Reflections from Saint Paul's Church

Anglican Identity - Part I
One of a series of sermons on the roots and character of Anglicanism, this sermon was delivered at St. Paul's Church, Salem, on Sunday, 8 January 2006.

John the Baptist appeared on the scene at a time of political and religious turmoil. It was a time that was in many ways like the time in which we live. Political divisions were deep then, as they are in our country today. Religious divisions were deep then, as well, as they are in our country today. You can try all you want, but in the end you cannot separate religion and politics. You could not separate them in John’s day and, no matter how hard you try, you cannot separate them today, either. Politics affect our values and our values affect our politics. And, since our values often come from our religious convictions, it is inevitable that our religious views will affect our political views. In spite of our modern conventions about not mixing religion and politics, the fact is that it is virtually impossible to separate them.

Look at John the Baptist and Jesus. The simple truth is that they challenged people–and it was not just their religious views that John and Jesus challenged. John and Jesus were not at all hesitant to challenge the political leaders of their day. Remember, both John and Jesus were put to death, not by the religious authorities but by the political leaders of their day.

Now, my point is not to make any kind of political statement. In fact, my agenda is quite different. During this season of Epiphany, I am planning to preach a series of sermons, or instructions, on our Anglican tradition–what it is, where it comes from, what it is all about. And today’s Gospel provides a helpful segue into that topic because, just as religion and politics played a role in the creation of Christianity in the first place, it was the potent mix of religion and politics that solidified modern Anglicanism. Our Anglican tradition is deeply rooted in a highly combustible mix of religion and politics. We would not be who we are, if it were not for the close connection between the two.

I want to explore some aspects of our Anglican tradition over the next several weeks. I have several reasons for wanting to do this, but the most important one is the simple fact that much of the Episcopal Church today seems to have lost any sense of its basic Anglican identity. Actually, this loss of basic identity is something that seems to have happened in most denominations in this country. There was a time when it meant something fairly particular and identifiable to be an Episcopalian, or a Methodist, or a Presbyterian. But modern American Christianity has lately become what I would call “generic” Christianity. There are still distinctions, but I suspect that, for the average person in the pew, those distinctions do not seem to be very important, or very well known. For many people, one church is pretty much the same as any other.

I would be the first to say that I very much appreciate the opportunity to share conversation and worship, from time to time, in other Christian traditions. But, even though I do like to visit some other churches and participate to some degree in other traditions, I am an Anglican, an Episcopalian, and not just because I think the church is pretty, or the liturgy is nice, or the parish is friendly. And it is not just brand loyalty, either.

Quite honestly, I am appalled by much of what goes on in the Episcopal Church today and I fear that the future is grim for our Church. I have many friends who have long since given up on the Episcopal Church and joined some other church, but I have not and I have no plans to do so. One of my great personal heroes is an 18th century English priest named John Keble who once said, “If the Church of England were to fail altogether yet it would be found in my parish.” He lived in a time of turmoil when people were leaving the Church of England over various issues. What he was saying was not merely that he had no plans to leave the Church of England. Rather, he was saying that there is something particular and important about the Church of England that claimed his loyalty and in important ways defined who he was as a Christian and as a person. That is my position. And as long as I am the parish priest here, it will be the philosophy of this parish: “If the Episcopal Church were to fail altogether yet it will be found in this parish.”

I would like to begin this series by pointing out something about the foundations of our Anglican/Episcopal tradition that most people probably never think about at all on this side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, I think it is one of the single most important things about our Anglican identity. And that is this: our roots are in the Church of England, which is to say that, at the heart of our tradition is an understanding of the Church not as one Christian denomination among many, but of one Church as the spiritual center, one particular Church as the spiritual identity of a whole nation. The Episcopal Church is not the state church in this country, but the Church of England, from which we descend, is the state church. It is the one official Church of England. That is part of our heritage and, I believe, it is a very important part of our heritage.

