Anglicanism is . . . 8. Sacramental

“Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men's profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace, and God's good will towards us, by the which he doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our Faith in him.
 
There are two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord.”
– Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, Article XXV. Of the Sacraments (1571)
 
Anglicans recognize that “Other sacramental rites which evolved in the Church include confirmation, ordination, holy matrimony, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction” (An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, 1979 Book of Common Prayer), but have not generally counted them as sacraments on a par with baptism and Eucharist.
 
Baptism
 
“The crushing suffocation of sin, the rage that sweeps over us like torrents, the weakness that undermines all resolve, the pitiful self-righteousness that cannot ignore how tinny it all sounds, the smallness and meanness, the icy darkness of cruelty: Christ has tasted all this in His baptism for us and for our sake.”
– Katherine Sonderegger (1950 - ), Systematic Theology Vol. 1
 
“Christians will be found in the neighbourhood of Jesus – but Jesus is found in the neighbourhood of human confusion and suffering, defencelessly alongside those in need. If being baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny.”
– Rowan Williams (1960 - ), Being Christian
 
“Christians are baptized ‘into a life summed up in love,’ even though we have to spend the rest of our own lives learning how to do it. Love, therefore, is the budding-point from which all the rest come: that tender, cherishing attitude; that unlimited self-forgetfulness, generosity and kindness which is the attitude of God to all His creatures; and so must be the attitude towards them which His Holy Spirit brings forth in us . . . To be unloving is to be out of touch with God. So the generous, cherishing Divine Love, the indiscriminate delight in others, just or unjust, must be our model too. To come down to brass tacks, God loves the horrid man at the fish shop, the tiresome woman in the next flat, the disappointing vicar . . . and the contractor who has cut down the row of trees we loved, to build a row of revolting bungalows. God *loves*, not tolerates, these wayward, half-grown, self-centered spirits, and seeks without ceasing to draw them into His love. And the first-fruit of His indwelling presence, the first sign that we are on His side and He on ours, must be at least a tiny bud of this Charity breaking the hard and rigid outline of our life.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Fruits of the Spirit
 
"The sacrament of baptism is a lifelong commitment immersed in the reality of the triune God and daring to live the teachings and the ways of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a commitment to renounce, reject, and actively oppose in our lives and in our world anything that rebels against the God who the Bible says is love. It is a commitment to renounce anything that attempts to separate us from the love of God and from each other. It is a commitment to renounce anything that hurts or harms any human child of God or this creation."
– Michael Curry (1953 - ), Opening remarks for Executive Council, June 25, 2021
 
"In Jesus, God shows what it looks like to be vulnerable, humble, and self-giving. In him, we see one who did not run from the things that broke his heart, nor did he first calculate what he would gain from a situation. Jesus sought instead to give away his life, that he and others night flourish as God intends. And before you say, 'Well, he was God; of course he did. What's that got to do with us?’, know *how* Jesus did it. In the very first chapter of Mark, Jesus heads from Nazareth to be baptized by John in the River Jordan. Just as Jesus comes up from the waters, the heavens break open and the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. 'And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased"' (Mark 1:10-11). Everything that follows is powered by the Holy Spirit and by the love of God.
 
The same Spirit that Jesus received now rests on anyone who follows him. God invites us into covenant, whereby the power of the Spirit we can allow our hearts to break, and then take the pieces–our lives, our love, our privileges–and share it all like a broken loaf of communion bread."
– Stephanie Spellers (1971 - ), The Church Cracked Open
 
Eucharist
 
“We receive Christ Jesus in baptism once as the first beginner of our life, and in the eucharist repeatedly to bring our life by degrees to its completion”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“. . . they saw their Lord and Master with hands and eyes lifted up to heaven first bless and consecrate for the endless good of all generations till the world's end the chosen elements of bread and wine, which elements made for ever the instruments of life by virtue of his divine benediction . . . They had at that time a sea of comfort and joy to wade in, and we by that which they did are taught that this heavenly food is given for the satisfying of our empty souls, and not for the exercising of our curious and subtle wits.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“It was one special end why the Sacrament itself was ordained, our comfort; the Church so tells us, we so hear it read every time to us: He has ordained these mysteries of His love and favour, to our great and endless comfort. The Father will give you the Comforter. Why He gives Him, we see; how He gives Him, we see not. The means for which He gives Him, is Christ—His entreaty by His word in prayer; by His flesh and blood in sacrifice, for His blood speaks, not His voice only. These means for which; and the very same, the means by which He gives the Comforter: by Christ the Word, and by Christ’s body and blood, both. In tongues it came, but the tongue is not the instrument of speech only but of taste, we all know. . . That not only by the letter we read, and the word we hear, but by the flesh we eat, and the blood we drink at His table, we be made partakers of His Spirit, and of the comfort of it.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Sermons of the Sending of the Holy Ghost preached Upon Whit-Sunday, Sermon III
 
“The doctrine of the church of England, and generally of the Protestants, in this article, is,--that after the minister of the holy mysteries hath rightly prayed, and blessed or consecrated the bread and the wine, the symbols become changed into the body and blood of Christ, after a sacramental, that is, in a spiritual real manner: so that all that worthily communicate, do by faith receive Christ really, effectually, to all the purposes of his passion: the wicked receive not Christ, but the bare symbols only; but yet to their hurt, because the offer of Christ is rejected, and they pollute the blood of the covenant, by using it as an unholy thing. The result of which doctrine is this: It is bread, and it is Christ's body. It is bread in substance, Christ in the sacrament; and Christ is as really given to all that are truly disposed, as the symbols are; each as they can; Christ as Christ can be given; the bread and wine as they can; and to the same real purposes, to which they are designed; and Christ does as really nourish and sanctify the soul, as the elements do the body. It is here, as in the other sacrament; for as there natural water becomes the laver of regeneration; so here, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ; but, there and here too, the first substance is changed by grace, but remains the same in nature.”
– Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667). The Real Presence and Spiritual of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament

“In the Eucharist, with the Risen Jesus present as our food, we are worshipping with the saints and angels in heaven. But the risen Jesus who is the heart of the heavenly worship is also a Jesus who was crucified, and we share in heaven’s worship only as sharing also in the Jesus who suffers in the world around us, reminding us to meet him there and to serve him in those who suffer. Indeed in the Eucharist we are summoned by two voices, which are really one voice: ‘Come, the heavenly banquet is here. Join with me and my mother and my friends in the heavenly supper.’ ‘Come, I am here in this world in those who suffer. Come to me, come with me, and serve me in them.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), Quoted in Love’s Redeeming Work: The Anglican Quest for Holiness, Rowell, Stevenson, Williams, ed.

