A friend here in DC directed my attention to this list (of propositions, basically) that the author deems essential for an Anglican dialogue with Rome. Click the link to see the list. Anyway, this list got emailed around and struck a kind of debate not so much about ecumenical dialogue with Rome, but rather a kind of “what do you need to hold to be Anglo-catholic”… that sort of thing.
Aside from my contempt for these kinds of lists - I don’t think any list of propositions can get at the essence of something like Anglicanism… unless you’re talking about the creeds, and they’re not lists! - it got me thinking about what Anglicanism essentially is. Back when Orombi wrote his like op. piece for First Things (which they’ve still not provided a counter piece to, thank you very much!), I wrote about it here, alluded to it here, and argued about it at Per Caritatem. Orombi lodges the essence of Anglicanism in the Scriptures and the Martyrs. I pointed out then that it’s unusual, I think, for him, an Anglican Archbishop, to provide a definition of Anglicanism which omits any reference to common prayer. Moreover, as one Anglican theologian today will say, if you want to know Anglican theology, read Anglican poets. It’s a messy state of affairs, but it’s Anglicanism. Not having a CDF or a Curia is not a dispensable part of who we are. The prayerbook, however, is indispensable.
JADR in a recent manifesto wrote here:
Catholic Anglicanism is the Christendom of the imagination. It’s a utopian project. It’s a church that never was and never really has been. You can’t find it in the phone book or even on the web. And you definitely can’t find it in the newspapers. I read in the UK´s Guardian the other day about the alternative conservatives: GAFCON. It´s a conservative gaffe, all right. Read the signs. It’s time for Anglicans to come clean. We’re the church of the drunks, the homos, the dandys, the dreamers. We pray like Warhol made paintings. Because we like images.
Here at TLOU, it seems it’s becoming our claim that there’s something important about images, art, and prayer that must be reckoned with before you throw up a smoke screen of propositions. So, that said, I think it’s as good a time as any to pick up the question that Cynthia began last year. But I don’t want to ask just what is Anglicanism, but rather what is at the core of Anglicanism? Jump in…
You know art is the only way I can understand anything about God. All the philosophical words in the world become like so many numbers in a column to me. Yes, read our poetry - and read our creeds and then look at the work of our artists and you may possibly begin to know something about that church which lives in the Catholic Anglican imagination.
I hope you don’t mind if I chip in as a used-to-be Anglican.
Yes, there is something about images and art and prayer, but in the end what I was looking for in Anglicanism, I found in Orthodoxy. And we too are the church of the drunks, the dandys, the homos and the dreamers, and a lot of other things besides.
If there were any things I might have missed about Anglicanism, I think I’d still be missing them, because most of the Anglicans tossed them out years ago. One thing I won’t miss, though: the endless arguments and discussions about what the Christian faith actually is.
And the lists, yes, the endless lists (written on newsprint with a felt-tipped pen). The endless meetings about theological education, when we would gather from all over the country for three days, and about halfway through someone would say “But what is a priest?” Well, that’s important, because if you’re training people to be priests, you need to know what a priest is, so out would come the newsprint and the felt-tipped pens.
At one meeting I was bored with the whole affair and asked if anyone had saved the newsprint from the previous meeting, so we could just pick up again where we left off, and move on. No, we couldn’t do that. We had to start from scratch, making a list of things about “What is a priest?”
In the Orthodox Church we make a mess of training priests (and deacons and bishops). We sometimes ordain highly unsuitable people, but at least we know what they are supposed to be doing even if they don’t manage to do it properly. We are incompetent players, and we often kick the ball and miss the goal, but when I was an Anglican we were too busy arguing about where the goalposts should go to practise kicking the ball.
Steve, I appreciate your input. Thanks for the candid reflection. I understand your frustration with your prior, Anglican situation. I deeply respect the Orthodox, and think that in many ways Anglicanism looks a lot more like East. Orthodoxy than Roman Catholicism. One of my pet peeves with Orthodoxy, however, is the role that women (don’t) play in the ministry of the church. As a husband of someone considering ministry, this is a deeply felt concern of mine.
Yes, there is a lot of arguing about the goalposts. But, I don’t think there has ever been a time that we have not argued about them. We’re constantly reevaluating our situations, our creeds, and our ability to merge the two. Some do it much better than others. Anglicans have never don’t it especially well, corporately speaking. But, I don’t think that’s a reason for abandoning it as a tradition. There’s a lot that Anglicanism has to offer for addressing cultural situations that neither Eastern Orthodoxy nor Roman Catholicism has been especially eager to confront. Anglicanism has always offered a (collective of) unique spirituality. And, in the ways that Orthodoxy will be a helpful model to the Covenant process, I think Anglicanism will (hopefully) be a helpful model in years to come for talking about human sexuality, etc…