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Unity and Concord: An Early Anglican ‘Communion’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Philip H.E. Thomas
Philip H.E. Thomas
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Abstract

The Anglican Communion did not come into being solely as a geographical extension of the Church of England. An agreement between episcopalian churches in Scotland and America in the eighteenth century represents a significant point in the development of Communion (koinonia) for Anglican ecclesiology. This essay traces the circumstances and the content of the agreement as an example of the way in which Anglicans have come, and are coming, to reconceive the way in which they participate in a global fellowship within the universal church of Jesus Christ.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , June 2004 , pp. 9 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) and The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2004

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References

1. See, for example, Wright, J. Robert, ‘Anglicanism, Ecclesia Anglicana, and Anglican: An Essay on Terminology’, in Sykes, S. and Booty, J. (ed.), The Study of Anglicanism (London: SPCK/Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 424–29.Google Scholar

2. Ecumenical thinking stems from the report of the 5th WCC Faith and Order Conference, On the Way to Fuller Koinonia (Geneva: WCC, 1994)Google Scholar. Anglicans have successfully utilized the notion in various bilateral unity initiatives (e.g. the Porvoo Agreement) and for a domestic understanding of their international relationship in The Virginia Report (London: ACC, 1998)Google Scholar. Intensifying questions about the impairment of Anglicanism's communion means that the current task of the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission is to investigate whether the theme of koinonia is not only useful in securing the unity of those who want to come together, but resilient enough to sustain the communion of those who are threatening to drift apart.

3. The event is recounted in Beardsley, E.E., Life and Correspondence of Bishop Seabury (1882), pp. 76–162Google Scholar; and described in standard histories, e.g. Albright, Raymond W., A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 113–40Google Scholar. Herklots, H.G.G., The Church of England and the American Episcopal Church (London: Mowbray, 1966)Google Scholar discussed the relationships involved at length, and also referred to it in an article reflecting on the 1963 Anglican Congress in Toronto: ‘Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Anglican Communion’, Church Quarterly Review 165.357 (1964), pp. 444–49.Google Scholar

4. A modern edition is White, W., The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered (ed. Salomon, R.G.; Philadelphia: Church Historical Society, 1954).Google Scholar

5. The way in which Richard Bancroft, at the request of the General Assembly, consecrated three Scottish bishops could have been an interesting precedent for White's proposal, should it have come to effect. Since 1572 they had been titular bishops, acting in a supervisory role but without being consecrated or episcopally ordained. The Laudians were uncertain about this procedure and that was one of the reasons for further Scottish bishops to be made in 1661. The per saltum ordinations (lit. ‘at a leap’ — when all three episcopal orders were conveyed at once without the usual ‘interstices’) were considered as a possible route to ‘Home Reunion’ by the 1908 Lambeth Conference Unity Committee (The Five Lambeth Conferences[London: SPCK, 1920], p. 432).Google Scholar

6. The document is printed in full in Perry, W.S., Historical Notes and Documents (1874), pp. 238–40Google Scholar, and Beardsley, E.E., Life and Correspondence of Bishop Seabury (1882), pp. 150ffGoogle Scholar. Surprisingly it does not appear in Evans, G.R. and Wright, J.R. (eds.), The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources (London: SPCK, 1991)Google Scholar, but understandably features in Armentrout, D.S. and Slocum, R.B. (eds.), Documents of Witness: A History of the Episcopal Church (1782–1985) (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1994), pp. 14–17Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that in drafting the document attention was drawn to a concordat between the English non-Jurors and the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1716—and that Articles II and IV, referred to shortly, follow the wording of that agreement closely.

7. The new Prayer Book included the prayers of Oblation and Invocation in the form and structure of the Scottish book, which had in turn taken them from the English Prayer Book of 1549.

8. Albright, , A History, p. 140.Google Scholar

9. Herklots, , The Church of England, p. 95.Google Scholar

10. The subject is a prominent theme traced by Avis, Paul, Anglicanism and the Christian Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989)Google Scholar, where a historic Anglican debate leads to the conclusion: ‘Baptism is the fundamental sacrament of Christianity … Baptism constitutes the ground of our unity … We do not deny one another's baptism; therefore we cannot deny our mutual status in Christ … We seek to be in communion with those who are already in communion with our Lord’ (p. 311).

11. This was expressed legally in the Colonial Clergy Act of 1874, which made clear that the right to minister in the Church of England was determined by the organization and discipline of that church, not the nationality or the source of ordination of overseas Anglican ministers.