 
“The creation in all its intricacy and ambiguity is placed on the altar. We place ourselves there, too, even though we can scarcely fathom the mystery of ourselves any more than the wildness of creation. We present the totality of our lives with the bread and wine. We may be eating the ‘bread of adversity and the water of affliction (Isaiah 30:20); we may be content and thankful; we may be confused or exhausted. We may have daily work, cares, and relationships to bring to the altar. To present these things at God’s altar is to present ourselves. We present them so the bread and the wine will be transformed into Christ, and that we ourselves will become Christ anew. Jesus ‘takes’ the bread and the cup from us. We await transformation.”
– Julia Gatta (1948 - ), Life in Christ: Practicing Christian Spirituality
 
“This is why Jesus is hymned not as grape juice but as wine: because He is dangerous and excessive. He is more than you need, and He is more than pleasure, and if you attend to Him, you will find so much there that you will be derailed completely. And you will think your heart might break. And then, per Louis de Blois, He will withdraw and you will be miserable and sick until He returns.”
– Lauren Winner (1976 - ), Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God

 
“The chief object, then, of the Holy Eucharist, as conveyed by type or prophecy, by the very elements chosen, or by the words of our Lord, is the support and enlargement of life, and that in Him.”
– Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the Penitent
 
Sacramental Perspective

Through the lens of the sacraments, we begin to see that all of creation is indeed sacramental – all material reality is charged with spiritual significance.
 
“The Eucharist demonstrates that material reality can become charged with Jesus' life, and so proclaimed hope for the whole world of matter. . . The matter of the Eucharist, carrying the presence of the risen Jesus, can only be a sign of life, of triumph over the death of exclusion and isolation . . . If the Eucharist is a sign of the ultimate Lordship of Jesus, his ‘freedom’ to unite to himself the whole material order as a symbol of grace, it speaks of creation itself, and the place of Jesus in creation.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel

“What else do the sacraments teach us but that we dare not approach heaven by leaving creation behind? Indeed, Catholicism [including Catholic Anglicanism] insists that to be with God we must be willing to subject ourselves to the simplest objects of creation: water, grapes, grain and oil. Strange to think that the same ingredients used for baking a pie can be used for filling the faithful with God’s grace. Alongside the wood of the cross, those four ingredients are the earthly elements of our salvation. Without them we are lost.”
– Mark Clavier (1970 - ), A Pilgrimage of Paradox: A Backpacker’s Encounters with God and Nature
 
“In a general sense you may say that the whole universe is sacramental – that is to say, all material things have some spiritual meaning. They convey to us some vision of beauty and truth and good. The whole universe is a Sacrament of God. So it is that all our great poets of nature are sacramental.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), The Holy Communion
 
“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
– C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Weight of Glory

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Anglicanism is . . . 7. Centered in Worship and Prayer

 
“[Anglican theology is done] to the sound of church bells, for that is what Christian theology really is all about – worshipping God the Savior through Jesus Christ in the theology of the apostolic age.”
– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), Anglican Spirit
 
“Thought is not all. Conduct is not all. Life is unspeakably impoverished if it is unhallowed by the sanctities of reverence and worship.”
– Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), Christus Consummator: Some Aspects of the Work and Person of Christ in Relation to Modern Thought
 
“One’s first duty is adoration, and one’s second duty is awe and only one’s third duty is service. And that for those three things and nothing else, addressed to God and no one else, you and I and all other countless human creatures evolved upon the surface of this planet were created. We observe then that two of the three things for which our souls were made are matters of attitude, of relation: adoration and awe. Unless these two are right, the last of the triad, service, won’t be right. Unless the whole of your . . . life is a movement of praise and adoration, unless it is instinct with awe, the work which the life produces won’t be much good.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1841), Concerning the Inner Life
 
“I feel the regular, steady, docile practice of corporate worship is of utmost importance for the building-up of your spiritual life…no amount of solitary reading makes up for humble immersion in the life and worship of the Church.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Letters of Evelyn Underhill
 
“The Eucharist divorced from life loses reality; life devoid of worship loses direction and power. It is the worshiping life that can transform the world.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), Citizen and Churchman
 
“Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose — and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. Yes — worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), Readings in St. John’s Gospel
 
“It is mere humbug to say that we will serve God by our conduct but cannot find time for prayer and worship. If that is all we can do, we shall serve him just as much as we have been doing – which has brought the world to the mess it is now in. We must have our times of companionship with God.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), The Hope of a New World
 
“Be not discouraged if but few come to the Solemn Assemblies, but go to the House of Prayer, where God is well known for a sure Refuge: Go, though you go alone, or but with one besides your self; and there as you are God’s Remembrancer, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.”
– Thomas Ken (1637-1711), A Pastoral Letter from the Bishop of Bath and Wells to his Clergy concerning their Behaviour during Lent
 
“God is available to all of us. God says, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Each one of us wants and needs to give ourselves space for quiet. We can hear God’s voice most clearly when we are quiet, uncluttered, undistracted—when we are still. Be still, be quiet, and then you begin to see with the eyes of the heart.
 
One image that I have of the spiritual life is of sitting in front of a fire on a cold day. We don’t have to do anything. We just have to sit in front of the fire and then gradually the qualities of the fire are transferred to us. We begin to feel the warmth. We become the attributes of the fire. It’s like that with us and God. As we take time to be still and to be in God’s presence, the qualities of God are transferred to us.
 
Far too frequently we see ourselves as doers. As we’ve seen, we feel we must endlessly work and achieve. We have not always learned just to be receptive, to be in the presence of God, quiet, available, and letting God be God, who wants us to be God. We are shocked, actually, when we hear that what God wants is for us to be godlike, for us to become more and more like God.  Not by doing anything, but by letting God be God in and through us.”
– Desmond Tutu (1931-2921), God has a Dream
 
“Prayer is this constant return to the place where one’s projects are frail and fallible and where one can only fall on God’s mercy. That’s the place God works. And God works powerfully there.”
– Sarah Coakley (1951 - ), Prayer as Divine Propulsion: An Interview with Sarah Coakley, Part I, The Other Journal
 
“Sure, sometimes it is great when, in prayer, we can express to God just what we feel; but better still when, in the act of praying, our feelings change. Liturgy is not, in the end, open to our emotional whims. It re-points the person praying, taking him somewhere else.”
– Lauren Winner (1976 - ), Mudhouse Sabbath
 
“We are given the gift of having the Spirit pray to God through us. Simply ask to join in the communion of the Trinity that prays eternally in perfect love. It is truly amazing grace that we can enter this eternal and dynamic prayer.”
 – Patricia Lyons, What Is Evangelism?
 
