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Edward Fudge

A GOOD WORD ABOUT ANGLICAN CHRISTIANITY (1)
"How can you feel kindly toward the Episcopalians?" one asks. "Don't you know that the Anglican Church started when King Henry VIII wanted another wife and the Pope wouldn't agree, so KH-8 started his own Church of England?"

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Although I was born and reared in the Churches of Christ, where God now has me placed for service, I find Anglicanism very appealing. Not because of the popular caricature stated above, but in spite of it. The truth is that Henry did "kick out" the Pope -- but the English kings had tried to do that for 500 years before he came along.

My roots run deep into English soil, where the Fudges go back to about the 12th century, and their predecessors the Fulchers appear in The Domesday Book of William the Conqueror. The thought that Anglicanism has been simply "the church" in England since about 400 A.D. entices me, fits my anti-sectarian impulses and stirs something deep in my bones. I was powerfully moved, when visiting Canterbury Cathedral, to see the order of worship with the name "Cathedral Church of Christ, Canterbury," and, upon visiting the theme-scene of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," to discover the name of the church to be "The Church of Christ at Stoke Poges."

Anglicans do not claim to be the true church in an exclusive sense, but they do profess to be nothing other than the church established in the British Isles by Christian missionaries during the earliest centuries, the church which has been there -- through thick and thin -- ever since. Anglicanism's success at bringing together the best of things both Catholic and Protestant resonates with my own longing for Christian unity, as well as with my personal ambition (as Alexander Campbell once put it) to adorn my hat with feathers plucked from birds of many colors.

You will be enriched by an acquaintance with The Book of Common Prayer, one of the richest Christian treasures in the English language. Read it online at www.tiac.net/users/chadwohl/bcp .


gracEmail
Edward Fudge

A GOOD WORD ABOUT ANGLICAN CHRISTIANITY

"How can you feel kindly toward the Episcopalians?" one asks. "Don't you know that the Anglican Church started when King Henry VIII wanted another wife and the Pope wouldn't agree, so KH-8 started his own Church of England?"

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Most Protestant churches would be greatly enriched by a hearty dose of Anglican eucharistic liturgy (the Communion service) -- and few Protestants have a better statement of Reformation principles at their disposal than those reflected in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Catechism found in the Book of Common Prayer. Nor do I know of any church which regularly reads more from the Bible, Sunday after Sunday, than the Anglican-Episcopalian.

Because Anglicanism has such solid historical, liturgical and creedal footings (not perfect, of course, or above room for criticism), it can safely open the windows to winds of spiritual renewal (whether Oxfordian, methodistic or charismatic) without fearing that the house will blow away. And, because the Lord's Supper is the central element of worship every Lord's Day -- involving profoundly meaningful language contained in the Book of Common Prayer -- one can expect a Scripture-filled and God-centered worship each week regardless of the quality or even the faith of the preacher.

At its best, Anglicanism remembers what historical Christianity rightly proclaims in both Gospel and doctrine, the moral life to which that calls us, what it means to live holistically in God's world, and how to be "Christian" in all that we do. Here one thinks easily of C.S. Lewis, J. I. Packer, John W. Wenham and others. Unfortunately, the media do not usually focus on that best part but rather on the aberrations -- whether the late Bishop James Pike or today's Bishop Spong and Bishop Righter, renegade clerics whose outrageous shenanigans and blasphemous pronouncements embarrass that great host of Episcopal laity, clergy and other bishops who believe and proclaim the Gospel and attempt to live responsible moral lives before God in response to it.

For a most meaningful Communion service found in the Book of Common Prayer, slightly adapted for responsive use in my own home congregation, click here.

For more on other Christian groups, click here.