Tract I: What Is Anglicanism?

Tracts for the Times 2.0

I’m often asked the question, “What is Anglicanism?” To which I respond: “Do you want the two-word answer, the long one-sentence answer, or my book on Anglican identity?

 Avoiding having to answer the question of what Anglicanism is has been a favorite Anglican hobby for decades, and when we do get answers to this question, they are often vague or partial. When I was pursuing my Ph.D. (my topic was Orthodox Anglican Identity), I had originally wanted to study the possible 21^st century revival of Anglicanism. But reform and revival are necessarily predicated upon a clear identity: to reform you must know who you are and who you want to be. And so I embarked on a five-year quest for Anglican identity.

 I was at a notable meeting of Anglican clergy and educated laity, at which, in one of the breakout sessions, the dreaded question was asked. What ensued was an illustration of the famous story of the elephant and blind men. Some told of their personal preference for liturgy, reverence, or organ music. Others gave good but partial historical or theological answers. But there was clearly a sense of fumbling over dumb numb tongues.

That same year, I took an intensive course on Anglicanism. After two and a half days of lectures on Anglicanism, there was a brief time for Q & A at the end. The students made the mistake of momentarily hesitating, thus allowing me to rush into the silence with the dreaded question: “What is Anglicanism?” 

 You could hear a pin drop.

The professor who taught the course hesitated for a few seconds with the classic deer in the headlight look and then did what any good teacher would do in such a situation: he threw the question back at the class. “What do you think Anglicanism is?” The students labored valiantly to answer but the effects were similar to the other situation I described above.

Even Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in his book Anglican Identities (notice the plural), ducked out of answering what Anglicanism is. In that book, he forswears “any aim to provide a fresh rallying-point for Anglican identity in these pages.” Williams’s title itself even seems to concede that defining a single Anglican identity may be an impossibility. 

But “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” and so here I am, with a definition of Anglicanism in my hand, in my head, and in my heart.

I’ll begin with the two-word definition. Anglicanism is “Reformed Catholicism.”  

There are, of course, two parts to this definition: “Reformed” and “Catholicism.” “Reformed” is the adjective which modifies the noun “Catholicism.” The fact that the “Catholic” part of Anglicanism is the noun means that it is the essential thing that is being reformed.  In this sense, although Anglicanism is also Protestant, it is a Catholic Christian tradition, keeping the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church as practiced by the one, undivided Church in the early centuries after Christ. And yet it’s not only Catholic because in the Western Church it became necessary to reform some of the abuses and errors of the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

 Anglicanism has characteristics of catholicity which bear a certain similarity and relationship to the catholicity of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. But it also has characteristics of being Reformed which bear a certain similarity and relationship to the churches that proceeded from the Continental Reformation, such as Calvin’s Geneva or Luther’s Germany.

As we’ll see in the next two tracts, the Catholic Church planted in England came to the British Isles in the first few centuries after Christ and was well-established long before Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine of Canterbury to England in A.D. 597 and before the Synod of Whitby was convened to “Romanize” the British Church. Anglicanism is, therefore, Catholic without being Roman Catholic, although the English Church came more closely into the sphere of the Roman Church for approximately a millennium.

Because of the Reformed Catholic nature of Anglicanism, Anglicanism has, over the centuries, taken the Catholic Church planted in England and inculturated it into a variety of cultures, diverse both temporally and geographically. It is this Reformed Catholic nature of Anglicanism that has made it particularly dynamic over the centuries.

 Before I present my one-sentence definition of Anglicanism, I’d like to articulate my theory of religious identity, which I’ve found accomplishes three significant things simultaneously: it provides a 3-D picture of Anglicanism and explains its complexity; it explains why Anglicans have a hard time saying who they are and why we see different parts of the same organism; and it provides encouragement that there is such a beast as Anglicanism after all.

