ESSAY | The Catholicity of the Anglican

E LIVE IN AN AGE OF W denominations and distinctions, and many bemoan the seemingly constant influx of new denominations by way of church splits and schisms. The total number of Protestant denominations today varies based on who is doing the talking (and often based on their denominational affiliation as well!), but most estimates put it well into the thousands. This can give the impression of a fractured, chaotic church; and while it is certainly the case that Protestants have never been accused of being monolithic, it is wrong to think they have no unifying beliefs whatsoever.

While there is much to be said about the problem of schism, there may be more to be said about the core beliefs that unite Christians. We can acknowledge the existence of schism in the visible church, as the hymn “The Church’s One Foundation” (written by Anglican minister Samuel John Stone) so eloquently puts it:

Tho’ with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.

We also proclaim the truth that the church is unified. As the same hymn says,

The church’s one Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is His new creation by water and the Word.

Despite the existence of denominations, Christians confess that the church still has unity. The church’s unity is not in buildings, finances, bishops, presbyteries, or popes. These may all be visible representations of unity, but the unity of the church is an invisible, spiritual unity. The church’s unity is in Christ himself. God creates the church and sustains it by his word and Spirit. In this essay, we will sketch out how Anglicans view themselves as part of this universal church so that we can see what we hold in common with all Christians rather than what sets us apart.

The original Reformers in the Church of England did not consider themselves “Anglican.” They were not trying to create a new theological distinction, method, or culture. They saw themselves as Christians who happened to live in England. Their desire was to be faithful to the faith handed down from the Scriptures and the church. They were not schismatic. Catholicity was of utmost importance to them.

The Anglican position holds that the traditions of the church are good and should not be abandoned (contra the Anabaptists and Radical Reformers), but they should be brought under the authority of Scripture (contra Rome).

This is not to say that the English Reformers had no theological distinctions. Some have tried to glaze over the Reformation in England, acting as though it never really happened or was not altogether a Protestant Reformation. But by the time of Queen Elizabeth’s Act of Conformity, the Church of England was a distinctively Protestant church, both politically and doctrinally. But the Protestant faith of the English Reformers was not set over and against the traditions and creeds of the church. It was understood to be the true inheritor of catholic faith.

One prominent seventeenth-century bishop, Lancelot Andrewes, encapsulated this quest for catholicity when he said we hold to “one canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period . . . determine the boundary of our faith.” 1 Here Andrewes lays out succinctly what the Anglican divines saw as “Anglicanism”: the Scriptures, the creeds and ecumenical councils, and the church fathers.

The classic statement of Anglican doctrine, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, echoes this desire for catholicity. In terms of tradition, the articles are catholic; that is, like the other Protestant confessions of the Reformation, the articles agree with the great ecumenical councils of the church in their statements about Jesus Christ and the Trinity. They depart from the other confessions in the visible forms of their church—in their use of the prayer book and their view of church government (archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons). The “Anglicanism” that emerges in the articles is not trying to reject tradition, but rather to reform it.

As an example of the articles’ attempt to uphold tradition, Article VIII, “Of the Creeds,” explicitly affirms their acceptance of the great ecumenical creeds:

The Three Creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasius’ Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.

Notice, however, how that is worded. The creeds are accepted on the grounds that they are proved according to Scripture. They are not accepted simply because they are tradition for tradition’s sake or some appeal to the magisterium of the church. Rather, as Protestants, they believe that Scripture has the final authority on all matters of faith and doctrine in the church and that the ecumenical creeds are part of that. The Anglican position holds that the traditions of the church are good and should not be abandoned (contra the Anabaptists and Radical Reformers), but they should be brought under the authority of Scripture (contra Rome). The Thirty-Nine Articles provide a place for the authority of tradition. Although that role is not nearly as authoritative as in the Roman Catholic Church, it is more so than in many of the radical sects of the Reformation and even than many of the Puritans desired.

The Anglican Reformers also saw themselves in line with the church fathers. Even in some of their most distinctively Protestant writings, they did not see

themselves as inventing something new but rather continuing in the faith of the earliest church fathers. In the Book of Homilies, the official book of sermons given out to ministers, Thomas Cranmer wrote the homily on justification. Within this explicitly Protestant sermon, we see that Cranmer did not think he was doing anything particularly innovative or new, but rather that he was echoing the doctrines of the church fathers as passed down through the ages:

These and other like sentences, that we be justified by faith only and without works, we do read ofttimes in the most best and ancient writers. As beside Hilary, Basil and Saint Ambrose before rehearsed, we read the same in Origen, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Cyprian, Saint Augustine, Prosper, Oecumenius, Photius, Bernard, Anselm, and many other authors, Greek and Latin.2

Even Anglican sermons on justification by faith alone (how much more Protestant can you get?) were seen as rehearsing the thoughts of the church fathers!

