The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective

Summary: An exploration of post-colonial practical theology in the Anglican world.

I am a fan of reading widely, but in my wide ranging reading I do not always know how to really write about what I read. This is a book that I appreciated and recommend, but I also need to say up front I am not qualified to evaluate. I have some understanding of post-colonial theory, but my understanding is very cursory.

I grew up baptist and have always attended baptist or non-denominational churches until the past 18 months when I started attending an Episcopal church. I used the Book of Common Prayer for years, which is the pull part of moving toward the Anglican tradition. The push part of that decision is my practical and theological changes from autonomous local churches in the face of abuse scandals and leader misbehavior. Episcopal structures are not immune to abuse and leader misbehavior (see George Carey and Justin Welby's resignations and the variety of scandals in ANCA and TEC). But part of the differences is that episcopal systems of church governance have the theoretical possibility of addressing sinful leaders, autonomous non-denominational or baptist church systems often do not have any ability to address sinful leaders in a meaningful way.

One of the themes of The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective is that interaction is bidirectional. Yes, colonial harm went from the colonizer to the colonized, but there are other interactions. This is similar to the focus in David Swartz's Facing West: American Evangelicals in an Age of World Christianity, which explores the ways that American Evangelicals were impacted by missions and interaction with world Christianity. Not all feedback is positive. In a complicated way, Swartz's exploration of the Homogenous Unit Principle and the way that was brought back from the mission field and was used to uphold church segregation beyond when segregation in other cultural areas was frowned upon, is an example of how not all feedback is positive.

But many areas of cross fertilization are positive. One of the examples in The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective is the fact that women's ordination occurred in Hong Kong about 50 years before it was approved in England. Women's ordination in Hong Kong and then China was a result of the realities of World War II. From that practical expediency movement on women's ordination moved first to other global south areas and then to the United States and the UK.

Postcolonial theory is particularly relevant to the anglican world. The Church of England was a state church and that state church was the state church of an empire that was one of the most extensive in global history. And that empire still has aspects of it in place and within the living memory of many, it was much more widespread. Post colonial analysis of the way that the global communion interacts and works makes a lot of sense, especially because of the stresses on that global communion.

The United States revolution changed the way that the Church of England related to the churches outside the geography of the UK. In 1867 the Lambeth Conference first met. There were several reasons for why the global Anglican communion were called together, but one of them was to discuss how and whether to accept polygamous men into church membership and if they were allowed to attend services, whether they should be baptized and given communion. It is not exactly parallel with the concerns around LGBTQ inclusion in the anglican communion now, but there are issues of sexuality and culture that are part of that discussion. The connection between sexuality and inculturation and local authority of the bishop has been at play in many of the meetings (that happen every decade) since that first meeting about 150 years ago.

I think like a good academic book, The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective complicates the narrative. It is not only that the global south is universally more conservative around sexuality than the US and UK. There are very conservative movements within the US and UK and there are inclusive areas of the global south. The issues are complex and listening to the whole church and paying attention to areas of post colonial theory as the global communion meets and discusses these complex and complicated issues is no silver bullet solution. But the reality is that the anglican communion was shaped by colonialism. And that has to be part of understanding the way forward.

Kwok Pui-Lan is herself from the global south but often working and teaching in the western contexts. She is rightly raising issues and pointing out areas of disagreement while noting the history which matters to how we proceed.

The past Archbishops of Canterbury have all have a level of taint or controversy from LGBTQ, sexual abuse and gender issues. Welby has resigned and the process of a new archbishop will be difficult. Rowan Williams certainly tried to find a way forward, but his academic chops did not seem to be up to the backdoor political wrangling. (I recently watched the movie Conclave and it does seem to be a relevant movie to the context.) And recently the George Carey (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002) resigned his priesthood because mishandling of sex abuse investigations.). Before Carey, Robert Runcie was the archbishop from 1980 to 1991 and oversaw the official recognition of women as priests in the UK. Every archbishop has had significant controversy around issues of gender and sexuality.

The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective by Kwok Pui-Lan will be too academic for some readers. It is not a difficult book to read, but may require a level of background theology, church history and other disciplines to fully understand some of the context. That being said, if people are interested in the issues, the very fact that they are interested probably means that they have the background to be able to read the book and will profit from it.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-anglican-tradition/ (there are lots of working links there.)