“When we are not able to do any other thing for men's behalf, when through maliciousness or unkindness they vouchsafe not to accept any other good at our hands, prayer is that which we always have in our power to bestow, and they never in theirs to refuse.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesial Polity

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6. Catholic and Reformed/Evangelical

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8. Sacramental

Anglicanism is . . . 6. Catholic and Reformed/Evangelical

“These be cases not of wit, but of faith; not of eloquence, but of truth; not invented or devised by us, but from the Apostles and the holy Fathers and founders of the Church by long succession brought unto us. We are not the devisers thereof, but only the keepers; not the masters, but the scholars. Touching the substance of religion, we believe what the ancient Catholike learned Fathers believed: we do what they did: we say what they said. And marvel not, in what side soever ye see them, if ye see us join unto the same. It is our great comfort that we see their faith and our faith to agree in one.”
– John Jewel (1522-1571), An Answer to M. Harding’s Conclusion
 
“We declare aloud that we are Catholic, but not Roman, the last of which words destroys the meaning of the first. We will never confine words of so wide an import within the narrow limits of one city or one man’s breast. The more that a man refuses to do that, the more Catholic is he.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Response to Cardinal Bellarmine
 
After writing appreciatively of both Luther and Calvin, John Cosin goes on to write, “We are no more followers of Luther or Calvin than of the Pope, where either they or he fall away from Holy Scripture, or cease to walk in the footsteps of the old Fathers who consent in the Catholic Faith. It is clear from all this that we have introduced no new religion into the world or into the Church. On our principles none such could be introduced, but the faith must remain in its completeness and unaltered. It is also clear that we retain in all essentials the Christian and Catholic Faith, which existed formerly, by which we, as well as our ancestors, were brought into the bosom of the Church, and which alone could save us.”
– John Cosin (1594-1672), The Religion, Discipline and Rites of the Church of England
 
“I die in the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Faith, professed by the whole Church, before the disunion of East and West: more particularly I die in the communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan Innovations.”
– Thomas Ken (1627-1711), an epitaph provided in his will
 
Reflecting on the 39 Articles of Religion, F. D. Maurice wrote, “The principles of the Reformation are asserted in the one division, not as necessary qualifications, but as indispensable conditions of the great Catholic truths which had been asserted in the other. And so to whatever cause we owe it, this has been the result of these articles; they have been thorns in the side of those who have wished to establish an English theological system, either fashioned out of the materials which Romanism or Calvinism supplies; they have encouraged persons of all sects and schools to hope that their principles, in some sense or other, might be contained in them, or by some process or other extracted out of them . . .”
– Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), The Kingdom of Christ
 
“In 1868 Bishop [Jackson] Kemper referred to the plans for organizing the Diocese of Fond du Lac in the following words: ‘The example of zeal and true Christian faith would be so beneficial, and so
encouraging to the whole of the Reformed Catholic Church, throughout the world, that I hereby pledge my cordial support’.”
– ‘Bishop Grafton', a Commemorative Volume by Reginald H. Weller, James O. S. Huntington OHC, William Walter Webb, William Harman van Allen, George McClellan Fiske, Erving Winslow (1913)
 
“Our special character and, as we believe, our peculiar contribution to the Universal Church, arises from the fact that owing to historic circumstances, we have been enabled to combine in our one fellowship the traditional Faith and Order of the Catholic Church with that immediacy of approach to God through Christ to which the Evangelical Churches especially bear witness, and freedom of intellectual inquiry, whereby the correlation of the Christian revelation and advancing knowledge is constantly effected.”
– Bishops’ Encyclical, 1930 Lambeth Conference
 
“The Anglican churches have received and hold the faith of Catholic Christendom, but they have exhibited a rich variety of methods both of approach and of interpretation. They are heirs of the Reformation as well as the Catholic tradition; and they hold together in a single fellowship of worship and witness those whose chief attachment is to each of these, and also those whose attitude to the distinctively Christian tradition of a free and liberal culture which is historically the bequest of the Greek spirit and which was recovered for Western Europe at the Renaissance.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), Introduction to Doctrine in the Church of England, The Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine, 1938
 
“First, there are two very definite schools of thought in the Church of England, one of which tends to emphasise that she is a branch of the Catholic Church and the other, that she is a Protestant Church; and secondly, that in spite of acute differences both in ceremonial and in actual doctrine, there are certain points on which all Anglicans would agree together, as against Rome on the one hand and Geneva on the other. She would, for example, agree with Geneva against Rome in repudiating certain Papal claims and certain pronouncements about doctrine which she does not hold to be oecumenical; she would agree with Rome against Geneva in upholding the Apostolic Succession and the formal theology of the Creeds.”
– Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Worship in the Anglican Church
 
“The Anglican Tradition . . . has its strong Catholic element – which emphasizes the historic continuity and organized life of the Church as the appointed channel of the Divine grace through creed, ministry, and sacraments. It has its strong Evangelical element, which emphasizes Gospel before Church, personal conversion before corporate expression of it, spiritual immediacy, the direct response to the Holy Spirit wherever He may breathe. It has its third strong element, not easy to give a name to, which acts as a watchdog of both the other elements, and brings into our tradition a special element of intellectual integrity, of sobriety and moderation of judgment, of moral earnestness – an element which is as aware of what we do not know as of what we do, which does not wish to go beyond the evidence but to judge all things with a large and reasonable charity.
 
No Anglican should be without something of these elements.”
– Geoffrey Fisher (1887-1972), Archbishop of Canterbury, Address Delivered to the Joint Session of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal in the United States of America, Sept. 12, 1946
 
“While the New Testament emphasises the Catholic truth that the church is the extension of the Incarnation, it stresses also the vital importance of that Faith which is associated with the word Evangelical; for the Indwelling of Christ, which makes possible the Church, is linked to Faith in Him ‘Who loved me and gave Himself for me.’”
 – Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), The Body of Christ - An Appeal to Anglo-Catholics, The English Catholic: the Quarterly Gazette of the Anglican Society (Summer 1928)

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5. Liberally Catholic and Generously Orthodox

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7. Centered in Worship and Prayer

Anglicanism is . . . 5. Liberally Catholic and Generously Orthodox

As we have seen, Anglicans take the Bible, Tradition, Creeds and theology seriously. But we tend to be generous in interpretation and minimalist when it comes to things that we expect everyone to agree upon.

“Be of good comfort, we have to do with a merciful God, ready to make the best of that little which we hold well, and not with a captious sophister who gathereth the worst out of everything wherein we err.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), A Learned Discourse of Justification
 
“Although we must neither deny nor doubt of anything, which we know our great Master hath taught us; yet salvation is in special, and by name, annexed to the belief of those articles only, which have in them the endearments of our services, or the support of our confidence, or the satisfaction of our hopes, such as are—Jesus Christ the Son of the living God, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, forgiveness of sins by his blood, resurrection of the dead, and life eternal; because these propositions qualify Christ for our Saviour and our Lawgiver, the one to engage our services, the other to endear them; for so much is necessary as will make us to be his servants, and his disciples; and what can be required more? This only: salvation is promised to the explicit belief of those articles, and therefore those only are necessary, and those are sufficient . . .
 
