In this essay, I explore two main areas of Rowan Williams’ theology of revelation. The former is his reflections on the silence of God – God’s reticence to clarify himself to us amid our theological and spiritual confusion. I argue that he is not denying that God has genuinely revealed himself to us, but rather Williams is grappling with – and exhorting us to grapple with – the limits of that revelation. The second area I explore is his theory of revelation as generative phenomena, and how his theory underwrites his understanding of church tradition and, mainly, scripture. Williams argues that there is a division within scripture between the parts containing true divine revelation and the parts containing humanity’s broken response to that revelation. I argue that this view, while it is very well formulated and has some merits, cannot surmount the epistemological obstacle of how biased and interested humans can adequately differentiate between these parts within scripture.

Contemporary studies of Anglican biblical interpretation in the nineteenth century are scant. Those that do exist tend to paint the biblical interpretation of the period as unidimensional and flat. This paper highlights diverse ways the Bible was interpreted by Anglicans in the nineteenth century by looking at the writings of Charles Simeon, Benjamin Jowett, and Christina Rossetti. Each has interesting and distinct ways of approaching the Bible. The paper analyzes their interpretive practices before tracing them to the present and drawing out significant historical themes in each.

In October 2022 the Church of England commissioned an examination of the impact of the debate on same-sex blessing and same-sex marriage within other Anglican Churches. The examination involved a literature search, an original survey among key informers and a general internet search. This paper draws on the general internet search to contrast the impacts in New Zealand and Australia. Drawing on Jungian psychological type theory, this analysis employs the contrasting decision-making functions of feeling (concerned with subjective interpersonal values) and thinking (concerned with objective logical analysis). The data suggest that the feeling approach dominant in New Zealand, which prioritized offering space and time for those of differing opinions to meet together, reported more positive outcomes than the thinking approach dominant in Australia, which gave greater priority to adversarial debate.

Examining intercession and anamnesis in the Anglican Eucharist first, a theology of the world in which its brokenness as embraced by the compassion of Christ, is seen to undergird intercession, whereby a ‘natural’ link is found with the anamnesis. Turning to the historical background of relationship between these two topics – in the Early Church, noted are two particular forms as recorded by Justin Martyr and Cyril of Jerusalem; in the English Reformation, it is seen that intercession was maintained as a part of the canon (and therefore had some connection with the anamnesis), and then, the modern period displays a departure in Anglican provinces from the Reformation order with only a loose principle, or none, maintained in its position between Word and Sacrament. The retrieval of Christ overcoming the powers of evil in his redemptive work, as recorded in Hippolytus’ liturgical form, has made its way into the modern liturgy, providing implications for the connection between anamnesis and intercession. The liturgiology of the Orthodox Church strengthens the theme. Present concerns regarding the Anglican practice of Eucharistic intercession are raised and improvements are suggested. It is concluded that, theologically, intercession and anamnesis hold an intimate connection in the Eucharist.

The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have caused both declines in psychological well-being and increases in spirituality and religious coping. This paper explores the relationships of spiritual and psychological well-being in a sample of 3,403 Anglicans from the Episcopal Church (USA) who completed an online survey in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Spiritual well-being improved more among women than among men, among older than younger people, among Black or African Americans than among other ethnicities, among those who lived alone and among clergy than among lay people. Positive change in spiritual well-being was also associated with psychological type preferences for extraversion, intuition and feeling. Emotional volatility was associated with more negative changes in spiritual well-being. Multiple regression suggested that spiritual well-being was more closely associated with positive, rather than negative, psychological affect.

This article explores the appeal to catechesis in the writings of Anglican theologian and educator John Westerhoff III (1933–2022). I argue that he proposed the concept of catechesis as a way of critiquing and incorporating the streams of liberalism and neo-orthodoxy from the early and mid-twentieth century into a more comprehensive and theologically substantive approach to theological education. In doing so, he used the language of catechesis as a means of integrating the strengths of liberalism’s emphasis on nurture and enculturation and neo-orthodoxy’s accent on conversion, the church and the uniqueness of Christianity. His appeal to catechesis, then, was not a retrieval or ressourcement of patristic catechesis. While he appreciated the term’s antiquity, the way in which he described the term was more indebted to contemporary education theory than patristics, particularly the anthropological insights of socialization theory.

The Episcopal Church has been engaged in efforts to revise its Book of Common Prayer since the mid-1990s, but a completed revision is still nowhere in sight. This essay explains the process for revision in the Episcopal Church, the working of that process leading up to the adoption of the Book of Common Prayer 1979 and the optimism about a further revision in the 1990s. It then seeks to understand the inability of the Episcopal Church to follow through on the hope of revision in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, despite considerable work on liturgical texts and the involvement of a growing number of task forces and special committees. It follows with discussion of the issues related to revision before the 2022 and the upcoming 2024 conventions and concludes with reflections on the obstacles to a completed revision.

Applying the balanced affect model of clergy psychological wellbeing, as conceptualised by the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) and operationalised by The Index of Balanced Affect Change (TIBACh), this study explored the impact of seven sets of variables on individual differences in perceived changes in positive affect and negative affect among 737 clergy in the USA serving in the Episcopal Church during the Covid-19 pandemic. The seven sets of variables were: personal, psychological, contextual, ministry-related, church orientation, theological stance, and attitudinal. The data supported the balanced affect model of clergy psychological wellbeing by demonstrating how different variables predicted individual differences in negative affect and in positive affect. For example, clergywomen showed no differences from clergymen in terms of positive affect, but higher levels of negative affect; active self-supporting and retired clergy showed no differences from stipendiary clergy in terms of positive affect, but lower levels of negative affect; Evangelical clergy showed no differences in negative affect, but higher levels in positive affect. The balanced affect model provides insights into how clergy may be better supported during a pandemic.

Inspired by the objectives of the Church of England’s Living Ministry Research Project (to understand the factors that enable clergy to flourish and to understand how these factors vary according to person, background, etc.), the present analyses were designed to test the capacity of an individual differences approach to the science of clergy well-being for delivering such objectives. The specific case in point concerned understanding the connections between migration to digital technology and changes in clergy well-being during the pandemic. The data demonstrated how the individual differences approach both offered explanatory power and provided insights into how personal support and professional development could be most effectively structured and targeted.