Theological Comprehensiveness as Anglican Practice

Intersectional and liberationist theologies have flourished, often at the expense of systematic and dogmatic work more broadly conceived. While these approaches have yielded real moral gains—bringing embodied suffering, structural sin, and the legacies of violence and its agents to light—they have also contributed to fragmented theological discourse and a thinning of shared confessional grammar across the church. In conversation with Clint Schnekloth’s claim that intersectionality has functionally replaced dogmatics, this article receives the diagnosis and reframes it through an Anglican theological lens. Rather than lamenting the decline of systematic theology as a genre, the article argues for renewing an Anglican vision of comprehensiveness. Drawing on Hooker’s account of reason, Berkeley’s moral theology of obedience, and the Prayer Book’s formative logic, it sketches implications for theological method, seminary formation, and ecclesial leadership. It contends that only a chastened, penitential, embodied theology can sustain communion, moral seriousness, and hope today.