Anglican Identities
by Rowan Williams.

Reviewed by Philip Harvey.

If you are reaching after definitions of Anglican identity, there is an initial tendency to state large abstracts, such as core doctrines or Reformation benchmarks. Or to go for the social incidentals, like cups of tea and the Vicar's new stole. Whereas it is observable that when asked for our personal definition, we are more likely to name an individual who has influenced us, someone's life, example and (often) writing that has given us our sense of identification with the Anglican Church. It is this recognition of the traditions through individual lives that is the basis of this book.

Rowan Williams has chosen eight Anglicans whose work, lived as well as written, has contributed to our deeper understanding of Anglicanism. Identities make for identity. The book is clearly an outcome of work done on that quintessential anthology of Anglican spirituality, co-edited by Williams, Love's Redeeming Work (Oxford University Press, 2001). Here though, Williams gives himself the freedom to expand on some of the writers in that other volume. In one paragraph Williams has the literary skill to say what others take hours to explain.

William Tyndale, for example, Bible translator and "the true theological giant of the English Reformation". Tyndale's teaching on the use of wealth is presented to concise effect. If we have amassed wealth then the gospel asks us to share it with our neighbour. And who is our neighbour? The poor and, more shocking still for Tyndale's enemies, even non-Christians like Jews and Muslims. Our wealth is not our own. Williams makes special note of Tyndale's understanding of the Bible as a product of community, shared out to all. As a translator, Tyndale used the language everybody knew, to transmit the message – a serious expression of community that we do well to consider in our own time.

William Tyndale, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, B. F. Westcott, Michael Ramsey, John Robinson, E. C. Hoskyns, and William Temple. Rowan Williams is careful not to make crashingly definitive statements about the Anglicanism of his subjects, while at the same time he gives rounded portraits of ideas that are definite in purpose. Such an approach is unmistakably Anglican in itself, reminder of Williams' own innate identification with the tradition. Such an approach is a pleasure to encounter, and broadly informative, enhancing our awareness of the particular individual as well as the Church they support. Although he says we will find similar examples in other faith traditions, and this would be so in some ways, one senses always Williams' affinity with and valuing of these English identities. The book is inviting as well as heady.

Although he deliberately avoids providing any "fresh rallying-point for Anglican identity", Williams does write this in the introduction, very helpful in the current context: "The writers discussed here in their different ways are apologists for a theologically informed and spiritually sustained patience. They do not expect human words to solve their problems rapidly, they do not expect the Bible to yield up its treasures overnight, they do not look for the triumphant march of an ecclesiastical institution. They know that as Christians they live among immensities of meaning, live in the wake of a divine action which defies summary explanation. They take it for granted that the believer is always learning, moving in and out of speech and silence in a continuous wonder and a continuous turning inside-out of mind and feeling."

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