Anglicanism is . . . 16. Passionate, but Balanced, Patient, Humble, Comprehensive

This post is something of a grab bag of quotes that did not all quite fit any of the earlier chapter, but which capture something of the Anglican spirit. Anglican Christianity is characterized by what Rowan Williams calls a “passionate patience” that is reticent to declare too handily exactly how God is to be defined or to presume too easily to know what God desires in all instances. It is a tradition that does not avoid issues of sin, guilt, repentance, and judgement. And as we have seen in earlier posts, it takes seriously the beliefs of the Church and the call to discipleship and holiness. But Anglicans are more likely to start with grace rather than shame or fear. ours is a tradition that rejoices in God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ, and from that embraces spiritual disciplines that enable us to live more fully in that grace. As Charles Williams says of Christianity generally, the Anglican tradition embraces an understanding of the faith characterized by generosity and “largesse”.

“What is Christianity but a doctrine of largesse? The doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine of largesse; the doctrine of the Incarnation and the creation is a doctrine of largesse; the doctrine of the Redemption is a doctrine of largesse; the doctrine of heaven is every way a doctrine of largesse. Add that the doctrine of all true adoration―single or mutual―is a doctrine of largesse.”
 
“It is a largesse of spirit―courtesy, generosity, humility, charity.”
– Charles Williams (1886-1945), The Figure of Beatrice
 

“In the Anglican Church we find a harmonious combination of authority and reason. They are not found, as is sometimes supposed, to be contrary one to the other. Our Church teaches us with authority, but with maternal authority. She is our Mother. She does not come to us with a big stick, and say: ‘Youve got to believe this, because I say so, or you’ll be damned!’ but she shows to us the reasonableness of the truth she has been authorized to transmit. She teaches as our Blessed Lord taught. She tries to put her spiritual children in the right relation to the Faith. She enables them through grace to see the Truth for themselves, and so embracing it through their own reason and will, it becomes their own possession and a joy to their hearts.”

– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Some Characteristics of the Episcopal Church

[Anglican Christianity avoids the extremes] “represented by a dogmatism that 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
 
“Within the comprehensiveness laid down by the Elizabethan Settlement, the Church of England included those who learned their doctrine chiefly from the continental Reformers, those who gave greater value to the appeal to the ‘Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops’, and those whose outlook owed most to the learning of the Renaissance. It is commonly said that these three types of Anglican have their successors in the Evangelicals, the Anglo-Catholics and the Liberals. This comprehensiveness opens the way for the Church of England to be a school of synthesis over a wider field than any other Church in Christendom. Within it people of very diverse points of view use the same Prayer Book, and join in the same services. Hence there exists a way of approach, which is common to different types of Anglican, not by seeking to agree on cut-and-dried formulations, but by regarding the truth as a mystery whose full understanding is beyond us, but which can be elucidated by the interplay of different minds seeking it from different angles. It is a matter not merely of reaching right conclusions, but of seeking them in the right way.”
– Catholicity, A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West Being a Report presented to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (1947) by a group of scholars including Dom Gregory Dix, T. S. Eliot, Austin Farrer, and Michael Ramsey
 
“The English Church also recognizes the authority of the undisputed General Councils. It was in these Councils that all the great heresies were rejected, and the main truths of the Catholic faith asserted.
 
If this be our principle as to the truth, it may be asked, — How is it that there exists such diversity of teaching amongst us? There is no doubt a good deal of diversity on certain points, not so much touching the main doctrines of the Creed (e.g., the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, or the Divinity of the Holy Spirit), as on matters of practice, and the mode of carrying out our services, and the meaning given to some of our usages. This is to some extent unavoidable, seeing that in a great body of teachers there will be variety of thought and feeling. Judging by St. Paul's Epistles, we see that in the apostles' times, there was a good deal of disagreement, and this upon important points, which often greatly troubled the minds of the apostles. Much of the diversity of teaching in our midst is due to the fact, that men teach in the Church's name that which is not her doctrine. Amongst ourselves there is great unwillingness to carry authority too far, so as to crush the individual energies of earnest men. Often truth comes out the more clearly by allowing these differences to appear; and we are warned by our Lord against too great exercise of discipline, ‘lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them’ (Matt. xiii. 29).”
– Vernon Staley (1852-1933), The Catholic Religion: A Manual of Instruction for Members of the Anglican Communion
 
