Regular readers of this space will know that evangelical elements of the Anglican tradition have played a significant role in my spiritual development. As a very young Christian the first piece of Christian literature of any substance that I read was John Stott’s Basic Christianity.¹ The second was J. I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.² I remember exactly where I was when, in the summer of 1981, I read Packer’s Knowing God.³ The book was riveting and it introduced me to the Christian doctrine of God, the headwaters of the faith.

Among the first people to instruct me in the Reformed faith were graduates of the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia.⁴ From them I learned to appreciate the Book of Common Prayer. Later in my Christian life, when my family and I were in the UK to pursue graduate studies, we had the privilege of worshiping at St. Ebbes (Church of England) in Oxford while David Fletcher was rector and Vaughn Roberts was curate.

Throughout my Christian life I have often made use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The confession of sin in Morning Prayer is perfect and the best prayer for illumination I know is that found in the second Sunday in Advent. Beyond Packer and Stott, I have appreciated many Anglican writers, not the least of whom is C. S. Lewis (1898–1963). Over the years I have much appreciated the work of J. C. Ryle (1816–1900), P. E. Hughes (1915–90), and John Wenham (1913–96), among many others. Further, there were, in the history of Anglicanism, a number of conforming Anglicans who were important figures in the development of Reformed orthodoxy, for example, William Perkins (1558–1602) and Richard Sibbes (1577–1635).

With all these influences, dear reader, you might reasonably ask, why, when I left the Baptist tradition for the Reformed, did I not become an Anglican? As is often the case, my decision was influenced by a number of factors. I found the Reformed faith (or better perhaps, it found me) in St. John’s Reformed Church (RCUS), in Lincoln, Nebraska. To the best of my knowledge, there was no evangelical Anglican presence in Lincoln in those years (1980–84), so my relationship to the Anglican traditions was purely literary. As I matured and as I had opportunity to get to know a little about the history of the various Anglican traditions, I might have joined the Anglicans but for three reasons: the rule of worship, the role of the confessions, and church polity.

The Rule Of Worship

Almost from the very beginning of the English Reformation there were tensions in the English church between those who followed Geneva in their understanding of the regulating authority of Scripture in worship and those who were more Lutheran.⁵ Ultimately, the Church of England sided with the Lutherans on this question. While I was in the UK seeing the evangelical Anglican world in person, I had opportunity to see how differently the Anglicans think about the regulating authority and role of Scripture from the way the rest of the Reformed tradition has thought about it.

Consider the language of Belgic Confession 7:

We believe that this Holy Scripture contains the will of God completely and that everything one must believe to be saved is sufficiently taught in it. For since the entire manner of worship which God requires of us is described in it at great length, no one—even an apostle or an angel from heaven, as Paul says—ought to teach other than what the Holy Scriptures have already taught us.⁶

The Westminster Confession of Faith 21.1 is even more pointed: “But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.”⁷

To be sure, there have been Anglicans, for example, William Perkins, who have endorsed this principle. It is also true that Anglicans were among those who drafted the Directory for Public Worship (1644), which clearly taught this principle. But the majority view among the Anglican churches has been, since the first half of the sixteenth century, that the church may do in worship whatever is not forbidden by God’s Word. Thus, where the Genevans, if you will, required authorization from the Word to do something in worship, the Anglicans looked for a prohibition. Calvin called the principle confessed by the Genevans, the French Reformed Churches, the Dutch Reformed Churches, and the Presbyterian Churches “the rule of worship.”⁸ Today most people refer to the “regulative principle of worship.” The dominant Anglican principle, which is the Lutheran principle and that which tends to dominate among American evangelicals, is usually described as the “normative principle of worship.” These are distinct principles.⁹ As I understand the teaching of Scripture and that of the early Christian writers, the confession of the Reformed Churches is a better account of how Scripture intends to norm our worship.

The Role Of The Confessions

Though it does not seem to be widely known today, at its formation, the Anglican church, with the exception noted above, was generally aligned with the Reformed wing of the Protestant Reformation. The original versions of the Book of Common Prayer, composed under Edward VI (1537–53), were formed under Reformed influences.¹⁰ Under Edward, the two leading theologians in England were Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) and Martin Bucer (1491–1551), both Reformed. The Church of England sent representatives to the Synod of Dort (1618–19). The question at the Westminster Assembly (1643–53) was not whether the Church of England would be a Reformed church but what sort of church government it would have.

