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The
Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church, and The Windsor Report |
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This is the second in a two-session series on The Anglican Communion. Next week, we begin a two-session series on The Episcopal Church which will be followed by a two-session series on The Windsor Report. The sessions are offered to provide basic information about our church and to provide a foundation and context in which we might better understand current circumstances as relationships are tested within the simultaneous realities of autonomy and communion. These sessions are not for arguing about the presenting issues of the day but for better understanding about authority and decision making in our history and our present. In
the first session, I addressed the question, "What is the Anglican Communion?"
by presenting:
The complete text of the first presentation is available this morning.
Today's
question is "What is Anglicanism?" More particularly, the question is
"What and Where is Authority for Anglicans?" Our interest focuses on authority
and decision making, I shall offer some clues about authority in decision
making by sharing a few glimpses into our long and complex story in search
of some basic themes. In preparing for these sessions, I discovered that while I have a fairly thorough knowledge of authority in the Church of England, The Episcopal Church, and our Diocese, I know little or nothing about this matter in the other 37 churches of the Anglican Communion. If I am typical, and I well may be, then here is an example of the present challenges within the Communion. The best I can do this morning is to look at some periods of the Church in England and dig out the notions and exercises of authority and decision making that comprise the common heritage of all Anglicans. I refer you to the attached timeline of the church in England as we consider the matter of authority and decision making in different periods of history. The Celtic Church Christianity came to England with the expansion of the Roman Empire. There were Christians in England in the early 200s, and in the 300s, leaders of this English church participated in or accepted the decisions of church councils on the continent which were made for the whole church. We'll call this early English church the Celtic church. Some of its leaders knew there were other Christians and other bishops on the continent, including the Bishop of Rome, and they practiced, when they could, a collegial relationship with this wider church. But, although they were not subservient to the Bishop of Rome, they did comply with the decisions of councils which they knew of. The first Christians came into England without the Bible as we know it. They may have had a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, but books were rare. This was over a thousand years before the printing press. They brought no Prayer Book. The creeds were not yet defined. Canon law was no more than the acts of individual councils. No Bible, no creeds, no liturgies, or defined polity. Can we begin to imagine this when we think about authority? These early Christians brought to England a passionate knowledge and faith in the living Christ whom God had raised from the dead as God's gift to all people for forgiveness of sin and promise of eternal life. They knew the Christ, and they knew the story. They shared this story in the words they spoke, in the lives they lived, and in their liturgies which did more than tell the story. Their liturgies were means by which the story and the Christ of the story became present amongst them, regenerated them, reformed them, and energized them for new life. Scholars call what they brought "oral tradition" ----told and enacted from person to person, community to community, and generation to generation. Only in time, and that slowly, would the written word take its place in the church. When decisions were made in the Celtic church, its leaders, and sometimes, perhaps its members, talked among themselves. They listened. They pondered. They prayed. They tested their thoughts against their sacred story and about the ways of their fellow believers. Perhaps they knew the story of the church's first council which we find in the 15th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles when the apostolic leaders of the primitive church met in Jerusalem to consider and decide upon whether Gentile converts to Christ had to submit to the Law of Moses before baptism--and specifically whether Gentile males had to be circumcised to become Christians. (They fervently hoped not!) In that council, Peter the conservative held out for tradition, and Paul the liberal, called for church reform. They debated, they decided for the liberal side, they circulated their decision, and went back to work. And---the controversy continued anyway!
