Rejecting

Rejecting the Narrow Way; An Episcopal Tradition

In each era we must interpret scripture and tradition to address the questions of our day. As we do this we may come to different answers for those question but in struggling to do this we are being true to our Anglican roots. As I recently prepared a talk about Richard Hooker I was reminded how much the thinking of the early Anglican theologians still guide and form our practice of the faith today.

Hooker writing in the time of Elizabeth the First is seeking to defend Anglicanism to the Roman Catholics but he is not seeking to banish them. In his sermon of 1585, A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown, (The title alone is longer than most of my sermons.) he defended his belief in the doctrine of Justification by Faith, but he also argued that minor disagreements over points of doctrine did not exclude people from salvation. In his day this meant that Roman Catholics who rejected Justification by Faith could be saved. We still struggle with this lesson letting disagreements over theology and practice separate and divide us. The issues have changed over the years, now centering around creationism vs. science, the nature of gender identification and gender equality, but human nature has not changed. Some still see these as dividing points while the Anglican tradition challenges us to see them as discussion points.

Stephen Neill writing in his classic work Anglicanism says, “Hooker will not reject anything simply because the Roman Catholic Church has used it in the days of darkness. All things are to be proved, and joyfully accepted as good, provided they tend to the edification.” We have rejected the narrow view that says only those things mentioned in scripture have value. We have continued to broaden the scope of this inclusiveness as we have explored prayer practices, such as meditation, that have been restored to Christianity through the influence of eastern religions. We have explored and embraced symbols that have pre-Christian origins such as the labyrinth. And we have accepted each culture praising God with their own language, symbols and music. There is always the risk as we explore the value of a new way to express our relationship with God that we will go to far, embrace too much of the other way or culture but it does not seem to me that the risk is so great that we should forever be locked into the way it has always been.

Hooker is seeking a way for the Church of England that is between the way of the Roman Catholic Church and the Puritans. He charts a middle way that we know as the “Via Media.” At times this is truly the middle way, at other times it chooses the best of each tradition and at times it embraces both simultaneously in agreement and in opposition. An example is that as the Priest gives the bread of the Eucharist it is declared both the “Body of Christ” and a “Remembrance” embracing simultaneously the Catholic and Protestant positions.

It is now and it has always been in the nature of our church to err on the side of inclusiveness and to reject the narrow way.