for people who are not good at learning languages.
It’s a model, Jethro. I’ve been quite clear I am not talking about what we speak.
Do you really believe that the adoption of traditional liturgies are what should mark out this shift from unbelief to faith?
No. Obviously not - as is very clear in the talk you say you listened to! Where do I say this?! Please don’t put words in my mouth. I don’t put words in yours. I am so, so, so tired of bashing the liturgy straw man!
And what is the point of being counter-cultural when the culture around you doesn't recognize it?
Huh?!! Really?!! Seriously?!!
Does the Gospel not transcend culture, church or otherwise?
Yes.
Your argument sounds a lot like the Jewish Christians in the early church demanding that gentiles be circumcised (culturally Jewish) as a sign of their adoption into the people of God.
Huh?!! Seriously?! For you there is no change whatsoever in becoming a Christian?! Then, what is the point?! For you any change is akin to the demand-for-circumcision group?!!!
Must people become culturally Anglican now if they are to become the people of God?
No.
Blessings
Bosco
Hi Bosco and Jethro
Rather than divert down the road of 'what did I say?' what I am interested in from both of you is how we maximise the counter-culturalness of Anglican Christianity and minimise the inaccessibility of Anglican 'language'.
The question of our day is how we speak both the 'language' of liturgy and the 'language' of mission. Once the church tried to do the (word) 'language' of liturgy in Latin and the (word) 'language' of mission in the vernacular. I assume we are agreed that that is not the way to go!
Why should we have to teach someone a new “language” to let them worship in our churches? Precisely because what Christ brings so often is new and news and good news at that.
Your argument sounds a lot like the Jewish Christians in the early church demanding that gentiles be circumcised (culturally Jewish) as a sign of their adoption into the people of God. Must people become culturally Anglican now if they are to become the people of God?
If the “language” we Christians “speak” (ie our actions, culture, lifestyle, symbols,…) is merely the same “language” as outside the Christian community – why would anyone bother making the shift from outside the Christian community to inside it?
do you really believe that the adoption of traditional liturgies are what should mark out this shift from unbelief to faith?
Does the Gospel not transcend culture, church or otherwise? [FX is trying to use the cultural vernacular, they are not trying to make culture and church one and the same].
Christ was countercultural where his life and message conflicted with his context, and used and celebrated the culture where it agreed.
what is the point of being counter-cultural [or in agreement] when the culture around you doesn't recognize it? [Traditional liturgies are culturally incoherent to a lot of people, especially those who are unchurched, so yes, seriously].
Church worship and practice need to be grounded in our historic liturgies, just as the reformers did not throw out all of what the Latin said. We must discover what will connect in a new era; which cultural forms we can subverted to the worship of the Living God.
Maybe in the end we will just get stumped and have to carry on with what we have always done so as to keep integrity of worship over cultural coherence. But we need to do the work first before we give up.
Bosco I found your video very very helpful as an ordinand and I am very greatful of your expertise. I wish we could talk sometime about what is of principle in our worship and what is just a form/way of outworking that principle.
Let you hear my angsty words not as an attack on liturgy but as a desperate plea to a church that refuses to wake up and realise that we are no longer in Christendom (though maybe in our church schools it may seem like it), we are now in a foreign land that does not know nor wish to know us. It cannot hear what we have to say over our own alien noises.
So what are the principles and non-negotiables in our gathered worship? and in what ways and forms can we express them so that they can be heard in our new world?
Hi Peter,
While your article and discussion is more focused on the NZ and perhaps broader Western Anglican church, I draw your attention to the largest Anglican church in the world, the Church of Nigeria. Because of issues with illiteracy, it does not have a printed liturgy for use in worship. Yet they have been spectacularly successful in evangelism.
Andrew
Hi Jethro
I am happy, just, to publish your 9.10pm comment, but it appears to rest on a presumption that Bosco is promoting 'traditional liturgies' when Bosco is taking some pains to say that that is not what he is doing. (I suggest he is promoting the tradition of taking care to lead worship well).
Thank you, Peter, for acknowledging that Jethro’s translation of what I attempt to say may not be what I intend.
