Questioning Authority

Ellen K. Wondra, an Episcopal priest, is a member of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on Faith and Order and Research Professor Emerita in Theology and Ethics at the Bexley-Seabury Seminary Federation in Chicago, Illinois. She is Editor Emerita of the Anglican Theological Review.

“Ellen K. Wondra has done us an enormous service by taking on the vexing issue of Authority in the Anglican Communion. The theology, history, and contemporary story of Anglicanism’s love-hate relationship with authority are carefully woven together in this substantial volume. Dr. Wondra argues for an understanding of authority which is relational and dispersed rather than juridical and focused. In such a system communion is experienced in diversity not in spite of it. This is a catholicity ordered in a ‘conciliar economy’ in which authority enhances communion while involving the whole body of the church in taking responsibility for its mission.”Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, Presiding Bishop’s Deputy for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations (Ret.)

• Michael B. Curry: Foreword – Acknowledgments – Abbreviations – Introduction: Communion Challenged – Impaired Communion – The Highest Degree of Communion Possible – Questioning Authority – Power, Responsibility, and Authority – Differentiated Authority – Relational Theology – Catholicity and Conciliarity – Conclusions and Prospects – Index.