A comment on another post suggested that
the Anglican Church is dying. It immediately reminded me of confirmation
class—almost 50 years ago!—when our Rector said that the mission of the
Anglican church was to disappear. In the context of that class, the comment was
about Anglicanism’s role in the Body of Christ. He didn’t use Newman’s term
“via media,” but very clearly he was pointing to the historical mediating role
of Anglicanism between Catholic and Protestant, which he saw as on a
convergence path after many centuries. Most of us would use different
categories today, after the rise of to dominance of evangelicalism in the
Fifty years is not much more than a hiccup
in church history, for me it is a lifetime. The church of my youth was a
somewhat conflicted, but mostly stable farm-town parish. I didn’t find out for
over thirty years that it was heavily dependent on my father—the lone tithing
profession in the congregation. When he moved to BC in 1973, the parish lost
25% of its income. It has never really recovered. The churches of our town in
the ‘50’s were a fairly self-satisfied lot, without a lot of fervour anywhere,
except maybe at the Pentecost Church—about whom most of knew nothing, save that
their pastor was a very odd duck indeed.
By the time I left for University, the
turmoil of the ‘60’s was well underway. Kennedy was dead, the Vietnam War was
beginning to impinge on people’s consciousness, and the hippy movement was just
beginning. The church group I joined at the
In 1970, I returned to my home town to
teach school. In fairly short order, I found myself on the parish vestry, an
experience which drove me away from the church for the rest of my twenties.
There was no life there, no excitement about the Gospel, no interest in being
leaven in society. Instead, at one meeting we spent two hours debating where to
get the best deal on garbage cans. If that’s what the church is all about, it
might as well die!
When my wife and I returned to church life,
it seemed automatic that we would go to the Anglican Church. We were both
cradle Anglicans, and we didn’t have any good reason to go elsewhere. If I had
found something like what I had experienced before, I might well not have
stayed. The fact is, I did stay, because I found within the church some others (not
everyone, thank God!) who thought like me, and especially I came under the
influence of a priest who encouraged me to use my gifts. What I realized a
while later was that I could not be a member of any church which discouraged
independent thought. Anglicanism seemed to me to be a faith which expected
people to think. Give people the tools, and let them go to work. If at times
others produce results that you don’t agree with…well, we just have to learn to
live with that, at least within the broad bounds of orthodoxy.
For me, the church is very much alive, and
most alive when it is engaged in Spirit-informed debate. We may not last
forever, but while we live, we have a mission. For me, that mission is summed
up best in the last three promises of the Baptismal Covenant in the Book of
Alternative Services: proclamation by word and example, loving service in
Christ’s name, building peace and justice.
I often come back to this thought: the
church—the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Body of Christ—is a provisional
reality, given to the world to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (see 1
Cor 11:26). No church is intended to last forever, including the Anglican
Church of Canada. We may be in numerical decline at this time, but there’s still
life and vigour in these old bones.
I will continue faithful to my Baptismal promises and my ordination vows, knowing that numbers are only part of the story. Dying? I hope not. But, if God wills it, so be it.
