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Whose Colonialism? Which Empire?

All social groups contain differences. Those that exist over time have to sustain themselves through the conflicts that difference and belonging create. There has always been conflict in Christianity and its sub-traditions. Anglicanism is no exception. In the continuing story of Anglicanism practices have developed to sustain faith and contain conflict. In the last 50 years Anglicans have been experimenting with global institutions in response to shrinking distances between provinces. Efforts to see how the story relates to these experiments have uncovered in the Communion some of the dynamics of power, its character and the manner of its exercise. We benefit from confronting these usually unstated dynamics. In his 1988 book Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Alasdair MacIntyre argued that concepts of justice only made sense within the framework of a rationality, which was sustained in a continuing community. One of the enduring issues from his book was that the practices and beliefs of a community embodied a way of thinking which made those practices and beliefs intelligible. One might have thought that such an idea could be usefully applied to a religious tradition like Anglicanism but we would need to be a little cautious in doing so too quickly. Certainly a case can be made for seeing Anglicanism in its historical formation as a tradition community with an identifiable range of practices and beliefs. Indeed that is probably the best way to see it. However, the very nature of Anglicanism invites into the dynamic of its own life influences from the different contexts in which Anglicans live out their faith. The impulse to live faithfully where you are is embedded deep in the Anglican history and faith and that means engaging with that context. Anglicans shape their community life and institutions in the light of that engagement. This is the arena of experimentation and reform in the continuing process of seeking to be faithful to the gospel in the life of the community, of being in the world but not of it. It is therefore worth reflecting on the context in which the contemporary form of the Anglican Communion has come into being.