Theology

Part V of a series entitled Sense of Place continues to name the state of urgency regarding human devastation of our planet. The series promotes reclaiming sense of place as a pathway to personal and ecological healing, both physical and spiritual.

Might it be possible to order our liturgical expression in such a way that it could better serve the earth community, including a recognition and celebration of our own interconnectedness and interdependence within a living eco-web? I am thinking of an Order of Celebration that in a formative way would redress our moral compass, clarify our human role within the natural order, and deepen our faith journeys as earth citizens awakened to a world imbued with sacramental value.

This article argues that it is insufficient to ask merely whether the proposed Anglican Covenant is confessional, contractual, conservative, centralizing, or punitive, the themes currently to the fore in the covenant debate. Instead, the Communion must ask what quality of intra- and inter-ecclesial relationality is appropriate for Christian community and measure the covenant against it. An ecclesiology founded upon an anticipated eschatology, an approach familiar to Anglican theology and practice, provides a framework for this assessment. Five characteristics of eschatological ecclesiology and of the quality of relationality it promotes are advanced. Aided by the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission’s report Communion, Conflict and Hope and the work of Bruce Kaye, it is shown that the ecclesiological values of the Windsor Report and its resultant covenant are at odds with those that arise from an eschatological ecclesiology, providing an opening for the Communion to resolve its “covenant conundrum.”

Response to a multi-author article criticizing the Episcopal Church's Task Force on the Study of Marriage's report to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Asks the authors three questions: (1) Is the overall Augustinian framework of the authors’ position as definitive, stable, and necessary as they suggest? (2) Is the scriptural basis of the authors’ position convincing? And (3) is it true that to affirm same-sex marriage is to support a defective eschatology? The entire exchange, including the original article and the three responses to it, by Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski and Kathryn Tanner, along with this one, can be accessed at http://www.anglicantheologicalreview.org/read/conversations/marriage-church/

This course is the second in a two-course sequence that introduces students to the core topics and methods of Christian systematic theology. Although special emphasis is placed on the Anglican tradition, students encounter the central theologians and theological perspectives necessary for an adequate foundation in Christian theology. For non-Anglican students, Anglican-specific readings may be replaced with appropriate material from the student's own tradition, at the discretion of the instructor. In this final course, the theological topics considered are: church, sacraments, eschatology, Christianity's relationship to other religions, hermeneutics, and theological method. The course is taught as a mixture of lecture and seminar, with the instructor presenting material at the start of each session that is then discussed by the class. Active participation in class discussion, writing assignments consisting of responses to class readings, and three short synthesis papers, also based on class readings, are the central requirements.

This course examines the work of several Anglican-identified theologians situated in the North Atlantic, treating a variety of themes and topics from their respective vantage points in their respective locales. This allows us to encounter various ways in which Anglican theologies are engaged theologies, theologies that challenge us to rethink how we imagine and interact with both church and world, and that provoke deep transformations in the lived life of faith. This is a seminar course focused on close reading and discussion of texts by