Anglican adaptation to pandemic disease: a historical perspective

As churches navigate the “new normal” of hybrid/online worship and public health measures, history offers some resources that can help guide our thinking. Anglicanism has, from its birth in the sixteenth century, adapted to such epidemic challenges as sweating sickness, plague, smallpox, cholera, and influenza. Anglican theology favors corporate prayer (including dispersed, synchronous prayer) and encourages the idea of the sacramentality of the word. At the same time, it resists the idea of virtual sacraments apart from a physical gathering and rejects a eucharist at which only the celebrant receives the consecrated bread and wine. History rarely offers straightforward lessons, but it suggests that Anglicanism has sufficient resources within itself to sustain itself through even a prolonged pandemic.

John Henry Newman’s Selected Themes from the Theology of the Church

John Henry Newman is one of the most famous person on the Catholic and Anglican Church. In his works he was writing on the both theological position. In the article author showed selected aspects of John Henry Newman’s theology of the Church, so-calledecclesiology. For understanding Newman’s theological position very important are his personal history in the Church of England, situation in the Catholic Church and two dogmas proclaimed during the life of this new Catholic saint. In the last part of the article theecclesiology of John Henry Newman is rereading in the light of modern problems in the Catholic and Anglican theology.

Brief Introductions to Anglican Theology: Theological Method: Theological Methodology and the Jesus Movement through the Work of F. D. Maurice and Vida Scudder

The twenty-seventh Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, has called the church over which he presides to become a part of the Jesus Movement. This call raised eyebrows for some, who feared a turn toward a Protestant evangelical tradition reflected in the legacy of people like the eighteenth-century Anglican evangelist George Whitefield. Because the evangelical tradition emphasizes individual salvation, it easily lends itself to a lack of engagement in social justice issues. But this was not the intention of the Presiding Bishop, who urges the church toward the “beloved community.” This essay will examine The Episcopal Church's history of engagement with social justice in light of the theological methodology of F. D. Maurice and Vida Scudder, in an attempt to discern the theological failure that the historical lack of social justice leadership within The Episcopal Church reflects, and which necessitated the Presiding Bishop's call.

Being an Archdeacon: A Coaching Model

Considering the importance of their role in the life of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, there is not much written about the role of archdeacons. In her recent article in the January 2019 issue of this Journal, Jane Steen focused on the legal aspect of the role of archdeacons, and reflected on how they play a key role in shaping the Church and its ministry, delighting in its beauty and rejoicing in its well-being. In this article, the recently retired training, development and support officer for archdeacons reflects on the nature of the role and, in the light of that, on the way in which it might best be carried out. Believing that process is at least as important as outcome, and that good processes lead to better outcomes, he argues that coaching provides a useful model to enable archdeacons to exercise their ministries most effectively and promote both the mission and the well-being of the Church. It is also, he argues, a better reflection of Anglican theology.

Revelation and Reason: Theological Epistemology in John Macquarrie’s Thought

John Macquarrie’s contribution to Anglican systematic theology has been long acknowledged and his impact is still being felt both within and outside Anglicanism. His existentialist theology, with its roots in German philosophy, as well as Christian mysticism, can at times seem quite distant from ‘traditional’ Anglican theology, but when his way of engaging in theological reflection is examined closely, his epistemology does not appear to be as remote from the ‘traditional’ Anglican hermeneutic of Scripture, tradition reason as it might seem at first sight. This article will argue that Macquarrie’s epistemology is rooted in the Anglican three-fold hermeneutic inherited from Richard Hooker, albeit in a way that is adapted for the modern age. In some respects, Macquarrie’s hermeneutic is a development of Hooker’s ‘three-legged stool’, but a ‘stool’ that has been heavily renovated in light of, and in response to, the existentialist crisis seen in continental philosophy from Søren Kierkegaard onwards. Macquarrie offers a resolution to the tension between individual and corporate identities, and his epistemology may offer Anglican thought a means of negotiating some controversial contemporary theological issues.

Mission and Care for the Poor in Sydney Anglican Perspective

Sydney Anglican theology has a number of distinctive motifs, including its ecclesiology and theology of the gospel. These motifs inform a theology of mission as proclamation that stands in a tradition that places a priority on evangelism. Where does such a missiological construction locate a theology of care for the poor? Answers to this question were explored through semi-structured interviews with faculty at Moore Theological College. The significance of caring for the poor is affirmed. Care for the poor is located in the life of the disciple of Jesus Christ and in the community life of the local church. The implications of this theological view for an understanding of the missio Dei are explored.

Chasing the Lady

Responding to intellectual, devotional and liturgical changes in the rest of Europe, the place of the Virgin Mary was reappraised in England during the Reformations of the sixteenth century. It was during a seventeen year period between the publication of the Litany in English under Henry VIII in 1544 and the revised Calendar of the 1559 Prayer Book under Elizabeth in 1561 that a liturgical ‘shape’ to a reformed understanding of the Virgin Mary’s place within worship of the established church was formed. It provided a basis for an ‘Anglican’ theology of Mary, subsequent devotion and liturgical developments in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.