The Last Island

This will be the last item I will post on the general subject of islands. I have written about my personal history with a particular island, biblical islands, liturgical islands, literary islands, and now the island that gave birth to the hybrid version of Christianity that has nurtured me, confused me, annoyed me, intrigued me, and employed me for the past fifty plus years.

As unlikely a church as it is, I cannot imagine myself as anything but an Anglican. Maybe that’s because of my history with islands. I am not familiar with any major branch of Christianity other than Anglicanism that is so closely identified with the life and history of an island. In terms of global faith traditions, only Japan has a similar connection to Shintoism.

So forget the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral! Forget the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council! Most of all, forget the misbegotten and hopefully forgotten “Windsor Covenant”! Anglican identity is not theological, ecclesiological, or any-sort-of-logical… our identity is that of islanders.

     Shakespeare, in Richard the Second, has one of his characters pronounce this well-known invocation of English exceptionalism:

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…

OK, Shakespeare was laying it on a bit thick in that passage, but it does call attention to the unique role geography has played in Britain’s development. Along with everything else British, Anglicanism evolved in a setting just isolated enough from its continental neighbors to permit unique forms to flourish, but not so isolated as to result in something utterly disconnected.

In other words a Via Media…balanced, nuanced, holistic. Or, depending on how you look at it, chaotic, conflicted, and confused.

When asked his opinion on the essence of Anglicanism, Abba Jonathan said: “ Essence? On the wrong side they drive.”