They are mostly theological, and practical. Let me also say this as a qualifier: Anglican does not necessary have to mean robes, incense, bells, and cathedrals and it does not mean that for St. There is not one aspect of the human experience that the gospel does not impact, and Anglican spirituality seeks to embrace this reality. First and foremost, I am an Anglican and have aligned myself with the Anglican church because it is gospel-centered.
It reads Scripture with a salvation focus, understanding that the gospel is how we are saved, how we are transformed, and how the entire cosmos is ultimately reconciled to God. It seeks to apply the gospel to all areas of the human experience forming our bodies, minds and senses as we stand, kneel, speak, hear, taste, touch, smell and sing.
It seeks to transform our experience of time, as the Church calendar roots us in the story of the gospel. In short, every effort is made so that people might fully inhabit the gospel of God, because it is the center of our faith and salvation. Secondly, I consider myself an Anglican because the Christian faith is Scripturally and historically bound. Anglicanism keeps Scriptural primacy, yet embraces what can be affirmed throughout history, rooting the Church in the Creeds and Apostolic faith.
Within the Gospels, Jesus critiques the traditions of the elders, and quite harshly. But Paul also speaks positively of apostolic tradition. Anglicanism rightly embraces this, and approaches theology first from Scripture, then tradition, then reason and finally experience.
Tradition can serve as a safeguard for navigating the challenges of culture and testing modern interpretations of Scripture. Yet the tradition affirmed by Anglicanism will never contradict what is revealed in Scripture, and if it does it will be corrected.
Thirdly, the Anglican church offers a robust missiology. It rightly sees missiology flowing inseparably from ecclesiology and the Trinity. The church is not solely an instrument to be used by God for his purposes. While similar to the Roman, Eastern and Protestant churches in certain respects, then, Anglicanism is distinctive, and, in my view, superior in her unique approach to Scripture, refined and sensible ordering of traditional authorities, and beautiful, yet flexible, liturgy.
Nevertheless, Anglicanism does have a center, what one might call classical Anglicanism. This center, however, is elusive, and escapes any reductive or hypostatizing method of identification. Identifying an Anglican center, then, requires a more synthesizing approach, one that can successfully comprise and account for general trends in theology and practice across different times, works of canonical divines, parties, and styles of churchmanship.
By applying this more synthesizing, comprehensive method of identification to the whole of Anglican theology across its history, I have come to an understanding of Anglicanism as both reformed and catholic, with its theology and practice rooted in Scripture, tradition and reason. Anglicanism is reformed, or, if you will, Protestant, in the sense that it has reformed and continues to protest certain abuses of the Roman Church, such as the sale of indulgences, papalism, mariological excesses, and so on.
It is catholic in the sense that it adheres to the teachings and practices of the ancient and early medieval, undivided Church, as encapsulated in the Creeds, Councils, and the consensus of the Church Fathers, as well as in its continuing administration of the sacraments and use of a fixed liturgy.
Scripture is the supreme authority for Anglican theology and practice, and sacred tradition and reason are the means by which the Anglican Church interprets the Scriptures. There is, to be sure, much diversity with respect to which of these aspects of the Anglican tradition gets emphasized in a given diocese or parish, and even certain embellishments that may be added without harm to this general definition for example, some might define the Anglican Church as both reformed and catholic, and charismatic , but this definition remains the most balanced in comprehensiveness and exclusivity, including as many authentic strands of Anglican tradition as possible low church, high church, latitudinarian, etc.
This is, in my view, the correct and most generous way to define the Anglican tradition. The richness of the liturgy, embodied worship, and the sense of belonging to something ancient and tested have given my life greater meaning than I could have hoped for when I set out on this wild, spiritual journey.
For this blessing I am eternally grateful. Use tab to navigate through the menu items. Anglican Chaplain ETF. Why Anglican. Recent Posts See All. My Journey into the Anglican Way. Holding Tension is Classic Anglicanism. I became Anglican because of the church calendar. Not only because of the church calendar but it was part of the process. That's about it. The rest of the year is up to the preacher, the pastor, the elders and deacons, and up to the congregation.
Many pastors wisely organize their churches to be formed over time through a series of themes -- or books of the Bible Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Piper preached through Romans for almost two decades -- but none can improve on the centrality of Christ in the church calendar. Image permission. I begin with the church calendar, beautifully displayed in the graph at the top of this post.
I love the church calendar, and here are my reasons:. God gave the children of Israel and calendar and a series of feasts that memorialized annually the story of God with Israel and the history of God's redemptive work among Israel. Thus, read Leviticus A calendar like this served to divide the year into its parts on the basis of God's redemption. Agriculture is folded into this redemptive calendar.
The calendar reminded Israel of what God had done and became the platform of hope for what God will do. The spirituality of attentive Israelites was formed then on the basis of the major redemptive acts of God in Israel's history.
Israelites knew their history and their story on the basis of this calendar.
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