Nevertheless, in the history of the Anglican traditions the Reformed confessions have not had the same authority and function as they do in the other Reformed churches. If there is any document that holds the Anglican traditions together it is not the Articles of Religion but the Book of Common Prayer.¹¹ Even that statement, however, must be qualified. The eagle-eyed reader might have noted that I have written of Anglican traditions rather than of “the Anglican tradition.” This is intentional because there are at least five Anglican traditions:

1. The Reformation Anglicans. This group represents those among the Anglicans who continue to believe the fundamental Reformation tenets of salvation by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide). Perhaps the most outstanding representative of this wing of the worldwide Anglican communion is Ashley Null, Bishop of North Africa.
2. The Latitudinarians. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there developed a movement known as Latitudinarianism.¹² Julius Kim characterizes this movement thus:

In the years following the religious and political tumult of the 1640s and 1650s, a group of young pastors and preachers within the Church of England emerged to take leadership during the period known as the Restoration (1660–89)—the years in which Charles II was restored to the monarchy after some twenty years of Puritan rule under the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. Known originally for compromising their ecclesiastical status before and after the Restoration, the Latitudinarians—as they came to be known—numbered among them future leaders of the Restoration Church of England such as Edward Stillingfleet and John Tillotson. In a seminal work on the Latitudinarian movement of the Restoration period, Martin Griffin analyzes this group of seventeenth-century English church divines as sharing similar characteristics:

1. Orthodoxy in the historical sense of acceptance of the contents of the traditional Christian creeds
2. Conformity to the Church of England as by law established, with its Episcopal government, its Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Book of Common Prayer
3. An advocacy of reason in religion
4. Theological minimalism
5. An Arminian scheme of justification
6. An emphasis on practical morality above creedal speculation and precision
7. A distinctive sermon style¹³

Kim adds, “For Latitudinarians like Tillotson, there emerged a growing conviction that the true essence of Christianity consisted of preaching and practicing God’s moral demands and duties. The hallmarks of the Latitudinarian message were the moral prescriptions of religion, the excellence and necessity of moral virtue, and the reasonableness of Christianity.”¹⁴

3. The Anglo-Catholics. The roots of this movement lay in the attempt by Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645) to push the Church of England in an Arminian and Romanizing direction. One need only take a look at his vestments, which I had opportunity to see while I was in the UK, and to read just a bit of his history, to see that Laud was opposed to the Reformation and wanted to undo what the Protestants had done. Beginning in 1833, a movement arose in Oxford “aimed at restoring the High Church ideals” of the seventeenth century.¹⁵ Those ideals were the Laudian goals just described. The Oxford or Tractarian movement sought to make the Church of England as much like the Roman communion as possible without becoming formally Roman catholic.¹⁶
4. The Evangelical party or wing of the Anglican movement overlaps, in some ways, with the Reformation Anglicans mentioned above, but this is a broader movement, the roots of which are more in the nineteenth century rather than in the sixteenth century. This movement is more interested in subjective experience, and it tends to be influenced by the revival movements of the nineteenth century and the charismatic renewal movement of the twentieth century.
5. The Liberal movement is probably the dominant movement, certainly in the Church of England, which has provoked a series of splits from the Church of England by more theologically and socially conservative wings of the movement. These wings have been led by African Bishops. In North America we have seen the development of the ACNA, which produced a new catechism several years ago that was reviewed in this space.¹⁷ The Anglican Liberals have tended to be the most accommodating of the sexual revolution and to have incorporated higher critical views of Scripture, etc. In short, they are virtually identical with the theological liberals of the Scottish and North American mainline Protestant denominations (e.g., the PCUSA et al.).

There are probably other movements (e.g., we could mention Methodism), but this should give the reader a sense of the breadth of the Anglican movement.

The point of mentioning the diversity is to say that of these groups only one of them is deeply attached to the Articles of Religion, the confessional standard of the Anglican movements. The Anglo-Catholics more or less ignore both the Articles and the Catechism of the Church of England. Obviously, the Latitudinarians and Liberals could not care less about Articles and Catechism. The evangelicals appreciate them, but are they normed by them?

