The place of civic belonging: the dangers and possibilities of Anglican territorial embeddedness

Abstract

This contribution addresses pressing questions about English national identity and belonging through exploring Anglican polity and its relationship with place. I argue that the Church of England’s ‘territorial embeddedness’ has resources to offer to the present turmoil over what it means to belong to a national civic community. However, identifying these resources involves reckoning with the ways that the Church–in its relationship with territory–has itself historically displayed possessive and hierarchical tendencies. Through reckoning with this history I retrieve a theological account of the place of the church as undefended territory, in which there is genuine attachment to particular places that is (or should be) non-competitive. This non-competitive account of belonging is explored in terms of, first, federated modes of polity and, second, forms of collective responsibility for all the people of a land and all of that land’s history. In grappling with Anglicanism’s mottled identity, therefore, fruitful resources emerge for understanding belonging and responsibility within a place-tethered community–resources which can help to offer an alternative to narrow forms of nationalism and attendant civic alienation. In this way, there is scope for the Church of England to distinctively contribute to the cultivation of a truly common national life.