Anglican Identity and the Diocese of Chelmsford

Bradwell Area Study Day 2006

One of the joys of being in the Diocese of Chelmsford is living on the front line of articulating what Anglicanism is all about.  I have a historical frame of mind.  So I hope you will not mind my approaching the subject from that perspective.

There are many histories that have formed us in Essex and East London and brought us to where we are today.  There are seeds in every part of that history which have brought life to us.  The origins of Christianity in Essex are interesting.   The mission conducted by Mellitus in the early 7th century at the behest of the Archbishop of Canterbury did not in the end succeed.  But the mission of the East Saxon Cedd coming from Lindisfarne did succeed.  He had been brought up by St Aidan and was the brother of Chad.  So there were some Celtic influences at the beginning.  Small Minster centres of mission mark the early days of the church among the East Saxons.  Upminster, Southminster remind us of these Saxon and Celtic beginnings.  Cedd took part in the Synod of Whitby accepting the Roman calendar and uniting the traditions in England – a fact we should remember as we face the challenges of our own diversity.

The Norman Conquest clearly changed the whole cultural history of our nation.  But I suspect that even if the power went with the Normans the cultures here in the East continued to be deeply Saxon in many places.  So high medieval Christianity came among us but did not entirely capture hearts and minds.  Outside Barking Abbey this county was not known for its strong monastic tradition in the medieval form.

The East of England was ripe territory for the Reformation.  Cambridge University was a centre for Reformation thinking and then for Puritan thought.  There were centres across Essex which were major centres for reformed and then for puritan life.  Bishop Laud when Bishop of London made a number of visitations of the area to try and stamp out Puritanism.  That meant closing down lectureships in parishes which were ways the Puritans used to introduce sound teaching into the church with a view to its further reform.  Places like Braintree had good pasturing from people with Puritan opinions. The 17th century saw the rise of Independency in these parts with Colchester a major centre.  So the Civil war saw a great deal of support for the Parliamentary cause across the East of England.  It made it a sympathetic place for the Huguenots when they fled Louis X1Vth.   These themes and traditions have persisted in the ever changing environment of our culture.

Industrialisation changed us again.  Pockets of Catholicism had resisted the Reformation and held on in secret until the Act of Toleration and the eventual removal of all disabilities against Catholics.  The Petre family and Ingatestone Hall were one such here.  What industrialisation did was open the way to further immigration into England.  Irish labour, fleeing poverty and seeking work came here as London began to spread east.  So we added to the historic Catholic community a new Irish Roman identity.  In the diocese of Chelmsford – St Albans as it was until 1914 – the Catholic movement in the Church of England did not have as big an influence as it had west of the River Lee.  There were important Catholic parishes and church building in that tradition.  The diocese, however, held on to its more Protestant culture.

The movement of peoples and our history continue to influence our sense of identity.  In East London today we see the presence of the Anglican Communion in many African Anglican communities in or churches.  So we remain not only a community of many influences and origins but an international community.  Celtic and Roman, Saxon and Norman, Protestant and Puritan, Independent and Catholic, peopled from many cultures and histories.

Anglican cultures are always changing.  If you had entered Sheffield Parish Church in the early 18th century in the middle of the crossing you would have been faced with a three decker pulpit.  You could not see the Communion table.  The liturgical design was for Mattins, Anti Communion and the Litany.  The service was taken, the lessons read and the sermon preached at different levels of this construction.

The Parish Communion movement of the 20th century changed Anglican practice in our time and might be said to have influenced Common Worship.  Look at the architecture of Anglican churches from different generations and you will catch the changing emphasis of our life.

Our Basic Unity

Yet behind all of this diversity and the specific character of our history here in this diocese lies some commonalities.  These define us and are what we are called to hold on to as the bonds of our common life in Christ.  Some are to do with doctrine.  Some with pastoral practice.  Some with matters of order.

