High Anglicans

Via TitusOneNine:

The special relationship between one local parish and the Catholic tradition

By Adam Parker
The Post and Courier
Sunday, July 19, 2009


In religious circles, one often hears the phrase "the authority of Scripture," which carries the implication that Scripture is authoritative not only because of its lessons but because a powerful force is pushing it from behind.

Ever since organized religion has designated Scripture as authoritative, everyone has experienced the tension created between "the word" and "the church," between individual faith and doctrine, between social and religious law.

Tension is part of what defines religious experience, and it is certainly felt by the Church of the Holy Communion, according to its leaders. On July 12, the Charleston congregation celebrated a special service recognizing the 176th anniversary of the Oxford Movement, which was an effort in the first part of the 19th century to uphold the Roman Catholic nature of early Anglicanism. As a consequence, an extra dose of holy pomp was added to a celebration already replete with liturgical smells and bells.

Holy Communion is not a typical Episcopal church. It's part of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Its leaders fret at the "protestantization" of their fellow Anglicans, a process going back to 1534 when Henry VIII nationalized the Church of England.

It strives to rejoin the Vatican in full communion. It adheres to the Oxford Movement's assertion that the Church of England (and other Anglican Church bodies) has been, and is now, an apostolic church, a direct descendant of St. Peter's church, a true inheritor of the word of Christ.

Protestantism holds that there is no "one true church," that individualshave the authority to forge a personal relationship with Christ and don't really require an institution to do their bidding for them.

Outreach

On July 11, Janet Gallagher presided over the distribution of food to needy people of the neighborhood surrounding the church, which is at Ashley Avenue and Cannon Street. Gallagher, a member of Holy Communion's congregation, works with 15 other volunteers, including a few people who deliver groceries to the elderly and homebound.

One Saturday a month, the team gathers at 6:45 a.m. to load up paper bags with food donated by Limehouse Produce and purchased at the Lowcountry Food Bank. At 8 a.m. they pause for prayer. Then the work begins.

Social outreach is practiced by most churches, but Holy Communion cites special political and theological reasons for their brand of community aid.

Early practitioners of Anglo-Catholicism were ostracized by the Church of England, which, among other things, cut funding to parishes run by members of the Oxford Movement. John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey and others affiliated with Oxford University were writing a series of "Tracts" or theological statements, affirming Catholic doctrine, and threatening Church of England officials who wished to defend Anglicanism's "middle way" between Catholic and Protestant practice. As a result, Anglo-Catholic leaders took their theology to the slums, where expenses were low and need was great.

What they taught was that Christ's presence in the sacrament represented a living ministry on Earth. If Christ was ministering to believers, then the church, too, must minister to those in need, said the Rev. Dow Sanderson, rector of Holy Communion.

On days its food pantry is open, Holy Communion distributes food to more than 100 people, Gallagher said.

It also runs a free medical clinic twice a week. Dr. Bill Prioleau, a cardiothoracic surgeon, retired from Roper Hospital in 1996.

At wife Patsy's urging, he began a second career as a medical volunteer. Today, he uses a small kitchen and visits with about 70 regular patients and a number of walk-ins whose annual income qualifies them for free care.

And the Rev. Patrick Allen, on staff at Holy Communion, devotes himself to a full-time ministry at the Medical University.

Church origins

That service is a manifestation of Christ's mandate to bear witness, Sanderson said.

The Oxford Movement asserts that the doctrine of apostolic succession accommodates "One True Church" with three branches: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. Its ideas were promoted in a series of pamphlets called "Tracts for the Times" (1833-1841).

The first "Tractarians" formed their ideas partially as a response to the French Revolution, Sanderson said. Leaders in Paris had abolished feudalism, declared the rights of man, stripped clergy of special privileges and confiscated property from the Roman Catholic Church.

As society embraced the principle of separation between church and state, the traditional role of the established church — its authority, finances, political influence — was under threat, according to The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge and other histories and sources.

