A set of essays that explores the intersection of Anglican and philosophical theology, paying particular attention to the theological work of David Brown and Austin Farrer"-- Provided by publisher.

This article argues that the kind of religious establishment that currently obtains in England is sufficiently liberal in the sense that it accommodates rights to religious freedom and is compatible with political equality. What is more, insofar as it expresses a Christian anthropology, established Anglicanism can generate the ‘thick’ set of virtues necessary to make citizens capable of respecting liberal rights. In the course of defending its thesis, the argument disputes John Rawls’s description of the ‘overlapping consensus’ as one (...) that stands free of its supporting comprehensive doctrines; and it reads Martha Nussbaum as, ironically, confirming that an established orthodoxy of some sort is inevitable. (shrink)

High profile (and controversial) events and installations, like the Helter-Skelter in Norwich and the Crazy Golf Bridges in Rochester, have drawn attention to innovation and public engagement within Anglican cathedrals. The present study contextualised these innovations both empirically and conceptually. The empirical framework draws on cathedral websites to chronicle the wide and diverse range of events and installations hosted by Anglican cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man between 2018 and 2022. The conceptual framework draws on Edward Bailey’s theory (...) of implicit religion to classify and to explore these events and installations. Two insights from the theory of implicit religion emerged as of particular significance. First, the notion of implicit religion softens the boundaries between the sacred and the secular. This was exemplified by eight categories of events: scientific exhibitions, festivals, musical events, art exhibitions, theatre, markets, community events and installations. Second, the notion of implicit religion draws attention to the themes and activities that generate meaning and purpose. This was exemplified by seven themes: social justice and social conscience, violence and reconciliation, remembrance, migration and sanctuary, COVID-19 and lockdowns, personal well-being and nature and environment.Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this article identifies the range of innovative events and installations hosted by Anglican Cathedrals in England and the Isle of Man and assesses the significance of these events and installations through Edward Bailey’s lens of implicit religion, discussing first the softening of boundaries between the sacred and the secular and then the generation of meaning and purpose through the core themes raised by these events and installations. (shrink)

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), whose leaders govern well over half of the 80 million Anglicans worldwide, have put forward ‘a contemporary rule,’ called The Jerusalem Declaration, to guide the Anglican realignment movement. The FCA and its affiliates, e.g. the newly-formed Anglican Church in North America, require assent to the Declaration. To date, there has been little serious appraisal of the Declaration and the status accorded to it. I aim to correct that omission. Unlike ap-praisals in the social media, (...) however, mine grants the FCA’s conservative stand on same-sex unions and homosexual practice. Nevertheless, I argue, the Declaration mischaracterizes the traditional Christian teaching on marriage, binds Anglicans to falsehoods and dubieties in the Thirty-Nine Articles, and adds to the gospel. Two things follow. First, no one—especially no Anglican who identifies herself as con-servative, traditional, orthodox, evangelical, Anglo-catholic or simply concerned with the truth—should assent to the Jerusalem Declaration. Second, since the FCA and its affiliates know that these defects ex-ist in the Declaration, they should fess up to these shortcomings and retract the Declaration’s status as ‘a contemporary rule’ and they should stop requiring assent to it. Anything less constitutes intellectual dis-honesty of a most egregious sort. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:570 BOOK REVIEWS like reasonable rule for economic life. This effort is worthy of more attention than is possible here, but let it be noted that it must inevitably suffer the same fate as any ethical calculus: someone must decide for others what is their due and what is not. How much wealth, for example, makes for a concentration [of wealth] that would be " demonstrably detrimental to some (...) people's exercise of their generic rights "? His is ultimately an entitlement or rights ethic, rather than an aitial ethic of goal-purposive fulfillment for the individual, projected outwards for a common good scenario. While his rejection of goal ethics's inability to detail principles for distribution of goods is noteworthy, it does not appear that a tightened version of generic rights theory will come closer to either of Phillips's desiderata: a justification of moral reasoning apart from any theory of nature or a calculus for its application. Desan and Phillips wish to think against the limits of the human situation. For Desan, rising above limitation is a moral task and obligation facing us each, if there is to be a common future. His call is to be World Citizen in a Polis of Nations. Phillips's vision is more concrete, a distribution of benefits to benefit all with well-being and freedom. But this mundane task is no less difficult than Desan's transcendent one. Indeed, according to Augustine, even the Divine Mind must utilize an artifice in dealing with human creation: "He loves each of us as though there were only one of us." Both ethicists have striven to show us how we might think this vision for ourselves, i.e., for each other of us. ]OIIN B. DAVIS, O.P. ' Detroit, Michigan Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans: Seventeenth-Century Essays. By HUGH TREVOR-ROPER. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. xiii + 317. $27.50 (hardbound). Even to list the changes and events which occurred in seventeenth century England is a difficult task: the century spans the period from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the Glorious Revolution and beyond, through the Civil War, the accession and exile (twice) of the Stuarts, the rise of science, the transformation of the theological and religious issues of the English Reformation, to name only the most obvious. To conceive a book, in the form of occasional essays, which not only addresses these changes and events but does so by establishing the connections which were present with European currents at the same time surely tempts fate, even when it does not tempt reviewers. BOOK REVIEWS 571 But Hugh Trevor-Roper is a master, both of the period under survey and of the form of the essay. With one exception, each of these essays began as a lecture or seminar paper, and the pleasantly legible style in which they are written must bear some trace of that origin. The occasional flashes of wit, mixed with rthe fairly non-technical style, make the book a joy to read and a welcome escape from the usually constipated style of scholarly prose. In his Introduction, the essayist clearly sets forth his thesis that English intellectual history does not exist apart from the currents of European intellectual history (a thesis for which Trevor-Roper has already staked a claim). That leads to what may very well be the major problem with these essays: its end is in its beginning. The list of names cited in these essays only partially coincides with the list of names in the index; the former is much longer than the latter. And while the style of the essay welcomes the reader to the period, it also throws up more names and places and events than can be explained or even annotated adequately. This occurs both on a large and on a small scale. The first essay, on "Nicholas Hill, the English Atomist" contains such a vast array of names that at times it becomes the prosopo· graphical equivalent of a telephone book. On a large scale, there is the problem with a definition of Arminianism. No definition, at least no formal definition, is attempted-and this is probably wise. But, particularly in... (shrink)

