Comprehensiveness and the middle way: Anglican perspectives on religion and ecology

Background/Question/Methods

Anglicanism, and its Episcopal expression in various global contexts, represents a “middle way” between Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions.  The Anglican tradition takes context seriously, and adapts its practice to local needs and realities, much in the way species do.  Anglicans characteristically use all the senses in worship, and believe that human beings and other parts of the created order reflect the divine, with a resultant willingness and encouragement to value, respect, and care for the natural world.  The sacramental tradition in Anglicanism heightens respect for the environment and its right use, as the outward symbols of spiritual relationship are material – water, bread, wine, human beings, oil.

            Decision-making in Anglicanism is neither singularly hierarchical (like the Roman Catholic) nor highly individualistic or local (like more Protestant traditions).  Clergy and laity together engage the needs and challenges of local situations, making decisions in community, often inviting contributions from experts or concerned persons from beyond the church.  Anglicans also consider (without legislating) the urgent needs of the world in global conversations, and challenge their constituent bodies to active response, networking, and partnership.  Decisions and perspectives may be revisited when human knowledge has developed further, or social realities raise new ways of understanding what characterizes holy relationships.  The life of the mind is encouraged in Anglicanism, as an honoring of the one who has created human beings with a capacity to reason.  That means that doubt, questioning, and inquiry are not seen as negative, but potentially creative, and thus the scientific method is not entirely foreign to the way Anglicans engage life’s challenges.

Results/Conclusions

This session will explore how global Anglicanism has in the past and is today interacting with environmental issues and practitioners from perspectives of care of the earth and the constituent parts of the global ecosystem; issues of ecological justice, biodiversity, and sustainability.  We will also attend to the creative possibility of partnerships between science and the Anglican tradition as well as other, more reformed or protestant ones.