Anglican Communion

  • Thread starter Thread starter pjcsisabel
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

pjcsisabel

Guest
Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I know that the Anglican Communion is not a single church but rather, as the name suggest, a communion of independent churches or provinces. These include the Church of England (which is considered the mother church), the Episcopal Church in the USA, etc.

Being independent churches in the Anglican Communion, they may have different teachings but they must share fundamental ones.

I don’t get this?

Probably all of these provinces believe in the Trinity, Jesus Christ, etc. but what about other important teachings? For example, in the Episcopal Church in the USA, they ordain women as priests–their presiding bishop is actually a woman–but here in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines (which is also part of the Anglican Communion), they don’t. Isn’t that a very big difference?

What happened to the unity in teaching?

I mean, the Anglican Communion calls itself to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. How can they call themselves one if they aren’t even united in some teachings. And take note, the ordination of women is a major issue.

I’m not an Anglican but I’m just curious as to how they explain that they differ in certain teachings and yet they are a communion.
 
pjcsisabel said:
Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I know that the Anglican Communion is not a single church but rather, as the name suggest, a communion of independent churches or provinces. These include the Church of England (which is considered the mother church), the Episcopal Church in the USA, etc.

Being independent churches in the Anglican Communion, they may have different teachings but they must share fundamental ones.

I don’t get this?

Probably all of these provinces believe in the Trinity, Jesus Christ, etc. but what about other important teachings? For example, in the Episcopal Church in the USA, they ordain women as priests–their presiding bishop is actually a woman–but here in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines (which is also part of the Anglican Communion), they don’t. Isn’t that a very big difference?

What happened to the unity in teaching?

I mean, the Anglican Communion calls itself to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. How can they call themselves one if they aren’t even united in some teachings. And take note, the ordination of women is a major issue.

I’m not an Anglican but I’m just curious as to how they explain that they differ in certain teachings and yet they are a communion.
Click to expand...
Overall, there is no such unity. It is a communion of 38 independent Churches who trace their origin to the Church of England, and share a sort of social club interaction. But there is no uniformity of doctrine, and no authority to impose such a thing. And the degree to which even core doctrine is shared is less than in the past.

One might also mention that there are Anglican groups not in the official Anglican Communion.

Anglicans are a varied lot.

GKC
 
GKC said:
Overall, there is no such unity. It is a communion of 38 independent Churches who trace their origin to the Church of England, and share a sort of social club interaction. But there is no uniformity of doctrine, and no authority to impose such a thing. And the degree to which even core doctrine is shared is less than in the past.

One might also mention that there are Anglican groups not in the official Anglican Communion.

Anglicans are a varied lot.

GKC
Click to expand...
So that being said, when it comes to referring to it when discussing about faith and morals, it’s not enough to say “Anglican” because as you’ve said they vary a lot. Probably, it should suffice to say “Church of England” or the “Episcopal Church in America”.
 
pjcsisabel said:
So that being said, when it comes to referring to it when discussing about faith and morals, it’s not enough to say “Anglican” because as you’ve said they vary a lot. Probably, it should suffice to say “Church of England” or the “Episcopal Church in America”.
Click to expand...
You have the right idea, but even that presumes a unity, at the national Church level, that does not exist. You simply can’t generalize about Anglican belief and doctrine, esp. in the last 40 years or so, as revisionist trends have dominated and divided the Anglican Churches of the developed world.

GKC
 
What GKC said is how it is at the moment. Everyone though recognizes that there is a problem at the moment.

How it is supposed to work is that there is unity in essentials, whereas non-essentials may differ. What is essential is meant to be discerned by the Church.

At the moment, the problem is that we are not able to agree on what is essential. There are a number of causes of this, though it will be undoubtedly be worked out at some point. But never having really encountered this problem in this way before, we don’t really have a method to solve it, we have to create one.
 
Even from the beginning, weren’t there three separate entities within Anglicanism – low, broad, and high? The differences between these three are startling, considering that they were all part of the same organization. One could be an evangelical (Protestant) Anglican, or a liberal (Broad) Anglican, or a High (Anglo-Catholic) Anglican and fit under the same umbrella. Correct me, please, if I am wrong.

Jim Dandy
 
GKC said:
One might also mention that there are Anglican groups not in the official Anglican Communion.

Anglicans are a varied lot.

GKC
Click to expand...
Yes, I find Anglicans come in many flavours. There are the “Catholic-flavoured” ie, the Anglo-Catholics, who love smells and bells and the Sarum Rite, and all that. Then, there are the “mainline-Protestant Evangelical-flavoured”, of which the only thing separating them from average Evangelicalism is the style of interpretation. Then, there are the “Average-flavoured”, a.k.a. Broad-Church. They are just in the middle, with elements of both High and Low church. But, I find, the low Church Anglicans vary as well. There’s the Evangelical low church Anglicans, then there’s the Presbyterian-style low church Anglicans, so on and so forth. I don’t know of what unity they speak of.
 
Jim_Dandy said:
Even from the beginning, weren’t there three separate entities within Anglicanism – low, broad, and high? The differences between these three are startling, considering that they were all part of the same organization. One could be an evangelical (Protestant) Anglican, or a liberal (Broad) Anglican, or a High (Anglo-Catholic) Anglican and fit under the same umbrella. Correct me, please, if I am wrong.

Jim Dandy
Click to expand...
In general, you are correct, but the terms were slow in developing. In the Elizabethan period, the Elizabethan Compromise was constructed to form a a peaceful unity (enforced) between the more reformed side of developing Anglicanism, and the less so.