If any man will urge farther, that whatsoever is deducible from these articles by necessary consequence, is necessary to be believed explicitly, I answer: It is true, if he sees the deduction and coherence of the parts; but it is not certain that every man shall be able to deduce whatsoever is either immediately, or certainly deducible from these premises; and then, since salvation is promised to the explicit belief of these, I see not how any man can justify the making the way to heaven narrower than Jesus Christ hath made it, it being already so narrow, that there are few that find it.”
– Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying
 
“My great wish is to show you, that the Anglican Church was led, not by reason of any peculiar excellence or glory in the members or teachers of it, but by a course of providential discipline, to put worship and sacraments before views, to make those acts which directly connect man with God the prominent part of their system, – that which was meant to embody the very form and meaning of Christianity, – and those verbal distinctions which are necessary to keep the understanding of men from error and confusion, as its accessory and subordinate part.”
– Federick Denison Maurice (1805-1872)
 
“I recognize my littleness, my incapacity and my feebleness of attainment in sanctity. It is of little account what I am, but I believe I am a Christian and a Catholic. An evangelical Christian, believing and trusting in Christ's merits only for salvation, and a liberal Catholic, holding as faith that only which is certified by the universal consent and experience of Christendom, and relegating in charity all other matters to the realm of allowed opinion.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Correspondence between the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Fond du Lac and the Rev. the Rector of St. Patrick's Church, Fond du Lac
 
“Outside the Creed we need have no settled opinion. When we have said Amen to that, we have said Amen to all that we really know and upon any point we can yield to others.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Meditations and Instructions
 
“So long as the creeds and dogmas proclaimed and certified by the whole Church are held, differences of opinion on subordinate points are allowable.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Christian and Catholic
 
“The ideal state is a via media in which the due authority of the Church nourishes the spiritual judgment of the individual into mature life and freedom till ‘he that is spiritual judgeth all things yet he himself is judged of no man.’ The extremes are represented by a dogmatism which crushes instead of quickening the reason of the individual, making it purely passive and acquiescent, and on the other hand by an unrestrained development of the individual judgment which becomes eccentric and lawless just because it is unrestrained.
– Charles Gore (1852-1932), Roman Catholic Claims
 
“No reference is made to the Devil or devils is included in any Christian Creeds, and it is quite possible to be a Christian without believing in them. I do believe such things exist, but that is my own affair.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Answers to Questions on Christianity in God in the Dock

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4. Creedal

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6. Catholic and Reformed/Evangelical

Anglicanism is . . . 4. Creedal

“The golden rule is only gilt without a creed to guide it.”
– Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy (1883-1929), I Believe: Sermons on the Apostles Creed
 
“There has been a common, a universal, faith of Christendom, which has, most authoritatively, expressed itself in the Catholic Creeds, the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds. There are, indeed, features in the common faith, such as the belief in Atonement, in sacramental grace, in the inspiration of Scripture, which are only slightly or by implication touched on in these formulas of faith; but at least in what they contain they represent what has been universal Christianity. . .
“[That means that faithful engagement with Christianity will wrestle with the] “whole set of ideas about sin and redemption and the Incarnation and the Trinity which belong to the Catholic Creeds and are the commonplaces of historical Christianity.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), The Permanent Creed
 
“Modest and well-disposed people take it for granted at starting that the orthodox judgment will turn out to be right; and they set themselves to school to learn why the artists and poets of great name are great, till their own judgment becomes enlightened, and they understand what at first they took on trust. It was the instinctive perception of this function of authority which made the Church insist so much on the principle ‘credo ut intelligam’ [I believe in order to understand]. The Creed represents the catholic judgment, the highest knowledge of God and the spiritual life granted to man by the Divine Revelation. Let a man put himself to school in the Church with reverence and godly fear, and his own judgment will become enlightened.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), The Holy Spirit and Inspiration in Lux Mundi
 
“The Creed is no mere academic document, no mere list of ‘dogmas.’ It is an account of that which is; and every word it contains has a meaning at once universal, practical, and spiritual within the particular experience of each soul. It irradiates and harmonizes every level of our life, not one alone. All great spiritual literature does this to some extent; but the Creed, the condensed hand-list of those deep truths from which spiritual literature is built up, does it supremely.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The School of Charity
 
“All I try to do is tell people that the creeds are not arbitrary formulae; that they were intended to mean something, and do still mean something.”
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), in a letter to Karl Barth, 1939)
 
“Prayer and dogma are inseparable. They alone can explain each other. Either without the other is meaningless. and dead."
– Austin Farrer (1904-1968), Lord I Believe, Suggestions for turning the Creed into Prayer

“Though God be in me, yet without the creed to guide me I should know neither how to call upon God, nor on what God to call. God may be the very sap of my growth and substance of my action; but the tree has grown so crooked and is so deformed and cankered in its parts, that I should be at a loss to distinguish the divine power among the misuses of the power given. Were I to worship God as the principle of my life, I should merely worship myself under another name, with all my good and evil. So I take refuge in that image of God which we have described as branded from outside upon the bark. Here is a token I can trust, for he branded it there himself; he branded it on the stock of man when he stretched out his hands and feet and shed his precious blood. The pattern of the brand was traced on me by those who gave the creed to me; God will deepen it and burn it into me, as I submit my thoughts to him in meditation."
– Austin Farrer (1904-1968), Lord I Believe, Suggestions for turning the Creed into Prayer
 
“The Nicene Creed matters, because it affirms the Trinitarian shape of the Christian faith into which every baby, child, young person, and adult being brought into the faith is baptised. It is also the most important and obvious example of legitimate development from scripture: a development that brings out what is implicit in scripture, enfolding it in a form of corporate speech that every generation takes up as its own.
 
The Spirit works beyond Pentecost in the tradition of the Church, and it is by imitation and repetition that we are formed in faith. Dogma, as has often been said, following a rabbinical saying, is a ‘fence around a mystery’. To lose the Nicene Creed risks a descent into an endlessly quarrelsome individualism, at the same time as making us vulnerable to control by whatever constitutes the current church hierarchy.”

