An Anglican's Response

Those that have been keeping tabs on me for a while will know that I have been considering the Anglican Church as a possible way of expressing my faith and worship. I first started considering this as an option when I discovered how many of the authors that influence my thinking are Anglican.  (C.S. Lewis, Os Guinness, Jeremy Begbie, J.B. Phillips, G.K. Chesterton-who was Catholic, nee Anglican, Alan Jacobs, and probably most importantly Ken Myers.)  


These are all men who, as authors and thinkers, I deeply admire, and whose thoughts I ponder.  As I realized that Anglicanism was a common thread, I decided to explore for myself.  


In the middle of that, I happened upon Alan Jacobs e-mail address.  His blog, which I follow, was having a comments issue, so he posted his e-mail address in order to rectify the problem.  I took that opportunity to write to him with a question, "Why are you Anglican?" (a question which I introduced a little less abruptly in the e-mail.)


A.J., the "Clyde S. Kilby Chair Professor of English" at Wheaton, was polite enough to respond, and here is a part of his e-mail, which was a copy and paste of something he wrote for his church's website:


"We are heirs of CATHOLIC tradition: we draw for our sustenance upon
teaching and practices that go back to the Apostles but flowered fully
in the Church's first several centuries. The foundation laid for us,
and for all subsequent generations of thoughtful Christians, by the
Early Church Fathers is a rich legacy. From those early times we
inherit our Creed, our sacramental worship, and our sacramental
theology; these we share with Christ's true Church wherever it may be
found. We see that kinship in powerful ways when we look upon our
brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Orthodox
world. In that sense we claim, and rejoice in, catholicity.

"But we also acknowledge that that Church has not always faithfully
preserved its theological and spiritual inheritance, and that, in His
love and care, in the sixteenth century God raised up great men of
faith to REFORM the church, to call us back to the Bible as the
ever-living Word of God, the reliable testimony to his grace and favor
towards us in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. In that
Word we see clearly that we are saved by God's boundless grace, and we
appropriate that grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It is this
message -- which we share with all the churches that trace their
lineage to the Reformation -- that we proclaim in our preaching and
enact in our worship.

"We strive to be a church that is fully catholic and fully reformed;
and this is what we think it means to be ANGLICANS."


This short essay was particularly interesting because I had recently decided to stop acting as if history didn't exist as I pursued loving God and loving others.