Sakramenty inicjacji chrześcijańskiej w tradycji anglikańskiej

Abstract

Liturgy has always played a central role in Anglicanism. The spirit of Anglicanism is to be found in its worship rather than in any documents. The liturgy calls all members of Christ's Body into a common act of praise. The establishment of one uniform liturgy was a distinguishing mark of the Church of England at the Reformation. It explains why the Book of Common Prayer has become a special authority in this tradition. For many reasons the Book has undergone several revisions. The last major one was in 1662. After the Lambeth Conference of 1968 the Church of England produced in 1980 the Alternative Service Book. Anglicanism has always seen the sacraments as visible means of God's grace and placed them in the centre of Christian worship. Since R. Hooker the sacraments have also been regarded as „moral instruments” There is an indispensable link between worship, in particular sacramental worship, and a Christian's daily life. The recent decades have seen a rediscovery of theology of initiation which is directly related to the recovery of biblical understanding of the Church as the people of God. In the following chapter of this paper the author outlines the changes in the liturgy and understanding of baptism, confirmation and Holy Communion that have taken place over the centuries in the Church of England. These changes indicate some common concerns like indiscriminate baptism, confirmation as a rite for a mature reaffirmation, ceremonial enrichment or the centrality of the eucharistie aspect in the Christain worship. In the new rites of initiation as a whole there is a clear commitment to the integral unity of initiation itself. The last part of this article deals with the relationship between liturgy and ethics. According to O. O'Donovan they are both concerned with the speech that shapes a man's action. Liturgy here has a threefold task: to communicate the basic moral principles to the faithful, to integrate those categories into a whole moral vision and to interprete the world into which the Christ's disciples must act in the light of that moral vision.