The Church of England By Law Established, in incidental payment for secular privilege, has submitted to the bonds of established clichá, in particular to the reproach that its rulers seem more concerned with the external or practical working of Anglican faith and ritual than with their intellectual definition and justification. This intellectual looseness remained unimportant in practice as long as a forceful anti–Roman spirit blew all waves of opinion in one practical direction. In time, however, that wind gradually lost force (...) and positive cross–currents of Anglican belief came to the public surface. The legislators of the sixteenth century had formulated the positive rules of the Thirty–Nine Articles and the Prayer Book in tolerantly broad language. They left no decisive teaching authority to explain their texts and to meet the challenge of shifting ritual and speculative doubt. Time has subjected both instruments to an everwidening range of individual interpretation especially since the early nineteenth century, when the Anglican monopoly of political, social and educational institutions was disputed by fresh tides of Protestant dissenters, renascent Catholics and nascent agnostics. To–day, as Mr. Cockshut wryly comments: “to throw doubt on the Anglican formularies is itself part of the Anglican tradition”. (shrink)

A very sympathetic study has appeared lately which introduces the impressive personality of Richard William Church, Fellow of Oriel, Rector of Whatley and famous Dean of St. Paul’s, London. Written to give ‘the Anglican response’ to Cardinal Newman, it is well worth considering the conclusions of this book and tracing their premises.

In its specific moral conclusions ecclesiastical Anglican theology shares much with traditional Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. In its understanding of the method and purpose of moral theology classical Anglicanism sometimes diverges from earlier Roman Catholicism — and anticipates the most positive developments in contemporary Roman Catholic moral theology — while sharing a common theological heritage with Rome in its understanding of natural law , the moral agent, and the moral act. Anglicans situate moral reasoning within the Church (...) of the patristic Tradition, which distinguishes them from Protestants, yet do not accept the Roman magisterium's selfunderstanding. Consequently, the Anglican mode of moral reasoning has strong affinities with the Orthodox churches. (shrink)

According to Paul Russell’s irreligious interpretation of Hume’s Treatise, the aim of the Treatise is to discredit “Christian theology” generically construed. In this paper, I argue that in seeking to discredit Christian theology in the Treatise, Hume uses an early eighteenth-century Anglican version of Christian theology rather than “Christian theology” in a generic sense as his theological paradigm. Taking Hume’s attacks on “hidden powers” and “the liberty of indifference” as test-cases, I show that whereas Hume’s views on these topics are (...) subversive of the Anglican theology of his day, they are not subversive of other major forms of Christian theology that were current at the time, including the Calvinist theology of the Kirk of Scotland. If this is right, then the immediate theological target of Hume’s Treatise should be deemed narrower than Russell’s irreligious interpretation takes it to be. (shrink)