Today, vestiges of these Celtic Christians still remain, including the
stories of their great saints, Patrick and Columba, and the living memory
that a small, sometimes isolated but effective church was there before
the pope's presence. In council, it made decisions for its own life, and
sensitively shared life with the larger church when possible. |
Authority
in decision making in the Celtic church: The Roman Catholic church in England For almost a thousand years, the English church was a part of the Roman Catholic church. Augustine and his 40 monks were sent by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. They found Celtic Christians immediately and worked to bring the English/Celtic church into submission to the Bishop of Rome. In 664, a council was convened at Whitby, on the cold shores of northwest England in Yorkshire, under the powerful eye of a woman, St. Hilda, abbess of the great monastery there. Celtic and Roman churchmen answered her summons, and at the end of the day, the vote went for Rome. It is tempting to say that for the almost one thousand years the church in England was in union with the Bishop of Rome, the pope, that there was a singular, clear, universally accepted line of authority that ran directly across the channel to Rome. Rome decreed. England complied. End of story. But, we must not be led into temptation. The facts are that the Roman papacy was an evolving and often contested institution. Throughout Christendom, honor was given to the Bishop of Rome because of the unique history of the Roman church. This, after all, was the church of Peter and Paul. Few doubted this. Few doubt it today. But not all agreed that the successor to the Fisherman was due universal and unquestioning obedience. Kings and emperors and powerful noblemen often disagreed. Throughout the history of medieval Europe, there are numerous stories of heated and sometimes fatal contests between crown and church. The sad tale of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a'Becket and King Henry II is but the most famous of such stories. Popes issued bulls and interdicts. Kings and princes were expected to obey and enforce, and their bishops were expected to obey both pope and kings. Kings often named their own bishops. Contests were frequently about money. Kings did not like to see precious coins leaving their realms on the way to Rome. Kings withheld money. Popes withheld salvation. Liturgical conformity was required by Rome. Even so, local liturgies evolved and merged slowly, and even at the time of the Reformation, there were several versions of the Latin rite used regularly in England. Celibacy was expected. Many clerics, including bishops, had wives. When bishops, including the Bishop of Rome, clutched temporal wealth and power in the name of spiritual authority, salvation was made commercial. The masses of illiterate and trusting peasants, driven by normal human appetites for food and shelter in this world and a better chance in the next, often gave more than they had to purchase a pardon or pay for a building block in a new cathedral in their desperate hope for heaven. The Roman church of Europe's middle ages was not all bad. Most works of hospitality and mercy were done by the church through monasteries, parishes, and cathedrals. Patronage of learning and the arts, such as existed, was mainly from the church. And, in spite of the excesses of too many of the church's prelates, there were many in holy orders and in the laity who were good and faithful followers of Jesus who loved God and their neighbors. Laity had no say in anything much, except for the few with some money, and their say was usually local. Parish priests, ordained monks, mendicant friars, and devoted nuns did their duties, and their duties did not include sharing in decisions. Most diocesan bishops followed the lines of the powerful. This thousand-year story spans half the history of the church of England, and therefore, it is a part of our story in The Episcopal Church. Many of the rites and ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer were shaped during these years. Even the much-loved arts of stained-glass windows, altar hangings and vestments, candles, ceremonial grace, and beautifully composed, pious prayers so familiar in The Episcopal Church, are the inheritors of this church. It was this church which made use of the accepted list of books of the Bible and acclaimed the Holy Scriptures to have unique authority. It was also this church which claimed authority over the rites and ceremonies of worship and in other aspects of life, even in areas which were not addressed in Holy Scripture. It was this church that, in the last years of England's submission, began to wrestle with a notion that the world was round, that language could be mass-produced on movable type, and that the minds of ordinary men and women could understand and even decide their own destinies. You and I are daughters and sons of this church. |
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Authority and decision making in the Roman Catholic church in England The
