The article seeks to reflect on the Lambeth Conference of 2008 and, in particular, the use of the indaba method of engagement, in the context of the Anglican Communion’s fractured history and its need for inner reconciliation. It proposes that theological and pastoral work is required in the areas of conflict resolution and communication.

The following article was prepared before the TEC (The Episcopal Church) General Convention of 2009, and does not take account of its decisions.

Christianity and Social Order was a creature of its time and, although influential over several decades, is challenged by today's plurality and globalization. Nevertheless, the ascendancy of Radical and Neo-Orthodoxy repeats imbalances of the Christendom Group which Temple was concerned to counter. Temple's greatest weakness for today is his failure to appreciate the trend towards profound social plurality, and its challenge to his strong idea of nationhood. However, today's global economy suggests that plurality must be held in tension with other aspects of the dominant market model. Temple's work reinforces important critiques of market economics, including scepticism about the alleged impossibility of moral agreement. This in turn suggests that total abandonment of Temple's Middle Axiom approach may be premature. A better-developed theology of correctives would reflect classic Christian vocabulary, cohere with Temple's approach, and offer a route toward the revitalization of the Anglican tradition of public theology.

In the 1830s, among those associated with the Tractarian revival in England and also among certain figures in the (then) Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States (PECUSA), the idea of the ‘missionary bishop’ was propagated, which presented the bishop as a pioneer evangelist as the apostles were understood to be in New Testament times and saw the planting of the Church as necessarily including a bishop from the beginning for the ‘full integrity’ of the Church to be present. This view of the bishop as the ‘foundation stone’ was not held by the Evangelicals of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), who saw the bishop by contrast as the ‘crown’ or coping stone of the young churches. Two main protagonists were the High Churchman, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and the honorary secretary and missionary strategist, Henry Venn. The party, led by C.F. Mackenzie as Bishop and mounted by the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) in 1861 to the tribes near Lake Nyassa, was the outworking of this Tractarian ideal.

An exploration of the development and meaning of the text of the Baptismal Covenant in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church provides the basis for a discussion of the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant. The article concludes by suggesting how biblical, theological and liturgical understandings of covenant offer a perspective by which to assess the proposed Covenant for the Anglican Communion.

The thought of Percy Dearmer was related to that of Augustus Pugin and Daniel Rock, Roman Catholics seeking to revive English medieval forms, and to his Anglican near-contemporaries Conrad Noel and William Palmer Ladd. In England, Noel was more ideologically committed than Dearmer and his imagined medieval society and the English Use were given applied expression at Thaxted. In the USA, William Palmer Ladd was a congenial colleague to Dearmer but his liturgical ideals were of the 1930s, and not an outcome of the nineteenth-century English ritual controversies. Dearmer, Ladd and Noel were all grounded in what has been called Sacramental Socialism, which saw a unity between the Eucharist, the corporate church, and its mission as part of the Kingdom of God.

Initially the Church of England was the one recognized church in Australia. As other churches were established, it became the dominant church among a few others. Subsequently it became one Christian denomination among many. Now it finds itself, with other churches, among a plurality of other faiths. This evolution from singularity to plurality has raised such questions as whether truth is one or many, how unity relates to plurality and how a church conveys its message in a plural society. For Anglicans the intensity of these questions has been heightened by the plurality within Anglicanism itself. This article argues that plurality can contribute positively to a fuller perception of truth and that the pressure for unity continues in the face of pluralism, though it may be a unity obtained by excluding dissenting points of view or an inclusive unity which transcends plurality.

Sixty years after William Temple's death, little in the way of constructive theology has been done with the body of writings he left. Part of this is due to the way in which his legacy has been (mis)appropriated by some of the scholars and church leaders who are seen as his heirs and admirers. An over-emphasis on the ‘middle axioms’ approach exemplified in Christianity and Social Order, and later promoted heavily by Ronald Preston, explains much of this lack. Although the ‘middle axioms’ approach is still applicable, the principles set out in Temple's most famous work need to be re-examined and perhaps expanded in the light of a post-Christian plural society. The purpose of this essay is to examine a broader range of Temple's work than is commonly done. By doing so, I will propose that the virtues of intellectual excellence, graciousness, and the welfare of the wider (non-church) society are guiding principles for ecclesial being, speech and action that are fully present in Temple's writings.