At this point, it would be a considerable accomplishment not to be aware that there is something very strange going on in the Anglican Communion. Nearly every day brings fresh stories of increasingly complicated ecclesiastical warfare: Nigerian bishops in Virginia, Ugandan churches in California, same-sex blessings in Canada, threats of schism, charges of heresy—and perhaps you've heard about the gay bishop in New Hampshire?1The current difficulties in the American Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion can be traced back to (...) a number of different events in the life of the church, depending on how deep the storyteller would…. (shrink)

He discusses the challenges these four philosophical Anglicans issued to certain important trends in the philosophy and theology of their day, and argues that ...

Rooted in the field of cathedral studies, this paper draws into dialogue three bodies of knowledge: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion that, among other things, highlights the continuing traction of the Christian tradition and Christian practice within secular societies; David Walker’s notion of the multiple ways through which in secular societies people may relate to the Christian tradition as embodied within the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s notion of spiritual wellbeing as conceptualised in relational terms. Against this conceptual background, (...) this paper draws on data provided by 1234 participants attending one of the Christmas Eve carol services in Liverpool Cathedral to explore the perceived impact of attendance on the spiritual health of people who do not believe in God and yet feel that Liverpool Cathedral is their cathedral, and it is this sense of belonging that brings them back at Christmas time. Contribution: Situated within the science of cathedral studies, this paper links in an original way three fields of discourse: Edward Bailey’s notion of implicit religion, David Walker’s notion of the four ways of belonging to God facilitated by the Anglican Church and John Fisher’s conceptualisation and operationalisation of the notion of spiritual wellbeing. The hypothesis developed from this original integration of theoretical perspectives is then tested empirically on data provided by 404 participants at carol services who do not believe in God. (shrink)

Anglicanism's relationship with its Reformation heritage represents a tension. It looks to the Reformation as the movement from which an English Church, independent of papal authority, was inaugurated. At the same time, it refuses to be labelled as a “church of the Reformation”, pointing to its continuity with a much longer history of Christian practice in Britain. The growth of the Anglican Communion and current controversies over church order, the interpretation of scripture and the exercise of authority make Anglican (...) identity difficult to define. Identity would once have been sought in liturgy, but the view that liturgy completely enshrines Anglican doctrine has been convincingly put to rest by scholarship since the 1970s. This paper argues that the liturgical legacy of the Reformation offers categories that can help to form possible approaches to the current crisis of Anglican identity. (shrink)

This essay, which won the Prince Consort Prize for 1950, treats of the revolutionary change in historical writing that followed the entry into England, early in the nineteenth century, of the ideas of Vico and of the German historical school. Chiefly through Coleridge's influence, eighteenth-century rationalist suppositions gave place in certain men to a fundamentally opposed, 'Romantic' philosophy, and so to a new kind of History. Mr. Forbes is particularly concerned with the part played in this revolution by the liberal (...) Anglicans: Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby and Regius Professsor of Modern History at Oxford; Richard Whitely, Professor of Political Economy at Oxford and Archbishop of Dublin; Julius Charles Hare, disciple of Coleridge and translator (with Thirlwall) of Niebuhr's History of Rome; Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of St David's and author of the History of Greece; Henry Hart Milman, Professor of Poetry and Oxford and Dean of St Paul's; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, pupil and biographer of Thomas Arnold, and Dean of Westminster. They have elsewhere been studied in the compartments of 'classical' and 'ecclesiastical' history. But it is fundamental to their outlook on Church and State that for them no such compartments existed, and their idea of History as a whole has hitherto lacked an English historian. This essay does much more than clarify technical problems in one of the various ideas of History embraced in Professor Toynbee's system. Mr. Forbes addresses his book to all students of nineteenth-century thought. (shrink)

The Development of Anglican Moral Theology is the successor volume to The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology. It describes how Anglican theologians interacted closely with the moral philosophers of their day while providing a pastoral resource in the fast-changing period between 1680-1950. The book shows how vibrant and intellectually rigorous the tradition was, and includes detailed studies of the sermons of Butler, Wesley and Newman, the writings of William Law and Coleridge, and the later work of Maurice, Gore, Scott Holland, (...) Moberly, William Temple and Kirk. This is the first account of this lively tradition of moral theology. (shrink)

The article sets out aspects of locke's theory of personal identity which were seen by contemporaries to be not only fallacious but also to conflict with christian doctrine regarding the soul. A modified theory is then educed, From berkeley, Butler, William law and other divines, Which avoids these fallacies, Is epistemologically more rigorous and arguably expressed christian doctrine more accurately. This is seen as a forerunner of some central concerns of romantic theology.