Tudor Church: Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary The sorry story of King Henry VIII can be told briefly although it is more interesting if it is told in a mini-series on Masterpiece Theatre. Henry wanted a son to succeed him and keep together the united kingdom so hard-won by his father. He did not trust a woman to govern, and it was a woman's duty to give him a son. Of his three official children, his third-born child and only son reigned as a sickly boy for six years, beginning at age 10. His first-born child, daughter Mary, ruled as an angry failure for five years, determined only to undo everything her father aimed for. His second-born child and daughter, Elizabeth, reigned for 45 years as one of the strongest rulers in England's history and took England well beyond her father's dreams. All three of his children died without issue, and his line died with Elizabeth in 1603. Henry VIII was by no measure a nice man or a good man, and he is no credit to English Christianity at all. He did not found the Church of England. My late hero, Archbishop Michael Ramsey had an answer when someone asked him, "Where was your church before the reformation?" His answer was, "Where was your face before you washed it?" In 1534, Henry fired the pope. He did what a number of other kings had long wanted to do. He considered the pope a foreign prince and declared that he had no rights in England. He fired the pope because Pope Clement VII would not annul Henry's marriage to Queen Catherine. Henry wanted to dump his queen because she had not bourne him a living son. He appealed for annulment because Catherine had previously been married to Henry's older brother. Popes had granted annulments for less reason to other kings and lesser nobles, but this pope refused for two reasons. His predecessor had already given Henry a dispensation to marry Catherine--and popes try not to contradict their predecessors openly if they can avoid it. Further, Holy Roman Emperor Charles was Catherine's nephew and at that tedious moment, Charles had the Papal States in his grip. Clement thought it a bad moment to make Charles mad. So, poor Henry. Except that Henry fired the pope and required parliament and the bishops to agree. He then proceeded to marry five more women, never to the advantage of any of them. A few years later, he forced the monasteries to close and give him their money. Otherwise, he made no reforms in the church, and he permitted none. Minus the pope and the monks, the churches in England functioned to the day Henry died as they had done for a thousand years. Ten-year old King Edward VI was a different matter. His father had let him be brought up by men anxious for more church reforms, so the boy king was sympathetic to his handlers when his time came. There began in his time, a tug of war that is still going on. Some members of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion everywhere want to change the church as little as possible. Others want to change it as much as possible. This tension has in time produced a strong via media, a strong "middle way" as well as strong forces on the edges. The issues of the day change. The tensions continue. When Edward died at the age American youth get driver's licenses, his embittered sister Mary took the throne. Fiercely Roman Catholic and angry, she undid all of the Edwardian reforms with a terrible vengeance for five years. Then she died miserably, not in childbirth as was first thought, but attempting to discharge a tumor. Henry, Edward, and Mary enforced their actions with coercion and violence all in the Name of Christ. While kings and nobles resented the pope's power and unending claims for money, men of lesser rank had other reasons for church reform. Gutenberg's printing press (1450) made Bibles more plentiful, while valiant and usually persecuted scholars attempted to get the sacred text into the vernacular. Bible readers found great differences between the character and practices of the primitive church and the catholic hierarchy. Scholars in England's growing universities, men like Thomas Cranmer, read their ways to new and powerful ideas, and carefully shared ideas with men of like minds on the continent. An Augustinian monk in Germany named Martin Luther aimed his reforming zeal against the capital funds campaign of Pope Julius II to build the present St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The pope sold tickets to heaven called "indulgences:" Sins were forgiven in exchange for a contribution to the building fund. Gutenberg printed some of the indulgence forms with blanks for names and the amount of the gift. John Calvin in Switzerland came up with his own ideas for reform.
The forces for financial and doctrinal reforms meshed, often in messy
and unrighteousness ways. Reformation is still spelled with a capital
R in sixteenth century European history. Authority and decision making in the Tudor church
When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, she inherited a much divided people, and religion was at the heart of the divisions. She distrusted the Roman Catholics because they denied her legitimacy. She distrusted the Calvinists, the Puritans, because they were opposed to bishops, and bishops protected the crown. Her own personal wish was to find a common ground where most, if not all, could stand. Two acts of Parliament, early in her reign, make for what is called the Elizabethan Settlement--a seminal factor in contemporary Anglicanism. She persuaded parliament to undo her sister's reunion with the pope and wanted a Book of Common Prayer which could unite most of the nation. She refused her father's title of "Supreme Head" of the church and settled for the title, "Supreme Governor." Her namesake in our time has the same title. She was personally content for Roman Catholics to