– Angela Tilby (1950 - ), Let us sing the Creed, Church Times, 05 June 2020
 
“Christian doctrine is not just useful, it is beautiful. If we cannot give thanks for God’s great glory, the glory of the eternal Trinity, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, it will not even be useful for long, because it will not compel and involve us. Moralism with a sentimental gloss of mythology does not, as far as I can see, radicalize our perception of each other very deeply for very long.”
– Rowan Williams, (1950 - ) Living Tradition: Affirming Catholicism in the Anglican Church
 
“Doctrinal statements may stretch and puzzle, and even repel, and yet they still go on claiming attention and suggesting a strange, radically different and imaginatively demanding world that might be inhabited.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), No life, here – no joy, terror or tears Church Times 17 July 1998

In the canons (governing rules) of the Episcopal Church, the formal definition of doctrine is “the church’s teaching as set forth in the Creeds and in An Outline of the Faith, commonly called the Catechism.” – Canon III.10.4.c.2 of The Canons of the Episcopal Church

“Doctrine shall mean the basic and essential teachings of the Church and is to be found in the Canon of Holy Scripture as understood in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and in the sacramental rites, the Ordinal and Catechism of the Book of Common Prayer.” – Canon IV.2 of The Canons of the Episcopal Church

See also: The Nicene Creed: Some Questions & Answers on the 1700th Anniversary

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4. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

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5. Liberally Catholic and Generously Orthodox

Anglicanism is . . . 3. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

Along with the scriptures which we believe to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, Anglican Christianity, trusting that the same Spirit continues to move in the Church, looks to a broader foundation in the tradition of the Church, particularly the first five centuries. 

Tradition is not the dead weight of the past but rather the momentum of past Spirit-led faithfulness giving us direction and propelling us forward.

 
“One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Opuscula Quaedam Posthuma Lanceloti Andrewes, Episcopi Wintoniensi 

[Certain Posthumous Minor Works of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester]

“Be it in matter of the one kind or of the other, what SCRIPTURE doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience is due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of REASON; after this the Church succeedeth that which the Church by her ecclesiastical authority shall probably think and define to be true or good, must in congruity of reason overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“[N]o man can set a better state of the question between Scripture and tradition, than Hooker doth. His words are these: ‘The Scripture is the ground of our belief; the authority of man (that is the name he gives to tradition) is the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture.’ . . . [W]e resolve our faith into Scripture as the ground; and we will never deny that tradition is the key that lets us in.”
– William Laud (1573-1645), A Relation of the Conference between William Laud and Mr. Fisher the Jesuit
 
“[Anglican Christianity] is conspicuously orthodox on the great fundamentals of the Trinity and the Incarnation. [Anglicanism] accepts the ecumenical councils as criteria of heresy.”
– Charles Gore (1852-1932), Roman Catholic Claims

“The authority of the collective society, the ‘rule of faith,’ is meant to nourish and quicken, not to crush, individuality. Each individual Christian owes the profoundest deference to the common tradition. Thus to ‘keep the traditions’ is at all times, and not least in Scripture, a common Christian exhortation. But this common tradition is not meant to be a merely external law. It is meant to pass by the ordinary processes of education into the individual consciousness, and there, because it represents truth, to impart freedom.”

– Charles Gore (1852-1932), The Holy Spirit and Inspiration in Lux Mundi
 
“In truth I believe that the most radical voice in our contemporary world is tradition, the Scripture and Doctrinal tradition of the Church. These are the radical un-making of our world of the everyday.”
– Katherine Sonderegger (1950 - ), from a May 7, 2015 interview with Fortress Press acquisitions editor Michael Gibson upon the publishing of Systematic Theology: Volume 1, The Doctrine of God

Traditional, not traditionalist

We engage the tradition of the church not as a problem to be overcome, but a community across time to which we belong and with which it is possible to dialogue. We might not be bound to a simple repetition of the past in all things. Tradition is not simply static. The Church needs to engage in careful, prayerful, patient discernment to avoid and resist unfaithful deviation. The basic dogma of the Church is set. But there is adaptation and development in some matters of practice. Still, we will seek continuity with the Apostles and the communion of saints who encourage us as we run the race in our time.

“Traditions themselves embody dimensions of conflict and ambiguity, and a quest for tradition should never be confused with a return to past conventions of a straightforward kind. Tradition is rather a quest for rich and fertile soil, for grounding, for a profound basis for discipleship, for something that is more adequate and abiding than the shifting sands of fashion. To be outside all traditions is, as Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, is to be intellectually and morally destitute.”
– Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), The Eye of the Storm, Living Spiritually in the Real World

The real development of theology is rather the process in which the Church, standing firm in her old truths, enters into the apprehension of the new social and intellectual movements of each age: and because 'the truth makes her free' is able to assimilate all new material, to welcome and give its place to all new knowledge, to throw herself into the sanctification of each new social order, bringing forth out of her treasures things new and old, and shewing again and again her power of witnessing under changed conditions to the catholic capacity of her faith and life.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), Lux Mundi, Preface

“The Church has also met the different phases of the world's attack by adaptations in her discipline, in changes in her worship, and by forging new spiritual weapons of her own. . .
 
It has been asked whether St. Vincent's rule applies to Practice as well as Doctrine. It is applicable only to doctrine and to such practices as involve doctrine. St. Vincent says, ‘which ancient consent of the holy Fathers is with great care to be investigated and followed by us, not in all the lesser questions of the Divine Law, but only or at any rate principally in the Rule of Faith’ [i.e., the Creed] . . .
 
We have ventured to add to Vincent's rule one further test: the practical one of Christian Experience. What, we may ask ourselves, does the Christian Experience or Christian Consciousness bear witness to in any matter?
 
It is certainly a very useful test, to some minds more powerful than any other, and it may by God's blessing help to draw all schools of Churchmen closer together. This, we may remark if our Church is to fulfil its noble mission, is the thing pre-eminently to be labored for by us all today.
 
Now there are those whose natural conservative tendency of mind leads them with St. Vincent to make their appeal to Holy Scripture and the Authority of the Church. There are others who naturally turn more to the practical results of Christianity as seen in conduct and character, and rest their belief on the approval of Reason and Conscience and the certification of truth by the Voice within. Then there are our Evangelical brethren who, while loyal to the Prayer Book, make the Word the lantern to their feet, and the indwelling Holy Spirit its interpreter. But I trust we may see that these three modes are not exclusive of one another, but may walk as friends peacefully together, lending to each other a mutual support. May they make a three-fold cord, the less easily broken because the strands somewhat differ.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Catholicity and the Vincentian Rule
[The Vincentian Rule’ was proposed by Vincent of Lerins in the 5th-century to distinguish Catholic truth from heresy, asserting that true doctrine is that which has been believed “everywhere, always, and by all”]
 
“Movement, not stability, is the law of the Christian life, and of God's self-revelation in history. This is a fact important to realize at the outset; for our instinct is often to stay put, and to envisage change with distrust and dread; while the fundamental method of the Church is to keep us steadily . . . in the light of a great expectation. The first thing she does with us is to turn us to face the future.”
– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), Social Teachings of the Christian Year
 