The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology shows how Anglican moral theology draws on Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, Luther and Calvin. Perkins, Hooker, Sanderson and Taylor express its flowering from 1590 to 1670.

The scant scholarship associated with Newman’s Anglican views about Judaism has focused on his negative rhetoric against Judaism and portrayed him as anti-Semitic. His Anglican writings, however, applied terms associated with Judaism in a typological sense to the political and religious realities of his day, primarily to support his apologetic agenda and to highlight threats to the Church of England. Simultaneously, he stressed the positive characteristics of Judaism, illustrated the continuity between Judaism and Christianity, and pointed out that the religious (...) system of Judaism was divinely inspired and contained worthy examples for Christian living. (shrink)

Domestic violence, especially against women, has become a frequent occurrence in recent times, and most of these incidents are not reported. This study examined the response of the Anglican church to domestic violence against women, using Nsukka urban as a case study. This study is imperative as it explores the extent of domestic violence in Nsukka and the danger it poses. This study adopted a mixed research design of quantitative and qualitative research methods. A sample of 60 respondents was purposively (...) selected for the study (18 clergymen and 42 lay people). A structured questionnaire and interview schedule were used for data collection. Data were analysed using simple percentages and frequency counts, a descriptive method. Contribution: Findings revealed that high domestic violence prevalence in Nsukka. Also, emerging from the study, the high rate of domestic violence is induced in part by substance abuse, psychological disorders, poverty and, more importantly, traditional and religious belief and practi. (shrink)

The Anglican Tradition of Moral Theology Alan M. Suggate Hooker and the via media For the English who experienced the impact of the Reformation on the...

In 1967, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) appointed a Committee in order to begin formal conversations. The first series of theological dialogues resulted in the Pullach Report (1972), which surveyed the variety of issues affecting AnglicanLutheran relations. The ACC and the Executive Committee of LWF convened a Joint Working Group in 1975 to review responses to the Pullach Report. A new Joint Working Group was convened in 1983. The Cold Ash Report (1983) surveyed the (...) state of LutheranAnglican rela- tions and explored the concept of full communion, as a description of the life together. Finally, in 1998 the Anglican-Lutheran International Working Group was convened by ACC and LWF. The Porto Allegre Report (2002) provide a picture of the present state of AnglicanLutheran relations, and analyze issues raised by the present relations between Anglicans and Lutherans. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 71-84 [Access article in PDF] Christian Views on Ritual Practice Society and Sacrament: The Anglican Left and Sacramental Socialism, Ritual as Ethics Nicholas GrovesLoyola University Introduction August in New York City is frequently a time of intense heat, where the congestion of city living kindles tempers to the breaking point. This is true in a special way in the tenements of the city, where people (...) without air-conditioning take raw anger and frustration into the streets. It was in this environment, in the tenements of the Lower East Side, that gang violence erupted in August of 1959. At least two young people were shot in gang-related "rumbles" and retaliation. Blacks and Puerto Ricans, already scrambling for the few available jobs society provided for them, squared off against each other. Police and the city of New York vowed more punishment, more arrests. (At this same time, Leonard Bernstein portrayed these struggles in terms of the love of Tony and Maria, but in "real life" it was "East Side Story" as much as "West Side Story.")In response to renewed war among his youth, the Episcopal priest, Fr. Kilmer Myers of St. Augustine's Chapel (now St. Augustine's Parish) also took to the streets. Canceling the church's usual patronal festival and carnival, he led his people in a procession through the streets of his neighborhood, with clergy clad in the solemn vestments of the Eucharist, with banners, incense, and hymns. His purpose: to pray and to plead that the killing stop, and that the authorities see the agony of the young who had abandoned an almost three-year "truce" he had helped work out with youth leaders between rival gangs.Myers wrote later in his book, Light the Dark Streets (Greenwich, Conn.: Seabury Press, 1957) about his ministry at St. Augustine's. In contrast to a city government and police department intent on further punishment as a solution to gang problems, Fr. Myers posed the presence of people who lived and worked with the young people and a community in desperate need: A parish such as this... so filled with darkness, defeat... and a longing for victory.... We think of next year and the year after that. We are not sure that we have the strength or that we can ask for it. The shouts in the street become an unending shout. The angry cry mingles with music from the tenement.... [End Page 71] There is the scream of the police siren. Will it stop in the block? There is the uncertainty at each youth affair. Will someone be shot or stabbed? (p. 96) In 1981, Bishop Desmond Tutu challenged the government of South Africa to abandon its policy of apartheid, a challenge he and others later won. But at that point, with any kind of victory far from certain, he confronted his opponents with words about his own spiritual commitment: I want to say that there is nothing the government can do to me that will stop me from being involved in what I believe is what God wants me to do. I do not do it because I like doing it. I do it because I am under what I believe to be the influence of God's hand. I cannot help it when I see injustice. I cannot keep quiet. I will not keep quiet, for as Jeremiah says, when I try to keep quiet, God's word burns like a fire in my breast. But what is it that they can ultimately do? The most awful thing that they can do is to kill me, and death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian. (Quoted in S. DuBoulay, Tutu: Voice of the Voiceless [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988], pp. 174-175.) How does ritual involve ethics? I would like to present for your consideration one example of such an intersection: the witness of what some have called the "Anglican Left" in both Britain and the United States, or what the historian Peter Jones has named "sacramental socialism... (shrink)

