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Freedom and Covenant: The Miltonian Analogy Transfigured

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Radner, Ephraim

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Prelacy and ECUSA

Milton provides only a typological analogy to contemporary ECUSA apologists. But Milton's influence in the formative years of the United States was not negligible. He was read carefully by Jefferson, and the Areopagitica became a classic text for First Amendment and educational mythology.12 Still, his incorporation into the public pantheon of American liberty was partly accomplished by neglecting his primarily religious vision, which for a long time remained outside the accepted mainstream.

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But the Miltonian analogy should make clear that ECUSA's adoption of this religious vision places it at odds with its own genetic ecclesial identity. ECUSA's episcopal identity stands in an almost suicidal relationship with the Miltonian anti-episcopal understanding of religious liberty. Certainly the interest of early U.S. Anglicans lay exactly in embracing this episcopal identity, whatever character of "democratic" processes were lodged in its conventional life. While not all early Episcopalians were "Seaburyites" in their views of episcopacy, the entire organizational drama of PECUSA focused on this question. Practically, the avenues for embracing the episcopate formally tied the Episcopal Church to the Church of England. For example, the revision of the American Book of Common Prayer and the doctrinal constraints around creeds and organization finally accepted by the new church were tied to the episcopal dependence of the Americans upon the English.13

Second, there is the theological import of the American church's commitment to episcopacy. William White's use of the term "communion" in his famous case refers not only to the relationship held among American Episcopalians, but describes also the relationship they held with the Church of England.14 Theologically, part of the deep and common bond they experienced and expressed in the ordering of the church by bishops lay in the Americans' commitment to "apostolicity." White makes this case overtly, informed by the deep theological bequest from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the high church primitivists. The episcopacy was "apostolic," furthermore, because it was scripturally given and upheld by the early church. This twofold criterion became the centerpiece of standard self-understanding by Episcopalians until relatively recently. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral represents a clear, evolved, and self-conscious embrace of this prelatical-scriptural identity, and its implications continue to bear fruit in ecumenical theology. It lies at the foundation of ECUSA's consistent embrace (until recently) of the ideology of the Anglican Communion itself.

Yet none of this precluded a consistent celebration of American "exceptionalism" with regard to the Episcopal Church's character. Especially in the context of missionary apologias, Episcopalians emphasized the distinctions between PECUSA and the Church of England precisely in terms of the former's wonderful system of self-governance. But this defense was based on "apostolic" considerations, the necessity of elections and of connection between people and leaders all being part of the original apostolic practice of the early church.

Freedom and Covenant: The Miltonian Analogy Transfigured

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005 by Radner, Ephraim

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