What Catholics Must Understand about Anglicanism
By: Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Anyone with a love of history, literature, and culture would find it difficult to resist the appeal of the Anglican Church. With some of the finest architecture in Christendom, an exquisite tradition of sacred music, fine liturgies with splendid hymns, Anglicanism takes all that is most refined, educated, eccentric, and traditional about England and filters it through the Christian faith.
The expression of the Christian faith we call Anglicanism is now in terminal decline. Pope Benedict XVI’s recent lifeline to disaffected Anglicans makes it imperative for Catholics to understand present-day Anglicanism. Much of the ecumenical adventure between Anglicans and Catholics over the last 40 years has been fruitful, but its success has been limited because many Catholics do not understand the complexity of the Anglican church. The sort of Catholic apologetics often used with Evangelical Christians is ineffective for Anglicans. To approach Anglicans and to be able to answer their questions about the Catholic Church, we have to understand Anglicanism from the ground up.
English to Its Core
The story of the English Reformation is more complex than people realize. In England, the Reformation was more a revolution. The dissolution of the monasteries brought about a redistribution of wealth so radical that nothing like it was seen until the French and Russian Revolutions. As the monasteries were dissolved, the entire educational, social welfare, and health care systems collapsed. The monastic lands and riches were simply taken by the king and given to his cronies.
Over time, the effect was to identify the Church of England not only with the monarchy, but with Englishness. Members of the Church of England hold their Christianity in one hand and their Englishness in the other, and they pray by putting their two hands together. Converts to the Church of England often do not realize the depth of this union of Christianity and English nationalism. More importantly, many Anglicans are unaware how much their Christian faith is defined by their English culture.
This means that Englishness is written in and through the Anglican religion in a far deeper way than Scottish culture is written into Presbyterianism or German culture into Lutheranism. Without having a firsthand experience of this blend of religion and culture, it is impossible to understand the heart of Anglicanism.
Global Growth
Anglicanism began to travel as the English began to travel. First it came to the American colonies. For political reasons, Anglicans in America had their bishops consecrated by the Scottish (who were also anti-English). Because Anglican means English, both the Scottish and American Anglicans chose the name Episcopal, meaning “with bishops.”
During the expansion of the British Empire, the Anglican church also spread to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the other British colonies—most notably in Africa through the work of the Victorian missionary societies. As the Anglican church spread, each national church was given its own hierarchy and as the colonies eventually gained independence, so did their national churches. The result was the Worldwide Anglican Communion.
It is easy to think that the worldwide Anglican church is rather like the Catholic Church. We have the pope in Rome; they have the Archbishop of Canterbury. But nothing could be further from the truth. There is no central authority in the Anglican church. Each of the national churches are independent provinces. The Archbishop of Nigeria has complete authority in Nigeria and owes no real obedience or loyalty to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The same applies to all the national churches. The Episcopal church of the United States, the Anglican church of Canada, and all the other national churches are held together only by a shared Anglican ancestry.
Three Ways to Be Anglican
Or is it 300? While all the national churches that make up the Worldwide Anglican Communion are independent, they also have particular theological complexions. Depending on the churchmanship of the missionaries who went there, the different national churches might be Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical—or they may have gone liberal.
This leads us to the next bewildering aspect of Anglicanism. From the time of the Reformation there have been Anglicans who have been more Catholic in their theology and understanding of the church and there have been those who have been more Protestant. The two have always existed in an unhappy tension within the Anglican church.
I attended an Anglican seminary of the Evangelical persuasion called Wycliffe Hall, and down the road was the Anglo-Catholic seminary called St. Stephen’s House. The two were totally opposed in theology, liturgical practice, culture, and ethos. In Oxford was an Anglican seminary which was “broad church,” or liberal. This third strand of Anglicanism has always been a kind of worldly, established, urbane type of religion that is at home with the powers that be and always adapts to the culture in which it finds itself.
These three forces co-exist in the Anglican church—united by nothing more than a shared baptism, a patriotic allegiance to the national church, and the need to tolerate each other. Unfortunately the toleration frequently wears thin. The Anglo-Catholics, the Evangelicals, and the liberals are constantly at war. Their theology, their liturgy, their politics, and their spirituality are in basic contradiction to one another.
Continued
