The Anglican Communion is currently undergoing significant challenges to its coherence as a unified ecclesial tradition, and to its self-identity in an increasingly post-colonial world. The immediate context for this book includes the ructions and realignments throughout the global Anglican Communion in reaction to the institutional approval of LGBTQIA affirming theologies and liturgies, predominantly throughout westernized Anglican jurisdictions. Ecclesiastical unity is fracturing whilst the concept of unity and accusations of both disunity and insufficient orthodoxy are being wielded as cudgels in a rhetorical battle to assert the dominance of particular Anglican tribal groups. This is an attractive, but typically unproductive, rhetorical strategy for all participants to deploy, allowing the partisan wielding such rhetoric to assume moral authority, forcing those portrayed as fractious or unorthodox to justify themselves as authentically Anglican. Charlie Bell’s Unity: Anglicanism’s Impossible Dream? is dedicated to exploring the theological concept of unity to bring greater clarity to these contentious dialogues.
Bell’s writing in Unity is articulate and approachable, passionately advocating for both maintaining bonds of ecclesial unity across the Anglican Communion and progressive liturgical developments within the Church of England. Following a brief introduction to the book, it consists of nine chapters in three parts. The first, ‘Where we find ourselves’, consists of chapters on the Church of England, the Communion and its current polarities, and Anglican identity and unity. The second part, ‘Reflections on unity’, consists of chapters exploring unity in scripture, throughout early Christian history, and the 20th-century ecumenical movement. The third part, ‘the search for Anglican unity’, explores opportunities and hopes for future Anglican unity.
Unity suggests reasonable and achievable ideas for fostering greater cohesion within the Communion, including reconsidering the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a ‘unique focus of unity’ for the Communion. It further argues that churches have patience with theological and liturgical innovations during a time of ‘reception’, testing them in practice before pronouncing final judgement on them.
One consequence of a book’s being written both from and to a specific moment in the life of the Communion means that it will, of necessity, become dated. Unity was written in the last years of both Archbishop Justin Welby’s tenure and the ‘Living in Love and Faith’ process, and with acknowledgements dated to June 2024. Sarah Mullally is now the Archbishop of Canterbury, her appointment further exacerbating some of the existing fractures within the Communion. At present, the L’iving in Love and Faith’ process has been debated without the approval of liturgies for blessings of same sex unions. Globally, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order continues to consider a geographically rotating leadership role for the Communion. An updated volume with reflections upon such developments may be a further gift to the church.
A further critique of Unity derives from the implication of the subtitle that its focus is global Anglicanism, rather than merely its English expression. Anglican Identity is described phenomenologically from the common threads of Anglican practice, rather than propositionally from a set of doctrines or documents. Whilst it is undeniable that the Anglican Communion is historically derivative from the Church of England, the articulation of Anglican identity in Unity retains the colonial direction of influence, from England to the world. There is little recognition that Anglicanism can grow, develop and positively influence the Church of England, and voices of global Anglicans are consistently couched in how they are discussed within the Church of England’s internal debates, rather than encountered as dialogue partners in their own right.
There are three further manifestations of this. First, whilst noting that Anglicanism is only ‘established’ within the Church of England, Unity suggests that the broader Communion learn from the English church’s sense of being an expression of the Church Catholic serving all people of the nation, rather than merely another Christian denomination among many. This assumes that other denominations share a similar theology of cultural engagement. Perhaps English Anglicans might benefit from greater political disentanglement, such as is enjoyed by the rest of the Communion. Secondly, despite describing the recent innovation of overlapping ecclesial jurisdictions as dubiously Anglican, this forgets the overlapping jurisdictions in both the Church of England and the US Episcopal Church’s European ministries, and in the tikanga system within the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. Finally, the Bishop-in-Synod model of ecclesial governance is lauded as a distinct and under-appreciated aspect of contemporary Anglican ecclesiology, yet this innovation of the global Communion, subsequently adopted in England, is described exclusively with reference to Church of England documents. Thus, a significant contribution of global Anglicanism is ignored. With such an internal focus on the debate within the Church of England, perhaps a more appropriate sub-title would be ‘The Church of England’s Impossible Dream?’.
These critiques aside, Unity is a stimulating book on an important ecclesial issue within the Communion which rewards careful engagement.
