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Sunday, February 07, 2021

The Distinguishing Mark of a Confessional Anglican

 

By Robin G Jordan

Wearing a black gown and preaching tabs or a cassock and surplice, using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and standing at the north side of the Table do not make us confessional Anglicans. We are confusing a particular brand of churchmanship with Anglican confessionalism. These practices are not what separate confessional Anglicans from the common herd. 

One thing separates confessional Anglicans from other folks who identify as Anglicans. They adhere to the doctrinal and worship principles of the Articles of Religion of 1571, the Anglican Church’s historic confession of faith. They can wear a white cassock alb, a white concelebration alb, or street clothes. They can use any service that conforms with the teaching of Scripture and the principles of the Articles. They can also stand at the west side of the Table. Churchmanship and confessionalism are not the same thing.

If confessional Anglicans have any hope of selling other self-identified Anglicans on the value of having a confession of faith and the Articles of Religion of 1571 in particular, they need to stop peddling a particular brand of churchmanship with it. They might find those to whom they hope to market the Articles a shade more receptive.

Whether or not they like it, confessional Anglicans are marketing a product. The product is a series of positions on issues that not only affected the Anglican Church in the sixteenth century but affect the Anglican Church in the twenty-first century. These positions constitute what is a genuine Anglican identity. 

In a time when it has become increasingly unclear what Anglicans and the Anglican Church stands for, they are very much needed. They expose the vacuity of the claim that the Anglican Church has moved on since then. Moved on to what—Catholic Modernism, universalism, Tridentian Catholicism, cafeteria Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy? 

We find all these beliefs joggling against each other in the Anglican Church and vying for dominance. To the claim that Anglicanism is anything that we want to make it, the Articles respond, “Hold on!” “Not so fast!!” They apply a brake where a brake is needed.

For those who wish to speed on ahead, brakes are not popular. But in a time of accelerated change, we need something that will slow us down, keep us on the road, and prevent us from having a smashup.

The Articles were also intended to safeguard the truth of the gospel. In a time in which all kinds of ideologies are masquerading as the gospel, they uphold what Anglicans have historically understood to be the New Testament gospel.

The Articles were intended to foster unity and order in the church, not only in doctrine but also discipline. They were meant to protect the Anglican Church from “erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word” and from pastors who preached and taught such doctrines. They provide doctrinal standards for the catechism, rites, and services that Anglican clergy and congregations use, standards second only to the teaching of Holy Scripture.

The Articles were intended to establish the boundaries of the comprehensiveness of the reformed Anglican Church. It is a comprehensiveness circumscribed by the gospel, as the late J. I Packer emphasized in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today

It is a comprehensiveness that, in Packer’s words, “results from keeping doctrinal requirements down to a minimum and allowing the maximum of flexibility and variety on secondary matters.” Whatever their views on other matters, the Articles were meant to make sure that all Anglican clergy “unite in teaching an Augustian doctrine of sin and a Reformed doctrine of justification and grace—should, in other words, unite in proclaiming what the Reformers took to be the New Testament gospel.”

It is in their adherence to the Articles’ doctrinal and worship principles that confessional Anglicans stand out from the rest of the pack, not in their conformity to a particular brand of churchmanship.

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