Church Conflict and Global Christianity: The End of the Anglican Communion?

This course analyses tensions in Global Christianity by focusing on the contemporary dispute in the transnational Anglican Communion. It demonstrates that the conflict is about much more than homosexuality, but that this issue is has become the 'presenting' symbol for a series of intersecting tensions and disagreements between Anglicans across the globe. With attention to empirical research, this course looks at the 'homosexuality' crisis as it is refracted in disagreements between 'liberals' and 'orthodox' Anglicans, between North and South (as well as within both North and South), between those supportive of women as priests and bishops and those opposed, as well as the ways that attempts to repair the fabric of Communion have in some instances aggravated the tensions. Religious strife is far from unique to the Anglican Communion, and thus the course also approaches Anglicanism's difficulties in comparative terms with more general tensions in global Christianity. The course attends to demographic trends in world Christianity, theologies of church conflict, and ecclesiological debates over the future of the church.