“Those who cling to tradition and fear all novelty in God’s relation with his world, deny the creative activity of the Holy Spirit, and forget that what is now tradition was once innovation: the real Christian is always a revolutionary, belongs to a new race, has been given a new name and a new song. God is with the future. The supernatural virtue of Hope blesses and supports every experiment made for the glory of His Name and the good of souls: and even when violence and horror seem to overwhelm us, discerns the secret movement of the Spirit inciting to sacrifice . . . In the Church, too, this process of renovation from within, this fresh invasion of Reality must constantly be repeated if she is to prevent the ever-present danger of stagnation. She is not a stagnant institution but the living Body of Christ―the nucleus of the Kingdom, in this world. Thus loyalty to her supernatural calling will mean flexibility to it pressures and demands and also a constant adjustment to that changing world to which she brings the unchanging gifts. But only in so far as her life is based on prayer and self-offering will she distinguish rightly between these implicits of her vocation and the suggestions of impatience or self-will.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Abba
 
“Theology looks to the Christian past not for models for simple imitation but for a way to complicate one’s sense of the possibilities for present Christian expression and action. It looks to the past not to restrict and cramp what might be said in the present but to break out of the narrowness of a contemporary sense of the realistic.”
– Kathryn Tanner (1957 - ), How My Mind Has Changed: Christian Claims, Christian Century, February 23, 2010
 
“We are seeking a tradition that is open to the disturbing challenges from which renewal of life can come. Spiritual life stands always in need of interrogation by the word of God, of self-scrutiny and perpetual *metanoia*. It is a tradition that is never ‘at ease in Zion’ but always restless, always struggling. It is a tradition of pilgrims and sojourners who are never fully at home in this world., never adjusted to the values and norms of any given order, but always seeking to be a community of contradiction and dissent, of scandal and prophetic testimony. It is a rebel tradition, a tradition of sojourners in quest of a better city.”
– Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), The Eye of the Storm, Living Spiritually in the Real World
 
For honesty’s sake, I must acknowledge that even some who I identify as Liberal Catholic Anglicans have been suspicious of the idea of the adaptation of tradition. See, Percy Dearmer here and C. S. Lewis here. Much as I respect each of them, I do not think tradition has been of can be simply static. And, in the view of some, each of those three departed from some aspect of the tradition. A lot depends on what counts as Tradition vs traditions. More on Charles Gores take on faithful development can be found here,

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2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

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4. Creedal

 

Anglicanism is . . . 2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

Anglicans look to the inspired Scriptures as our primary authority. But we also recognize that God speaks to us in myriad ways. Anglicans honor the human ability to reason. Reason enables us to interpret Scripture, engage Tradition, and understand Creation (the Book of Nature). Reason is understood not merely as abstract logic, but as the comprehensive human capacity to imagine, understand, experience, reflect upon reality, and discern truth ultimately aiming to know God. It is a participatory engagement with the reasonableness of a reality created and intimately sustained by God who is in, with, and under all things.
 
“God being the Author of Nature, her voice is but His instrument. . . . By force of the light of Reason, wherewith God illuminateth everyone which cometh into the world, men being enabled to know truth from falsehood and good from evil, do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is.’ The function of reason was to discover law, particularly the Natural Law, moral and physical, by which God regulates the universe.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“Whatsoever either men on earth or the Angels of heaven do know, it is as a drop of that unemptiable fountain of wisdom; which wisdom hath diversely imparted her treasures unto the world. As her ways are of sundry kinds, so her manner of teaching is not merely one and the same. Some things she openeth by the sacred books of Scripture; some things by the glorious works of Nature: with some things she inspireth them from above by spiritual influence; in some things she leadeth and traineth them only by worldly experience and practice. We may not so in any one special kind admire her, that we disgrace her in any other; but let all her ways be according unto their place and degree adored..”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“Religion is not a bird of prey sent by God to peck out the eyes of [humans].”
– Nathaniel Culverwel (1619-1651), An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature
[This is a paraphrase of a rhetorical question Culverwel asks about those who are suspicious of reason]
 
“And this is the second proposition: If God does reveal himself to us, we cannot acknowledge or master what he reveals without the use of reason. Therefore all his self-manifestation is also our discovery of him, and all revealed theology is rational theology.”
– Austen Farrer (1904-1968), Saving Belief
 
“If people are to believe with any vigour of peace of mind, then heart and head need to be on reasonably friendly terms. At least our scientific picture of the universe and our general habits of thought, the ideas we are prepared to find meaningful, must be such that ’God’ does not become a nonsensical term, totally alien to everything else in our mental furniture.”
– John Baker (1928-2014) in Believing in the Church: The Corporate Nature of Faith by the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, 1981
 
But with a caveat
 
Anglicans, recognizing the effects of sin, self-deception, and creaturely limitations, are cautious about putting too much trust in our ability to reason our way to truth unaided by God. Thus we use our reason with humility.
 
“Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade deep into the doings of Most High, whom although to know be life and joy to make mention of His name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence. He is above and we are on earth, therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“This light hath caught a fall . . . and thereupon it halteth.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Lancelot Andrewes Works, Sermons, Volume Five, Nineteen Sermons Upon Prayer in General, and the Lord’s Prayer in General Preparation to Prayer, Sermon II
 
“Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.”
– John Donne (1572-1631), Batter my heart, three-person’d God
 
“As the human mind is limited in its knowledge, and its premises are not universal, its conclusions are only more or less probable. The function of the reasoning faculties in respect to religious truths is to better enable us to understand what God has revealed and our spiritual nature discerned. It must therefore be kept in its own proper office, to illustrate and not to be made the basis of our faith.
 
We must also mortify it by a certain distrust in it, and not be obstinate in holding our opinions. After the truths of the faith, there is nothing of belief which is a matter of grave importance. We should therefore never argue with earnestness of manner or assertions of certainty about theoretical questions or practical matters.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Commentary on the Rule and the Book of Customs
 
“Reason itself as it exists in us in vitiated. We wrongly estimate the ends of life, and give preference to those which should be subordinate, because they have a stronger appeal to our actual, empirical selves . . . It is the spirit which is evil; it is reason which is perverted; it is aspiration itself which is corrupt.”
– William Temple (1881-1944), Nature, Man, and God
 
“Who can possibly know what the right thing is to say, particularly when one speaks of God? Near the end of his life, following a profound religious experience while celebrating Mass, Thomas Aquinas ceased writing. He is reported to have said, when asked why he had ceased his theological labors, ‘All that I have written seems like straw to me compared to what I have seen.’ As Thomas himself had often said, the inadequacy of human language plagues all attempts to talk about God. But sometimes even our straw can be used by God as tinder upon which the spark of the Spirit can fall.”
– Sarah Coakley (1951 - ), Introduction to The Love that is God by Frederick Bauerschmidt

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1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

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3. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

Anglicanism is . . . 1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

Introduction
 
I am going to do a series of posts with quotes that I believe capture something of the spirit of the Anglican tradition to which the Episcopal Church belongs. Since I have not read everything and everyone, the quotes included are a bit eclectic idiosyncratic. They deliberately will come mainly from authors who represent the “Liberal Catholic” take on Anglicanism with which I identify. There will be a few exceptions to this, but I hope for a catholicity that includes them as well. I also hope for a catholicity that embraces people who disagree on any number of things (as the authors I am quoting would) while agreeing on the broad Catholic faith of the creeds (as the authors I am quoting also do).
 
