Amidst bloggers and camellias, some of the most important contemporary theologues from around the Anglican world gathered in Charleston, South Carolina for the second annual Mere Anglicanism conference. TAP sent Sue Careless to bring it all home.

By Sue Careless

WHILE FIRESTORMS RAGE in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, gentle breezes and camellia blossoms welcomed 250 people to the second annual Mere Anglicanism conference held Jan. 25-27 in Charleston, South Carolina. The conference was a chance not to ignore the turmoil, but to have a few moments to reflect thoughtfully and worshipfully in the eye of

the storm.

There was also a high tech twist to the gathering--a bloggers’ dinner where those who post online journals and those who enjoy reading and replying to them could dine together. Stand Firm blogger Greg Griffiths also ran a workshop on the impact of the

internet on the church.

Griffiths observed that information about the church was now “outside the control of diocesan power structures.” This “information reformation” allows information to be disseminated freely, no longer “highly filtered and heavily packaged” by church bureaucracy. In the

past even the secular media “depended too heavily on press releases from the diocesan office.” And parishioners had to wait thirty days before they could read news in a diocesan paper. Now the same parishioners can read news from a General Convention or a Primates’ Meeting just thirty minutes after it occurs.

Many parish websites now have links to orthodox websites such as Stand Firm or Titusonenine run by Canon theologian Kendall Harmon or David Virtue’s Virtueonline. “The speed of information doesn’t change the meaning,” said Griffiths. These alternative news sources mean that the church bureaucracy cannot “spin the news” so easily. As for errors, Griffiths said he tries to use reliable sources but that after an item is posted, “it’s open to discussion and correction” and is usually corrected online within half an hour.

The theological conference drew primarily from the eastern seaboard but participants from as far away as California and British Columbia also attended. Stephen Noll, the Vice-Chancellor of Uganda Christian University in Mukono, Uganda, gave the conference an international perspective as did the keynote speaker, Pakistan born Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, England.

Noll observed that “there was no agreed upon mechanism of discipline” in the Anglican Communion. While he felt a covenant would be very useful for identity and mission, he feared the Communion could dissolve before it was completed. Noll argued that the Communion spoke in 1998 and that all members should have conformed. “Because we didn’t discipline those who disobeyed, the Communion sent the message: ‘We didn’t really mean what we said.’”

Noll concluded by asking, “What stops a body of believers from coming together and agreeing on doctrine and discipline?” He thought a new communion was coming into being. “A formal structure may need to be knocked down so a new, living structure can be built up.” (See his “Blueprint for a Global Anglican Communion”.)

The world-renowned Anglican scholar Bishop Nazir-Ali tackled “The Nature and Calling of the Anglican Communion.” He sought to “recognize all that God has done through the Communion,” but also tried to offer a “sober estimation of its weaknesses so in God’s good time they could be remedied.”

The bishop argued that Anglican theology had overemphasized the Incarnation at the expense of the Atonement. The local parish system, with its commitment to the local community, was based on the doctrine of the Incarnation but needed to stress also the Atonement. “Anglicans realize well the incarnational model of the parish system, ministering with the grain, but this only works well as long as the culture remains open to Christianity and is sympathetic to a Christian world view.”

He agreed with Callum Brown’s assessment in Death of Christian Britain that Christianity ceased to be the public religion of Britain when it ceased to be practiced in the home, “when mothers ceased passing on the faith to their children.” 

He also observed that “When the Bible is translated into different African languages it unleashes forces that missionaries could not have foreseen. This always happens in people and cultures.” He claimed that “Translatability is at the centre of Anglicanism.”

At the same time he warned that “faith must not be so completely translated into a culture that it becomes “captive to one group and is not available to others.” He cited perceptions that because Armenians are Christians Iranians can’t be. Assyrians are Christians so Kurds cannot be. “The Church must not excessively identify with the State.” He claimed that “the Reformation did not produce world missions,” and that the nation states that arose made it difficult for people to conceive of a universal Church.

While the “Exodus trajectory speaks to an oppressed people…parts of every culture will need to come under the judgment of Christ.”

Just as “translatability” must not result in “captivity,” the Bishop of Rochester also argued for “legitimate diversity.” Anglican mission was not to create “a lot of little Church of Englands.” There must be a spiritual transmission not a mere “transmission of culture.” He felt there was a tendency in Anglicanism to “capitulate to culture.”

Speaking of the Instruments of Unity Bishop Nazir-Ali admitted, “I do wonder if they’re enough” to hold the Anglican Communion together. He argued that “real creativity comes from movements” -- whether the monastic movement in the 4th century or the missionary movement in the 18th. “Today we need movements to keep the Church alive.”

The conference chaplain, Dr. Leander Harding, preached that an idol is “a god you make with your hands to suit your own purposes. It fits like a glove because it’s tailor-made. Idols promise much but they deliver little and ask more and more.” Harding warned that we are in a struggle with idols in our Church. It doesn’t help to just have the law. We must “fall in love with God and his seeking, searching love,” shown in his hand stretched out to us, “the pierced and glorified hand of Jesus.” Only that will break the power of idols and life-destroying addictions.

Canadian Dr. Edith Humphrey of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary gave a superb analysis of the contemporary misuse of Richard Hooker’s three-fold cord of Scripture, Reason and the traditional voice of the Church (Tradition). She also noted how a fourth element, Experience, “has made a takeover bid.” She argued that personal experience, sadly, has become the “trump card” with “veto power” over Scripture and all else.

“The so-called ‘Wesleyan Quadrilateral,’ in which Scripture, Tradition, Reason and Experience are taken to be primary sources…has made inroads into our own Anglican communion.

I am witness to this through my five year participation in the Anglican Communion of Canada’s Primate’s Theological Commission, where the Quadrilateral frequently raised its cheeky head.

“Wesley, though utterly intent that his Christian brothers and sisters possess not simply creedal orthodoxy, but a living experience of the Lord, would have been appalled at the idea of making personal experience an authority for theology. This means that for many, if our current experience is different than that believed or practised in the past Church, then the experience of today must be heeded.”

Dr. Ashley Null, Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Western Kansas, considered a world authority on Thomas Cranmer, spoke eloquently on the architect of the English Reformation. Cranmer, Null said, would have us plant our souls like seeds in the “garden of Scripture for Scripture gives life.” Reason and Tradition are merely “hoes and spades,” tools to work the soil.

Three panels, one of scholars, one of lay activists and one of “Common Cause” bishops were also remarkably lively. (Disclaimer: as the news editor of the Anglican Planet I was one of the participants on the lay activists’ panel.)

Sarah Hey, one of the young organizers of Mere Anglicanism, views the annual conference as an opportunity for laypeople and clergy to “dig a little deeper into Anglican theology and identity, while at the same time forming more networking and communication links with one another as traditional Anglicans who love the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The conference participants parted knowing the times are dark and the way ahead uncertain, but they seemed to appreciate even a small window of opportunity to reflect and encourage one another.