In fact I find much of his translation the very opposite of what I intend. My talk critiqued mindlessly replicating inherited traditional liturgical forms (see my use of the story of the Abbot’s cat). It seems Jethro cannot get beyond his own prejudices about liturgy even when people are agreeing with him.
Jethro does not answer my questions what he will replace baptism, eucharist, and ordination with.
My very point is trying to work out what the essence of liturgy is, rather than getting distracted by its forms. And then translating that essence into the particular context one finds oneself in – rather than cookie cutter cloning from one context into a quite different one. I say this all clearly and explicitly in my talk.
As for the put down, “we are no longer in Christendom (though maybe in our church schools it may seem like it)” – this shows a prejudiced gross lack of knowledge of such schools currently. My daily ministry to over 600 young people is to Buddhists, Muslims, Baha’is, Jews, Sikhs, atheists, agnostics, Mormons, Christadelphians, Anglicans, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, etc. etc. etc.
Blessings
Bosco
I thought we would be talking at cross purposes. I am not sure if I have been understood either.
Is there any suggestions on how we might do authentic Christ-centred mission in a new context? If we are to find unity surely it must be around this question?
Hi Bosco: glad there are some Anglicans at your school!
Hi Jethro: I am wondering if what you are identifying as an impediment to mission is not creative care over doing liturgy well (Bosco's concern) but your experience off mindless repetition of traditional liturgies, seemingly oblivious to change in the surrounding environment (if so, then you and Bosco are agreed).
We are agreed! And I to love liturgy and find the 404 is my favourite way to worship! Don't forget my dad describes himself as an Anglo-catholic; I was brought up with smells and bells, and it is my personal preference!
Now Bosco your talk seemed to assume that we would be using the prayer book, even if it was not in a cookie cutter, recipe book type way? Would I be right in saying that? Or have my deep seeded anti-liturgy prejudices blinded me again? (I have big friendly grin on my face as I write this just so you know I am not trying to be combative). Because I think that where we actually disagree is the extent to which things may need to be changed?
I do not think we should trow out baptism, Eucharist etc. I think there I was having words put in my mouth, but I do think we perhaps need to radically rethink these things (notice how I used 'perhaps' to add a note of caution) due to our change in context. I wish to ask questions around how people participate in worship when anti-clericalism so prevalent? How things are communicated in a culture that engages through audio-visual rather than text? These are just a few questions that perhaps need to be asked.
Also Bosco I would love to hear how you have tailored your liturgies to engage with 600 young people each week!
Thanks, Jethro,
I think that for baptism, eucharist, and ordination we should be using essentially what we have agreed together to use. A lot of that is bound together in our Prayer Book. But I have never been enamoured with services where our heads are in Prayer Books as we wade through page after page of announcements where we are up to now and recite poetic stuff at a book.
In terms of “audio-visual rather than text” – baptism is essentially about lots of water; eucharist is essentially about bread and wine; ordination is essentially about laying on hands – the words that go with these visuals are few and have varied through history – but before changing them, their history and dynamic must be understood.
I am passionate about also holding to our ecumenical agreements as much as possible. So I am critical of those who depart from our agreed RCL and in doing so do not produce something better.
If people are departing from our agreements, then what they produce must be better than what they are abandoning, and also the weight of their improvement must be greater than the loss of unity and the breach of their vows.
The details of my ideas, in slow motion as it were, are in my book Celebrating Eucharist – readily available, and online free.
Finally, we meet in Chapel about four times a week. We use some material repeatedly, so that we use and know it by heart, meaning we are often not book-bound. We are mostly an unvarying community, so we build service to service. We rehearse together. We always make connections with the scriptures. We always make connections with the real, concrete lives of young people. Our services are uncluttered, with silence, and a strong emphasis that we all participate. But, I repeat: one could not and should not clone elsewhere what I do and what we do.
Blessings
Bosco
In many evangelical-charismatic churches (it seems), the 'worship' means a bracket of up-tempo songs, which do engage the congregation spiritually and emotionally, but actual spoken prayers can be banal, stereotypical and unthought-out: the church equivalent to the rhetorically flat age we live in, where few people (again, it seems) can speak well off the cuff or have much literary heritage behind them. The great nonconformists of the 19th century, who would have spurned Anglican liturgy, still possessed a rich and florid tradition of extempore prayer that was based on intimate knowledge of the Bible and hymns.
