Anglican identity and the Missio Dei: Implications for the American convocation of churches in Europe

Anglican Theological Review, Summer 2000 by Douglas, Ian T

And so the Catechism makes that profound missiological affirmation. It states that "the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ."13 The calling of the Church, the calling of every Christian, is to participate with God in the restoration of unity between ourselves and God and ourselves and each other; to participate in the missio Dei. It is the work of the Church to herald and effect the new order where alienation, division and separation give way to inclusion, healing, and unity. As the Body of Christ in the world today, we are called to work for the restoration to unity of all people with God and each other in Christ. The eminent missiologist David Bosch has thus summarized,

Mission is, primarily and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a ministry in which the church is privileged to participate, This is the deepest source of mission... there is mission because God loves people. 14

Our identity as Anglicans is dependent upon, and judged against, how faithful we are to the mission of God, to the making real of God's redemptive love in the world. Embracing and celebrating apostolic catholicity in the vernacular moment must always be oriented toward this greater call to the restoration of all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. Anglicanism for Anglicanism's sake, no matter how free from English cultural captivity, is not of God or for God. Anglicanism is not an end but a step on the way to the all-embracing Shalom of God, the all-embracing Reign of God where the particularities of peoples and cultures are both affirmed individually and brought into a new relationship of wholeness and universality one with another. As Anglicans, as Christians, we are called to live beyond ourselves trusting that God will use us to effect God's restoration to unity, God's redemption of creation to wholeness and oneness in Christ. Anglicans and God's Mission in Europe

To review before moving on, this paper has offered a new understanding of Anglican identity that is separate from our historical and cultural connection to the Church of England. Secondly, a theology of mission that looks beyond Anglicanism, per se, to participation in God's restoration of all people to unity with God and each other in Christ has been offered. It is now time to bring both the discussion of Anglican identity and the calling of the missio Dei to the realities of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe at this crucial time of change and transition. As Bishop Rowthorn said in his letter of invitation: We are here "to recognize the ways in which the Holy Spirit has been moving powerfully in our midst, and to discern more clearly and together what God is asking of us in the next few years. For it is God's mission in which we are privileged to share."15

The understanding of Anglican identity separate from a sense of Englishness presupposes that each and every nation and culture can embrace and celebrate apostolic catholicity within the vernacular moment. I am thus not against the spread of our own tradition of the Body of Christ to places where Anglicanism does not yet exist. I like being an Anglican. I believe in Anglicanism. And I know that our Church has much to offer the world and the larger Christian community. So I am very much in favor of the development of an Anglican province in Continental Europe. But I would caution that any Anglican province that comes into being on these shores must do so with an eye to the larger mission of God.