This collection of thirteen essays on the history of Anglican-Methodist ecumenism originated in a conference held in November 2018 to mark the acquisition by the Centre for Methodism and Church History at Oxford Brookes University of the Documents of the Anglican Methodist Union Collection (DAMUC). Around half of the essays were originally given as papers at this conference with additional essays then being added “in order to achieve a comprehensive treatment of multifaceted topic” (p. xii).
At the heart of the collection are a range of essays that look at different aspects of the Anglican- Methodist Conversations, which took place between 1955 and 1972 and which proposed a scheme for eventual Anglican-Methodist unity, a scheme that was agreed by the Methodist Conference but then twice rejected by the Church of England. These essays consider the origins and development of these conversations, why the unity scheme they proposed met with opposition in both churches, and why it was ultimately vetoed by the Anglican side.
Additional essays then look at how an ad hoc form of Anglican-Methodist ecumenism has developed in the context of army chaplaincy, how the Anglican-Methodist ordinal of 1968 “continues to have influence up to the present day” (p. 227), and how Anglican Methodist relations have developed since 1972.
This is a collection of well-written essays by Anglican and Methodist scholars who know their subject matter well and explain it in a clear and readable fashion. Anyone who wants to be better informed about the history of Anglican-Methodist ecumenism should certainly read this book. However, as someone who is a theologian as well as a church historian, I felt that there was something missing from this book, which was any evaluation from a theological perspective of the history it describes. The key theological question raised by the essays is whether Anglicans have been right to insist on ordination by bishops in historic succession, and this is a question to which the essays do not provide an answer.