continue their piety until the pope excommunicated both her and everyone in England who recognized her as rightful queen. It was the pope's actions, not hers, that drove the wedge deeper. After her sister's papist councilors and bishops were removed, she found herself surrounded by powerful nobles who insisted on more extreme church reforms than she herself wished, but survival is a high priority for monarchs and for nations. Elizabeth is believed to have once said that she wanted no religious establishment that pried into the consciences of her people. Her idea was of a common way of worship that left individuals free to their own opinions on all other matters, so long as these opinions were not a threat to the kingdom. This idea still permeates much of Anglican thought today, although it is surely under siege. Every decision of the Elizabethan church was under attack from the Roman Catholics on one side and the Puritans on the other. The Puritans were the extreme Protestants for whom the church could not be reformed enough. Puritans insisted that the Holy Scriptures be the one and only authority for all decision making in the church. The Latin cry, sola scriptura, was their rallying cry. It still is, for many Christians today. The Articles of Religion as adopted and revised from 1549, and in 1801 by the General Convention of The Episcopal Church (beginning on page 867 of our Prayer Book) were written with aims at both directions: Roman Catholic and Puritan. The great spokesman for "authority" in the Elizabethan church was a priest named Richard Hooker. His lengthy, intricate and, by our standards, tedious book, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, set forth the famous "three-legged stool" of Anglican authority: Scripture, tradition, and reason. His writing was never official in the way the Book of Common Prayer or the Articles of Religion were and are official, but it was accurately descriptive of the emerging regard for and practice of authority in the Elizabethan church. To this day, Hooker's three legs are supposedly the basis of authority within Anglicanism. Once again, I rely upon the late Archbishop Michael Ramsey and his own distillation of Hooker's main points which Ramsey described as "certain characteristics of Anglican theology as they began to emerge." Holy Scripture, Ramsey says, is supreme. Article 6 of the Thirty-nine Articles says so. This is a hit at the pope's own Council of Trent which declared that a body of truth exists outside of scripture which has equal value. Not so, says our own Article 6, but the articles go on to say that the Scriptures contain all that we need to know for salvation. The articles go on to say, as a hit to the Puritans, that the Scriptures do not provide for all the rules and details of the church. The Puritans rejected use of wedding rings because they were not in the Bible; likewise, they rejected the celebration of Christmas, and any number of other practices. The Church of England's articles were clear to uphold the supremacy of Scripture for salvation and the authority of the church to decide upon areas not provided in Scripture.
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Article 20 calls the church the "witness and keeper of Holy Writ." Ramsey and Hooker argue that we look to the fathers of the ancient church, to their writings and practices, to guide our interpretation of Scripture and our decision making beyond the specifics of Scripture. Ramsey prefers to talk of "antiquity" rather than "tradition," and I think I understand why. The late Albert Tully of this parish used to say that for most people, "tradition" is a word that means "what I am accustomed to." Hooker's meaning of tradition is far broader than this, and Ramsey makes sure that we mean the ancients of the church from whom the church knows a great deal. Hooker adds a third point of authority: Reason. On this point, I make my own explanation. Human beings, created in the image of God, are born with memory, reason, and skill. The ability to think, to discern, to decide, is ours, and it is ours by rational processes if we choose to utilize all that we can learn and know by whatever means--through intellect, through senses, through experience, through reflection. Christians may believe on the basis of Scripture, antiquities, and our own reasoning that our redemption in Christ includes our minds as well as our souls and bodies. Ergo, Christians think, and Christian thinking can be a holy enterprise when yoked with Holy Scriptures and the wisdom of our Christian forebears--and indeed with the wisdom and experiences of all people. Holy Scripture declares that the Holy Spirit leads into all truth. Of what then, has the Christian to fear? Think of the tests that have confronted Scripture and the ancients in ways Hooker could not imagine. Galileo and Copernicus revealed that the sun stood still and the earth moved. They were heretics in their times. Columbus believed the world was round and not flat, and here we are! Benjamin Franklin played with a kite in a lightning storm. He is buried in the cemetery where our Church's constitution and first Prayer Book were adopted. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin published his thoughts about the development of life on this planet and shocked long held opinions. