'Stop, Stop and Listen': Changing the Church by Listening to its Life

Abstract

This chapter asks if the current official account of Anglican ecclesiological identity is fit for purpose, and argues that the evidence to-date points clearly to an answer in the negative. Since 1987, the claim that Anglicans enjoy ‘one communion’ facilitated by four ‘instruments of communion’ has frequently been expressed in Anglican Communion publications. The theological persuasiveness of this self-description, however, has yet to appear. When tested against the life of Anglican churches – in, say, the proposed Anglican Covenant or in the reception of the Virginia Report – it has run into a wall. Rather than simply reiterating this implausible yet oddly normative self description, perhaps a more appropriate and urgent ecclesiological task for Anglicans is to seek a more empirically-satisfying account of the life together that Anglicans experience?