WARNING: This is a Anglican dork post... if this sort of thing bores you, please do not read on.
So, I was putting together a post for my church's website about the new movie, "Prince Caspian." I wrote something like, "this is a movie that comes out of our Anglican heritage." And I wanted to post a link to a site that might say a little more about that. Instead, I found a lot of really boring sites about Anglicanism. Like:
on The Episcopal Church website: What Makes Us Anglican?
(yawn.)
Wikipedia: Anglicanism
(booooring)
Church of England: What it means to be an Anglican
(all Christian jargon)
on The Anglican Communion website: Anglican Communion Information Service
(and you may think, in trying to prove a point, that I've selected the most boring page on the AC website... but THE WHOLE SITE IS LIKE THIS! It's: the Instruments of Communion, the Provinces, the Creeds, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, the Berkeley Statement, a dozen news services, blah blah blah)
I'm longing for something more than creeds, theological catechism, or dogmatic statements. I'm looking for something that might actually drawn someone in... that might make them fall in love with Anglicanism, the way I did. (Nice essay about such a falling in love here.)
Those are not unimportant -- but when I think of Anglicanism, I think of something Brian McLaren, the author of A Generous Orthodoxy, said about Anglicanism: that it is the expression of Christianity that celebrates the "beauty of God."
Where's the beauty, folks???
--Our church is centered around a book of beautiful, poetic prayers.
--Our church emerged in Tudor England, where the Benedictine monastery had been a center for spirituality, education, and community. Also from monastic life, we inherited an emphasis on the cycles of the day (morning prayer, noonday prayer, evening prayer) and the year (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost), still central to our worship life.
--We have more prominent poets (Donne, Herbert, Eliot), mystics (Julian of Norwich, Nicholas Ferrar), and fantasy writers (C.S. Lewis) than theologians. And even the theologians (Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, Joseph Butler) were more liturgists, preachers, and ethicists, than theologians per se. And all their books and essays were quite short!
--We're a church centered around the mystery of the bread and wine -- every Sunday, we lift up those things and share them together. We celebrate them as precious and sacred, ordinary things that become holy, extraordinary, and transcendent.
-- The student whose article I linked to above, about falling in love with Anglicanism describes feeling "[an] inclination towards an intuitive truth that is believed and understood rather than 'known' and towards a greater appreciation for uncertainty and grayness -- which is, of course, a defining characteristic of Anglicanism as a whole." (Although I don't want to say this isn't true of other mainline denominations, but I think it's more characteristic of Anglican theology historically than it is of say, Calvin, Luther, or Aquinas, for instance.)
And so, a movie like "Prince Caspian," that explains theology and the Christian life through a story -- a fantasy! -- set in a beautiful land, with fanciful creatures, with a theme of faith and perseverance, and WITHOUT a dogmatic message so thick you could choke on it, is essentially Anglican.
Hopefully, the movie won't be a dud.
I remembered JRR Tolkien as Catholic, so I checked wikipedia (I know, it's a little sketch) and it has this quote by Tolkien on Anglicanism: "a pathetic and shadowing medley of half remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs."
ReplyDeleteOf course, I also think Tolkien was racist and ahistorically nostalgic, so maybe it's good that he's not in your fold. Lewis I'm not sure what to make of...
Ah, I guess I shouldn't assume all prominent English Christians are Anglican! Thanks, Jon.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Lewis was a odd duck. His personal life was weird until he met his wife, who of course, died very soon after. I've never been able to get into his books or novels much past "The Lion, The Witch..." and even there, I like the first few chapters better than the rest of the book. His allegory is just very blunt.
This is interesting and I am still thinking about it. I hope that you don't mind that whenever you are on denominational things I comment.
ReplyDeleteI thought the mention of Luther, Calvin, and Aquinas was insightful. It may be that Anglicanism, lacking a theological "founder," has more flexibility about doctrine and believe. I doubt there's a default theologian that all Anglicans read.
I do think it's not quite fair to claim all English authors as Anglican. Julian, for instance, is before the split. And in the 19th c. at least, as many people were attending nonconformist chapels on Sunday as were at Episcopal churches. I'm not sure how things stand today. Was Blair's conversion a big deal? I wonder what the Catholic/ Anglican / Mainline / Evangelical split is. How tight do you think the Episcopal connection is to England?