Via Media, But Which One?
by Bishop Duncan

Bishop Duncan asks what "Via Media" means in the Episcopal Church today.

“By 1593 the Church of England had shown plainly that it would not walk in the ways either of Geneva or of Rome. This is the origin of the famous Via Media, the middle way, of the Church
of England…Anglicanism is a very positive form of Christian belief; it affirms that it teaches the whole of Catholic faith, free from the distortions, the exaggerations, the over-definitions both of the Protestant left wing and of the right wing of Tridentine Catholicism. Its challenge can be summed up in the phrases, ‘Show us anything clearly set forth in Holy Scripture that we do not teach, and we will teach it; show us anything in our teaching and practice that is plainly contrary to Holy Scripture, and we will abandon it.” (Stephen Neill, Anglicanism p. 119)

For generations we Anglicans have understood ourselves to offer a middle way, a via media. In a very similar vein, we have often spoken of our calling as that of a “bridge” church.

These self-understandings depended on reference to realities on either side: through what land were we the middle way? Between what shores were we the bridge? the rest