 When I examined the different species of definitions of Anglicanism that scholars were offering (hoping all along someone would define Anglicanism so I wouldn’t have to), I discerned four different kinds of definitions. My final synthesis of these four kinds of definitions into a single, nuanced definition embodies the belief that only if all four definitions are taken together and harmonized will we have an adequate description of Anglicanism (or any religious identity, for that matter). These four kinds of definitions are the ecclesial, the normative, the practical, and the historical definitions. Historically, Anglicanism has been held together in large part by the common doctrine (normative definition), discipline (ecclesial definition), and worship (practical Anglicanism) proceeding from the Catholic Church planted in England (historical definition).

Ecclesial definitions focus on official relationships between churches that claim a shared identity. One specifically ecclesial definition of Anglicanism states that Anglicanism is the churches of the Anglican Communion. However, this is an insufficient definition of Anglicanism because not all Anglican churches are in the Anglican Communion and some churches in the Anglican Communion are in the process of becoming less identifiably Catholic or Christian. Still, churches who claim a shared heritage and identity need some ecclesial authority to shape and guide their common life.

Normative definitions of religious identities are based on certain norms or standards that are deemed to be essential or important aspects of a religious identity.  Such normative definitions of Anglicanism are useful because they provide clear boundaries and therefore make the acts of definition and identification more possible. Being Anglican has historically meant not just a current being in communion with but also a being in continuity with the common life on which the present Anglican Communion largely has been based. Christians in general hold certain norms in common: Scripture as the highest authority, the historic Creeds, the two dominical Sacraments, and the episcopacy as locally adapted. To these terms of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, most Anglicans would traditionally have added the dogmatic decrees of the General Councils and the writings of the Church Fathers as the record of the mind of the Church in reading Holy Scripture. Specifically Anglican norms have included The Book of Common Prayer (which was given its most abiding classical form in the 1662 Prayer Book), the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Ordinal.

Practical definitions center on matters of a particularly Anglican ethos, behavior, and practice. These might include Anglican notions of comprehension, a dispersed authority (as opposed to, for example, the Roman Catholic magisterium), or a distinctive theological methodology. One of the most useful ways of envisioning practical definitions of Anglicanism is to think of it in terms of the distinctive spiritualities or churchmanships that have emerged over time, as well as distinctive historical movements within Anglicanism. Such spiritualities would include the High Church, Anglo-Catholic, Prayer Book Evangelical, Reformed Evangelical, Charismatic, and Liberal spiritualities. Historical movements that are part of the practical definition of Anglicanism would include the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century and the Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century, as well as the English Reformation in its various stages.

Historical definitions of Anglicanism help locate Anglicanism in the context of the Catholic and apostolic church and also help to highlight the continuity between contemporary and historical Anglicanism. Since religious identities develop over time as the Church interacts with culture, and since decisive reshapings of Anglican identity have occurred within the context of particular historical circumstances, a historical component is an important aspect of definitions of Anglicanism. However, historical definitions by themselves (as with the other species of definitions) are insufficient, because they can only tell us what is and what has been, and not what should be.

 The most comprehensive, useful, and encouraging definition of any religious identity (including Anglicanism) will employ and synthesize all four of these kinds of definitions: ecclesial, normative, practical, and historical.

Finally, we are in a position to offer a robust definition of Anglicanism that will offer hope, clarity, and stability to Anglicans and which will help guide us in our collective prayerful thinking, such as that expressed in the Tracts for the Times 2.0 Project.

 “Anglicanism is the life of the Catholic Church that was planted in England in the first few centuries after Christ; reshaped decisively by the English Reformation that reformed the received Catholic traditions and also renewed by the Evangelical and Catholic Revivals and other historical movements of the Spirit; and that has now been inculturated into independent, global churches.”

 A close inspection of this definition will reveal that all four kinds of other definitions are synthesized into a complex religious identity. My hope and prayer is that such a definition will be used by God to renew and revive one of the authentic Catholic Church traditions (Anglicanism), which has a unique ecumenical charism in the world today.