Those in England loyal to the Vatican didn't want their church swept up in these winds of social change. They wanted to remember what they considered holy and essential, that Christ was made manifest in the blessed sacrament and, therefore, on Earth; that the poor, part of the body of Christ, required aid, as Jesus commanded, Sanderson said. So when changing social norms began to influence the church, the Tractarians reacted.

"At any point in the 17th century where Anglicanism differed from Catholicism, Anglicanism was out of communion and wrong," said the Rev. Dan Clarke, curate at Holy Communion.

As liberalism made inroads, Anglo-Catholics increasingly were marginalized, Clarke said. "It was like an American celebrating Thanksgiving in Mexico or the Fourth of July in Tiananmen Square," he said.

Tractarians in the 19th century were persecuted, jailed and deprived of their livings, relegated to the slums, where they could pursue the work of Christ and serve the underprivileged, according to Clarke.

But this history only provides impetus for the church's purpose, Sanderson said.

"We are here to witness that we are all intended for our destiny, which is Catholic Christianity," he said.

Many of the original Tractarians, including Newman, ultimately abandoned the Church of England and became Roman Catholics.

Embattled

In ordinary times, Holy Communion would plant its theological stake in the ground and strive to set an example in the community. But the Episcopal Church is not in the midst of ordinary times. It is caught up in one of the biggest conflicts in its history.

The crisis, triggered by the 2003 ordination of an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, is in fact a culmination of centuries of disagreement among Anglicans.

In recent years, four Episcopal dioceses and a number of individual parishes have broken with the national church, sought realignment with church bodies abroad and formed the Anglican Church in North America. Some conservative Anglican provinces have broken ties with the U.S. church.

The Diocese of South Carolina, which has jurisdiction over the lower half of the state, has found itself embroiled in the controversy, its theologically conservative leadership trying to figure out what it should, or should not, do.

At the moment, the options are not very good, said the Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon, the diocese's canon theologian, who has characterized the conflict as one waged between "reappraisers" and "reasserters."

In a long interview about the status of the church, Harmon said the tension between gospel truth and Catholic order is ever increasing, and some, such as the conservative Anglican Church in North America, are sacrificing ecclesiastic tradition for the sake of evangelical truth.

"They've chosen truth over order in the short term because there was no other option." On the other side, those advocating order and church unity have not done enough to distance themselves from recent "errors," Harmon said.

"And South Carolina is in no-man's land, somewhere in the middle," a theologically conservative diocese that nevertheless doesn't want to break away entirely, he said. For now, the diocese sees its role as a standard-bearer of orthodoxy.

Harmon compared the diocese's relationship with the national church to a married couple made unhappy by adultery but not yet determined to divorce.

"If you stay in the house, you have no choice but to distance yourself from your spouse," he said. You sleep in a different bedroom and argue vociferously over dinner.

The leadership at Holy Communion is acutely aware of the strain.

"We are committed to the Diocese of South Carolina, and the Diocese of South Carolina is at the moment committed to the national church," Clarke said.

The odd duck

Creeds are important to Anglo-Catholics, and Holy Communion's catechesis requires participants to read, study, learn the vocabulary and reinforce the idea of Catholic authority, Harmon said.

To design its lessons, the church relies heavily on Catholic teaching, Sanderson said.

"The Episcopal Church is incapable of creating a curriculum with a holistic view of Anglo-Catholic theology," he said. "So we use lots of Catholic literature for catechism."

The multiculturalism advanced by the national church is fine to a point, he said. "But if everything is equally included, is anything particularly important?"

It's this kind of deep thinking that makes Holy Communion stand out in the diocese, Harmon said.

Holy Communion offers not only a flamboyant Sunday service, "but you also get intellectual and spiritual depth, and historical depth that makes you think," Harmon said.

Sanderson is determined to stay the course.

"Since the beginning of the church, its witness to the Anglican Communion is to say, 'This is who you are,' " Sanderson said. "We will be Catholics with the Anglican tradition as long as its possible to do so."