This article discusses the educational context of John Henry Newman's earlier writings. Through a detailed analysis of the character of Oxford University it traces the development of his educational theory in his practice of teaching. Oxford, which remained a wholly Anglican institution until the 1870s, functioned as a microcosmfor the broader issues of church and state which dominated the writings of the leaders of the Tractarian (or Oxford) Movement in the 1830s. The article helps explain why English theology developed completely (...) differently from theology in continental Europe. For Newman, education was a pastoral and religious task where faith and life were connected through a common ‘catholic’ ethos: the quest for truth was a religious duty. This idea, where the intellect and will were mutually determinative of one another, remained central to his theology and theory of education after his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, especially in his plans for the University of Dublin, published in The Idea of a University. Newman's insight was that authentic education required a ‘religious’ disposition, and learning was a moral and spiritual task. This may still be of some relevance in educational policy in the present day. (shrink)

An important examination of the theological, spiritual, and ethical issues surrounding death. At the end of a life of faithfulness comes our dying. To approach it as faithfully as we have our living calls for some serious forethought. Because one of the simplest facts of life—that we all die—seems like the most complicated thing we do. Not only have advances in medical technology saved lives, but they also have prolonged death, and raise a number ethical, moral, social, and theological issues. (...) How far should we go to sustain life? Is it right to withdraw artificial feeding from the dying? Is it wrong to end the lives of those in pain? No matter who we are, dealing with these sorts of choices near the end of life is difficult to do on our own.Faithful Living, Faithful Dying: Anglican Reflections on End of Life Care brings together the wisdom of a task force created by the 72nd General Convention of the Episcopal Church to study what faithful living and faithful dying mean today. The task force’s reflections, published for the first time in this book, assist individuals, congregations, and the Church as a whole to disentangle the thicket of ethical, theological, pastoral, and policy concerns. (shrink)

Robbins, Francis, and Rutledge (1997) documented the personality profile of Church of England clergymen and clergywomen prior to the ordination of the first women to the priesthood in 1994, drawing on Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality. They found that the personality profiles of clergymen and clergywomen were indistinguishable. The present paper reports a comparable study conducted in 2004 among 182 clergywomen and 540 clergymen serving in similar parochial posts in order to examine whether the ordination of women to the priesthood (...) had impacted the overall personality profile of Anglican clergy. The data suggest that little change had taken place between the two cohorts of clergy studied. Once again clergywomen and clergymen appeared to be formed in the same image. (shrink)

