BECOMING HUMBLE SKEPTICS: REJECTING ANGLICAN IDENTITY
It was January 2019, and we were visiting Anglican churches throughout London to study church growth, revitalization, and evangelism as part of our theological formation at Bexley Seabury Seminary. The variety of churches was impressive—mega-churches, small churches, Anglo-Catholic services, evangelical services, Alpha programs, house churches, community center churches, historic churches and church plants— and at each one we asked, “How do you see yourself as Anglican?” “How does your Anglican identity affect your ministry?” “What does being Anglican mean to you?”
They didn’t really understand the question.
At one particular church—a church plant of mostly young folks sent from a parent church—the staff was stumped. They didn’t see themselves as Anglican and had not thought about their identity in that way. When pressed, they chose Anglican to describe their “denomination.” And, while they benefited from the infrastructure and polity (#equalpay) of the Church of England, it wasn’t a key part of their decision-making, identity, or ministry. For them, the tradition didn’t matter so much as the way of Jesus. They were trying to make followers of Christ, not baby Anglicans.
Their answers stumped us, too, and not just one member of our class left “Jesus is my boyfriend”/fog-machine/inspirational speaker services grumbling, “This isn’t Anglican!” under their breaths. But perhaps Anglicanism in London is on a journey that we all need to join—an ability to hold the depth, breadth, and variation of expressions of a faith rooted in Jesus of Nazareth, Anglican tradition, and our own common sense.
Samuel Wells, Vicar of London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields and former Dean of Duke Chapel, wrote in What Episcopalians Believe that:
We have no revered founder, no pivotal item of doctrine, no egregious error of another group of Christians against which we define ourselves, and no pivotal interpreter through whose definitive reading of Scripture all must be evaluated…Instead we have a tradition of common prayer, a general commitment to the well-being of all, including nonmembers of the church, and a desire to seek a faith that can be shared by people of a wide diversity of temperaments and backgrounds.
Rather than a particular intellectual assent, claim to infallibility, or set beliefs, the faith of Anglicanism is bound to a desire for faithfulness, community, and holy living in a way that makes sense according to context, rather than by assent to a party line received from on high.
As clergy people in The Episcopal Church, we feel that our current church has not lived into the call to breadth, context and diversity embedded into our Anglican tradition. We’ll save the discussion on racial/educational/economic diversity for another day and urge you to note just how diverse the churches in your diocese are—fundamentally, theologically, and liturgically.
This call to diversity is rooted in a humble skepticism—a common thread in all the expressions of Anglican identity. At its healthiest, a posture of humility reminds us that while we, and all human and nonhuman creation, are good, we are also limited. We know that we cannot deign to understand God and God’s actions, and so no theological claim can be taken unchallenged, unquestioned, or at face value. Humility leads us to present ourselves to God as we are, and skepticism reminds us that we are not God. Both elements are crucial.
When we detach skepticism from a foundation of humility, we come into the shadow side of our ethos—either in nihilism or elitism. Searching for relationship with an unknowable God, we might become so skeptical that we throw our hands up in despair and apathy. If nothing is sure, or theologically permanent, then on what doctrines are we able to land? What unchangeable Gospel can we then share? Or, in the words of Alexander Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece, “If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?”
One of Anna’s regular gigs as Canon for Formation in the Diocese of Ohio is teaching an Episcopal 101 class. It’s a quick and dirty intro to what it means to be an Episcopalian, given to camp counselors, interns, confirmation classes, etc. We start with polity and history, move to theology and spirituality, and end with liturgy and sacraments. I tell them things like, “the catechism is a jumping off point,” and “the BCP is like jazz,” and “if you asked this question of 10 Episcopalians, you’d get 14 answers.” I see their minds—especially the minds of those with years of Catholic school behind them—explode (not least because they are being taught by a lady priest with a healthy dose of irreverence.)
That moment when they begin to crack open is a crucial point in the teaching of Anglican identity. This is the cliff where I am tempted to set them loose without parameters, the precipice from which they can leap into the land of “Episcopalians can believe whatever they want!” But here is the crucial teaching: Just because we don’t spoon-feed one-line answers which crack at the first hint of skepticism does not mean anything goes. I’ll say it another way—there may be lots of “right” answers but there are also indeed some “wrong” ones. For example, Christ’s presence is recognized in so many different ways in the celebration of the Eucharist—but Christ is, indeed, present. The resurrection is juicy and mythical (in the classic sense) and mysterious—but it is also true and it carries truth.
Skepticism without humility may also lead to an idolatrous elitism that is not uncommon in Anglicanism. In an effort to wrap limited minds around a limitless God, we use concrete signs, symbols, and rituals. The beauty of liturgical (usually seen as the seven traditional sacraments) and nonliturgical (other outward and visible signs of God’s Grace) sacraments is indeed that they are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. But in the sea of skepticism, it can be too easy to drown in the mistake that the concrete expressions of our ethos are the ethos itself.
