Canterbury Studies in Anglicanism – serie

Daniel was written during a time when God’s people were struggling to discern how to remain faithful, even as their lives were dominated by the political and cultural forces of the Empire. Daniel’s central themes have remained relevant ever since: the challenge of remaining loyal to God despite the alternately seductive and threatening voices of imperial powers; the indispensability of humility before God; the perpetual problem of human arrogance and failure to recognize the overarching power of God; the insatiable and life-denying human thirst for power and control; and the call to find in God the source of just, joyful and abundant living.As people today try to make sense of a newly emerging global reality, Daniel continues to speak an important word about faithful living. Who truly controls our lives? To what or whom do we owe ultimate allegiance? To whom do the kingdom, the power and the glory belong? This book invites readers to consider the questions that Daniel raises and then live out the answers.

Based upon addresses given to Anglican audiences in North America and Australia, Bill Countryman directly confronts the challenges that face Anglicans and other Western Christians at a time of internal division and increasing indifference to religion on the part of educated elites. He regards these challenges as a work of the Holy Spirit, who is clearing the ground for a new era of building, and help readers start thinking about what kind of future the Spirit is leading us toward.The book begins by presenting the Spirit as a demolition expert, endeavoring to shake us out of our complacency. It then focuses on three central elements of Christian faith and life: the image of Jesus, the sacraments, and the scriptures, and notes some different ways in which we have seen and utilized them over the ages. It holds out the communion of saints as the key to understanding the ongoing value of the church today. It calls faithful people of all stripes to reject our tendency to turn God’s gifts into idols and to rediscover a humility that will be open to the rebuilding that must now be done with the leadership of the Spirit.

This pioneering book by theologians and leaders in the Anglican Communion addresses the topics of ecclesiology and missiology. This book invites theologians, theological educators and church leaders to reconsider the theological basis of the Church and its call to mission and ministry in the twenty-first century, paying special attention to the colonial legacy of theAnglican Church and the shift of Christian demographics to the Global South.Part one of the book offers reflections on historical and theological perspectives on the Church by some of the Anglican Communion’s leading theologians. In the second part of the book, a number of authors from around the world discuss the involvement of Anglican women in God’s mission in a variety of contexts including the Mothers’ Union, the Church Mission Society and the HIV-Aids pandemic.

Anglicans are formed by Scripture and it has undergirded their identity since the Reformation. It shapes Anglican worship and liturgy, it is read and listened to corporately and individually, through preaching its wisdom is interpreted for daily life, and scholarly engagement with it is valued as new situations and challenges call for scripturally informed understanding. Yet what is meant when Anglicans talk of the authority of Scripture in the life of the Church is not always clear; nor indeed exactly how Scripture should be interpreted. In recent years, tension has arisen from differing understandings of Scripture. For this reason, the Bible in the Life of the Church project was set up in 2009 to explore the questions of authority and interpretation in widely differing contexts. This landmark book records what happened when groups of Anglicans in different parts of the world studied the same passages of Scripture concerned with creation and justice, what was revealed about the way that Anglicans actually regard and use the Bible and what this implies for life together in the Church. The contributors include Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, David Allen, Ellen F. Davis, Stephen Lyon, Robert MacSwain, Jonathan May, David Moxon and others. The editor, Clare Amos, was Director for Theological Studies in the Anglican Communion Office, and was involved in the work of the Bible in the Life of the Church project from its inception. She is now Programme Coordinatorand Executive for Interreligious Dialogue and Co-operation at the World Council of Churches.

This new volume offers some of the most recent, richest and cutting edge reflection on the nature of Anglican identity at the beginning of the 21st century. Originating from The Society for the Study of Anglicanism, it includes contributions from leading international scholars, including: Katherine Grieb (Virginia Theological Seminary), Robert Hughes (School of Theology, Sewanee), Thomas Hughson (retired, Marquette University), Gerard Mannion (University of San Diego), Mark Chapman (Ripon College, Oxford), Paula Nesbitt (Graduate Theological Union), Martyn Percy (Rippon College), Philip Sheldrake (Cambridge Theological Federation and University of Wales), Robert Slocum (St. Catharine College, KY) and Simon Taylor (St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol).