Anglican Identity – What’s in it for me?

This post is a summary of a presentation made at the Anglican Schools Australia Connections Forum in May.

1: Introduction

This post stems from a comment made by a student in one of my Year 7 classes. We were discussing what it meant for our school to be an Anglican school. After I had shared about the history of our school and provided, what I thought, was a really good explanation there was a pause. And then a student said ‘all that is well and good but what’s in it for me?’

What a great question. On one hand, there is the issue of a student wanting to reduce the topic of Anglican Identity into a rather self-interested question. But, on the other hand, as chaplains and RE teachers we should be able to provide a good response to this question. As we deal with more and more students untouched by the Christian faith, let alone the subtle nuances of the Anglican tradition, we need to be able to respond to this question and provide an answer that even a Year 7 student can easily understand.

There has been some really good work done on Anglican Identity recently thanks to the paper and associated resources that the Rev Dr Daniel Heischman DD produced for Anglican Schools Australia[i]. While greatly admiring the work that Daniel put into his paper and challenged by the student question, I wanted to have a go at seeing how I would provide an answer to this. I gave a response to the student at the time but felt that I could have done better, so I took some time reflecting on my twenty-five years of experience working in Anglican schools to try to come up with my own take.    

Being able to articulate the positives of being an Anglican school is vitally important as we face an increasingly sceptical cohort of parents, students, staff and even school leadership.

2: Perhaps what not to do

In talking about Anglican Identity to an unchurched school community, we all know that its perhaps not the wisest to lead by going through the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion. As vital and important as these articles are for helping frame Anglican Identity, they are a long way removed from being in any sense student friendly. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral[ii] of scripture, creeds, two sacraments and the historic episcopate is obviously helpful for us in our roles as chaplains and RE teachers, but it is still pretty churchy in its language and relies on a lot of assumed knowledge.

The oft cited three-legged Anglican stool of reason, tradition and scripture is helpfully succinct, but I am not sure how much traction it is able to get in our largely secular school communities.

More recently there has been a lot of emphasis placed on the Five Anglican Marks of Mission.

• To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
• To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
• To respond to human need by loving service
• To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation
• To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth

Again, this is really helpful for those of us within the tradition, but its churchy language doesn’t translate easily to the average secular Year 7 student.

I am not sure who came up with the five T word summary of the five marks of mission – Tell, Teach, Tend, Treasure and Transform. This summary  get us a bit more on track by making the five markers more accessible for our students.   

A good starting point is to ask yourself – why is being Anglican important to your Anglican school? The challenge of course is that while it will be important to you, the reality is that it probably isn’t that important to many in your school community. As the Rev Dr David Cole once commented ‘The actual life of the school, and its commitment to Anglican values and identity, may vary enormously, from wholehearted embracing of them, to an embarrassed peripheralisation of them.[iii]’

So how can you articulate an answer to the question of Anglican Identity in a way that gets traction with school leaders, staff, students and parents? How to get a non-church community to see the value that being part of the Anglican Tradition brings to your school? How to get your school to be proud of your Anglican Identity and not be embarrassed by it?

3: My take on Anglican Identity     

As I was reflecting on all this, I attended the Anglican Schools Australia Conference in Melbourne last year. As part of the conference there was a presentation by Sophie Renton from McCrindle Research. Her presentation summarised the recent research that McCrindle had done on schooling. The best schools are neither educational institutions nor consumer-centric learning providers but authentic communities of learning, serving and belonging.’

I realised that this statement was really helpful for showing the value that the Anglican Tradition brings to an Anglican School. For our students, being part of an Anglican school will enable them to learn better, serve more genuinely, and help them feel like they really belong.

These three subheadings provide a nice summary of all a student needs to know about the value that being an Anglican school holds for them. In what follows I will unpack each subheading to enable you to get a fuller understanding of the thinking behind them.  

A: Anglican Schools help you learn better

• The Anglican Tradition is proudly an intellectual tradition that puts a high value on thinking and reason. Historically the Anglican Tradition has always valued learning and the integration of the mind and the heart. We intentionally seek to cultivate a thoughtful and reflective expression of the Christian faith.
• Education and establishing schools is a very Anglican thing to do. The oldest schools in England and Australia are Anglican Schools. Education is in our DNA.
• The emphasis with Anglican Schools is on education rather than indoctrination. In Anglican schools we don’t assume our students are Anglicans but are open to everyone of all faith traditions and of none.  
• The Anglican Tradition is a thinking faith and therefore students in Anglican schools are encouraged to stay curious. We explore answers by keeping questions open.  We warmly welcome student’s questions, especially their tricky ones.
• The American author David Foster Wallace once said, ‘A good education is not just about your capacity to think but to help you think about important things.’ Anglican schools encourage our students think about the really important things of life such as meaning and purpose.
• As Anglicans we have a Tradition rather than a Vibe (positive emotional energy).  Obviously generalising hugely but Pentecostal churches typically tend to have Vibe while Anglican churches typically do not have this. What tends to attract people to the Anglican church is our tradition and theology. 
• Vibe works well when it comes to growing a church, but it is not a good fit for a school. Parents, who send their children to an Anglican school, don’t tend to want religious vibe – this seems overly enthusiastic. Our parents are more comfortable with a religious tradition that is based on reason rather than vibe.  Our students tend to draw closer to God because they are curious not because they are hyped.
• American writer Christopher Morley is credited as saying ‘Anglicans believe in God, but not enough to want to bring him to anyone else’s attention.’ Morely was making the observation, in a humorous way, that the Anglican faith can be seen as not demanding a lot of you. Being nondemanding could be argued to be a bit of a weakness in the Anglican parish setting but it is a strength in the Anglican school context. In an age of wariness when it comes to religious enthusiasm the gentle laid back nature of Anglicanism is a better fit for a school that looks to welcome everyone.  