Its importance is in the fact that it says something about what we believe it means to be the Church in general. In the Creed we say that we believe “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”–one Church. However, from the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and even before, the Christian Church has been fragmenting into many denominations. Every time an issue arises over which people disagree, if they cannot come to some agreement to settle the issue, they just start a new church. That is how we got Presbyterians and Methodists, Baptists and Lutherans, Congregationalists and Universalists, and a whole host of other denominations.

But the English took quite a different view at the Reformation. For both theological and political reasons, England maintained a commitment to one Church. There was always resistance, and it took several decades of political and religious turmoil to settle on just which church would be the Church of England. But when Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne she settled the issue more or less once and for all, establishing one Church in England, one Church of England. Today, England has lots of denominations, too, but that was not the way it was when good Queen Bess was on the throne.

The truth is that this singular Church of England was not an entirely tidy affair. There were, and there continue to be different styles of worship and theological disagreements within this one Church of England. But the Elizabethan Settlement made it quite clear that if you were English and if you were Christian, you were Church of England. Our democratic impulses are appalled at some of the consequences of this. If you were a non-conformist in those days, if you refused to be a part of the Church of England, you might be persecuted in various ways. The pilgrims packed up and left because they found life so intolerable. Roman Catholics were denied the right to vote in England until 1829–because they refused to be part of the Church of England.

It would be easy to get all exercised about things like that which we may rightly regard as injustices, but we should not let our righteous indignation obscure the real point: as I often say, Christians are not Christians in isolation. We are members of something larger. And that something larger is not just the parish we happen to choose to go to. If you choose to go to this parish–or any other Episcopal parish–you are saying something about what you believe. By choosing to be an Episcopalian, to be a part of a parish of the Episcopal Church, you are saying that you believe in one Church and that you believe in what that one Church believes.

And let me refine that just a bit more. In spite of what lots of misinformed people like to say, the Church of England was not founded by Henry VIII, nor by his son Edward VI or his daughter Elizabeth I. Henry rejected the authority of the pope over the Church of England, but he did not reject the authority of the received tradition of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. He believed, and we believe, that the Church of England and its descendants–us, among others–is and always has been part of that same Church which was founded by the apostles and which handed our faith down to us.

The faith we have received from that Church and in that Church contains things which we cannot change, things which we accept on faith because they have been handed down by that one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Notice that in the creed we do not say that we believe in the Church. We say that we believe the Church–we believe what the Church teaches us. Those things include the creeds as the norm of our faith, and the Bible as the essential source of what we teach and believe.

One of the principal reasons the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are in such chaos today is, I think, because we have lost sight of these essentials. Our life as a Church has too often devolved into struggles over issues that may be important in their way but that are not nearly as central as some of their proponents would have us believe. What our tradition teaches us is that we are members of one another by virtue of the faith, the creeds, and the deep bonds we share as fellow members of Christ’s Body, the one Church. We will never succeed in resolving our disagreements over other issues if we are unwilling or unable first of all to acknowledge and confess the primacy of our faith in the creeds and the fact of our belonging to one another by virtue of our membership in this one Church.

There is, of course, the danger that our divisions really are rooted in disagreements over essentials. That is what happened at the very beginning of the Church. The first Christians were, first of all, Jews. But there was a fundamental disagreement among the Jews about Jesus: Is he or is he not the Messiah? That was the key issue. If John was right, and Jesus is the Messiah, that fact trumps all others. And that is just as true today, as it was then.

In our current difficulties, I am very much opposed to division, especially if division is going to be over matters which are not demonstrably essential to our faith in Jesus Christ. I am opposed to division in large part precisely because I am an Episcopalian, an Anglican. We are not members of a Church that has traditionally seen either multiplication or division as an appropriate arithmetic for the Church. Addition is the only arithmetic appropriate to the Church: adding new members, new believers to the ever-growing Body of Christ–the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. That Church was formed in the days after the Resurrection of Jesus. It was refined in the fires of persecution and martyrdom. It grew through the centuries in the ongoing addition of new souls. It is one in its fellowship with one another and with Jesus. And it is that Church which we believe ourselves to be part of, the one Church of the one Messiah, the one Body of the one and only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The Very Reverend Gary W. Kriss

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