The Catechism of the first Prayer Book was also notably catholic. Eamon Duffy has noted that nothing in the original catechism could not have been said by any Christian after the year 1215.3 The catechism didn’t hit any “Reformed” distinctive or doctrine; it consisted of the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. So, while Church of England clergy had to assent to the explicitly Protestant Thirty-Nine Articles, there was a clear distinction between the beliefs required by the clergy and those required to be a part of the church in the laity. For the laity, all that was required was for them to profess these three ancient Christian statements. Any catechumen who could pray the Lord’s Prayer, confess the Ten Commandments, and profess the Apostles’ Creed was a welcomed member of the Church of England, regardless of their personal beliefs on the eucharist, justification, or church governance.

This has often been referred to as the Anglican “big tent.” At times, too much has been made of the “big tent” nature of Anglicanism; but the fact remains true that Anglicans have historically tried to create a religious community where Christians who did not see eye to eye on matters of doctrine could still worship together.

Anglicans uphold the ecumenical creeds as the tent under which all Christians share a common life together. To break from the ecumenical creeds is to break from the church itself. Under the tent, we may have different tables and seats in which we are comfortable, but we’re all in the party together.

Anglicanism has always viewed itself as catholic and in keeping with the apostolic faith. From the earliest Reformers to the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Homilies, and the Book of Common Prayer, all of these have at their core an

The first Book of Common Prayer (1549).

Lady Jane Grey (c. 1537–1554) earnest desire to be truly catholic. In fact, they saw even their Protestant distinctive as the inheritance of their catholic faith, not an opponent against it. An illustration of how the Anglican Reformers saw themselves as truly catholic Christians can be found in one of the great martyrs of the English Reformation. Lady Jane Grey was the wife of Edward VI, who briefly served as king of England after his father, Henry VIII, died. After her husband died, there was an attempt to make her the queen instead of Mary (who would henceforth come to be known as “Bloody Mary”). The plot failed, and Jane was arrested and ultimately sentenced to death for heresy because she refused to recant her Reformed convictions. On the day of her execution, she brought with her some of the prayer books that had comforted her while she was in prison. And who were the authors of these prayer books? Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. All fourth-century church fathers. In the moments leading up to her brave death for the sake of the Protestant gospel of God’s free grace for sinners based only on the meritorious work of Christ, this seventeen-year-old girl reached deep into the history and catholicity of the church to find prayers that brought her comfort in her time of need. This is Anglicanism.

Justin S. Holcomb (PhD, Emory University) is an Episcopal minister and teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary. He has written or edited more than twenty books on theology, biblical studies, and abuse.

Jared L. Jones (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is an Episcopal minister currently serving as associate rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Winter Park, Florida.

1. Lancelot Andrewes, Opusc. Posthuma (1629), 91. 2. The Book of Homilies: A Critical Edition, ed. Gerald Bray (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2017), 25–26. 3. The Prayer Book catechism, as Eamon Duffy points out,

“might have been written at any time since 1215. . . . It said nothing whatever about the distinctive Protestant ordo salutis, nothing about the Fall or original sin, it never discussed the nature of salvation, except in terms of duties toward God and neighbor, and it never once used the word faith.” Eamon Duffy, “The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Multitude,” in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation, 1500–1800 (London: UCL Press, 1998), 43.

III. Persuade

Thinking theologically about all things

T OFTEN FEELS LIKEI the church is dividing along political lines. When we declare a church to be conservative or liberal, we are often not referring to theological stances (as J. Gresham Machen did in his classic Christianity and Liberalism), but to political ideology and cultural stances. Those who try to hold these parties together in the church are usually held in contempt by both sides.

The fact that winsomeness is now demonized by many Christians (and with it, related attributes such as patience, gentleness, and charity) doesn’t help. Instead of looking for biblical and confessional boundary markers to establish whether unity is possible, we tend to exaggerate the deficiencies in camps and tribes besides our own.

These divisions are made more intractable because they are legion and cannot be reduced to a matter of culture or politics. Many divisions in the church are far subtler than an outright culture war. Age plays a large role and with it, the dominant worldviews that accompany each generation. Philosophical assumptions also play a large role. Every church has its share of rational polemicists and emotional pacifists, and some churches attract a far higher percentage of one than the other. And let’s not forget geography, which largely overlaps the other categories, as each region of the country has values all its own. Let’s look at a few of these less noticeable divisions.

*** The Generation Gap

While I was in seminary, I worked for a year in a Korean-American church. I know every church culture is different, but I’ve never seen a more pronounced generation gap than in that church. There was a Korean Ministry (KM) serving largely firstgeneration Korean immigrants and an English Ministry (EM) serving a broader spectrum of largely second- and third-generation Korean Americans. While members of the KM tended to emphasize maintaining their traditions, the EM focused more on assimilating people into the broader culture. Each ministry in the church had its own pastors, spoke its own language, and upheld its own unique culture.

