The emphasis in Year 2 of the interdisciplinary Anglican Studies Seminar is to surface the theological and biblical factors that are shaping Anglican practices in diverse locales. The emphasis in the Anglican Studies Seminar is on discussion, and thus, only a brief overview of the papers will be given. Participants are urged to read the papers in their entirety before the seminar. Papers for the Anglican Studies seminar are considered working papers and are not intended for circulation or research use.
The Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI - Independent Church of the Philippines) was formed in the beginning of the twentieth century as part of the broad nationalist struggle against Spanish colonialism and subsequently American imperialism. This paper focuses on the ecclesiology of the church, particularly how the IFI’s concept of the church shapes its theology of mission and ministry. The discussion will focus on two recent developments in order to explore how the IFI’s theology and understanding of church shapes its lived practices: the ‘Abundant Life’ programme with indigenous peoples, and the inclusion of LGBTQ+ peoples in the church. The paper offers an analysis of a church that is part of the Anglican Communion, which represents an intersection of post-colonial struggle, a liberative pastoral vision, Roman Catholic worship and sacramentality, Protestant concern for individual autonomy and self-determination, and a pastoral vision that encompasses the national as a whole.
Zhao Zichen (1888–1979) is one of China's leading Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. After becoming a priest and deacon in the Anglican Church in China in 1941, he built upon the Anglican thought of theologians Oliver Chase Quick (1885–1944) and William Temple (1881–1944). In his published writings, Zhao developed his own vision for the church's substance and function in conversation with the philosophy of “substance-function” (ti-yong體用) that Song-dynasty Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi articulated in the twelfth century. Zhao thus the groundwork for a highly original sacramental ecclesiology in his Chinese context, shedding tremendous light on the theological shape of Anglican identity in China.
Through a critique of traditional Anglican approaches to Patristics, this paper will explore how those could be shifted and rethought in a way that is honest to diversity and conflict. Instead of a narrative that either glorifies or dismisses Late Antiquity, an understanding of the ancient church's struggles and conflicts is, in itself, a precedent for the Anglican Communion. When Constantine recognized Christianity as a religion of the Roman Empire, relatively isolated bishops with mixed autonomy and oppression were forced to shape a common identity. Beautiful treatises and wild conflicts followed and continued for centuries. Communion was defined as much by the willingness to continue to engage and fight as it was to reach a cohesive agreement. In the modern era, the Anglican Communion, with its deeply divided and wonderfully diverse components, shares much of the same tradition and may find blessing in the same unabashed embrace of collective struggle.