The men and women I will be quoting are all part of the Anglican tradition. But pretty much everything that follows could be supported by quotes from early and Medieval saints and theologians.
 
This is not exhaustive and none of these by themselves is unique to Anglicanism. But, taken together, they begin to give a picture of what the Anglican tradition of Christianity might be about.
 
Anglicanism is . . .
 
1. Biblically Focused
 
The Anglican Tradition is centered in the Scriptures. But it is more “Prima Scriptura” than “Sola Scriptura.”

“Unto a Christian man there can be nothing either more necessary or profitable than the knowledge of holy Scripture; forasmuch as in it is contained God’s true word, setting forth his glory and also man’s duty. And there is no truth nor doctrine necessary for our justification and everlasting salvation, but that is or may be drawn out of that fountain and well of truth.”
– Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture (Part 1), First Book of Homilies
 
“Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. . .” 
– The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, Article 6 (1571)
 
“Scripture is perfect, without error, and sufficient – for the end towards which it is ordered, namely, for providing ‘a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary, the knowledge wherof man by nature could not otherwise in this life attaine unto.’ And if some err in denying that sufficiency in matters of salvation, others err by ‘racking and stretching it further then by him was ment.’”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“The same body of saving truths which the Apostles first preached orally, they afterwards, under the inspiration of God the Holy Ghost, wrote in Holy Scripture, God ordering in His Providence that, in the unsystematic teaching of Holy Scripture, all should be embodied which is essential to establish the faith.”
– Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Eirenicon
 
“Holy Scripture, according to the Anglican view, is the treasure-house of God's revealed truth.”
– William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), The Church-Idea
 
“The first [proposition] is this: If we believe in God at all, it is absurd and impious to imagine that we can find him out by our own reason, without his being first active in revealing himself to us. Therefore all our discovery of him is his self-manifestation, and all rational theology is revealed theology.”
– Austin Farrer (1904-1968), Saving Belief
 
“If there is to be a religion of trust, and not of slavish cowardly fear, that religion must have a Revelation, the revelation of a Name for its basis. A religion which creates its own object cannot be one of trust. I cannot rest upon that which I feel and know that I have made for myself. I cannot trust in that which I look upon as a form of my own mind or a projection from it. . . Neither can I trust in any shadowy, impalpable essence, or in any Soul of the world. If this be the God I worship, my worship will be one of doubt and distrust, whenever it is at all sincere.”
– Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), Sermons on the Prayer-Book’, Sermon X, ‘The Creed
 
“Christians are committed to the belief that the triune God has revealed a passionate desire to have fellowship with them, even in the light of their manifest sin. Scripture is chief among God's providentially ordered gifts directed to bringing about reconciliation and fellowship with God despite human sin. Thus, Scripture is holy because of its divinely willed role in making believers holy.”
– Stephen Fowl (1960 - ), Theological Interpretation of Scripture
 
Biblical, but not Literalistic
 
“Scripture is perfect, without error, and sufficient – for the end towards which it is ordered, namely, for providing ‘a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary, the knowledge wherof man by nature could not otherwise in this life attaine unto.’ And if some err in denying that sufficiency in matters of salvation, others err by ‘racking and stretching it further then by him was ment.’”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 
 
“In respect of the Holy Scriptures: the Anglican Church stands for truth. It places no ban on research into the origin of the various biblical books. It encourages priests and laymen to study God’s Holy Word. Nothing that science can discover concerning the origin of the books or the method of their compilation can affect their corroborative value as to the teaching of the Church. It is by living in the Church, and primarily listening to her teaching, that the written word is best understood. What the Holy Spirit has enlightened the Church to read out of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit put into it, to be so read. Differences of interpretation may exist about different texts, but the mind of the Spirit is to be found in the Church's common and enduring consent.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Journey Godward
 
“The Church has no opposition to the investigation of science in any department of knowledge. Nothing has so far been demonstrated that contradicts the dogmas she has declared essential. We may allow, for instance, the allegorical character of the early chapters of Genesis without denying the sinful tendency found in man's nature by reason of heredity. Man has fallen away from God.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Journey Godward
 
“It is a common fallacy, which has caused much needless difficulty and fruitless discussion, to suppose that the religious value of Genesis depends upon its scientific and historical accuracy. This confusion of thought is due to a mistaken theory of inspiration which maintains that every word of Scripture, every statement contained in the Bible, is divinely inspired and is therefore to be accepted as literal truth. Such a theory is . . . one which can only be maintained either by obstinately ignoring the established facts of science and history or by imposing a forced and artificial, interpretation upon narratives of Genesis to try to reconcile them with scientific facts by extracting from them a meaning which they do not contain.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), A New Commentary on Holy Scripture
 
“If, instead of trying to manipulate the words of Scripture to fit an arbitrary theory to which the Bible itself gives no support, we examine the Scriptures carefully and deduce a theory from the evidence they themselves furnish, we find that their religious value is independent of scientific or historical accuracy. The writers are inspired to reveal the religious truth necessary for man’s eternal salvation.”
– Charles Gore (1853-1932), A New Commentary on Holy Scripture
 
“Thus something originally merely natural—the kind of myth that is found among most nations—will have been raised by God above itself, qualified by Him and compelled by Him to serve purposes which of itself it would not have served. Generalising this, I take it that the whole Old Testament consists of the same sort of material as any other literature—chronicle (some of it obviously pretty accurate), poems, moral and political diatribes, romances, and what not; but all taken into the service of God’s word. . . The total result is not ‘the Word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Reflections on the Psalms
 
“It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible . . . as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read without attention to the whole nature and purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), letter to Mrs. Johnson on November 8, 1952 in Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Vol. 3. Mrs Johnson had asked, “Is the Bible Infallible?”
 
“Rather than get hung up on historical details, we need to keep coming back to the question, ‘What does God want to tell us?’ If we hang our faith on the absolute historical accuracy of Scripture in every detail, we risk making Scripture a sort of ‘magic’ book that turns up the right answers to all sorts of rather irrelevant questions, instead of being a book that gives us, in the wonderful words of the Coronation service, ‘the lively oracles of God’. The Bible is not intended to be a mere chronicle of past events, but a living communication from God, telling us now what we need to know for our salvation.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), Being Christian

2. Reasonable, with a Caveat

3. Rooted in Tradition, but not Traditionalist

4. Creedal

5. Liberally Catholic and Generously Orthodox

6. Catholic and Reformed/Evangelical

7. Centered in Worship and Prayer

8. Sacramental

9. Incarnational

Empathy and its Discontents

Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another – is a natural, innate characteristic of being human. It is a natural inclination we share with other social creatures. It enables us to live in community where understanding and caring for one another is essential.