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Sigmund Freud led us to new knowledge about the human mind and personality, and we are still journeying into paths he opened. (I have no idea where he is buried.) In the same years, scholars begin to ask critical questions of the Bible: Who wrote these books? When did they write them? To whom were they written? What were the circumstances of that time and place, and, more importantly, what about them speaks to us now? This so-called critical study of the Bible unsettled many Christians, but today, most of the world's Biblical scholars, including most Anglicans, are students of this scholarship, and find that it does not diminish the proper authority of Scripture. Today, there are many Christians, including some Anglicans, who still demand sola scriptura--Scripture only. The Puritans are still with us under new names. But they are not the Anglicans of the Elizabethan Settlement, the seminal event that defined Anglicanism as we receive it today. Authority and decision making in the Elizabethan church The
Puritan church
Before then, Puritans had claimed a settlement on the cold shores of
Massachusetts, and their kind continue among us. Eighteen years before
Plymouth Rock, Anglicans came to the tidewater of Virginia. There, in
that commonwealth today, and among many others, the contest between
contemporary Puritans and contemporary Anglicans continue. The presenting
issues change. The old principles are the same. Other developments in the English church Conclusion
This is a place to stop. There is more to tell in the story of England's
church, but most of what remains are variations on earlier themes. What
are these themes? Themes
in Anglican authority and decision making I offer two last thoughts. The hallmarks of the Elizabethan settlement are foundational principles for today's Anglicanism, along with the continuing tugs on both sides by catholics, who know the church must make many decisions in its setting, and by puritans who claim the Bible and the Bible only to have all the answers for everything. My other thought is a continuing question: If Anglicans really accept Hooker's three legs of authority, do we use all of them well and fairly? For each question that confronts us, do we carefully seek the Holy Scriptures? And then, having done so, do we seek the ancients for their wisdom and consider the traditions of other times and places in our sacred story? And then, having done both, do we lift up the best that human reason and knowledge and discovery tell us through all the arts and sciences, and put what we think that we know against the test of the ages? Do we really and truly work this hard? Do you? Does anyone? Or, in today's Anglican practice, is our decision making simply a matter of majority votes cast after a series of sound bites spoken in what passes for a serious engagement of Scripture, tradition, and reason? The question is deep and real for me, based on my experiences for over thirty years in the decision making bodies of our own Anglican bodies. I leave you with these thoughts.
Meginniss
Library, Trinity Episcopal Church
Armentrout, Donald S., Editor, This Sacred History: Anglican Reflections
for John Booty, Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1990.
[BX 5005.T47]
Book of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church: 1979. Coleman,
Dale, Editor, Michael Ramsey: The Anglican Spirit, Cambridge,
Mass.: Cowley Publications, 1991. [BX 5005.R35]] Lytle,
Guy Fitch, Editor, Lambeth Conferences: Past and Present, a
special publication of Anglican and Episcopal History, Vol.
LVIII, No. 3, September, 1989, and Forward Movement Publications,
Cincinnati, 1989. [BX 5021.L3] Man,
John, Gutenberg: How One Man Remade the World with Words,
New York: MJF Books, 2002. Simpson, James B., Editor, Seasons of the Spirit: The Archbishop of Canterbury at Home and Abroad - Robert A. K. Runcie, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1983.
[BK 5006.R8625] Simpson, James B., and Story, Edward M., The
Long Shadows of Lambeth X, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1969.
[BX 5021.S5] Rector's
personal library Bicknell,
E. J., A Theological Introduction to the Thirty- Nine Articles
of the Church of England, 3rd edition, London: Longman
Group Ltd., 1970. Book
of Common Prayer of the Church of England: 1549, 1552, 1662. Book
of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church: 1789, 1892. Cross, F. L., Editor, The Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church, London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Hatchett,
Marion J., Commentary on the American Prayer Book, New York:
The Seabury Press, 1980.
Hefling, Charles, and Shattuck, Cynthia, editors, The Oxford Guild
to The Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey, Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Hooker,
Richard, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Volumes I
and 2), New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1969. Shepherd, Massey H., Jr., The Oxford American
Prayer Book Commentary, New York: Oxford University Press, 1963. The First and Second Prayer Books of Edward VI,
New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1960 Walker, Williston, A History of the Christian Church, 3rd edition, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970. Scott, R. A., Basilica--The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's, New York: Viking Pilgrim, 2006. A Timeline of the Church in England © by S. Albert Kennington, 2006 is shown separately. |
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