The Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion (CUAC), a global network of Anglican-affiliated tertiary schools, and sponsor of the Dr Rowan Williams Annual CUAC Lecture series, announced that the transcript and on-demand video of the 2013 Lecture, “TransAnglican Identity and Christian University Education,” is available to the public on the CUAC website.

This address, the second annual installment in an ongoing lecture series honoring the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was delivered from Lady Doak College in Madurai, India, on November 11, 2013 by The Rev. Dr. Sathianathan Clark, who holds the Bishop Sundo Kim Chair in World Christianity at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.

The Dr Rowan Williams Annual CUAC Lecture was founded in 2012 to commemorate Dr. Wiliams’ ten years as Archbishop of Canterbury and his tenure as CUAC’s Patron.  As a network of Anglican-affiliated colleges and universities around the world, CUAC seeks to foster exchanges of ideas and individuals among its member institutions.  The Dr Rowan Williams Lecture series furthers this goal by sharing the views of the Anglican luminaries invited to consider some aspect of the nature of Anglican higher education, in terms of both the global commonality of Anglican identity and ethos, and the various ways in which such identity and ethos are lived out in the cultures in which they have taken root.  To this end, each annual lecture is delivered on a rotating basis from the global regions represented by the CUAC membership.

“By rotating the location of each year’s lecture and hearing from the various regions comprising the world-wide Anglican Communion, not only are the hosting chapters invigorated, but the entire network is drawn closer together,” notes The Rev. Canon James G. Callaway, D.D., CUAC’s General Secretary.  “And, in the process, the global spectrum of voices within the Communion—the ‘dialects’ of Anglicanism, if you will—are heard.”

Dr. Clarke, a native of India, draws on the history of his own family and county to illustrate how self-understanding of identity evolved in response to situational context, leading to the idea of “TransAnglican Identities.”  His starting-point is the form of Christian identity that served well for generations, the “single-essence identity” (one is an Anglican, a Presbyterian, a Roman Catholic) that serves as the sole lens through which one's identity is formed.  He then notes that India’s independence from Britain brought about a sense of “double belonging” in which the Christian in India could belong both to Christ and to India—a much more interactive and dynamic model of identity that incorporates the various cultural, social, historical, and other contexts that contribute to Christian identity formation.  Finally, in the globalized world in which we live today, the myriad influences that shape Christian identity result in “multiply-hyphenated identities.”  Dr. Clarke presents himself as such an example:

…to claim I have a multiply-hyphenated identity I might express I am an Indian-American-Christian-ecological-liberation-theologian-priest…. I was born into and formed within the [Church of South India (CSI)].  Being baptized into this ecumenical Church in 1957, I was ordained as a CSI presbyter by my father in 1985.  After serving the CSI as a presbyter and theological educator for decades, from 2005 my mission location has moved to the United States of America.  Although a full-time theological professor in a Methodist seminary, I serve as a licensed priest for the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Washington in the District of Columbia.  Taking stock of this complex blessedness I can claim that my Christian identity is multiply-hyphenated to many cultural contexts, national interests, and church families. 

Recognition of such intersecting and overlapping realities of identity not only refines the ways in which one receives the heritage of the past—less as a single, eternal, unchanging verity, but rather as a multifaceted proposition whose constituent parts may have varying degrees of relevance to different individuals and times—but also opens up new channels of discernment of one’s identity as a Christian, in one’s own context and alongside others of different identities.  This shift in awareness makes possible the emergence of new creative ways of understanding God’s purpose and the ways in which we might act, individually and corporately, for the betterment of the world.  And what better matrix of incubation for that creativity than the Anglican college or university?  Dr. Clarke leaves the listener invigorated by the interplay of paradox and harmony he skillfully lays out, and draws each of us into consideration of our own “multiply-hyphenated identities.”

The transcript and on-demand video of Dr. Clarke’s lecture are available on the CUAC website at www.CUAC.org for the next year, and will be thereafter available on the Lecture Archives page, where the inaugural Lecture by then-archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, “What is the Point of an Anglican University?” is now available on-demand and in transcript.

CUAC is a world-wide association of over 130 institutions of higher education that were founded by and retain ties to a branch of the Anglican Communion.  With institutions on five continents, CUAC promotes cross-cultural contacts for the exchange of ideas and the joint development of educational programs among member institutions.  As a network of the Anglican Communion, CUAC leverages its global presence to help the faculty and students of its member institutions become better citizens of an increasingly-diverse world.  For more information, visit www.cuac.org.