So many Anglicanisms, so little Anglicanism
So for example, you can go to an Church of England service that would feel really quite similar to a Roman Catholic service - so much so that both would be called Mass. On the other hand you could go a cafe style charismatic service, or a Bible proclaiming reformed evangelical service. Probably most likely, if you picked a church or cathedral at random, is that you would end up in a broadly liberal catholic set up. When faced with that array of options it is pretty hard to define Anglicanism observationally! It is quite simply a right old mish-mash. Which is ironic when you think that the intention of the initial reformers like Thomas Cranmer was to have Common Prayer!
There are probably a couple of issues here. The first is that that Church of England is a mish-mash stylistically. The liturgy or lack of it, the style of music, the clothing of the minister, the layout of buildings and so on vary tremendously. For many, the assumption is that this is where the variation really lies. They like to think that we're all basically Christians who believe the same thing. For what it's worth, if that was really the case then the woes of the Church of England would be much less significant!
The reality is that there is a second, much more fundamental issue, which is that we are a mish-mash in terms of our core beliefs or a doctrinal mish-mash. Surveys of what clergy and congregation members believe often throw this up. And it's not just that people believe different things on the hot-button issues of the day such a gender and sexuality. In fact, the difference of belief on those issues tends to be rooted in more doctrinal things. Doctrine leads to ethics. So there are a range of beliefs on how the Bible should be viewed, what was actually achieved at the cross, whether the resurrection happened and what we mean by that, what we believe the church is and what it means to be a presbyter/priest.
When looked at like this, it's quite hard to understand how the Church of England has held together for so long. Essentially it's become a kind of financial and institutional unity which has held while people have been able to plod their own paths spiritually speaking. That has always been unstable and has always led to people leaving (or not joining in the first place). Evangelicals will know of the lesser and greater exoduses over events like the growth of the Oxford Movement, the call of Lloyd-Jones, the ordination of women and the more recent issues around sexuality and transgender.
In recent times this has been magnified as the Anglican Communion (Anglican Churches across the world) has been stretched to breaking, with the formation of GAFCON and the increasing number of geographical locations with more than one Anglican Church. A number of places have history with this latter scenario. The U.S. has for many years had a variety of episcopal churches, South Africa has for a long time had two Anglican denominations (although only one recognised by the communion) and even in the UK we have had the Free Church of England for a long period due to the rise of influence of the Oxford Movement.
But now we have increasing numbers of GAFCON lead movements for refugees from liberal Anglican Churches: AMiE in the England, ACNA in the US, Church of Confessing Anglicans in New Zealand and so on. Most of these are not connected to the Anglican communion, but would still claim a committment to be Anglican and are connected to GAFCON.
This makes it more significant still how you define what an Anglican is. Perhaps most difficult here is that we disagree on how you would define an Anglican. I read recently the chapter in the Church Society book Reformed Foundation, Reforming Future by Lee Gatiss where he seeks (effectively I think) to show that the 39 Articles define the Church of England as a Reformed Church. In a sense this is a short version of Griffith-Thomas' 1930 book, Principles of Theology, which sought to show a similar thing. This is a confessional approach to defining what it means to be Anglican - we should believe certain things. For what it's worth, I think the confessional way must be the way to go. But others would want to take a more institutional approach. The churches are linked to the priests, who are linked to the bishops, who are linked to the apostles, who are linked to Christ. What you believe is less significant at this point. Ecclessiastical officers are more important.
With this kind of mish-mash, such that we hardly seem able to agree how might begin to agree or disagree, it seems two things will be likely to result. One, the Church of England and the Anglican Communion will break up. I'm not sure how quickly this will happen, but I think the trajectories are already set. We are already seeing a steady stream of people leaving Church of England ministry and a steady stream of new churches being set up outside of the Church of England. Similarly, we are seeing new movements being set up in many provinces and a Lambeth conference that cannot gain the confidence or attendance of many or its largest provinces. Two, there will continue to be a proliferation of Anglicanisms. In a sense this is sad. Personally I would rather see a confessionally united Anglicanism, but this seems unlikely at the moment. Even within those united on core aspects of the Anglican confession, the variation on more peripheral, but not insignificant issues - such as the ordination of women - and the stylistic variations seem very likely to mean that we will have many Anglicanism for some time yet.
To my mind, much modern day Anglicanism, especially within the Church of England and some of the more liberal provinces bears precious little relationship to what previous generations would have understood as Christian, let alone Anglican. Certainly it is confessionally a million miles from what Cranmer and his contemporaries envisaged. The hope and prayer would be that the proliferation of new forms of Anglicanism would be able to be faithful to their confessional roots, while contemporary in their practice.
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