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May 16, 2012 by Katharine Jefferts Schori

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Those parties continue to affect and influence Anglicanism to this day, and they have been an important part of the history of mission. The catholic wing, often called Anglo-Catholic or high church, reflects a strong interest in frequent Eucharist and in a corporate worship environment involving all the senses (color, vestments, candles, incense, bodily actions like genuflection and crossing oneself). The evangelical or low-church party puts more emphasis on the primacy of scripture, the saving relationship between an individual and God through faith alone, and the work of individuals in fostering the conversion of others. The third party is often called latitudinarian or broad church and focuses on maintaining an open posture that includes something from both ends of the spectrum, often from a more liberal or progressive stance. That is a shorthand caricature, lived out in different ways in different ages and contexts, but the three emphases remain active and even activist within Anglicanism today. It's significant and appropriate to observe that in the United States, the parties have historically been less rigidly defined than in England, and that today they are more based on theology than on liturgical practice. A high-church evangelical is not a complete oxymoron in The Episcopal Church!

The mission societies that arose from the different parties in Anglicanism, particularly within the Church of England, sent their missionaries and theologies abroad, to the Americas, to Africa, and to Asia. The reach corresponded to colonial and commercial interests of the British Empire, and the Hudson's Bay Company or East India Company often imported chaplains at some point after establishing a commercial station or beachhead. The theological and liturgical stripe of the nascent Anglican presence often grew within a new colony in a way that excluded the other Anglican parties or emphases. To this day, the style of Anglicanism in the different autonomous parts of the Anglican Communion can often be distinguished and directly related to the mission agency that first sent missionaries.

The churches of Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya, for example—and indeed much of East Africa—were founded by Church Mission Society workers, as were the small churches in Patagonia (southern South America), which date their origin to a later partner of the CMS. Those parts of the Communion retain an evangelical identity. The churches of central and southern Africa were largely established by SPG or UMCA workers, in an Anglo-Catholic expression.

Something similar happened in the broader Christian mission work in the United States, when the US government divided up Native American reservations among the different mainline Christian traditions, and invited them to operate residential schools designed to Christianize native populations. Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Methodists, and Episcopalians were assigned different tribes. Today, much of the Navajo nation is Episcopalian, as are the Gwich'in people of the Arctic, and several tribes of the Sioux nation.

But Anglicanism at its best has always insisted that there is value and truth in each of the strands of its tradition—that we need the fervor of the evangelical wing, and the transcendence of the catholic wing, and the wisdom of the latitudinarian. If we lose any of those we are greatly diminished—even blind, deaf, or mute. The Body of Christ needs the ability to see—and to hear, pray, and act—from different and multiple vantage points.

There is a possible seed of healing and reconciliation buried in the midst of the great flowering of mission efforts in the mid-nineteenth century. An Anglican missiologist, Henry Venn, together with a Congregationalist, Rufus Anderson, set out an understanding of mission that moved away from a narrow focus on conversion toward establishing a local expression of the Body of Christ that could develop and sustain its own life as a mature Christian cell. They pointed out that a local church should be self-governing, self-sustaining, and self-propagating, rather than a body whose life was dependent on another for its direction, life, and growth. Here were the seeds of a postcolonial vision of mission.

An American Episcopal missionary, Roland Allen, who worked in Japan and China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, developed this missionary theology in ways that linked it directly with Paul of Tarsus's work in some of the earliest Christian communities around the Mediterranean. Allen pointed out that Paul brought the scriptures and sacraments and then got out of the way, staying in touch and offering pastoral guidance by letter or a rare pastoral visit. When the gospel has the opportunity to grow and flourish in a new context, it generally does take on a new character; it doesn't clone the original missionary.

The Meaning of Mission—
Looking toward the Future

Article Continued On Next Page

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5/16/2012 4:00:00 AM

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