Questioning Authority

“Ellen K. Wondra has done us an enormous service by taking on the vexing issue of Authority in the Anglican Communion. The theology, history, and contemporary story of Anglicanism’s love-hate relationship with authority are carefully woven together in this substantial volume. Dr. Wondra argues for an understanding of authority which is relational and dispersed rather than juridical and focused. In such a system communion is experienced in diversity not in spite of it. This is a catholicity ordered in a ‘conciliar economy’ in which authority enhances communion while involving the whole body of the church in taking responsibility for its mission.” Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, Presiding Bishop’s Deputy for Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations (Ret.)
“This important book on authority fulfills two major tasks brilliantly: first, the author clarifies the splendid complexity of the institutional forms of the worldwide Anglican communion. Second, the author develops an original and persuasive theological analysis of authority as relation explicitly in church, but also implicitly in state, university, business and family. A major work on an issue that affects us all—the true nature of authority.” David Tracy, Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religions, the University of Chicago
“In this wide-ranging work, Ellen K. Wondra doesn’t so much question authority as reclaim what true authority consists of in the Anglican tradition. Authority derives its power to initiate and confirm action from the common life of individuals bound together by history, obligation, affection and shared hope. Hence, authority is essentially relational. Wondra demonstrates how this moral philosophical claim is reflected in the ancient ecclesial principle of conciliarity: bishops, personally embodying the unity of the church, only exercise leadership in concert with the people of God as a whole. Its Anglican focus notwithstanding, this study is deeply ecumenical, particularly in its steady insistence that when disagreement and difference coexist in community, there true authority is to be found, however messy and fluid it may be.” Rt. Rev. Thomas E. Breidenthal, IX Bishop of Southern Ohio