With all the acrimony that runs through this Church these days, and considering the knee-jerk reactions from various sides coming out of the General Convention, we must begin to revive the traditional Anglican way of seeking a common or middle way that carries the Church though rough times and the strong pull of the polarizing extremes. Heck, we need a revival of Hooker’s ideals of what the Church of England and now Anglicanism can truly be. We could call ourselves “revivers” or “rekindlers” or “reawakeners” after the “conservative’s” term for themselves as “reasserters” or the “liberal’s” term for themselves as “reappraisers.”
Now is the day to begin rebuilding Anglicanism in the United States.
The polarization resulting from the American Culture Wars (from both the conservative and liberals sides) has infiltrated The Episcopal Church. The two extremes in this Church have polarized the membership, perhaps intentionally, in order to achieve their goals that result in the imposition of particular perspectives and practices over and above the middle or opposite-extreme positions. There are good and faithful Episcopalians from all sides that do wish to remain together and to forge an honest way forward so that the balance and richness that results from different sides staying in conversation, debate, and inquiry can be maintained. The result is a solidly balanced way to understand our faith in the 21st century and God’s call to us to influence the world.
Dean Alan Jones from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in his new book entitled, Common Prayer on Common Ground: A Vision of Anglican Orthodoxy, attempts to articulate an Anglicanism based squarely on Via Media – the middle way which encompasses the vast majority of the common folk in the Episcopal Church. He writes about the “Conservative and Liberal Perspectives” in one small section of the book. I want to quote from it because I think he does a similar thing that The Very Rev. George Back did with his essay written in 1991 detailing the positive aspects of conservatism and liberalism in the Church and our need for both. I read Back’s essay for the first time in The Anglican Digest July, 2003.
Jones writes:
“This highlights the weakness of liberalism. It is an effort – sometimes noble and heroic – to dispense with tradition and ancient ways of believing. [Houston] Smith writes, ‘Liberals are at their worst in not recognizing how much an absolute can contribute to life, and in assuming that absolutes can be held only dogmatically, which is not the case. Absolutism and dogmatism lie on different axes. The first relates to belief, whereas the second is a charter disorder. The opposite of absolutism is not open-mindedness but relativism, and the opposite of dogmatism is not relativism but open-mindedness. There can be, and are dogmatic relativists and open-minded absolutists.’
“But he goes on, ‘liberals [are] better than conservatives at recognizing the dangers of fanaticism and the virtues of tolerance, and conservatives [are] better as perceiving the dangers of nihilism and the virtues of a sense of certainty… Both the strengths and dangers of liberalism pertain to life’s horizontal dimension, which encompass[es] human relationships – whereas those of conservatives pertains to the vertical, asymmetrical God-person relationships.’ [Houston Smith, The Soul of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco: 2005, p.211]
“Liberals need to learn that the vertical relation is more important. It seems to me that the conservative diagnosis is often right but its remedy (charging back into an idealized and imagined past) is both unworkable and disastrous. The liberal is often a poor diagnostician but, at least, has an inkling of freedom in God…
“…Of course, as an Anglican, I’d say that both statements are true! It’s a matter of emphasis. Polarization is a form of indulgence and is both unnecessary and harmful. The world is in both a state of sin and a state of grace. Human beings are both fallen and free.”
Alan Jones, Common Prayer on Common Ground, Morehouse Publishing, 2006, pp31-32.