Let me begin with authority. The Bible, the Catholic Creeds and our need to proclaim these afresh in each generation: scripture, tradition and reason.   All three have been with us across our history.  If you do not accept the God given authority of Scripture as leading us uniquely to the Word made flesh, if you do not accept the doctrine set forth in the creeds and if you are not willing to engage in proclaiming these in every culture – you are straying outside the boundaries of Anglican life.  The three great and historic traditions of Anglicanism – which we have had throughout our history – the evangelical movement holding us to the basic truth of Scripture and the Gospel experience, the catholic movement holding on to the unbroken traditions of ministry and faith, and the liberal tradition seeking to make sense of all of this in the light of contemporary understandings of truth – all have dangers if they fail to see the balances in Anglicanism.  Fundamentalist literalism lurks around evangelicalism.  That is a Victorian rationalist invention in Christianity.  The same literalism about catholic thought and practice lurks around the catholic movement – again much of it Victorian in origin – and a lapse into a rational positivism threatens liberal thought cutting it off from the spirituality of the Bible and the history of the church.  One of the things we do have to do is to, within our shared Anglican identity, help one another hold to the boundaries.  That is why conversation across the traditions is so important – not so that evangelicals can impose a fundamentalist agenda, catholics a rigid Roman identity or liberals a reductionist theological understanding – but rather that each may learn from the other and help the other hold to the width and genius of our history.  The great thinkers and leaders in all these movements never fell into these traps.

The threefold structure of authority is important.  It is there in the Articles of Religion, in the character of the creeds and in the shape and formation of the Scriptures.

Order

Whatever the complex political contexts of the 16th century, Anglicanism held on to the order of ministry which it had from earliest times.  It is an Episcopal church with a three fold order of ministry.  Some have believed – especially since the Oxford Movement in the 19th century – that our order is a matter of doctrine.  Hooker believed it to be a matter of order. We believe this order of governance and oversight in the church to be consonant with Scripture, true to the tradition and a reasoned way of holding the shape of the visible church.  Full Communion with the Church of England requires our finding that shape of order in our sister churches.  So we accept the order of the Roman Catholic Church even if they do not accept ours.  We look to our Free Church sister churches to work with us to find a way of bringing us together within this frame of order. Hence our delight that Methodists are seeking to bring episcopacy into their church.

Because these things are for us matters of order we are not required to unchurch other traditions which do not have this ministerial frame.  So, for example, it would be out of order for a non-episcopally ordained person to celebrate the Anglican rite.  It is not out of order for such authorised ministers in their own tradition to celebrate according to their order and tradition in Anglican churches and for Anglicans to receive the sacrament at such services.  Indeed, I would want to encourage such hospitality within the boundaries of the provision of Canon Law.

Anglican order is primarily about the structure of our ministry holding us in a particular kind of way with the church across the centuries.

Pastoral Identity

Here we are probably dealing with a Church of England experience within Anglicanism.  That is the inheritance of establishment – the parish system which means we have a lawful duty to provide ministry for all the people in England.  So our doors have to be open.  When people come into encounter with the church it is the Gospel they are to find among us.  We gather people around Word and Sacrament because Word and Sacrament tell the Gospel to the people.  In effect that has always meant a church with porous boundaries – people come and go.  Both the sacramental and the preaching ministries of the church are not confined to whoever happens to be there at the time – but are public statements of the character of the Gospel – good news for people in whatever condition of life they find themselves to be.

That pastoral ministry has often meant a political and social ministry.  An established church speaks to kings and parliaments about the condition of the nation and the strengths and failings of government,  be that Thomas Becket,  Bishop Latimer in the 16th century,  the Christian socialists nearer our time, William Temple, social responsibility etc.  At a local level it has led to priests being involved in campaigning against immoral conditions of social life for people – including in own time being a voice for Refugees and Asylum Seekers and other groups of people who are marginalised by our culture.

Anglicanism in this country and in this diocese has a strong tradition of being prophetic both in word and deed.

We are not just a congregational church.  Ministers and congregations are servants, in the name of Christ, to the whole community.  The parish structure is about that.  Fresh expressions of church must be about its continuance in the ever changing social cultures of our time.

For Anglicans that pastoral ministry, that structure of ministerial order and our doctrine is expressed in the setting of prayer and worship.  If you want to know what Anglicans believe or how we see the world and our ministry you do not go to books of formal theology or vast volumes of canonical law but to the liturgies of the church both ancient and contemporary.  We are a people who speak the truth through prayer and common worship.

So, in our diversity, we have a doctrinal bond of unity in the structures of authority and the content of the creeds – all expressed in a spirituality of worship and prayer.  We have an order of ministry which holds us to the universal church and we have a character of pastoral ministry which sees the Gospel for all people and every situation of living.

If we can dig deep under the many histories that form our identity here in Essex and East London we might yet offer, in the 21st century, a way of thinking and practice to help a diverse and often conflict ridden world discover the bonds of a common humanity in Christ.

John Gladwin
Lent 2006

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