Confirm Yourself in Anglicanism

I am currently attending Confirmation Classes at my Episcopal parish.  If there is one thing you’ll discover when talking to Anglicans is that defining the term “Anglican” is really quite difficult to do.  Sometimes the “Via Media” seems more like the “Via anything-goes.”

As an academically minded youth I have found a treasure trove of books on Anglianism which have been helping me learn what it means to think and believe like a Prayer Book person.  I would venture to say this.  Anglicanism, before all other branches of Protestantism, is truly a body which takes the phrase “Reformed and Always Reforming” pretty literally.  Heck, they were even Prebyterians for a few years.  I am hedging my bets that they can keep it going, and hopefully with thinkers like Wright, Williams, Thiselton, Milton, Jenkins, McGrath, Polkinghorne, and Radner at the helm, we might end up looking more like Christ than we did yesterday.

Of course, first you will need a Book of Common Prayer.  The official Episcopal Church one is the 1979 BCP.  I have heard many complaints about this book but have found almost no faults in the celebrations of the Daily Office, Liturgy’s for Special Occasions (such as Ash Wed. etc…) and the Service for Eucharist.  In fact it takes much of the 1662 BCP and updates it with the theories advanced by the famous Liturgist Gregory Dix which in the end have made the book a bit more Catholic than it’s predecessor.  So show some love for the ‘79.  But, that is not to say that the 1662 (the sort of “gold standard” book - ie- the one the British colonized the world with) isn’t powerful, especially for the services for ordination.  So get one of those too.  To fill in the blanks, this MASSIVE tome on the worldwide BCP’s lays to rest the conservative argument that the 1662 is the “authoritative” book in the Communion.

There are of course many many books which purport to tell us all what Anglicanism really “is” but these days one needs two perspectives, I think, to really get a feel for it.  One needs a book from the perspective of “Classical Anglicanism,” which is inevitably Anglo-focused.  But the truth is that the formative years were all very, well, British.  I can think of no more thorough book than “The Study of Anglicanism” edited by Stephan Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight.  In its revised edition it spans a substantial 517 pages with a brief “History” of Anglicanism at the start, from which it moves on to well researched essays on everything from Canon law to our Eucharistic theology.  Highly recommended.

But of course on also needs a book which paints Anglicanism as it actually is now, which is a non-Western church.  More people attend an Anglican church in Nigeria on a single Sunday morning than all the Anglicans in Britain, America, Canada, Scotland and Ireland combined.  We are now a World Communion (or are trying to be) and “An Introduction to World Anglicanism” from Cambridge helps us to get our heads around what Anglicanism is and where it might “be going.”

A very short yet greatly commendable book is by none other than Rowan Williams.  His little book “Anglican Identities” gives us some academic articles on Tyndale, two on Hooker, as well as Ramsey, Westcott, the poet Herbert, J. A. T. Robinson and an intriguing essay “Anglican Approaches to St. John’s Gospel.”  A must.

As Anglicans have tried to avoid Confessionalism, much of their identity comes from thier divines.  Another huge book which is a collection of pieces by no fewer than 100 thinkers and poets (not that poets aren’t thinkers!) “Love’s Redeeming Work - The Anglican Quest for Holiness” This book is a gem.

There are of course many other books which could be very helpful, perhaps this one on Anglican Ecclesiology, or this “Very Short Introduction” or “Anglican Approaches to Scripture“; but I only have so much time!