The Anglican

Anon tells me - Rachel, step by step you are moving in the liberal direction, though you are scarcely aware of it. Your last post of "marriage equality" suggests you have great difficulty even understanding the matter from the evangelical, biblical perspective. When you start looking at things in abstract "justice" categories, instead of the clear teaching of Scripture of the redeemd life in Christ, you will end up endorsing the liberal viewpoint. 

I can write well on the evangelical, biblical perspective, my tutors will testify to that but I am aware too that life is a lot messier on the ground. Academia can become an ivory tower indeed and I have left that tower now. Now by this, I am not saying that I also champion relativism. I have learnt also about our postmodern resistance to truth and authority. As I told Anon, and I do not think I have too many worries about doing so, vulnerability being scary but also something I think I am called to, I am happy to work these things through here and out loud. In 2009 ABC said 'perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage. . . To recognise different futures for different groups must involve mutual respect for profoundly held convictions.' (2009, 2502)

I reckon part of my problem is that I do not want to have to choose between these two tracks. I have much to learn from journeying with people along both and no doubt there are other tracks I am yet to discover, (this blog investigating more the evangelical position than say, the Anglo-Catholic, for example). Perhaps Open Evangelicalism is a kind of evangelicalism grappling with its Anglican identity, perhaps Open evangelical fails to identify me but then that is the problem with labels afterall. Pluralist puts me in this category. I think I probably do too but not as quickly now. Every time I label I also begin to construct caveats, imagine small print etc.

Paul Avis, in his recent book, The Identity of Anglicanism, concludes his chapter on ‘Anglican Ecclesiology in the Twenty-first Century’ with an assessment of the state of Anglicanism today which does much I think to highlight the strange country Anglicans inhabit and why perhaps my often clumsy attempts to dialogue on all sides can sometimes mean that I appear to be something of strange creature, who knows not what kind of creature it really is.

“Anglicanism does indeed attempt to hold together elements that are opposed in other traditions – though not without strains. It defines itself as catholic and reformed; orthodox in doctrine yet open to change in its application. Its polity is both episcopal (and its bishops have real authority) and synodical – an unusual combination in a church that has maintained the historic episcopate. It acknowledges an ecumenical council as the highest authority in the Church, but is not opposed in principle to a universal primacy and virtually never has been. It confesses the paramount authority of Scripture, but reveres tradition and harkens to the voice of culture and science. It tries to be neither centralized nor fragmented, neither authoritarian nor anarchic. It is comprehensive without being relativistic. This interesting experiment has endured and evolved for nearly five centuries; in spite of the present difficulties, I believe it is worth persevering with.” [Paul Avis,The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology(London: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 168-169.]

I believe that it is worth persevering with too and there is something inherently optimistic about Avis's position. The uncertain certainty of Anglicanism felt like a haven when I first started to discover it, a relief from the dogged certainty of the more free evangelicalism I was sampling. Anglicanism has held together so many types over such a long period of time with losses along the way but losses often impoverish and so we should remember that and continue to try to hold on to one another.