Unless we are praying together in some meaningful way, it is hard to see how a common identity can be forged - or how young and new Christians can deepen their understanding of 'the faith once delivered' - which is meant to be passed on. I have long considered it vital that every mature Christian should aim to memorize: the Lord's Prayer; the Ten Commandments; the Nine Fruit of the Spirit; the Eight Beatitudes; the Seven I am's; the Grace from 2 Cor 13 - as well as the Apostles' Creed. If our Sunday worship fails to incorporate some of these, and our regular praying all of them, then our faith will be shallower - and eventually heretical.
So: worship leaders - give thought to your prayers in your preparation! Teach by example and encourage depth and beauty in prayer.
Martin
Why stop at seven, Martin? :)
Six days of creation
Five books of Moses
Four gospels
Three Pastoral Epistles
Two volumes of Luke
One and only one gospel!
Why stop there, Peter? Why not learn from that great spiritual classic, Jim Reeves' 'A Deck of Cards'? :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9I1mnPsqo
I hadn't realised there was a video!
I have heard the radio version many times.
Fascinating discussion, notably re what is pursued and what is left by the wayside.
African evangelism (Nigeria was cited) is often so powerful because the very Presence of the Risen Jesus is not confined to some ex opere operato view of the liturgical performance of the Eucharist. Rather, the Holy Spirit’s power is released into the everyday life of the believers. Now; ideally, both liturgy and life might be fully integrated, so that my own maxim takes wings: “we cannot face the world in mission unless we have first face God in worship; yet the authenticity of our worship is tested by the reality of our mission”. Yet we westerners stubbornly stick to our wee boxes, ticking them off as if the problem is thereby solved ...
FX = “everyday life”; Anglican culture = very much as Fr Jonathan describes, which is a contradictory mish-mash of opposing views and practices that is inherently unstable, culturally, organizationally, whatever - otherwise why else the chaos of the past decades. What therefore the prospects of joining these two fulsomely?!
I sense Peter that greater earthquakes still are needed among a number of Anglican folk before boundaries are genuinely crossed in the mission of the Gospel of Jesus (as opposed to, say, 19th C, cultural imperialism). For the actual substance (as opposed to the form) of the Gospel profoundly matters: both love and truth, truth and love need to fully embrace (e.g. Ps 85:10). Sadly, much of the world just sees our own present Anglican cultural muddles - and moves right along thanks, leaving even what we consider things (various things to be sure) to be cherished by the wayside.
"We could also think back to the identity of Anglicanism in the 18th century as it wrestled with the rise of Methodism, an undoubted 'fresh expression' of its day, a wrestling match which ended in departure (or ejection) of Methodism, almost certainly to the detriment of the development of a strong global Anglican church through the 19th century."
Very good point. The same process appears to be happening today, but with a key difference. For example, one of the reasons that the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) is planting so many churche is because since 2003 a large number of the people most active in evangelism left the Episcopal Church of the USA (TEC) over doctrinal differences with the hierarchy. Most ended up in ACNA, which has greatly benefited as a result.
So also, many "conservative evangelicals" (as they are usually called by liberals in England) are finding it increasingly difficult to minister in the CofE because of doctrinal differences. At present they are isolating themselves from liberal control in CofE, but further down the track they may well leave.
But a key difference between the 18th century and now is the existence of the Global South Primates - orthodox leaders of large Anglican provinces. They are ready to step in and provide oversight and fellowship contact for dissident Anglicans in the western Anglican churches. This factor was not present for the Methodists. It indicates that the story of Methodism may not be repeated - rather than the new methodists leaving the Anglican churches and setting up a new methodist denomination, it is more likely that they will set up new Anglican denominations with the same (or more extensive) communion links as the more liberal western Anglican churches with whom they co-exist.
" it is more likely that they will set up new Anglican denominations with the same (or more extensive) communion links as the more liberal western Anglican churches with whom they co-exist. - MichaelA -
Sounds like the probable reality, MichaelA. The only question is, how 'Anglican' will they be? Such dissenters seem to want to disassociate from the traditional Anglican Churches that exist in communion with the originating See of Canterbury. Now that's Anglican!
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