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ABSTRACT
Much of the Anglican story has been told, focusing on the history and theology of the Church of England. Edward Said used the concept of counterpoint to discuss territories as overlapped and histories intertwined. Using the insights of Said’s contrapuntal reading, this article broadens our historical horizons by interpreting the Anglican story from different locales and vantage points in three historical periods. It discussed biblical interpretation and colonialism in the works of John Robert Seeley at Cambridge and John William Colenso in Natal, South Africa, in the nineteenth century. It compares the social teachings of Archbishop William Temple and Chinese theologian TC Chao in the first half of the twentieth century. The last part focuses on the debates of human sexuality, comparing the arguments of Americans with those of African theologians.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Jasanoff, ‘Mourn the Queen, Not the Empire’.
2 Zandt, ‘The Biggest Empires in Human History’.
3 Johnson and Zurlo, eds., World Christian Database.
4 Ward, A History of Global Anglicanism, 17.
5 Said, Out of Place, 7, 22.
6 Said, ‘Edward Said on Orientalism’.
7 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 102–6.
8 Said, Culture and Imperialism.
9 Said, ‘A Palestinian Voice’, 31.
10 Capitain, ‘From Counterpoint to Heterophony’, 2.
11 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 51. Emphasis in the original.
12 Capitain, ‘From Counterpoint to Heterophony’, 12.
13 Said, draft three of chapter one of Culture and Imperialism, cited in Capitain, ‘From Counterpoint to Heterophony’, 13.
14 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 386.
15 Capitain, ‘From Counterpoint to Heterophony’, 12.
16 Seeley, The Expansion of England.
17 Strauss, Life of Jesus.
18 Renan, Life of Jesus.
19 Seeley, Ecce Homo.
20 Ibid., 48.
21 Ibid., 139.
22 Ibid., 151.
23 Seeley, The Expansion of England, 226–27.
24 Colenso, The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua and St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.
25 Colenso, Bringing Forth Light, 232, cited in Sugirtharajah, The Bible and the Third World, 116.
26 Sugirtharajah, The Bible and the Third World, 139.
27 The discussion of Temple draws from Kwok, The Anglican Tradition, 74–77.
28 Kent, William Temple, 12.
29 Temple, Christus Veritas, 139.
30 Ibid.
31 Temple, Mens Creatrix, 332.
32 Temple, Nature, Man and God.
33 Temple, Christianity and the Social Order, 45.
34 Dorrien, ‘Economic Democracy as Political Theology’, 544.
35 Spencer, William Temple, 53–54.
36 Wondra, ‘William Temple’, 324.
37 Kent, William Temple, 54.
38 Chen, ‘T.C. Chao’, 23–24.
39 Chao, ‘Zhenxue Sijiang [Four talks on theology]’, 520, cited in Chen, ‘T.C. Chao and the Sheng Kung Hui’, 82–83.
40 Chao, Yesu Zhuan [The biography of Jesus].
41 Xu, ‘The Sage of Sages’, 171.
42 Chao, ‘Christianity and Confucianism’, 595.
43 Ng, ‘A Study of Y.T. Wu’.
44 Chen, ‘T.C. Chao’, 28.
45 Wickeri, ‘Was T.C. Chao an “Anglican Theologian”?’ unpublished essay cited in Chen, ‘T.C. Chao’, 30.
46 Ibid.
47 Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis.
48 Some of them spoke out in the documentary Black and Sherrod, ‘Voices of Witness Africa’.
49 For example, Spong, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.
50 Spong, Living in Sin? 25.
51 Ibid., 28–37.
52 Ibid., 198.
53 Spong, The Bishop’s Voice, 180.
54 Andrew Carey, ‘African Christians? They’re Just a Step Up from Witchcraft’, Church of England Newspaper, 10 July 1998, quoted in Hassett, Anglican Communion in Crisis, 72.
55 Cheng, ‘Race and Sexuality in the “Regions Beyond”’.
56 Kaoma, Christianity, Globalisation, and Protective Homophobia, 89.
57 Kaoma, ‘Beyond Adam and Eve’, 9.
58 Mombo, ‘The Windsor Report’, 77.
59 Mombo, ‘Kenyan Reflections’, 151.
60 Biggar, Colonialism.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kwok Pui-Lan
Kwok Pui-Lan is the Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, USA. She is the author of The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective and a coeditor of Anglican Women on Church and Mission and Beyond Colonial Anglicanism: The Anglican Communion in the Twenty-first Century.