The thesis of this study is that Australian Anglicanism has practised diverse theologies of the eucharist and that the diversity itself is a valid characteristic of Anglicanism. Douglas argues that the diversity consists mainly of variations on two philosophical positions: ‘moderate realism’ and ‘nominalism’. Moderate realism is the view that sacraments communicate the grace of a generous God, specifically in the eucharist, by the bread and wine and the liturgy ‘really’ conveying what they ‘signify’. Integral to the ‘moderate realist’ position in philosophy is anamnesis in theology which holds that ‘the effects of Christ's sacrifice are identified with the eucharistic celebration and instantiated in the present in the Eucharist’ (p. 15).
In the less sacramental world of the nominalists, preferred by heirs of the Reformation, access to the benefit of Christ's atoning death is through propositional faith. The bread and wine are ‘memorials’ of a past rather than a present event. This doctrine of the Lord's Supper is receptionist: benefit of the signified grace of Christ is confined to the moment of reception when the communicant feeds on Christ by faith. Those of a more Catholic persuasion express moderate realist understanding of the eucharist, while Evangelicals prefer nominalism. The author professes to avoid taking sides himself in the interests of promoting deeper reflection and ongoing sharing within the body of Christ. This worthy aspiration is in chronic tension with the author's evident sympathy for moderate realism and his distaste for nominalism. This is not necessarily a criticism: the best ecclesiastical history is written usually by the committed. Delivering on the promise of impartiality, of course, is always more difficult than professing it.
The book's twenty chapters are divided into four sections. The first covers the 190-year history of the diverse traditions of eucharistic practice from the foundation of the penal colony in New South Wales to the adoption of An Australian prayer book (AAPB). The second details the negotiations on liturgical revision which led in 1978 to the AAPB. The third covers the period of revision leading to the production in 1995 of A prayer book for Australia (APBA). The fourth addresses further manifestations of the diversity, such as the movement for lay presidency, the validity of live-streamed ‘virtual’ eucharists in pandemics, and increasing awareness of the value of the ‘inherent sacramentality’ of Aboriginal spirituality. It is a rewarding structure, allowing breadth of coverage with illuminating case studies. At times the search for moderate realism, the philosophy by which all other theologies of the eucharist are to be judged here, tests credulity, constructed from possibilities rather than evidence. In other places, the documentary analysis is close and rich, such as the chapter on the sacramental theologies of Bishops Broughton, Perry and Nixon, based on their sermons and lectures immediately prefatory to the 1850 Bishops’ Conference. Then, following an overview of the wide-ranging options which developed in Australian Anglican dioceses before the adoption of the 1962 Constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia, Douglas treats with rewarding detail the evolution of the AAPB. He has a lot to tell us about the main players, all of whom he treats with respect. His authoritative and lively treatment of the nominalist case draws on the correspondence between Sydney's D. W. B. Robinson, probably Australia's leading Evangelical authority on liturgy, and the English liturgist, Colin Buchanan. Douglas also accesses the writings of the leading promoters of the realist side, Evan Burge and Gilbert Sinden. Robinson and Sinden became close friends during their work on the AAPB, giving hope to those who still longed for unity in the riven Anglican Church of Australia. Indeed, Douglas reports that the approval by General Synod of the AAPB with only one dissenting voice was considered at the time ‘a mighty achievement’ (p. 177).
Douglas's own assessment is more measured. He argues that it should have been evident from the advice to the 1977 General Synod from the chairman of the Liturgical Commission, Bishop Grindrod, that the Anglican Church of Australia would have to accept ‘theological variance’ and give up on the principle of uniformity. The Catholic side endorsed the AAPB out of ‘a spirit of charity’, and it was only ever intended as a short (fifteen-year) stop gap. That the AAPB was ‘a mighty achievement’ is, it seems, the Evangelical assessment which Douglas would prefer not to see accepted in Australian Anglican Church history. His revisionist interpretation has recently been endorsed by a surprising witness on the Evangelical side. Professor Edwin Judge, another member of the ten-man Liturgical Commission, understood that the duty of its members as they worked on the AAPB was to supply a contemporary version of the 1662 BCP, leaving its doctrinal function intact, ‘an intellectual challenge far more exacting than anything’ he had to deal with in his university post. But the cat was let out of the bag when a new commission took the word ‘common’ as in ‘common prayer’ to mean ‘various’. At the General Synod of 1995 Judge complained of ‘ambiguity’, but the archbishop of Brisbane cheerfully cried ‘That's just what we want’. And that is what the displeased Evangelicals believed the APBA delivered. The icing on the cake, for the Catholic realists, was the liturgical multiformity of the APBA, a reality Douglas evidences in his close analysis of the use of anamnesis and epiclesis in the five alternative thanksgivings in the APBA's Holy Communion Second Order. The Evangelicals continued to oppose both, but the General Synod's acceptance of theological variance meant they could not continue to block Catholic eucharistic theology. It is an epic drama, and Douglas's account of the tenacity of the nominalists and the persistence of the realists will educate both sides and deepen reflection on the sacraments, and no doubt speed the realists in their taste for further liturgical ‘development’.