In spite of the presence of women in previously male-dominated ecclesial spaces, patriarchal normativity continues to be re-inscribed through the reproduction of knowledge, which sustains skewed gender power relations amongst the clergy. This was a case in point when a newly ordained woman priest in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa was recently addressed as, and given the official title, ‘mother’ during the vestment ritual at a church service where she was to celebrate the Eucharist for the first time. This (...) while the male priests present had retained the title ‘father’ without any critical reflection on the male-headship theology it perpetuates. If one considers that the ordination of women has opened the possibility for them to celebrate the Eucharist, which gives authority to preside at (or head) the ‘Table’, then one has to be mindful of the subtle ways in which language is used to regulate the production and reproduction of gender bias in a patriarchal system. Being the guest preacher at the celebratory service of this former Ethics and Theology student, I could do no other but interrupt the sermon I had prepared. In this article, I argue that interruption is a helpful theoretical concept – both as a transformative rhetorical strategy in the interpretation of biblical texts and also as an act of resisting discourses and practices that uphold and re-inscribe patriarchal norms. I will approach the hermeneutical concept of interruption from what I call a feminist theo-ethical perspective. (shrink)

"In 2007, I underwent a crisis of sexual identity. I was married, with two young children, when I became attracted to another woman. The hostility I encountered at the Anglican church I was attending made me curious about other people's experiences. It seemed to me imperative that stories of being gay in the Church be heard, especially in the context of the current maelstrom within the Anglican community in which the Church has been encouraged to undergo a 'listening process'. This (...) book is the result." Outspoken presents the narratives of eleven people who have come out in the Anglican Church in New Zealand, including two ordained church members. The author has written a general introduction, plus an introduction to each individual story and reflections on it. The book closes with a postscript that discusses truth and the Church; community, belonging and rejection; ideas about hell and damnation; the theology of denial; and the implications and ramifications of the "Don't ask, don't tell" approach. The author notes that "People's lives are sacred ground and the area of sexuality is one where people are arguably at their most vulnerable." She hopes that this research will contribute to community building within the Anglican Church. (shrink)

Anglican reception history of 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12 reaches back to the apostolic era and the interpreters of the early church, yet it takes on a decidedly English tone through medieval readers, such as the Venerable Bede and Lanfranc, as well as John Wycliffe and its early revolutionaries. With Parliament’s Act of Supremacy (1534), Henry VIII and England broke with the Roman Catholic Church and joined a litany of voices in opposition to the papacy, who saw in it the mystery of (...) iniquity at work, the falling away, the son of perdition, and the man of lawlessness. This unleashed a bevy of interpretations of the pericope that ranged from identifying the eschatological timeline of the NT with that of England’s Reformation to voices of restraint in the likes of Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes. It was not until the end of the 17th century that apocalyptic realism began to die down and Anglicans became generally more introspective, with the papal the Antichrist tapering off and disappearing by the 20th century. Theologically, this reception history challenges Anglicans to recognize the horror of evil and to respond with vigilance, faithfulness, and hope. (shrink)

This study explores the connection between dominant psychological type preferences and reader interpretations of biblical texts. Working in type-alike groups, a group of 40 Anglican clergy were invited to employ their strongest function to engage conversation between Mark’s account of Jesus sending out the disciples and the experience of ministry in today’s world. The data supported the hermeneutical theory proposed by the SIFT approach to biblical interpretation and liturgical preaching by demonstrating the four clear and distinctive voices of sensing, intuition, (...) feeling and thinking. (shrink)

The Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) is the oldest church in Kenya and the largest protestant denomination in the country. Since religions were liberalized after the attainment of political independence in AD 1964, the church has experienced declining congregations due to the registration of new denominations, especially the Pentecostal ones. The decline has been noticeable from the beginning of the 21st Century but there are no reports of strategies to resolve the phenomenon. Since congregation members are the customers for a (...) church, the declining phenomenon indicates a marketing problem that requires a marketing strategy. This research investigated how the ACK is operationalizing a marketing strategy and its influence on its sustainability. The ACK operates on standardized structures and a diocese is the highest independent unit. This research was conducted in the diocese of Kirinyaga as the unit of analysis with Wanguru Archdeaconry as the unit of observation. The independent variables were the elements of the marketing mix, namely Product, Promotion, Position and Price strategies while the dependent variable was the church sustainability. Data collection involved 308 participants drawn from the 19 parishes in the Wanguru archdeaconry and included the church leadership and the congregation members. The research instruments were a semi-structured questionnaire and interviews. For the Product variable, the research applied the Maslow Hierarchy of needs theory while for the promotion variable, it was the AIDA Model (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action). For the positioning strategy, the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) Model was applied while the Value-Based Pricing theory was used for the price strategy. For church sustainability, the research applied the Triple Bottom Line model. Data analysis was conducted using Structural Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results indicated that the ACK has not operationalized an effective marketing strategy for while the Gospel as the marketing product of the church was highly rated, there were low scores for Promotion, Position and Price strategies. (shrink)