A good friend in Charleston recently asked the question “What does it mean to be Reformed?” Being “reformed” is currently in vogue. That is, it’s cool to be a Calvinist. This growing trend which has been documented by the New York Times, Time Magazine, and U.S.A. Today has produced new interest in Reformed Christianity but it has also produced much confusion about what it means to be Reformed. So it’s currently a hot topic worth addressing.
Second, to speak of “Reformed” Christians is to speak of the heritage of the Anglican Church, which both me and my friend who asked the question are part of. Unfortunately, just as people from Idaho will pretend they’re from somewhere else when they move to a big city so have many Anglicans forgotten where they’ve come from. The Anglican Church was born in the fires (literal) of the Protestant Reformation, of which the Church of England adopted a fairly strict Reformed (yes Calvinist!) approach to theology in its first 100 years. Just as visiting with your quirky friend’s parents is always an “aha” moment, so too knowing where this church has come from should prove a revealing experience.
Through several posts in the coming weeks I hope to address this question in a way that brings clarity to the term. This might appear to be solely an academic exercise, but it most assuredly is not. The clergy at Trinity Church consider those doctrines known as “Reformed” to be closest to the heart of the scriptures and they inform every sermon, Bible study, prayer, and counselling session done by us at this church. Perhaps more importantly, these doctrines have sunk deep into the well of our lives and affected us profoundly. I hope in the coming weeks as I attempt to engage this question, not only will your heads grow larger with new knowledge but more importantly so would your hearts. The Reformed Christian, if anything, is a Christian deeply concerned with the heart and its “bigness” for the glory of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
To read Part I in its entirety, click here.
To read Part II, click here.
2 comments:
Are there any "divisions" between unbelievers and believers? Orthodox and unorthodox? Anglicanism apparently does not think so.
Historic Anglicanism? Or contemporary Episcopalianism? I am convinced that we do a disservice to the Protestant and Reformed cause in the Anglican Church and Anglicanism when we confuse the two.
To my mind the question is "Do we throw in the towel and acquiesce to letting the liberal Episcopalians redefine Anglicanism for us and accept their redefinition?" This has been at the center of the fight of the past few years as has been the authority of the Bible. This is what happened to the Evangelical Episcopalians in the nineteenth century. They bought into the propaganda of the Tractarians and the Ritualists and let it shape their views of their own tradition. They eventually withdrew from the Protestant Episcopal Church and formed the Reformed Episcopal Church. Look at the REC today. What good did the formation of the REC accomplish?
Or do we uphold a Protestant and Reformed definition of Anglicanism, one that stands in continuity with "Protestant Reformed religion" of the historic Church of England formularies and the Coronation Oath Act of 1688.
Do we retreat from the field, conceding defeat and letting liberalism appropriate the terms Anglican and Anglicanism? Or do we keep up the fight? These to my mind are the challenges that we face today. It is no easy choice.
The Non-Conformists did not voluntarily leave the Church of England. They were thrown out. It was the Anabaptists and Brownists in the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, and the various Independent sects that formed during the Commonwealth Period, and the Plymouth Brethren in the nineteenth century who embraced separatism and withdrew from the Church of England, not the Presbyterians and the Puritans. Even though a substantial number of the Presbyterians and Puritans were ejected from their livings, a goodly number of them subscribed to the Articles and the new Prayer Book and remained in the Church of England. They maintained a Puritan and Reformed witness throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century. The Evangelical wing of the Church of England can be traced to those who remained as well as to the English Reformers.
The challenges facing the Anglican Church face other Protestant denominations, including the Reformed Churches. They are far from problem-free. I would hazard that there are no safe havens. We can fight the battle in our own tradition or fight it in another tradition but whether or not we like it, we cannot escape it. There will always be tares amongst the wheat. Those who separated from the Church of England would learn this lesson.
I would add that God may be leading one group of people to carry on the fight in one tradition and He may be leading another group of people to carry it on in another tradition. For years I tried to interest my rector in church planting to no avail. Then I realized that God had given me the passion for church planting, not my rector. God was calling me to become more involved in starting new churches and pioneering them, not him. This realization is one of the reasons that I propose the formation of a diocese or sub-provincial jurisdiction for those who uphold the historic Church of England formularies in the ACNA as well as an independent convocation for confessional Anglicans outside of the ACNA. God does not call us to serve him in the same place or in the same fashion. He did not make us all Pauls; he made some of us Peters, Barnabases, and Philips. The Potter does not make every pot alike or for the same purpose.
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