A Still More Excellent Way

Alexander Ross

Description

"A Still More Excellent Way" presents a comprehensive account of the development and nature of metropolitical authority and the place of the ‘province’ within Anglican polity, with an emphasis on the contemporary question of how international Anglicanism is to be imagined and take shape. The first comprehensive historical examination of the development of metropolitical authority and provincial polity within international Anglicanism, the book offers hope to those wearied by the deadlock and frustration around questions of authority which have dogged Anglicanism.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Anglican
• Philosophie et théologie
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334059349
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Still More Excellent Way

© Alexander John Ross 2020
Published in 2020 by SCM Press
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ISBN 978 0 334 05932 5
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Printed and bound by 4edge Limited, UK
Contents
Foreword
Methodological Introduction
Part One – The Pedigree of a Polity
1 ‘A Glorious and Salutiferous Œconomy’: Provincial Polity Established
2 The Mean Between the Streams: Provincial Polity Adapted and Abolished
3 Colonial Communion: Provincial Polity Exported
Part Two – The National Church
4 ‘Contained’ or Compromised Catholicity: a Critique of the ‘National Church’
5 Independence or Interdependence: A Close Reading of Communion Constitutions
Part Three – The Rise of the Primates
6 Primus Inter Pares: All Bishops are Equal, but Some are More Equal than Others
7 ‘Leisurely thought, prayer and deep consultation’: The Primates’ Meetings
Part Four – Paradigm for Provincial Revival
8 The Anglican Church of Australia: ‘Microcosm’ or ‘Ecclesiastical Monstrosity’?
9 Provincial Possibilities: a Theological Reflection on the Potential of Provincial Polity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
by the Rt Revd Rowan Williams
St Augustine famously introduces one of his most original philosophical reflections by noting that we all know what ‘time’ means until someone asks us to define it. Anyone who has had anything to do with the institutional life of the Anglican churches in the last couple of decades will recognize the problem. A generation had grown up happily and rather vaguely talking about the Anglican Communion as a fellowship of local churches loosely bound together by connection with the See of Canterbury, a bit like the British Commonwealth and the Queen. But suddenly the pressure was on to define – to define limits and disciplines, structures, loyalties and priorities in ways that had never been articulated before. And the question was not a matter of benign interest from theologians exploring the nature of the Church in general; it was being asked by exasperated ecumenical partners, baffled congregations, irate hierarchs and unsympathetic journalists and commentators. We thought we knew – or at least we thought there were questions from which we were perhaps exempt. Not so.
Of course the idea that there was once a golden age of Anglican practice, in which hard questions about the limits of diversity and the nature of authority never arose, is a fiction (though still a popular one, not least in the Church of England); even a passing familiarity with the history of the last few centuries will show the vigour and variety of argument about these things. But it is not an accident that the development of a received wisdom about global Anglican identity emerges roughly in step with the post-war transformation of Empire into Commonwealth. The idea of a federation of local/national polities, united in cordial diplomatic relations under the aegis of a symbolic British institution, played a significant role in shaping what seemed to be common sense in the understanding of the Anglican family. Increasingly, Anglican life outside Europe was organizing itself not only in the traditional shape of ‘provinces’ led by metropolitans, but in ‘national churches’, whose operational independence was largely taken for granted, though moderated by the growth (through the latter part of the twentieth century) of various cross-national forums and consultative bodies – which again reflected a characteristic post-war cultural style.
Is it enough to think of the Anglican Communion – or indeed any global Christian body – as essentially a ‘commonwealth’ of national churches? What has made the question acute is a set of debates about one very specific ethical issue, the theological reassessment of same-sex partnership. But the high profile of this has sometimes drawn attention away from the more basic and more difficult question of what sorts of interchange – what sorts of ‘porosity’, you might say – are needed for the Church of God to be more than an ensemble of separate local congregations. It has been recognized for a good many years now that the appeal to sovereign ‘autonomy’ as a self-evident and overriding good is ambiguous, whether for individuals or for communities; but anything resembling centralized executive power has understandably been resisted. How is it possible for local Christian bodies to express their interdependence, their accountability to one another, their commitment to converging goals in witness and mission? How is it possible to shape an ‘ecology’ of church life in which, without coercion from a supreme court, communities can find ways both of supporting one another and of calling one another to account, while sharing significant resources and genuinely ministering the gospel to each other as well as to the wider world?
Alex Ross’s groundbreaking and profoundly illuminating study grows out of a dissatisfaction with the simple repetition of mantras about autonomous national churches; but it is certainly not a plea for any kind of ecclesiastical superstate. On the healthy assumption that we have actually learned what we take for granted, he carefully traces the ways in which the early and mediaeval Church began to create vehicles for interaction and interdependence through ‘metropolitical’ structures, provinces whose composition might vary but which were seen primarily as a way of securing effective episcopal partnership and collegiality; and we see how aspects of this tradition proved helpful in the climate of the Reformation era and immediately afterwards, as a ground for resisting claims for a single universal jurisdiction in the Church. We see also how, already in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Anglicans were thinking hard about the nature of the Church’s global identity and interaction: in particular, how the experience of the planting of new Anglican entities in non-Western contexts generates some creative new perspectives. The steady drift towards a norm of national Anglican provinces led by primates (with or without ‘internal’ provinces as well) is tracked through the later part of the twentieth century, along with the new significance given to the Primates’ Meeting as an ‘ Instrument of Unity’ in the Anglican world. There is a really enlightening discussion of the very idea of nationhood in cultural modernity, and its impact on these developments, from the Victorian period onwards. And we are finally given a glimpse of how the non-national province can in fact work as (it seems) it was originally meant to – as an effective embodiment of shared learning and co-ordinated and responsible action; a reminder that the model of the national church is far from the only or the best way of thinking about convergent and mutually nourishing relations between local churches.
This is a book that fills a serious gap in Anglican studies, and indeed in ecclesiology more generally. It demonstrates wide and deep historical scholarship and keen theological insight, and is written with clarity and (sometimes refreshingly subversive) wit. It is an indispensable point of reference for any future work on Anglican doctrines of the Church, and makes a substantial and enormously creative contribution to the ongoing debates about unity and diversity within the Anglican family.
The Rt Revd Rowan Williams, Cambridge May 2020


Methodological Introduction

The discussion in the afternoon bored me stark. It dealt with the multiplication of Provinces in the Anglican Communion. I deserted and went to the Athenaeum.
- Hensley Henson on the Lambeth Conference of 1920. 1
Sustained theological reflection on questions of Anglican ecclesial polity, let alone provincial jurisdiction and metropolitical authority, may not always have commended itself for creative engagement by the church and academy. Even that great progenitor of theological reflection on the ecclesiastical polity of the English church, Richard Hooker, concedes the task might seem, at times, ‘perhaps tedious, perhaps obscure, dark, and intricate.’ 2 The pressing crises of each age, whether represented by John Colenso in a previous generation or Gene Robinson in our own, seem to make the most urgent calls on the Communion’s finite resources for reasoning and reflection. However, there is an increasing awareness within Anglicanism that beneath these ‘flashpoint’ issues lie foundational questions of authority and constitution. The examination of metropolitical authority within Anglicanism, and negotiation within it of provincial relationships, demonstrates intrinsic and important aspects of a polity which not only values and holds itself accountable to the inheritance of its tradition but also makes a commitment to look beyond the local through the formalisation of relational structures. This ‘key relational dimension’ provides for ‘patterns and models for personal and group interaction and channels of mu