Anglican Studies Seminar
Following our discussion of a provocative set of invited papers in Year 1 that focused on the historical legacies shaping Anglican ecclesiologies in various contexts, we are issuing an open call for papers in Year 2 of this five-year initiative that surface the biblical and theological factors shaping Anglican practices of church in diverse locales. Within the worldwide Anglican Communion, Anglicans engage the Christian scriptures and the heritage of Christian theology (Anglican and more broadly) in diverse ways. This has led to significant ecclesiological differences and has called into question whether there is anything like an “Anglican identity” or if it is simply true that there are multiple Anglican identities. If it is the latter, the question of what, if anything, unites Anglicans in the face of these diverse identities has become an urgent and neuralgic one, one that this seminar will investigate through the interdisciplinary methods of Anglican Studies. Papers that emphasize de- and postcolonial dynamics at work in the formation and maintenance of “operative ecclesiologies,” particularly in understudied regions of the Communion, are especially welcome.
Please note that those whose proposals are accepted must commit to submitting their paper for pre-circulation by Monday, October 16, 2023. Seminar members and others wishing to attend will have access to these papers, which will be briefly summarized at the meeting but will not be presented by their authors. Instead, they will be discussed among the panelists, seminar members, and session attendees. Please note that, due to AAR/SBL policies pertaining to participation, those whose proposals are accepted must commit to attending the 2023 Annual Meeting in San Antonio.
The Anglican Studies Seminar holds that Anglican Studies requires a sustained study of the intersections of post– and de-colonialism, imperial legacies, and globalization with the ongoing evolution of Anglican identity in specific locations marked by their particular economic, social, cultural, and historical conditions. The Seminar pays detailed attention to context; its work disrupts extant assumptions about the Anglican tradition being a monolithic, monocultural entity. Accordingly, the Seminar focuses on the “operative ecclesiologies” of Anglican churches at the national or provincial level. That is, we are interested in how the contextual realities of Anglicans in concrete locales shape the ways in which church is practiced by Anglicans, whether they answer to standard ecclesial and theological conceptualizations or not.
Seminar members are committed to a globalized study of Anglicanism, conceived broadly, and to investigating various operative ecclesiologies, locally and contextually. We foster interdisciplinary conversations that enable scholars to speak to multiple aspects of Anglicanism. The seminar’s findings will be of interest to scholars working in a range of disciplines. Moreover, close examination of the processes of decolonization that inform lived Anglicanisms will supply the wider field of religious studies with a set of thickly described case studies of post-colonial decolonization. It is the intention of the Steering Committee to publish research resulting from the Seminar and make it accessible to an interdisciplinary audience.