“The peculiar character of Anglicanism arises in part from the operation of history; the conflict within her own borders, both before and after her cultus took form, of Puritan and Catholic ideals. But it is also a true expression of certain paradoxical attributes of the English mind: its tendency to conservatism in respect of the past, and passion for freedom in respect of the present, its law-abiding faithfulness to established custom, but recoil from an expressed dominance; its reverence for the institutions which incorporate its life, and inveterate individualism in the living of that life; its moral and practical bent.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
 
“The Church of England is a superlative example of the strange English spirit of compromise, which contrives to make things apparently incompatible in theory work together somehow to produce a reasonably satisfactory result in practice. Of course, this sort of compromise has its disadvantages. The Church of England has rather the appearance, sometimes, of being a creature with a head at both ends. . .
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Worship in the Anglican Church
 
“We often speak of Anglican ‘comprehensiveness.’ If this is a way of making relativism palatable or a means of accommodating all shades of opinion with no regard for truth, then it needs to be rejected. If by comprehensive we mean the priority of a dialectic quest over precision and immediate closure, then we are speaking of the Anglican consciousness at its best.”
– Urban T. Holmes (1930-1981), What Is Anglicanism?
 
“Comprehensiveness demands agreement of fundamentals, while tolerating disagreement on matters in which Christians may differ without feeling the necessity of breaking communion.  In the mind of an Anglican, comprehensiveness is not compromise.  Nor is it to bargain one truth for another.  It is not a sophisticated word for syncretism.  Rather it implies that the apprehension of truth is a growing thing: we only gradually succeed in ‘knowing the truth.’ It has been the tradition of Anglicanism to contain within one body both Protestant and Catholic elements. It has been the tradition of Anglicanism to contain within one bod Protestant and Catholic elements. But there is a continuing search for the whole truth in which these elements will find complete reconciliation. Comprehensiveness implies a willingness to allow liberty of interpretation with a certain slowness in arresting or restraining exploratory thinking.”
– The Lambeth Conference, 1968, quoted in The Spirit of Anglicanism, William Wolf, ed.

“We are unhappy enough anyhow, and if Christianity is to mean a little more unhappiness, more discipline, more trials—the prospect not unnaturally drives men to that plea for annihilation which (the Church declares) is the only thing the Omnipotence will never grant, except indeed by the annihilation which is he. On the other hand, there is an offensive cheerfulness encouraged by some Christians which is very trying to any person of moderate sensibility. We are to be bright; we are to smile at strangers; we are (last horror of daily life!) to get into conversation with strangers. It is some comfort to reflect that Messias was against our being bright as he was against our being gloomy. He was against our being anything at all. He indicated continually that it was our wish to do or be something by ourselves, even to be saved by ourselves, that was the root of the trouble.”

– Charles Williams (1886-1945), ‘He Came Down From Heaven’

“There is in the Anglican identity a strong element of awareness of the tragic, of the dark night and the frustration of theory and order by the strangeness of God's work. . . The result is a mixture of poetry, reticence, humility before mystery, local loyalties and painful self-scrutinies.”

– Rowan Williams, (1950 -  ), Anglican Identities

“As a living Church with a mission to every generation of mankind, she [the Episcopal Church] must be alive to meet every developing need of humanity. She must enter into [humanity’s] growing intellectual, moral, social life – yea, into their literary, musical, artistic life. Her mission is to [humanity]; to lift [humanity] upward and Godward; to ameliorate the condition of servitude and labor; to undo the chains of the slave; to bless every investigation and effort for the advancement of humanity; to mitigate the evils of war; to quicken all philanthropic enterprises; to enlarge people’s hearts towards [other people]. And so in the domain of truth, while she is immovable in declaring the faith once and for all revealed, allowing of no alteration by addition or diminution . . . yet she possesses the power to meet by her definitions the newer aspects of human knowledge in science and philosophy, and show how conformable they are to revealed truth. She stands thus in no conflict with the discoveries and ascertained results of modern sciences. . . She does not fear any established results of the higher criticism. She, in calm security, possesses her deposit of truth, knowing that every difficulty in the future, as in the past, will only confirm the Catholic faith.”

– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Church Principles and Church Parties

 
“Anglicanism offers a richly textured Christianity with ancient roots, expansive sources, a living commitment to justice and reconciliation, and space for people to explore, question, and grow along the way.”
– Dwight Zscheile (1973 - ), People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity
 
“In an age that craves certainty and tribalism, Anglicanism offers something quieter and stronger shaped by prayer and lit from within by the glory of Christ. That is what gives me hope.”
– The Rt Rev Sarah Mullally (1962 - ) in her address upon being appointed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury

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15. Embraces an Ordered Ministry

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1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic