Does the Anglican Communion have a Promise? A Response to The Promise of Anglicanism by Heaney and Sachs

What is it about?

Robert Heaney and William Sachs’s The Promise of Anglicanism presents a ‘Promise’ which claims to be based on ‘mission’ and the necessity of contextualization. However, as this article will argue, this Promise is based on faulty premises, and the practice it suggests, while commendable, falls short of attaining to the full meaning of Christian fellowship. Furthermore, the Promise merits examination because it can be used to justify indolence and unchecked subsidiarity within the Anglican Communion, and consequently, to contribute to the Communion’s present shift towards pluralism. This present study argues that the two major premises of the Promise – its understandings of catholicity and of mission – are both mistaken, since each tends to emphasize individuality over commonality. Accepting the Promise and adopting its proposed practices would only encourage the Communion to lean further towards liberal pluralism, since the Promise falls short of encapsulating the true meaning of Christian fellowship, especially in the areas of commonality and intentional corporate reasoning. It is argued that a tighter conciliarity is both a necessary step towards restoring the essential fellowship of the Communion, as well as a complement to the ‘community of practice’ proposed by the Promise.

Featured Image