The magnificent multi-volume Oxford global history of Anglicanism is a resource that every library of history and theology should acquire, while individual scholarly readers will find a great deal to inform, edify and entertain them. The project culminates in the present volume. Its title Global Anglicanism is something of a misnomer. The volume editor, Bill Sachs, has recruited an impressive team – there is not one disappointing chapter here, though naturally they vary a bit in length and depth. There are a few broadly thematic essays with a global scope: on inter-faith relations (Paul Hedges), liturgical inculturation (Louis Weil) and Anglican–Eastern Churches relations (Peter Eaton). But most chapters are concerned with the Global South – Western Anglicanism being the title of volume IV, edited by Jeremy Morris. These three thematic chapters are scattered through the book, somewhat highlighting the arbitrariness of the threefold division of the whole volume.
What unites this collection of studies is not merely its chronological parameters but the constant theme of indigenization or inculturation and the ensuing tension with a received or given historical Anglican identity located mainly in the legacy of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and an episcopal-diocesan polity. The editor comments that ‘the Anglican capacity to become rooted in disparate contexts became the Church’s hallmark and its challenge’ (p. 7). The bewildering variety of cultural contexts means that the story covered in this volume is one of ‘almost impenetrable complexity’ (p. 28: Jeffrey Cox). Provided that we recognize with the volume editor (p. 19) that the coverage had to be somewhat selective, even in a book of nearly 450 pages, we need not grumble about certain gaps. However, if I were to put my finger on a gap, I would point to the paucity of theological input: although some contributors acknowledge that theology was at work, there is really very little that shows what theological visions and doctrines drove this movement – and that is necessary in order to understand the history. Factoring in more theological commentary would have helped to put the biblical literalism and doctrinal narrowness, that contributed a good deal to rivalry, conflict and division, into better perspective. But it is good to read that a number of missionary pioneers, notably in Oceania, were capable anthropologists, linguists and ethnologists (pp. 63, 71: Michael Gladwin).
What is rather arresting, even refreshing, about the treatment of inculturation in this volume is that it offers an antidote to the ‘anti-imperialist master narrative’ that dominates other literature (p. 25: Cox). Anglican expansion is not presented according to a simplistic ideological schema of the imperial or colonial suppression of native, tribal or national culture embodied in myth and social practice, but rather as a negotiated, dialogical joint development in which the aim of most missionary agencies from the start was to foster an indigenous self-governing and self-supporting Anglican church. It was simply not a matter of attempting to foist alien (English) institutions on to unreceptive societies, but rather of seeking to graft such institutions on to the most congenial existing forms in an organic way, so that the resulting, evolving institutions were actually trans-cultural in character. Racial privileges were inescapable, but they were not institutionalized (p. 41: Cox). Anglicans contributed much to building not only the infrastructure of emerging nations but also a sense of national identity that had moral integrity. Writer after writer shows how missionaries and bishops sought to distance themselves from the imperial structures, thus setting the stage for eventual decolonization, while some indigenous leaders instead cultivated the power base that the colonial administration provided and so found themselves somewhat discredited or at least wrong-footed when independence arrived and the colonizers departed. The institutionalization of Anglican Christianity was a moving target during this period of rapid change and transition. The aim was invariably contextual integrity and sustainability, but pursued within a dynamic situation (p. 9: Sachs). As Louis Weil points out, the central place of the theological paradigm of the Incarnation in Christianity must mean that no single historical form of Christianity can ever have definitive trans-cultural authority (p. 265). But there is a price to be paid for the faith that every culture has the capacity to receive and adapt the apostolic faith, for as a result of the intentional drive towards indigenization or inculturation, the unity and coherence of Anglicanism was put at risk and continues to be at a premium.
This is, of course, a history, combining narrative and analysis. I found the narrative enthralling: the adventure of the expansion of the Anglican form of Christianity is brought to life with the aid of innumerable telling examples of courage, vision, compassion, struggle and suffering – even unto death in some cases (e.g. p. 64: Gladwin). The Mothers’ Union is held up as a hugely successful missionary society. The roles of the missionary wife and the single female missionary (the two of them comprising the vast majority of missionary personnel) are acknowledged. But there are many perceptive judgements too, though I could have wished for a little more analysis in some chapters that set out mainly to tell the story. One of the closely examined topics is female genital mutilation in Africa, which posed a terrible dilemma for missions committed to inculturation (pp. 185-91: John Karanja; p. 245: Elizabeth E. Prevost). The Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) comes out very creditably for its stout opposition to FGM, though at the cost of defections, while the Church Missionary Society (CMS) chose pragmatic compromise in order to attain its goal gradually. Another area treated in even greater depth, with a chapter to itself (Derek R. Peterson) is the East African Revival that began in the 1930s and ran for several decades. The account does not spare the emotional and moral excesses that were intrinsic to this movement from the very start.
Another theme that is flagged up in the volume editor’s introduction and echoed by many contributors is that the Anglican mission in its various forms and in diverse contexts was carried out – largely successfully – by building the institutions of the church: mission centres, schools and colleges, clinics and hospitals, episcopacy and diocesan structures, ministerial training. As Jeffrey Cox puts it, ‘At the heart of the missionary enterprise was institution-building.’ He adds, ‘Even the “faith missions” of the late nineteenth century such as the China Inland Mission, while claiming to reject mission institutions, built an alternative set of institutions to train non-Western clergy and teachers’ (p. 35). This book could be read as an account of the progress of Anglican institutions around the world and the challenges that it had to contend with. Missiology can find food for thought here. The institutions are the bearers of the living tradition (a great treasure mixed with much dross, of course) and mission takes the form of institutionalizing that tradition with its beliefs, values and practices.
It is difficult to avoid a few typos creeping into a book of this size, but there are a few unfortunate ones here that could have been spotted at one of several stages: ‘rights’ for ‘rites’ (p. 144); manora for minora (in connection with FGM; p. 187); ‘proscriptive’ for ‘prescriptive’ (p. 264). The index is lamentably inadequate and rather random. There are no entries for several Archbishops of Canterbury whose names occur, not incidentally, in the text: Thomas Cranmer, Geoffrey Fisher, George Carey and Rowan Williams. Important figures who are mentioned more than once in the text, but are not indexed, include Bishop Samuel Crowther and the missionary statesman John R. Mott. Theologians mentioned, but not indexed, include Charles Gore, Karl Barth and Hendrik Kraemer. The index is dwarfed by the indexes of each of the other four volumes of this History.
