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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
The contrast in social life between a messhi bōkō (sacrificing one's personal interest to the public good) and mekkō hōshi(sacrificing the public for the sake of the individual) cannot be settled in terms of a dualism. The Christian Church from its earliest times was without doubt a ‘public’ community. Setting up a hypothesis that the concept of ‘publicness’ presented by public philosophy is actually closely related to the ‘catholicity’ that has been a characteristic of Christianity since the time of the Early Church, the main object of this essay will be to demonstrate, by introducing concrete theological illustrations, that Anglicanism has the potential to be a ‘public philosophy’.
1. NEET is the acronym for Not in Employment, Education or Training, a term first used in England. Understood of those who have little or no will to belong to society in any active sense.
2. The dictionary Kōjien (Iwanami, 5th edn) defines public-ness as‘in society at large, the disposition toward community of interests and justice’.
3. 1906–75. Studied under Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger; during the Nazi regime sought refuge in the United States. Carried out an important analysis of the totalitarianism she herself had experienced.
4. Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5. 1889–1975. American political critic and columnist. His book, Public Opinion, which interprets the role of the media in contemporary popular culture, is a classic in the field of journalistic theory.
6. 1927-. American sociologist of religion. Also noted for his exposition of the concept of what is known as‘civic religion’. According to Bellah, with the appearance of Christianity politics became separate from, and opposed to, religion. Civic religion is that‘set of religious symbolism and action’ which reconciles the opposition between politics and religion, inducing the members of a secular state to love their duty as citizens in a religious way. In the sense that it unites the people under a unified religion called civic religion by sanctifying the history and mission of the United States of America, it is closely related to nationalism.
7. Cf. Lippmann, Walter, Public Opinion (London: Macmillan, 1960)Google Scholar.
8. Cf. Lippmann, Walter, with a new introduction by Paul Roazen, The Public Philosophy (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989)Google Scholar.
9. Cf. Bellah, Robert, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar.
10. Following 9/11 and the frequent occurrence of terrorism, US society revealed a spirit of excessive nationalism in its state initiatives. How far Bellah foresaw this state of affairs is not clear, but a situation exists where excessive ‘private’ and excessive ‘public’come together, and in what shape the concept of ‘publicness’ would be able to cut into this—one would like to examine in a separate paper.
11. Examples of ‘publicness’ defined as ‘public matters in general related to the state and administration’ are public works, public investment, public education, public servants, public funds, etc.
12. Among contemporary theological pursuits is a field of study called public theology. The American Linell Elizabeth Cady is one of its representative theologians. Cf. Cady, Linell Elizabeth, Religion, Theology, and American Public Life (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993Google Scholar). Cady defines public theology as‘A general term for a theology which opposes contemporary theology which has become narrow minded, individualistic, and specialized.’ Clearly this moves in a different direction to the ‘public philosophy’ we are thinking about in this essay, so we avoid using the term‘public theology’.
13. 1554–1600. Hooker's theological enterprise is mostly concentrated in his main work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London: J.M. Dent, 1907)Google Scholar.
14. Cf. Nishihara, Renta, The Theology of Richard Hooker: Its Meaning for Today [in Japanese] (Tokyo: Seikokai Publishing, 1995)Google Scholar.
15. Laws, V.56.1.
16. Laws, V.57.6.
17. Laws, V.68.6.
18. Laws, V.67.3.
19. Weil, Louis, ‘The Gospel in Anglicanism’, in The Study of Anglicanism (London: SPCK, 1988), pp. 71–72Google Scholar.
20. 1772–1834. Coleridge studied at Cambridge University and for a brief time worked as a Unitarian minister but soon resigned. Following the publication (with Wordsworth) of Lyrical Ballads in 1798,he released a series of descriptive poems. His best known, The Ancient Mariner, was included in Lyrical Ballads.
21. Cf. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988Google Scholar).
22. Cf. Edwards, Pamela, The Statesman's Science: History, Nature, and Law in the Political Thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
23. 1801–90. Newman understood ‘the development of thought’ to be the mover of human history. Thought, like living organisms, must go through a process of evolution. The trend to discuss the development of society and history in organic terms was characteristic of thinkers like Coleridge and Thomas Arnold. Arnold and Newman were opponents who carried on a bitter controversy, but one can discern a resemblance in the basic direction of their thought.
24. The claim of the Swiss theologian, Thomas Erastus (1524–83), that the state had the right to control ecclesiastical matters.
25. This is in total agreement with the concept of ‘Doing Theology’ in contemporary theology. Riggs, John W., Postmodern Christianity: Doing Theology in the Contemporary World (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003Google Scholar) is a helpful study of recent trends in‘Doing Theology’.
26. Cf. Sasaki, Tuyoshi, Kim, Taechang, Public Philosophy (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
27. There is a very interesting dispute between Osamu Tsukada and the specialist in English history, Matsuura, Taka-mine, in Tsukada, Osamu (ed.), Igirisu no shukyo (Religion in England) (Tokyo: Seikokai Publishing, 1980).Google Scholar
28. Tsukada, Osamu, Ingurando no shukyo (Religion in England) (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 2004), p. 268Google Scholar.
29. 1805–72. Successively Professor of English literature, history, and of theology in the faculty of theology of King's College (London). He was also a major contributor to the founding of Queen's College.
30. Kingsley, Charles, His Letters and Memories of His Life (London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1877), p. 101Google Scholar.
