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Seminar 11:
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The current crisis in the Anglican Communion has precipitated the question: what does it mean to be Anglican? This seminar will discuss the formation of the Anglican Communion through patterns of mission and settlement in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, in order to ask a number of questions about Anglican identity today. How much do we stress commonalities and how much do we allow differences? How do we relate the local to the global? What are the issues in the current crisis, and what are their historical roots? In 1993, the distinguished church historian, Sir Henry Chadwick, described the Anglican Communion as "a fairly loose federation of kindred spirits, often grateful for fellowship but each province preserving the right to make its own decisions." We will ask whether this description still holds true today, where authority resides in the Anglican Communion, and whether the Windsor Report and other recent developments will lead to a change in the very nature of the Communion. Participants' experience and/or perception of what it means to be Anglican will form an essential part of the conversation.
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