This article identifies and compares two ecclesiological ‘streams’ that coalesced when the Anglican Communion was definitively formed in 1867: the traditional western catholic ecclesiology of England and Ireland and the more democratic, egalitarian ecclesiology of the American Episcopal Church. These streams had already mingled in George Augustus Selwyn’s constitution for the New Zealand Church. Incorporation of laypeople into the Church of England’s synods represented further convergence. Nonetheless, different understandings of the role of bishops in church government are still reflected in attitudes to the respective roles in the Communion’s affairs of bishops and primates on the one hand and the more recent Anglican Consultative Council on the other. Differences between the two streams were noticeable at the 1867 Lambeth Conference. The efforts of Archbishops Davidson and Fisher, rooted in the work of Selwyn, to hold together what Selwyn called ‘the two branches of our beloved Church’ are praised.

The patriarchal environment of nineteenth century England viewed women as weak and naïve creatures who should submit to the dictates of men. Religion, however, could give women a sense of freedom and independence from male authority. When auricular confession began to gain acceptance in some sections of the Anglican Church, women saw this as a way of asserting their independence because they could confide their personal thoughts and problems to a clergymen. This could, in the opinion of some, threaten the powerful role of the husband or father by substituting an alternative patriarchal system, and many critics warned of the dangers associated with the confessional, especially the weakening of the male dominated family structure. The Priest in Absolution gave advice to Anglican confessors, but the sexual nature of the questions, made public in 1877, shocked the public and confirmed the fears of the opponents of auricular confession.

The Church of England is experiencing a significant decline in membership and in other forms of influence and engagement, whose implications may have consequences for the Anglican Communion as a whole. The qualitative as well as quantitative changes suggest the need for a renewal of Anglican public theology that maintains a positive account of the relationship between church and world while letting go the expectation of privilege and power. Articles in this issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies address the public character of Christianity in Britain after Christendom.

Historians have used a number of political, social, and other factors to explain the controversy surrounding elementary education in Victorian Britain. This article underscores the importance of religious motivations. The Act of 1870 – a significant extension of state responsibility – did not end debates about the purpose of education and the pros and cons of government involvement and religious instruction. Prominent among voluntaryists and anti-secularists was A. J. Beresford Hope, whose position offers useful insights into the educational agencies of the Church and the manner in which churchmen responded to new circumstances. This article explains Hope’s attitude and uses it to explore some of the causes and consequences of the Act of 1870. What type of schooling best suited the British people? Should it have a basis in something other than religion? How could the Church and its supporters meet the challenges posed by education reform?

This article is a response to the essays in this issue of the Journal of Anglican Studies on scriptural reasoning in the Anglican context, from the perspective of a Roman Catholic theologian, and one who is engaged in another kind of interreligious study, comparative theology. It sets out in general terms the distinctive character of comparative theology as an inquiry that crosses the borders between religious traditions. It draws attention to some of the common ground between comparative theology and scriptural reasoning and the character of each as theological disciplines, even while drawing out some of the distinctive marks of comparative theology. In this way it aims to shed light on how scriptural reasoning, even in its general form, is similar to other sustained efforts at interreligious learning, yet possessed of distinctive characteristics that make it interestingly different from the close reading that is comparative theology.

The standpoint adopted here is that of a diocesan bishop serving in the Nippon SeiKoKai (NSKK, Anglican Church). The NSKK is a small church and has a long history in Japan. Its public stance has been relatively moderate and approaches Japanese society and other Christian churches in a modest way. Government agencies have tended to regard Christianity as peculiar and even dangerous. The moderate approach of the NSKK has meant that it has tended to yield its social work to the government. Liturgy and in particular the Eucharist has been the sustaining focus of the life of the NSKK. Monotheistic religions are regarded as not as suitable for peace as Buddhism and this creates special concerns for witness in a pseudo-religious and pseudo-communal society. The NSKK faces real challenges of enculturation and needs to find resources in the networks of the Anglican Communion for different experiences to be shared.

