The year 2009 marked the bicentenary of the birth of George Augustus Selwyn, one of the leading personalities of nineteenth-century Anglicanism. First bishop of New Zealand, later bishop of Lichfield, and joint secretary to the first Lambeth Conference, Selwyn’s influence ran in many channels, not least in the mid-nineteenth century development of what came to be called the Anglican Communion. Yet the fact that much of his ministry was spent overseas has sometimes limited the attention British church historians have paid to him. Without being altogether forgotten, the nature of his influence is all too often somewhat hazy. Even his role in the Communion itself is often more celebrated than understood.
The complex history of Anglicanism in the twentieth century — and particularly its recent travails — has perhaps masked the extent to which church leaders such as Selwyn were already struggling to overcome the difficulties flowing from the translation of the polity, liturgy, theology and practice of the Church of England into the diverse cultures of the colonies, and often finding ingenious or effective solutions. A High Churchman who accepted the traditional relationship of Church and State in England, but came to challenge its relevance in the colonial context; a seemingly cautious man who proved to be an innovator in the field of ecclesial administration; a natural authoritarian who helped to pioneer synodical government in Anglicanism, both in New Zealand and in England; a conservative who displayed a remarkable boldness as a missionary bishop — there were many sides to Selwyn, and his influence is far from easy to summarize. The bicentenary therefore presented a great opportunity to examine Selwyn afresh. The naming of a Cambridge college after him, perhaps in imitation of the founding of Keble College in Oxford after the death of John Keble, makes Cambridge the natural place where, in Britain, his life and work could be celebrated, and his legacy scrutinized critically.
Mirroring similar events in New Zealand, some seventy people, including a number of Selwyn’s descendants, met for one day at the Faculty of Divinity in Cambridge in April 2009 to consider his life and work. After a brief scene-setting address by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the day was divided into three main sessions. In the first, Warren Limbrick and Allan Davidson discussed specific aspects of Selwyn’s work in New Zealand, and so offered a perspective and a wealth of insight not readily available in Britain. In the second, Bill Jacob and Colin Podmore widened the scope, giving complementary assessments of Selwyn’s significance in the history of the Anglican Communion, and drawing — in Colin Podmore’s case — much from Selwyn’s encounters with the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. In the third, widening the scope further still, and opening up in the process reflections on the future of the Anglican Communion, Gregory Cameron provided a stimulating summary of the ecclesiological dilemmas facing the Communion. Rowan Williams ended the symposium itself with a short but rich reflection on the permanent tensions embedded in the Anglican churches’ search — especially outside Britain — for a form of autonomy that paradoxically could underline and serve the catholicity of the Church. The day ended with Evensong in Selwyn College Chapel, at which the Archbishop preached.
Of the five main papers presented that day, only two are reproduced here, namely those of Bill Jacob and Colin Podmore, along with Rowan Williams’s closing comments, in order to concentrate on Selwyn’s relevance for the history and ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion as a whole. The symposium was constructed carefully in order to balance historical analysis with discussion of the ramifications of Selwyn’s work for Anglicanism today. Against the background of the Communion’s current divisions over human sexuality and the ordination of women, among other issues, the organizers were all too well aware that some people were predicting the imminent failure of the vision which the Windsor report has designated ‘autonomy-in-communion’ but which arguably went to the heart also of Selwyn’s understanding of what a federation of ‘national’ Anglican churches throughout the world might look like. Bill Jacob’s paper traces the evolution and triumph of that understanding, and that of Colin Podmore its debt to the experience of Anglicanism in America. Together they supply a fresh and original reappraisal of a decisive period in the Communion’s history. Rowan Williams’s concluding comments draw our attention to what remains constant even today in this tense but frequently rich and close set of inter-church relations, with the dilemmas provoked by identity and difference.
The original idea for the symposium lay with a graduate student, Robert Wilson, who had begun doctoral work using the Selwyn papers deposited in Selywn College archives. This short introduction should not end without thanks to him, and also a tribute to the late Canon John Sweet, who strongly supported the idea. A distinguished biblical scholar, John was Dean and Fellow of Selwyn College for many years. Though ill, he lived long enough to have participated in the symposium. His death, shortly thereafter, marked the end of a life whose dedicated service to scholarship, the Gospel and the Church of England would surely have been celebrated by Selwyn himself.