More and more, a similar generational division has permeated mainstream evangelical churches. The young and old no longer fight about worship styles but about how best to engage the culture. Those who came of age with the rampant hedonism of the sexual revolution and then the powerful backlash of the Moral Majority tend to view the culture as in need of retrieval. Those who came of age during or after the Clinton impeachment and the public obscuring of morality tend to view the culture as in need of leavening.

In this way, many churches are dividing along lines like the KM and EM that I experienced. The older generations grieve the loss of traditions deemed vital to both the church and culture, so they are fighting for their preservation for the sake of the gospel. In the same way, younger generations are looking for ways to faithfully assimilate with the broader culture. They are not as concerned about winning back the culture, but about effectively influencing their own unique corners of the culture with the gospel. These distinct perspectives color the way each generation approaches both politics and culture.

*** The Philosophy Gap

There is also a philosophical divide in churches today. It largely, but not always, mirrors the generation gap. The twentieth-century worldview was dominated by modernism, which asserts that truth is fixed and can be ascertained and proven through human reason. It was an age frequently consumed with the “facts,” whether deduced through logic or discovered through the natural sciences. Postmodernism, arising in the late twentieth century, blew up many of these ideas with the reminder that all pursuits of truth are shaped by experience, biases, and innate presuppositions. It’s interesting to watch combatants in these two camps talk past each other on various social media forums, such as in this hypothetical argument:

Modernist: Facts are facts. This is a matter of truth, whether you like it or not.

Postmodernist: Whether or not it’s true, it’s colored by biases that must be explored.

Modernist: You’re arguing that truth is relative.

Postmodernist: I’m arguing that truth can’t be known and understood in a vacuum. You’re simply captive to your culture and are unable and unwilling to understand other points of view.

Even over the course of my own life, I’ve noticed a pronounced shift in the way Christians talk. In high school, I was always arguing for absolute truth in the face of moral relativism. That line of argumentation has largely been discarded on the ash heap of evangelical history alongside purity rings and praise songs sung in rounds. And to be honest, abstract argumentation was not particularly effective in attracting others to a gospel narrative rooted in real history.

*** The Geography Gap

This gap goes far beyond seersucker suits versus board shorts. For several decades now, Christians in major metropolitan areas, especially in the Northeast and on

the West Coast, have been living in exile within their respective cultures. Warehouses, coffee shops, and breweries are not only sites for worship or fellowship because of preference, but also because of availability. Christians from these areas are more at home with the stigma and hostility that comes with living at the margins.

Christians in the South and Midwest, especially in rural areas and small towns, still hold some pride of place in their respective cultures. Most people attend church, respect family and authority, and think about the world communally. They have enjoyed more space to nurture vital traditions and avoid the withering gaze of popular criticism. For these populations, the transition to cultural exile has been more sudden, violent, and painful.

*** The Common Denominator

There is a common denominator to all three rifts: They are not about the authority of Scripture or the centrality of the gospel. When it comes to the Bible and the gospel, we’re largely on the same page even when it comes to our differences. Should we value tradition and grieve the loss of the prominence of the church and the cultural capital of Christianity? Absolutely. Should we question whether traditions are biblical and creatively engage a hostile culture? Absolutely. Can we use both cultural philosophies to better engage the culture with the gospel? Absolutely. Are either modernism or postmodernism remotely Christian? Not at all.

Truth is not gathered by humans before it is first given by God, and our pollution of the process should lead to a greater humility and respect for the word of God. In more progressive cultures, the gospel must be upheld against deified sexualities. In more conservative cultures, the gospel must be distinguished from deified moralities. There is no culture that stands above the gospel. We are all made level at the foot of the cross.

If the church is to heal from its myriad rifts, then we must be honest about where the fault lines—and our own biases—lie. Am I standing on the solid ground of God’s word or on a pillar built of cultural assumptions that actually degrade it? This is why many of our denominations have confessions of faith. These are guardrails that keep us within the confines of Scripture and prevent us from wandering the weary paths of unexplored assumptions. We should always be more ready to test our assumptions against God’s word than to fight the unexamined fight. Sometimes I simply need to understand where my parents are coming from—what they dealt with and what they are trying to recover. They belong to a different generation, cultural milieu, and maybe even a different geography. These factors shape how we each handle the gospel and culture, but none of them negate how the God of the gospel handles us. From start to finish, it is the grace of God in Christ Jesus alone that will heal his church.

Stephen Roberts is a US Army chaplain and has written for The Washington Times and The Federalist.

There is no culture that stands above the gospel. We are all made level at the foot of the cross.