The controversy over the ordination of women as priests in the Church of the Province of Uganda has been going on for a long time. Today, there are a few women priests in a good number of dioceses in the Church of the Province of Uganda. But this revolution against the conservative order of male domination has not come without a price. Women who feel called by God to the ministry in the Church of the Province of Uganda are usually discriminated against even when they eventually become ordained. One wonders whether women are called by God but ordained by men. This article looks at the work and ministry of one of those women who opened the door to the ordination of women in the Church of the Province of Uganda. In her response to the challenges of the time, Njangali not only refused the old definitions of women’s involvement in church ministry but also guided the whole church to rethink and renew its leadership policy.

The origins of the term consensus fidelium lie in the rhetorical tropes of pagans who exhorted unity between friends and within cities – tropes supporting the hierarchy of imperial elites. The earliest Christians adapted this language for the same purpose within churches: to speak of unity and lay involvement in support of Church hierarchy. After the Reformation, Church of England writers used this rhetoric to enforce conformity to church polity and morality. The Tractarians and their successors employed a rhetorical ‘voice of the laity’ as a bolster for episcopal power. While the early twentieth century saw some in the Church of England and Anglican Communion use this same rhetoric to bring the laity into actual decision-making processes, the rhetoric of recent statements by the Communion has left power firmly with bishops.

This article argues that for good practice, well-being and fruitful ministry, decisions by and about clergy married to clergy (CMC) in the Church of England require a clear quantitative picture of their ministry, and offers such a picture in early 2013 drawn primarily from published data, compared with national Church of England statistics. Over 26 per cent more clergy dyads were found than previously thought, with many active in ministry. A wide variety of ministry patterns were identified, including a higher than normal percentage in non-parochial roles, supporting previous research noting high levels of boundary enmeshment and absorptiveness. Considerable gender inequality prevailed in shared parochial settings in spite of women having been ordained priest for nearly 20 years, with very few wives holding more senior positions than their husbands, while female CMC are more likely to be dignitaries than other ordained women.

Leadership remains the biggest challenge facing the Church in Africa today. The Anglican Church in Kenya (ACK) was started in 1844, but was it was not until 1888 that the official training of church leaders was commenced with the opening of a Divinity School at Frere Town. Since its inception the ACK has experienced a tremendous growth in membership, growing at the rate of about 6.7 per cent per annum. In spite of this rapid growth, the ACK is in leadership crises due to lack of enough and well-equipped clergy to run it. The Anglican population of about 3,711,890 Christians is served by only about 1555 clergy, translating to clergy per Christians ratio of about 1 : 2400. This affects the Church's mission in that it is impossible for one clergy to effectively provide spiritual care to 2400 Christians. On top of this, the majority of the clergy currently serving in the ACK are not properly trained to match the rapidly changing Kenyan society. About 83 per cent of these clergy have diploma and below theological qualifications. If the ACK has to be successful in its mission in this century, it has to reconsider its training systems.

Anglicanism has come to worldwide significance in the context of modernity and debate about the recent difficulties in the Anglican communion which have been of such note and concern has been influenced by this context. The categories of the debate as reflected in the Virginia Report provide a case study of the difficulties. That report is examined in this light and the tendency of the argument drawn out to show a disposition to see issues in terms of control and exclusion. A consideration of the origins of the Anglican Communion shows that it expresses a disposition of Christians to pray for one another. It is a myth not in the sense that it is unreal but in the sense that it provides a way of understanding how the communion works. It works like a myth and in being re-enacted gains its force. This argument is combined with the notion of scapegoat in the writings of Rene Girard and applied to the case of Gene Robinson in order to lead to a better understanding of inclusive love and communion.