When do we cease worshiping the One who gives us grace, in all Her mystery, and begin worshiping the chalice, the organ, the Sunday morning service, the vestments, the country club cocktail hour, and the safety of a white, “middle class” (whatever that is), tolerable-smelling congregation?
A sign on a winding road warns us “35 mph: turn ahead.” The sign isn’t the turn itself, but suggests the posture we might have as we enter the turn. The right collect, rite, hymn, or vestment in the nave doesn’t earn God’s grace, but invites us to a posture that we might receive grace with openness of heart. The particular rites of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist don’t ensure God’s grace, but invite us into a posture of living where we remember that God’s grace abounds without strings attached. We cannot fall into the trap of mistaking our objects with our ethos.
Skepticism without humility also means we can be quick to judge someone who claims answers without “appropriate” questioning and wrestling. We challenge (and judge, and shame) those who claim to have a tight theological understanding or claim on anything. Frederica Harris Tompsett writes that living out an ethos that assumes there’s a right way or a right ethos is what Anglicanism has always rejected. The Anglican Church was a church that rejected infallibility. Anglican identity is not an enshrinement of what is right, but is the right, and the likelihood that we will, change our minds. The Compromise, the Settlement, the via media— these decisions were honest about the likelihood that we do change our mind. That it’s human to change our minds, not a divorce from a rigid ethos.
Being an Anglican means we have the responsibility to discover and discern what it means to be in relationship with ourselves, with each other, with human and non-human creation, and with God. Being Anglican means we are committed to striving after the life taught to us by a loving, liberating and life giving God. And being Anglican means we commit to doing that as a community of accountability—one that is rooted in a particular tradition and a particular ethos that happened to take shape amidst a pendulum swinging from non-papal Catholicism to the Protestant Reformation in England in the 16th century. Our history is specific. Our tradition is not.
Our humble skepticism ought not to lead us toward idolatry (stained glass!) nor chaos (you can believe anything!) but to flexibility. Worship with the beautifully poetic prayer books, but don’t worship the prayer books. The beauty of the via media is not ambivalence, but nimbleness. The Elizabethan Settlement could be summed up as “theological rigidity is no bueno.” Our skepticism ought to lead us not to “whatever goes” but to flexibility—the via media allows us to have multiple diverse expressions stemming from the same root—whether that’s broad, Anglo-Catholic, charismatic, whimsical, monastic, or evangelical. Part of our ethos is flexibility and nimbleness, and over time we’ve enshrined certain strains of thinking as dogma, confusing symbols and signs with the ethos itself. Ethos should never be something that pins you down. Ethos has to breathe and ferment—if it’s not alive, it’s not an ethos informing living identity, but instead a static definition.
Adding more expressions of Anglican identity is honoring our ethos, not diluting it. To root Anglican identity in rigidity or sacred parameters means we aren’t listening and we’re out of touch. When we don’t listen, and presume to know, we forget our humility and we become elitist, presumptive and paternalistic. Anglicanism has a long history of this sin—an absence of good, claiming that the identity makes room for local expressions of faith, and then using that same identity as a tool of oppression and colonialism. The Divine One teaches us how to lead with consent—through the Covenant with Israel, the Annunciation, and a rabbi 2,000 years ago who understood that power comes not from violent coercion but from the vulnerability of asking for consent. Anglicanism in one context should look and feel wildly different in another while landing on the same liturgy, theology, and doctrine. It’s a tall order. But we’re doing it (see our experiences in London,) and have so much more room to do so, especially in The Episcopal Church.
It might look like our ethos is weird clothes, expensive buildings and pretty cups. But Cranmer (in part) gifted us a flexibility to be relevant, colloquial, accessible, and to change our minds.
In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (12:12) he writes of the transformation which comes by the continual renewal of the mind. God is constantly speaking, the Missio Dei is God’s, not ours, and the community is always challenging one another to think a new way. Conversion or renewing of the mind is not a one-time event but a continual life long process to honor whom we are becoming. Unity does not require uniformity. Unity does not require smothered liberty or ignored context.
Getting this from the page to the parish is perhaps our greatest challenge in accompanying the spirit in the Missio Dei. After a casual conversation turns theological, after Episcopal 101, after a new friend finds out what we do for a living, we often are asked for recommendations of churches for Episcopal newbies. We exchange a look. There is a disconnect between the identity on paper—humble skepticism, wideness of expression, nimble communities—and what’s happening in our parishes on the ground. Where can I go if I want to worship Jesus of Nazareth, not a building? Where can I go if I want to experience the freedom to be skeptical, not judgment toward other traditions (the Episcopal Church is neither “Catholic Lite” nor “Catholic Right”)? Where can I go if I want to worship in ways that are relevant to my relationship with Christ, even if it sounds and feels different than the way my grandma worships?
Anglican ecclesiology today is at risk of hamstringing both our missiology and identity. Maintaining humble skepticism through prayer and community ought to lead our church to freedom and experimentation, not nihilism or elitism.