31. Cf. Reardon, B.M.G., From Coleridge to Gore (London: Longmans, 1971), p. 198Google Scholar.
32. Maurice, F.D., The Life of F.D. Maurice, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1884), p. 357Google Scholar.
33. 1853–1912. Soon following graduation from Oxford, Gore became active as a youthful theologian there. In 1884 he was appointed the first principal of Pusey House. Talented theologians and clerics gathered around him and carried on joint studies. The young men who gathered there became the core leadership in the Church of England at the beginning of the twentieth century. Carpenter, James, Gore: A Study in Liberal Catholic Thought (London: Faith Press, 1960Google Scholar) is an excellent study of Gore.
34. Gore, Charles (ed.), Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation (London: John Murray, 1889Google Scholar).
35. For an analysis of Gore's theology, see Tsukada, Osamu, Ingurando no shūkyō, pp. 340–61Google Scholar.
36. 1881–1944. Temple's work as a leader in the Ecumenical Movement and the Student Christian Movement (SCM) was also truly important. It is said that when the Anglican Theological College in Tokyo was newly founded, its principal, Toshimichi Imai, met Temple and asked him to accept a professorship. Temple hesitated, then refused on the grounds that he was working as a secretary of the SCM. His contribution to the process of founding the World Council of Churches was very great. Kent, John, William Temple: Church, State, and Society in Britain, 1880–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Suggate, Alan M., William Temple and Christian Social Ethics Today (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987)Google Scholar; Thomas, Owen C., William Temple's Philosophy of Religion (London: SPCK, 1961Google Scholar), are a few of the excellent Temple studies.
37. Cf. Temple, William, Christianity and Social Order (London: Penguin, 1956)Google Scholar.
38. Figures are from an official pamphlet published by the Anglican Communion Office in 2005. Newest data can be found in www.anglicancommunion.org.
39. At the time of the Falkland War, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie protested to the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. On the occasion of the Iraq war, the newly elected Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams visited the residence of Prime Minister Tony Blair to urge him not to join a war without justice.
40. A parish is defined as the area of jurisdiction of an individual congregation.
41. For example, the writer is presently priest-in-charge of St Barnabas’Church in Chubu Diocese, NSKK. This church's parish includes the area surrounding Lake Suwa, with Tateshina to the north and Ina to the south, as far as Komagane. Pastoral care for the Okaya Church means not just care for the church members scattered through this region, but ought to be a positive commitment by the church to various social problems in the whole area of Suwa and Ina. There are a great many‘pastoral’ problems, including things like depopulation, human rights for foreign resident workers, etc.
42. Cf. ‘The Virginia Report’, 6.20, Being Anglican in the Third Millennium — The Official Report of the 10th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 1997)Google Scholar.
43. The four functions which support the Anglican Communion are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and the Primates' Meeting.
44. That the consecration to the episcopate by the Episcopal Church USA of the Revd Gene Robinson, an open homosexual, together with the approval by one diocese of the Anglican Church of Canada of a service for the blessing of a same-sex union, have caused much controversy and tension within the Anglican Communion, is common knowledge. The Lambeth Commission, chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames of the Church of Ireland, was set up to settle this disorder, and published its report, 77K Windsor Report 2004.
45. The Lambeth Commission on Communion, The Windsor Report 2004 (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2004).Google Scholar
46. Relating Gospel and the understanding of Church to the individual, indigenous culture in which the Church lives. The important theme for ‘enculturation’ is not, as often considered, ‘incarnation’ but rather the experience of Pentecost. The disciples ‘were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in all the languages of the world as the Spirit gave them ability’(Acts 2.4). In Jerusalem at that time people had gathered from every country in the world. So it is said that all those who had gathered there heard the Apostles speaking in the language of each one's native land. This was truly the appearance of a single multicultural community, which also possessed a cross-generational character.
47. The writer, as a member of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations, attended a meeting of the commission in the Maltese Republic in December 2005. Dialogues with the churches of various places are reported to the commission, and the churches in each country are to receive comments from the commission. At the Malta meeting too, each case was carefully discussed, one by one. At that time the key word going around was something called ‘ecclesial density’. In other words this meant a minute examination of the degree of concentration on the part of the dialogue-partner churches in such areas as Scripture, apostolicity, understanding of orders, and organization. Without doubt, the confirmation of such matters is basically important. Nevertheless, what I felt throughout the Malta conference, and actually made an intervention about it, was whether this concept was not in danger of becoming something like the old Roman Catholic ‘Holy Office of the Inquisition’ for the examination of heresy. The relation between enculturation and ecumenism would probably be a much bigger theme from now on.
48. The Truth Shall Make You Free; Lambeth Conference 1988, The Reports, Resolutions & Pastoral Letters from the Bishops(London: Church House Publishing, 1988), p. 29.
49. Mission in a Broken World — Report of ACC-8 Wales 1990 (London: Church House Publishing, 1990), p. 110.
50. In Anglicanism's understanding of catholicity and episcopal order, along with the ‘synchronicity’ which crosses the global with the local, there clearly exists a ‘diachronicity’ which, like apostolicity, carries the meaning of Christ's ministry from past to present to future. The present discussion around public philosophy can only work within a framework of synchronicity, but Anglicanism possesses the kind of meaning that can reach far beyond public philosophy. We would like to talk about that point at another time.
51. Executive Committee of the 1995 NSKK Conference on Mission, Report of the '95 Conference on Mission[in Japanese](NSKK Provincial Office,1995), p. 14.Google Scholar