The capacity to feel empathy is usually considered a good thing. We all appeal to empathy sometimes when we want to want others to better understand us understand. Politicians, aid organizations, advertisers and others employ empathy in ways that are familiar. We regularly employ appeals to empathy to persuade others or it is used to persuade us.

But over the last year we have seen that there are some who are suspicious of empathy. Elon Musk characterized empathy as a “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” But he is not alone. There are many who have criticized empathy, referring to “toxic empathy,” “untethered empathy,” and “weaponized empathy.”

Others have responded to this criticism of empathy, e.g., Mark Clavier. For responses to the underlying misogyny of the criticism of empathy, see Beth Felker Jones and Dani Treweek. I won’t repeat what they have said. I’ll just make a few observations before addressing what I think is the shadow side of empathy.

It is certainly true that empathy can be used not only to persuade us but to manipulate our emotions. We can probably all relate to that. But it is also true that whether empathy is being used to persuade (good) or manipulate (bad) is in the eye of the beholder. For example, both pro-choice and pro-life advocates appeal to empathy. Depending on your own convictions, you will feel differently about those appeals.

Those who talk of toxic empathy are concerned that just “feeling” for others can lead to a sort of codependence that negates moral boundaries have a point. But I can respond with empathy to a friend sharing about frustrations with their marriage without endorsing their affair. Empathizing with the victims of crime does not need to lead me to supporting the death penalty. But those who are making much of weaponized empathy are quite selective. For example, sharing the stories of immigrants and refugees is toxic. But weaponizing the crimes committed by some undocumented immigrants is not.

It is also the case that people can find themselves unexpectedly feeling empathy for those they are not supposed, e.g., the enemy or others whose feelings or anguish is otherwise inconvenient. And that, it seems to me, is at the root of the “anti-empathy” impulse. Feeling empathy for those considered beyond the pale can compromise group solidarity and lead us to wonder if those my group considers beyond the pale are really so.

And that gets at what I think is the shadow of our natural empathy.

As I said above, empathy is a natural, innate characteristic of being human that we share with other social creatures. But, along with many other species, our natural empathy is naturally parochial. We are more inclined to feel empathy for those who are like us, those we like, and those who are part of our group. Chimpanzees, for example exhibit lots of empathy within their group, but are suspicious and unempathetic toward those outside their group.

Franz de Waal writes of this in The Bonobo and the Atheist,

“[One lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan] is that everyone is our neighbor, even `people unlike us. Given the parochialism of human and animal empathy, this is the more challenging message. Even with a simple measure, such as yawn contagion, identification with strangers is hard to demonstrate. Both chimpanzees and people join the yawns of familiar individuals more readily than those of outsiders. Empathy is hopelessly biased, as was shown, for example, in a study at the University of Zurich, which measured neural responses to the suffering of others. Men watched either a supporter of their own soccer club or a supporter of a rival soccer club getting hurt through electrodes attached to their hands. Needless to say, the Swiss take their soccer seriously. Only their own club members activated empathy. In fact, seeing fans of rival clubs getting shocked activated the brain’s pleasure area. So much for loving thy neighbor.”

In Wisconsin we can imagine how this experiment would play out had it been Packers fans and Bears fans with electrodes attached to their hands. We can go from preaching to meddling and wonder which parts of our brains would be activated if instead of rival football fans receiving the shocks were a man wearing a MAGA hat and a man wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. What about a Christian vs a Muslim? An American vs an Iranian? A transgender person vs a cisgender person? An ICE agent vs a protester? The list could go on. 

As much as most of us would like to think we would have equal empathy for all, or least not take pleasure in anyone’s pain, the evidence suggest otherwise. To be otherwise requires a watchfulness of the movements of our own hearts and discipline and practice to engage every other with something more than empathy. 

Suspicion of the outsider – xenophobia – is another natural inclination we share with other social creatures. It is part of our neurobiology. Our brains constantly judge whether circumstances or the people we encounter are safe. And our immediate impulse is to trust the familiar and mistrust the unfamiliar. We have a natural tendency to be wary of the other and cling to the familiar.

While xenophobia might seem like the opposite of empathy, I think they are related. Shared feelings within a group and suspicion of those outside the group build a sense of belonging. Belonging is good and the desire to belong is strong. But when those two reinforcing tendencies are amplified, belonging can become a toxic exclusionary bonding that divides the world into “us” vs. “them.” 

The leaders of cults and political demagogues are geniuses amplifying these two natural inclinations. They cultivate a toxic solidarity in which members of the group become the good, the innocent, the righteous while others are identified as guilty, threatening, dirty, sick, inhuman, vermin. 

People are particularly susceptible to being enticed by such unhealthy belonging in time of anxiety, uncertainty, and conflict. A strong, reinforced sense of belonging brings a sense of security. And highlighting the threat of enemies, real or imagined or contrived, reinforces group solidarity.

You don't have to be a cult leader or a demagogue. Cable news thrives on the same sort of thing. Those who reject empathy as toxic seem too often, intentionally or not, to be falling into this trap.

Some of those who reject empathy are arguing for “Kinism” which is the belief that Christians have a duty to prefer the members of one’s family – and by extension, one's ethnic group over any appeal to universal care. That basically endorses the selective empathy as natural and of God. This is a false teaching.

The are others who are suspicious of compassion as a feeling because fellow-feeling can sometimes lead to sympathy for those who are supposed to be rejected and condemned, making it harder to turn one’s heart from them. Those who talk of toxic empathy often sound like what they are really about is excusing the hardness of heart toward those whose anguish is inconvenient. 

We can agree that more empathy is not the answer. It is too fickle and too parochial. The inclination to have more empathy for those with whom I identify than with those with whom I do not might be natural in a biological sense. But it is not natural in the theological sense of what we are made for as being created in the image of God. It is not the way of the kingdom of God.

Our natural capacity for empathy can be transformed by God's grace into a more expansive and consistent compassion. There is nothing toxic about that. Our natural inclination to be suspicious of the other and have more empathy for those who are like us or in our group can be corrupted to reenforce a toxic solidarity indifferent to the anguish of the other. One measure of good faith is whether it encourages compassion for all or forms communities of us vs them.

Christians are called to something more than mere empathy – compassion, mercy, and solidarity with all. Our mercy and compassion are to be perfect as is that of our Father in heaven, making no distinctions (Matthew 5:45-48 & Luke 6:36). Christians are commanded to love even their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44). Even as we resist those who are violent, deceitful, greedy, tyrannical, etc. we are called to do so with compassion and mercy toward them.

This is hard. It requires prayer and practice and discipline. And grace. But it is the better way.