I face these questions after I received several letters today from evangelical clergy in response to my short essay on Anglican identity of this morning [Oct 26].
One wrote:
Peter, I think that you have hit on the essential issue. Is the Anglican way necessary or relevant? I have many North American evangelical friends from a variety of denominational expressions. Some use liturgy, others don't. Most have vibrant ministries, and many of them are far more successful in bringing people to faith and raising up disciples for Jesus than any Anglican that I have ever known. There certainly won't be a denominational test for access to the kingdom. When I tell people that I am an Anglican today, they roll their eyes, and I am forced to fight an uphill battle for authenticity before I can even begin to minister to the Gospel. What is the point?Let me respond by recalling meetings in England in the 1970s.
Thirty years ago in England when conservative evangelicals in the Church of England were cooperating with other evangelicals from the Dissenting or Nonconformist Churches as well as from the National [Presbyterian] Church of Scotland, I recall discussions by Anglicans on the question of the status of Anglican identity. It came in answering this question: What relation does being a Churchman [Anglican] have to being a Christian and an Evangelical?
I further recall that in the British situation the answer of the evangelical leadership was that we are Christians first, Evangelicals second and Churchmen [members of the State Church] third but that the third was nearly equal second. This left us free to co-operate happily with Evangelicals outside and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans inside the Church of England.
But what theological principles guided this approach for, let us be clear, those who said these things were well educated in both the liberal arts and in theology.
First of all, they were committed to the priority in the churches of the Gospel of the Father concerning his only-begotten Son, who for us and for our salvation became Man and in our place, lived, died, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to reconcile God to man and man to God.
Second of all, they were committed to the need for individual conversion to God the Father through the Incarnate Son and by the Holy Ghost. That is, the response by the sinner of repentance from sin and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. So to be a Christian, a person who is united in faith to the Son of God and through HIM to the Father, must come first. But church membership follows on immediately.
Thirdly, they were wholly committed to the Church of God but they made a clear distinction between the Church as Visible and the Church as Invisible. That is, they saw the One Church of God present in all the congregations where the Word of God was preached and the Sacraments faithfully administered. Yet they accepted that not all members of the visible churches are true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, for they are nominal Christians or not Christians at all. Further, they saw the One Church expressed in a variety of forms – the National Churches of England and Scotland, the Baptist churches, the Congregational churches and so on.
At the same time, they also saw the Church as being invisible in the sense that God is invisible and grace is invisible. The total number of people from all ages and places who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and were united to the Father through him by the Holy Ghost (= the elect of God) they understood to be the true Church, known to God, but invisible to man. So they could happily work with and cooperate with Christians from outside the National Established Church for the invisible Church of God reached everywhere.
Fourthly, being Christians they had to make prudential judgments of what kind of Christianity (from amongst the options known through history) they wanted to be a part of and to manifest. They decided that to proclaim the Gospel and to make disciples was a clear priority in the Church because of the Lord Jesus’ Commission in Matthew 28. Thus they identified themselves as Evangelical Churchmen or as Evangelicals for they believed that there was no way into the kingdom of God and the Church invisible but by being embraced by the Gospel of the Father concerning his Son. Thus, being Evangelicals they could cooperate with fellow Evangelicals from Presbyterian, Baptist and Congregational churches and being Churchmen they could work with devout anglo-catholics with whom they had much in common even though their emphases were different.
So they had no doubt but that first and foremost they were Christians by the grace of God; and they also had no doubt but that as Christians they must be Evangelical with a Gospel to treasure and proclaim. However, they did not want to lose the important idea of being “Churchmen” or Anglican, that is members of the ancient (going back to the 3rd century) Church of England. This is one reason why when the great preacher, Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, London, made the call for Anglicans to leave the State Church virtually none did. They had this sense of the continuity of the visible Church through space and time and did not want to give up this aspect of commitment to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church of God. Further, some commented, was not the C of E the best ship to fish from?
During all this period there was, as far as I remember, no imitation of Free Church worship or borrowing of non-Anglican ceremonial within Evangelical Parishes of the Church of England. No-one thought that this was necessary. The usual way of public evangelism was to have Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer with Hymns and then to preach a hearty evangelical sermon.
Now to the year 2005.
Today – and especially in American Anglicanism but also in the UK – things are viewed differently by Evangelicals. In the USA Evangelicals cannot belong to an ancient National Church and they compete for members within a powerful supermarket of religion. Thus in the spirit of capitalism and a free market, they look around to see what works to create a successful, growing congregation and they borrow techniques and principles from fellow Evangelicals in a wide variety of churches. Evangelicals in ECUSA and AMiA have seemingly lost confidence (without really having tried it!) in the use of Morning Prayer with hymns followed by a hearty sermon and then opportunity for fellowship. Their Anglican identity has been very much subordinated to their admiration of generic Protestant Evangelicalism. In fact their Anglican identity seems only important now because of ties it supplies to other parts of the world to vibrant Anglican evangelical provinces there (and, at home, apparently in some cases, because of its heritage of respectability in society and its first class retirement and health benefits).
So they are Christians first, then Evangelical in terms of a necessary adjective to go with Christians, and way back third they are Anglicans. This is so because they believe it is impossible to be successful in church life by being genuine, full-blooded Anglicans who follow the discipline of the Daily Office, seven days a week, and who celebrate the Sacrament after Morning Prayer on the Lord’s Day in genuine Anglican style -- preaching the Gospel both within the forms of Anglican worship and wherever possible outside as well.
What Anglican identity can supply - as experience in Africa and Asia reveals -- is a solid, reliable and stable way of being the Visible Church of God on earth wherein the pure Word of God is preached and the dominical Sacraments administered, so that persons can be converted to Jesus Christ and all disciples of Christ therein edified and sanctified by Word, Sacrament, Discipline and Fellowship. It is not the only identity for the Visible Church but it is one that seems to work well in Africa. Why can’t it work for Evangelicals in the USA? Have they really tried in the present century?
October 26, 2005 The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
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