An Anglican Community

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I have a vision for an intentionally Anglican community, that is, a town or urban area where Anglican deliberately move to coalesce around a parish and influence the geographical area around them. Such a community would have to reflect the Anglican way. What is the Anglican way? It is difficult to say after a century or more of muddle and confusion. However, some core elements of what I see as the Anglican life would include: 

1. The parish being at the center of life. This means both literally and figuratively. Ideally, an Anglican town would have the parish building somewhere in the center of the physical location. Also, life would rotate around worship and interaction at the parish building, and in homes. If the community grew sufficiently, I envision several parishes of a couple hundred people all within the same town. Perhaps a central cathedral could be build for large gatherings of the saints. 

2. Daily worship. The church doors should be open all day every day for the Offices to be prayed, and for other worship services to be conducted. 

3. Feasting. Feasts should be a regular occurrence in an Anglican community. The church calendar provides the structure of when these feasts should take place. Our feasts and celebration of the church year should make national and Hallmark holidays look like what they are: pale imitations of life in the City of God. 

4. Education. The Anglican communion is famished for good, Anglican institutions of higher learning. A new Anglican university should be founded in a new Anglican community. 

5. Commerce. Localism would demand that people work and worship near home, not miles and miles away. Anglicans should form businesses or work at businesses in this new home, to make the community self-sustaining and able to absorb others of a like mind. 

6. Mercy ministry. Christians should be identified with alms-giving to the poor, and health-care for the sick. Any new community should be marked out by sacrificial charity. 

7. God-honoring architecture. 

8. Missions-minded. In line with the African revival, any Anglican community in the United States should raise up and send missionaries to either re-evangelize our nation, or head to the unreached globally.

Comments

  1. David AustenTuesday, 10 June, 2008

    What you are describing is the local parish church assembling for Divine Service along with a vision of that Body of Christ working as a redemptive influence upon society and committed to upholding a Christian world view.

    We in the traditional Protestant Episcopal Church are working toward a similar vision for the Church redeeming society through our heavy investment in classical Christian Schools. The Rev'd Dr. Geoffrey Hubler, Rector of Christ Church Appommatox VA and headmaster of the church school called Cornerstone Christian Academy is working toward the formation of an Anglican Community over time. To fulfill the vision you have for such a community would require much personal sacrifice for the Body of Christ the Church that is the focal point of such a community.

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  2. jmwWednesday, 11 June, 2008

    David, I'm actually talking about more than that. Although Steve may not be with me on this, my idea is for literally moving to one location and gathering there, with the thought of exercising dominant influence in the community. I see this as a hedge against a new Dark Age. A gathered community of Christians that live in one location, not simply starting a church somewhere.
    However, this would be a return to the parish model of life, yes.

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  3. matt boulterFriday, 18 July, 2008

    Have you guys given up on the Episcopal Church? On Canterbury?

    Just wondering,

    Matt

    ReplyDelete
  4. jmwSaturday, 19 July, 2008

    I have, yes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rev. Dr. Stephen LakeSunday, 20 July, 2008

    Matt, I can't say that I have.

    I am a confirmed Episcopalian and until my wife and I were married and needed to find a 'third option' (neither her church nor mine), I was a member in good standing in Dio Chicago. Even though I am not currently a communicant at an Episcopal parish, my relationship to TEC is complicated (what in Anglicanism is not?). I do long and pray for reunion with faithful Episcopalians as part of a north American province that better understands--and practices--mutual submission in communion.

    While I have been (and remain) severely disappointed by much that the current resident of the See of Canterbury, communion with ++Cantuar is not of mere historic value to me. So I've got some high views about catholicity and apostolic succession, but I also sense that the times are such that we need both 'inside' and 'outside' strategies to bring about the renewal of Anglicanism. Faithful Anglicans have always dissented with ++Cantuar over various things (and we've got instances of the See himself breaking ranks with the crown, e.g., the Non-Jurors). When church discipline functions as it should (and that is the greatest structural problem with the ecclesia Anglicana), the episcopacy is no mere institutional placeholder. It is the visible sign of the deposit of apostolic teaching and practice, handed down from one generation to the next. But right now, we have bishops who flout what the apostles taught, and until such time that our church figures out a way to restore orthodoxy and discipline amongst the episcopacy, I believe it is possible to 'be Anglican' without ++Cantuar, all the while striving to restore proper order. In short, I believe there are faithful Anglicans who are doing so with ++Rwanda as much as with, e.g., +Indiana. It is both/and, not either/or.

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  6. Mrs. SintaThursday, 14 August, 2008

    I like your ideas. It might be easier to bring them to pass if you took a vow of poverty of sorts and moved to the slums in the inner city where affordable housing, public transportation, and empty churches wait for your perusal. Of course, this would depend on your whole community sharing the same vision, and you would need a strong Joshua to make it work.

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  7. jmwFriday, 15 August, 2008

    I'm not opposed to the inner city, but I think it would be too hard to influence the government of a large city as opposed to a smaller community. Also, there is something that I hope to post about soon which is that cities are becoming places that only the rich can afford, while the poor are forced to move out. This is definitely happening in D.C. and New York. The old idea that cities are slums and the middle class flee them is being reversed and now you have to be well to do to afford the city. Homes in D.C. seem to be at least 500K, condos are obscene.

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