In dealing with this historic range of attitude and doctrine, I always stress (though not everyone listens), that the terms you used represent two slightly different and overlapping spectra. The high-low dichotomy (broad is a latter development, basically liberal, as you say) best refers to ecclesiology: churchmanship (how many candles, what sort of vestments, incense, liturgy, terminology, etc). The reformed/evangelical-Anglo-Catholic dichotomy emphasizes doctrine: Mariology, eucharistic theory, sacraments generally, attitude toward Rome, etc. The distinction is not absolute and it is not inaccurate to consider low=reformed/evangelical and high=a range of Anglo-Catholic, up to Anglo-Papal, as generally what you will find. But I find the distinction useful.

This is the historic and evolved Anglican spectrum, which existed under a general umbrella of common understanding of recognizable creedal and historical Christianity. But to it now must sadly, be added another, one that turned the broad category (without regard to ecclesiology) into what almost amounts to an 3rd dimension, indeed, a new faith; a liberalizing not only of Anglican particulars, but eating into what had been the common basis and ground underlying the old distinctions: mere Christianity. So, now one must consider, not merely what the level of churchmanship of an Anglican might be, and/or where in the doctrinal spectrum such might fall, but to what degree to they manifest historic, not Anglicanism, but Christianity.

A motley crew.

GKC
 
LoyalViews said:
Yes, I find Anglicans come in many flavours. There are the “Catholic-flavoured” ie, the Anglo-Catholics, who love smells and bells and the Sarum Rite, and all that. Then, there are the “mainline-Protestant Evangelical-flavoured”, of which the only thing separating them from average Evangelicalism is the style of interpretation. Then, there are the “Average-flavoured”, a.k.a. Broad-Church. They are just in the middle, with elements of both High and Low church. But, I find, the low Church Anglicans vary as well. There’s the Evangelical low church Anglicans, then there’s the Presbyterian-style low church Anglicans, so on and so forth. I don’t know of what unity they speak of.
Click to expand...
Probably so because back in the 16th century, there may have been Anglicans who really wanted to go away from traditional Catholicism and there may have been those who just wanted a kind of “non-papal” Catholicism.
 
pjcsisabel said:
Please correct me if I’m wrong.

I know that the Anglican Communion is not a single church but rather, as the name suggest, a communion of independent churches or provinces. These include the Church of England (which is considered the mother church), the Episcopal Church in the USA, etc.

Being independent churches in the Anglican Communion, they may have different teachings but they must share fundamental ones.

I don’t get this?

Probably all of these provinces believe in the Trinity, Jesus Christ, etc. but what about other important teachings? For example, in the Episcopal Church in the USA, they ordain women as priests–their presiding bishop is actually a woman–but here in the Episcopal Church in the Philippines (which is also part of the Anglican Communion), they don’t. Isn’t that a very big difference?

What happened to the unity in teaching?

I mean, the Anglican Communion calls itself to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. How can they call themselves one if they aren’t even united in some teachings. And take note, the ordination of women is a major issue.

I’m not an Anglican but I’m just curious as to how they explain that they differ in certain teachings and yet they are a communion.
Click to expand...
The churches of the Anglican Communion are united by the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral which I think dates from 1886. This is a four point articulation of the identity which encapulates the fundamentals of the Communion’s doctrine.

The four points are:

i) The Holy Scriptures as containing all things necessary to salvation;

ii) The Creeds (specifically the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds) as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith;

iii) The Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion;

iv) The Historic Episcopate.

The churches of the Anglican communion are all in inter-communion.

I have been privileged to be a member of three Anglican churches, the Church of England (where I started and am now); the Anglican Church of Australia; and the Church of Ireland.
 
GKC said:
Overall, there is no such unity. It is a communion of 38 independent Churches who trace their origin to the Church of England, and share a sort of social club interaction. But there is no uniformity of doctrine, and no authority to impose such a thing. And the degree to which even core doctrine is shared is less than in the past.

One might also mention that there are Anglican groups not in the official Anglican Communion.

Anglicans are a varied lot.

GKC
Click to expand...
Sortof renders the Archbishop of Canterbury irrelevant. Hmmmm.
 
TemplarJPN said:
Sortof renders the Archbishop of Canterbury irrelevant. Hmmmm.
Click to expand...
I react with shock. And I recall the first post I ever made, anywhere, online, around 10 years ago (about the time I first met Contarini), explaining the organization of the Anglican Communion, and a couple of other things, to some bemused RCs who were trying hard to fit *Cantaur *into the Papal mode. I think the phrase I used was something like “Toothless, symbolic figurehead”. Though I also did some talking about the powers of persuasion that might adhere to the office (head of the Communion).

GKC
 
Bluegoat said:
But why?
Click to expand...
Because of how the term came to be, within the CoE. It was a movement that didn’t pay much attention to the Church praxis, but that held that doctrine was flexible and not to be overly defined, interpreting Anglican formularies in a liberal sense, and avoiding dogmatism. Thus, broad and hazy, as Anglo-Catholics were high and crazy. Bishop Colenso was a fine example.

In the day, this did tend still to be in the context of a mere Christianity, but its descendants have broadened that into a comprehensive big tent. Liberal, that is. Christianity one of many paths.

Here’s a site, with a quick look:

victorianweb.org/religion/brdchrch.html

GKC
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top