The Identity of Anglicanism

Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology

Paul Avis

BLOOMSBURY

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Bloomsbury T&T Clark

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First published 2008

Reprinted 2008, 2010 (twice), 2011

© Paul Avis, 2007

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Contents

Preface

Abbreviations and Glossary

I Keeping Faith with Anglicanism

II What is Anglicanism?

III The Distinctiveness of Anglicanism

IV The Identity of the Anglican Communion

V Anglicanism and Eucharistic Ecclesiology

VI Anglicanism and Baptismal Ecclesiology

VII Reforming the Ministry: Ordaining Women

VIII Anglican Orders: From Apostolicae Curae to Women Bishops

IX Anglican Ecclesiology in the Twenty-first Century

X Jesus Christ in Modern Anglican Theology

XI Anglicanism in Memory and Hope

Index of names

Preface

This book is intended to provide some essential resources for the study of Anglican ecclesiology. I believe that I detect a growing appetite, indeed a thirst, for a deeper knowledge of the theology that is concerned with the Church—not as an inward-looking obsession, a retreat from the world and all its demands, but as part of an overall framework that sets the Church within the mission of God in the world. (The journal Ecclesiology, with which I am involved, published by Brill, is another attempt to respond to this demand.) While several earlier commentators saw the twentieth century as the century of the Church, this ecclesiological focus is becoming intensified as we move deeper into the twenty-first century. It has touched all the major Christian traditions, including Anglicanism.

It seems that the ecclesiological renaissance began within the Orthodox tradition, especially among Russian theologians in exile after the Communist revolution, and generated the particular expression known as eucharistic ecclesiology (which is discussed in one of the following chapters). The renaissance spread to the Roman Catholic Church and flourished before, during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Anglicans ...