Top Ten Anglicans: A Review

Two weeks ago, we finished our ten-week series in the Adult Forum on “Top Ten Anglicans.” It was one of my favorite classes I have ever taught, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope you did, too. If you missed it, you can watch any of the classes on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@stpaulsfay/search?query=top%20ten%20anglicans.

One of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was how helpful it was in grounding my understanding of what it means to be a part of The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican tradition. I get more requests for classes on our Episcopal identity than any other subject, and finding a way to enliven a series on the historical development of our doctrinal nuances can be difficult. When this series concluded, however, I felt like participants had a much richer understanding of what it means to be an Episcopalian, and I found that invaluable.

Here are some of the things I learned during the series.

People make history more interesting. Because Anglicanism does not have a single representative figure, I rarely focus on the individuals when I am teaching the Inquirers Class. By the time the class learned about Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, and William Laud, we would have run out of time and barely scratched the surface. Yet recognizing the role that those individuals played in securing the Church of England’s separation from Rome, establishing a distinct liturgical tradition, justifying our peculiar “middle way” in the face of Puritan skepticism, and maintaining our connection with the ancient and catholic church is a much more vivid way to learn those essentials of Anglicanism.

We need to study the English Reformation more deeply. Based on the number of people who asked me to recommend books on Richard Hooker, I think our congregation is hungry for a deeper dive into the English Reformation. In part, I think that is because the works of the Reformers help ground the broad characteristics of Anglican theology and identity in more focused and specific issues. For example, I try to convince members of the Inquirers Class that, because of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, what we believe as Episcopalians is a reflection of how we pray together in worship. Changing the prayer book, therefore, is a really big deal that does not happen very often. But studying Hooker’s response to Puritan criticism and reading the actual language of the Act of Uniformity help us understand why those fundamental characteristics came to be. Rather than stick with broad brushstrokes, I plan to include more Reformation-era writings in my classes.

We needed twenty weeks instead of ten. Every time I asked you to guess who the day’s top-ten Anglican would be, I made note of the names you called out that did not make the cut. When I heard your recommendations, I lamented those who were left out: John Wesley, Charles Wesley, John Henry Newman, George Herbert, and N. T. Wright. That also reminded me of names the clergy team thought of but did not have time to include: John Jewel, Jeremy Taylor, William White, Edward Bouverie Pusey, William Temple, Katherine Sonderegger, Florence Li Tim-Oi, Barbara Harris, Kathryn Tanner, Katherine Jefferts Schori, and more.

There are other, beneficial ways to think about a list of top ten Anglicans. Our approach focused on creating a balanced list of influential Anglicans who tell the multi-layered story of Anglicanism. Another approach would be to pick the top ten individuals whose impact on Anglicanism has been the most profound without regard to a balance of demographics or era. The result may have been a fuller picture of Anglicanism as a product of the English Reformation, but the retelling of the story of our tradition through the lives of ten English clergymen would have been much more shallow. Another approach would be to leave aside the question of their influence on Anglicanism and think about global impact more broadly. I think it would be fun to teach a class that included Shakespeare, Locke, Newton, Darwin, and Jefferson, even though they had more to do with Western civilization than Anglicanism. Finally, although we focused on the post-Reformation part of our history, I think a top ten pre-Reformation Anglicans would make a very interesting series, including the likes of Edward, Augustine, Anselm, Aelred, Wulfstan, and Wycliffe.

Reading theology takes practice. One of the challenges I faced, especially when presenting on contemporary Anglican theologians, was finding texts that we could read and digest during the Adult Forum. Rowan Williams, for example, is notoriously difficult to read. I ended up choosing more secondary sources about him than pulling from his own works because any distinct yet comprehensible piece of his writing would have taken us too long to read in class. Similarly, Sarah Coakley, who prides herself on being accessible to ordinary Christians, is still difficult to highlight through snippets of her writing. I left the class eager to do a book study on someone like Williams or Coakley with a small group who is up for the challenge. I think Anglicanism has produced some of the greatest theological minds of the twenty-first century, but digging into them takes intention and commitment.

Anglicanism remains a gift to contemporary Christianity. Many of you are members of St. Paul’s because of what we do in the community, how we open our doors to anyone, or how we worship God together. But our commitment to our neighbors, our willingness to welcome others, and the beauty and authenticity of our worship are all products of our identity as Episcopalians. We practice a way of Christianity that prioritizes common prayer over unanimity of doctrine. That leaves room for skeptics, cynics, and contrarians. We believe that Christianity is something to be pursued in the specific geographic context in which we live, which fuels our work among our neighbors. We seek a pattern of worship that unites all of us, so we cling to transcendent language, music, and form without sacrificing contextual integrity.

Who we are at St. Paul’s is a product of an identity we can trace back to sixteenth-century England and beyond. We did not get here by chance. We have grown and adapted and developed as a product of our history. Yes, sometimes our denomination misses the mark. Leadership at the church-wide level does not always reflect our culture as Arkansas and Fayetteville Episcopalians. But I believe our identity as Episcopalians remains our greatest asset to the religious and non-religious landscape of northwest Arkansas in the twenty-first century. The Top Ten Anglicans class helped me remember and celebrate that, and for that I am thankful.

Yours faithfully,

Evan D. Garner