This article offers a new narrative to reflect on Anglican ecclesiology through the lens of theological and cultural ‘mestizaje’. At a time of increasing signs of fragmentation in the world and the church (including the Anglican Communion), this study affirms elements that have been present in historic Anglicanism and contemporary Anglican praxis: the value of intercultural relations, dialogical processes and theological humility. While recognizing the challenges, complexity and limitations of the Anglican mestizo model, it asserts its intrinsic value as a source of ecclesial koinonia.

Two young teachers posted at an Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada, sought to act as whistleblowers regarding abuse there in 1952–53. Theologian Eugene R. Fairweather of Trinity College, Toronto, acted as their advocate and spiritual advisor. A significant correspondence, mostly purged from the official record, considered the reports of the whistleblowers, their fate, and the fraught place of the Residential Schools in Canadian Anglicanism in the decades before the era of Truth and Reconciliation. This article examines the relevant correspondence, retained only in the archival remains of Fairweather at Trinity. The correspondence, which adds to existing narratives of Anglican complicity in and responses to abuse at the Schools, suggests that future research must scrutinize official as well as previously overlooked sources of information, particularly the archival repositories of universities and theological schools, in search of the truth.

This article unearths the forgotten history of the first modern church planting scheme in the Church of England: an attempt to restructure parish ministry in Chester-le-Street, near Durham, in the 1970s and 1980s. This story of rapid growth followed by decline, and of an evangelical church’s strained relations with their liberal bishop, David Jenkins, has pertinence for contemporary Anglican antagonisms over ‘fresh expressions’ and other church planting programmes. A culture of mistrust is arguably apparent both then and now, between liberals and conservatives in ecclesiology, even as the same line divides those of the reverse tendency in broader, doctrinal theology: conservatives from liberals. Developments, decisions and, indeed, debacles in the story of Chester-le-Street parish point to the urgent need for liberals and conservatives in Anglican ecclesiology and theology to overcome their mistrust of each other by recognizing the other as valuable for the mutual strengthening and renewal of the Church.

In a preparatory essay for the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation 2011, on the topic of marriage, Thomas Cooper questioned the long-held view that the question of consent in the Prayer Book tradition was derived from the older betrothal vow. Arguing from the Latin of the Sarum Use, ‘Volo’, he argued that ‘Will you ..?’ and ‘I will’ reflects the Old English present tense and is part of the marriage vow. This article questions Cooper’s argument, and instead argues that the use of ‘will’ as a future tense already in Middle English and used in betrothals pre-dates the Latin text. As a result, the separation of the consent (understood as an immediate future intention) from the qvow as in the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer and the Church of England Common Worship 2000 is entirely justified.

Kenneth E. Kirk is regarded as the person who revived moral theology in the Anglican tradition in the early to mid-twentieth century. This article argues that a renewal of interest in mysticism, led especially by W.R. Inge and Evelyn Underhill in the first two decades of the twentieth century, was influential upon Kirk’s outlook, especially his association of moral theology with ascetic theology (or mystical theology), and linking of personal holiness with ethics. Kirk made prayer – especially contemplative prayer – and worship primary in the education of the soul, the forging of Christian character and therefore the creation of a moral agent.

The Church of England is blessed with an extraordinary inheritance of church buildings. However, this inheritance, particularly in rural contexts, is increasingly being viewed as a financial millstone and encumbrance to mission. This article takes issue with the largely ‘functional’ understanding of church buildings which is common place in the Church of England. It will argue that there needs to be a rediscovery of the symbolic and sacramental power of buildings. By reasserting the sacramental and symbolic power of church buildings we can come again to recognize how all church buildings – and not just those blessed with a great history or soaring architecture – exist in part to articulate the ongoing presence and activity of God in creation.

This essay demonstrates how Louis-Marie Chauvet’s sacramental theology both coheres with the sacramentology of the Anglican divines and challenges the multitude of sacramental expressions within Anglicanism today. After giving a brief background to the sacramental controversies inherited by both Chauvet and Richard Hooker, the first section of this essay argues that key similarities exist between unitive Anglican sacramental concepts and core components of Louis-Marie Chauvet’s fundamental theology as outlined in his monograph Symbol and Sacrament. After demonstrating that, through these similarities, Chauvet’s theology should be seen as a fruitful conversation partner with Anglican sacramentology, the second section of the essay will focus on two concepts within Symbol and Sacrament (the Eucharist as stumbling block and ritual as symbolic rupture) that hold the potential to enrich sacramentology within Anglicanism today.

This essay examines pressures and theological developments regarding sexuality and birth control within Anglicanism, as represented by statements from Lambeth Conferences and in discussions in the Church of England during the early to mid twentieth century, and notes some of the changes in ‘official’ position within US churches and especially The Episcopal Church. It offers comparison with the developments in moral theology within the Roman Catholic Church after 1930 and asks if, and by what means, the two Communions may come to agree on the specific issue of contraception.

The noted Episcopal theologian William Porcher DuBose was a seminarian when the American Civil War began. He was torn between continuing his studies for ordination and joining the Confederate Army. He felt duty bound to defend his homeland, and he served heroically, wounded in combat, and taken as a prisoner of war. Troubled by the senselessness and inhumanity of war, he was eventually ordained and served as a military chaplain. He devoted himself to faith and ministry when he realized his country and culture were lost. DuBose vividly presents his views on war and faith in his wartime correspondence with his fiancée and later wife Anne Barnwell Perroneau, and other writings. His experiences of loss and poverty were the basis for his theology of the cross and his understanding of the role of suffering in the Christian life, and he subsequently dedicated himself to faith, peace, and reconciliation.

This article explores the development of domestic devotion in the Georgian Church of England through an examination of the manuals of prayer produced and circulated for both personal and family use throughout the eighteenth century. Alongside more well-known works, including Edmund Gibson’s Family Devotion and Robert Nelson’s Companion for the Festivals and Fasts, it pays attention to the diverse material provided for private and household devotion and its relationship to The Book of Common Prayer. The article highlights the key themes that were expressed through this literature, the spirituality that it fostered, and the sources on which it drew. It reveals how greater awareness of this material can deepen our understanding of how Georgian Anglicans prayed and what they were encouraged to pray for.