Among the confessional Reformed and Presbyterian churches certainly there is inconsistency in our adherence and fidelity to our confessional standards, but our confessions and church orders are clear that these are normative and defining documents. In our churches they are standards of discipline. They do not represent merely one of five movements in our churches.

Church Polity

Finally, few Anglicans believe that episcopacy is a divine establishment (de iure divino). Typically, they recognize that it was a historical development. The Reformed and Presbyterian churches, however, typically confess that presbyterial and collegial polity is a divine establishment. For example, Belgic Confession 30 speaks of three offices—ministers, elders, and deacons. Article 31 rejects a hierarchical polity, which is essential to episcopal polity. The Westminster Confession, obviously, does not speak explicitly to church polity, but it was adopted only by churches that practice presbyterial polity. In none of those churches is a regional, national, or international bishop recognized. In the confessional Presbyterian and Reformed churches, there are local, regional, and national bodies of elders and ministers. These are bodies that decide doctrine and hear disciplinary cases. Decisions are made corporately or collegially, not by a single bishop.

Though there are challenges in sorting out exactly what the key terms, episkopos (overseer) and presbyteros (elder) signify in every case in the New Testament, it seems clear that there were no monarchical or regional episcopal officers in the apostolic church. And the case for monarchical episcopacy in the early post-apostolic church is more challenging than many seem to assume.

With peace to my evangelical brothers and sisters, many of whom live in what are functionally episcopal churches, who tend to assume that church polity is indifferent, my reading and experience tell me that church polity is quite important. For us, presbyterial and collegial polity is a matter of biblical fidelity and practical wisdom. As one wag once said to a class of students, episcopacy is great if you have a good bishop. That may be, but church history suggests that good bishops are rather rare. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) witnesses to the value of mutual correction and the wisdom of shared, accountable governance.

There is much to appreciate in the Anglican traditions, but as we evaluate them, we should be clear-eyed. Those of us who are devoted to the Reformation and to recovering the Reformed confession (theology, piety, and practice) should continue to benefit from those in Anglican traditions who share our love for the Reformation, but the Reformation in our time will be best served by pursuing the recovery of classical Reformed theology, piety, and practice within the Presbyterian and Reformed churches.

Notes

1. John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity., 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1971).
2. J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1961).
3.  J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1973).
4. For more on the history of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), see Allen C. Guelzo’s brilliant history, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). Guelzo illustrates both what the REC was and suggests what it was (then) becoming. Since the publication of this volume, the REC has become even more heavily influenced by Anglo-Catholicism.
5. For more on the tensions between the Genevans and the Anglicans see R. Scott Clark, “Calvin’s Principle of Worship,” in ed. David Hall, Tributes to John Calvin: A Celebration of his Quincentenary (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010), 247–69.
6. Belgic Confession (1561).
7. Westminster Confession of Faith.
8. “Porro, universalis est regula, quae purum Dei cultum a vitioso discernit: ne comminiscamur ipsi quod nobis visum fuerit, sed quid praescribat is, qui solus iubendi potestatem habet, spectemus.” Supplex exhortatio ad invictissimum caesarem carolum quintum, in Calvin, Opera quae supersunt omnia, 6:453–534.
9. For more on the rule of worship see the discussion in R. Scott Clark, Recovering the Reformed Confession (Philipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 227–91; idem, The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical, Theological, Pastoral Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press 2025), 468; 689–94.
10. For more on Edward VI see Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (New York: Palgrave, 1999).
11. There are, however, so many different versions of the BCP that, to some degree, even the unity around the BCP is not what it might seem. Some adhere to the 1662, others to the 1928, and still others to more modern editions.
12. For more on this movement see, Julius Kim, “The Rise Of Moralism In Seventeenth-Century Anglican Preaching: A Case Study,” in R. Scott Clark, ed. Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 365–97.
13. Kim, “The Rise of Moralism,” 367.
14. Kim, “The Rise of Moralism,” 368.
15. F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), s.v., “Oxford Movement.”
16. See the entry s.v., Anglo-Catholicism,” in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.
17. R. Scott Clark, “A Review Of The New Anglican Catechism And What It Says About The State Of Anglicanism.”

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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