B: Anglican Schools will help you serve more genuinely       

• Service is at the heart of an Anglican school. Anglican schools are intentionally created to be a blessing, not just for their own community, but to the wider world. They do this by seeking to raise up and nurture thoughtful and caring young people who can go into the world inspired and empowered to make a positive contribution in their chosen field of endeavour.   
• Anglican schools provide great role models who inspire their students with good examples of what it means to genuinely and authentically serve. Service is demonstrated by the high-quality staff employed in Anglican schools who know their stuff, teach it really well, and are doing their best to live out the values of their school. Many of the role models in Anglican schools are great role models because they in turn take Jesus to be the example of how they seek to live their life in service to others.
• For Anglicans one of the positives about being a tradition is that we have a great story to tell. Anglican schools connect a student’s individual story with a bigger, grander, story. This begins by connecting the individual student with the story of their school.
• The story of many Anglican schools is typically one of godly people working together to establish a school where young people have the opportunity to grow and thrive. It is at its heart a story of service.
• An Anglican school’s story is in turn embedded in the great story of God’s saving work in the world. A story that speaks strongly of God’s love demonstrated in the person of Jesus.
• This is a story that encourages and empowers young people to work for and build a better future. Anglican schools therefore don’t just live in the moment but are deeply connected to a grander story that draws on the past to enable us students to look to the future with hope.

C: Anglican Schools will help you feel like you belong because we really care about you.    

• The Anglican Tradition has always had an emphasis on place. As Anglicans we do a good job of making people feel welcome into that place (certainly in our schools) and this enables people to feel like they really belong in that place. 
• Anglican schools pride themselves on offering next level care. Going ‘above and beyond’ is what we do because we understand that this is what God has done for us. So, what is that makes our pastoral care excellent? It’s our Anglican Identity.
• We care better as we know our students better. A student in an Anglican school is known as a whole person who has a heart, a soul and an imagination not just a body, a mind and bank balance. Anglican schools seek to engage the whole person, therefore we are better placed to help our students become the best version of themselves.
• Anglican schools, like all schools, are becoming more diverse places. With increasing diversity what enables us to find common ground? It is our Anglican Identity that enables us find common ground.  It is the Anglican Tradition that provides the glue that helps bind a diverse community together and helps our students to ‘stick’ and feel like they really belong.  
• Chaplains are an Anglican school distinctive that provides a consistent familiar face in an ever-changing school environment. The chaplain can offer a pastoral point of anchorage in a sea of rapid educational change.
• It is the chaplain that accompanies students on their journey through their school. Over the course of a student’s time at school a lot will change, but the chaplain hopefully wont. The chaplain is present for the significant moments in a student’s journey through their school in a way that other staff won’t be. Other staff will have deeper short-term connection with a student but the chaplain offers a long term point of connection that extends beyond the student’s time at their school.   

4: Three contemporary images to capture Anglican Identity     

• I began by looking at some traditional images that explain what is distinctive about the Anglican Tradition. Let me finish with three contemporary ones.
• Vanessa Gamack, the Curriculum Lead – Anglican Identity for Southern Queensland, has a really helpful diagram that unpacks Anglican Identity in contemporary language.

• The next image is used in a number of schools and it not necessarily specifically Anglican, but it does work well unpacking Anglican Identity in a way that students can easily understand. Being a student in an Anglican School helps their Head (knowledge, thinking and questioning), their Heart (character, values, faith and spiritualty), and their Hands (service, caring, and faith in action).

• Given a lot of our images when it comes to Anglican Identity are old and traditional I think there is value in repurposing contemporary images to help unpack what it means to be an Anglican school. 
• One I used recently in my school with students and staff is adapted from an image that American country singer Reba McEntire is said to have popularised – the Three Bones.
• Anglican schools provide the Three Bones that you need to live the good life. You need a Wishbone – something to hope for. You also need a Backbone – something to enable you to achieve this hope. Life can be challenging so we need people with the backbone to achieve their dreams and aspirations. And thirdly you need a Funny Bone – the ability to find things to laugh at in life, in others and in yourself. One thing the Anglican tradition has always been pretty good at is having a sense of humour about itself.

• When I came across the Three Bones idea[iv] I immediately thought of its applicability in terms of capturing for young people what is great about being a student in an Anglican school. 
• Using a creative left field image like this one can really get students engaged and thinking.

5: Conclusion 

• It is said that students soak in the waters of their school. Students effectively ‘marinade’ in their school, taking on the flavour of their school. If students soak in the waters of their school, then our waters need to have a discernible Anglican flavour.
• The Anglican Tradition should be the glue that holds an Anglican school together. It is the secret sauce that makes a good school a great school. Anglican Identity should be the main ingredient of our cake – not just the icing on top.
• It is our Anglican Identity that enables our schools to be authentic communities that enables our students to learn better, serve more effectively, and helps them feel like they really belong.  

[i] Anglican Identity – Anglican Schools Australia

[ii] I have used images in this post that have been sourced from the internet. Apologies, as while I would like to credit those people who created these images, in many instances, I couldn’t find references for who first put them together.  

[iii] The Ecclesial Nature of Anglican Schools by David Cole in ‘Wonderful and Confessedly Strange’: Australian Essays in Anglican Ecclesiology Editor Bruce Kaye, Sarah Macneil, Heather Thomson, (2006: ATF).

[iv] This image come from page 276 of the book ‘Big Ideas: Little Pictures’ by Jono Hey (Media Lab Books) 2024