The other night after Vespers at St Joseph’s, we had an interesting discussion, sparked by a question from Bill Lee. He asked, “If you were asked to tell somebody about Anglicanism is in ten words or less, what would you say?”
His question cuts to the chase of who we Anglicans are and what we're about. What makes Anglicanism different from other Christian denominations? What makes it distinctive and worthwhile? What lies at its core?
A lot of definitions can be offered; many have been suggested over the past four centuries and more. Whatever theological terminology might be used or historical explanation offered to define Anglicanism, two things stand out: the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. The Anglican tradition produced both of them and, taken together, they form what is an essentially Anglican view of life. In the Bible we encounter God Who has revealed Himself as our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. He calls us to live as companions in His creation. This is the unchanging message of Scripture: we are meant to be the people of Scripture. And to the Holy Scriptures we need a guide, a way of understanding what they say. Anglican tradition gives us the Prayer Book as our guide to how we are meant live as people of the Scriptures.
The Prayer Book is not simply a collection of prayers. More than anything else it is a pattern for living. At its core is a daily, weekly and yearly cycle of prayer and worship. Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, the Sunday offering of the Mass, repeated over and over again in an annual cycle of Holy Days: of Feasts and Fasts. Added to this unending cycle of worship are the sacraments and sacred rites which mark the days of our lives: Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, illness, death, and burial.
This Prayer Book pattern of a Christian life draws on a vision which is the essential vision of Scripture. We are not “saved” by virtue of “accepting Jesus as our personal Savior.” The Bible and Prayer Book teach us that salvation is an on-going process, a life of redemption is a life of continuing sin and forgiveness, of faltering prayer and never-ending worship. This happy combination of Bible and Prayer Book teaches us something much older than either: our individual salvation takes place in the context of the common redemption of fallen humanity. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost call every human person to salvation—which isn’t escaping the fires of hell (what a pathetic concept of God that is). Salvation is an unending friendship with God. We are called to Common Prayer because Anglicanism sees Scripture as calling us to a Common Life—the One Church which the Lord Jesus came to establish.
The One Church, though, is the means to an end. The faltering Church here on earth, the imperfect fellowship of the baptized, points beyond itself. The Kingdom of God here on earth points to the Kingdom Which Is to Come in Heaven.
And that brings us back to language. The Jews have their sacred language; when they gather for common prayer, the most sacred of their prayers are prayed in Hebrew (which many of them don’t understand or understand only in bits and pieces). The Roman Church for many centuries offered the Liturgy in Latin, which fulfilled much the same purpose for them that Hebrew did for the Jews. The Christians of the Eastern Churches have the daily cycle of worship in the Greek of the Byzantine Empire or Old Church Slavonic, pre-dating any of the family of languages spoken by the Slavic peoples of today.
The King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer form a sacred language for us. Linguists extol the vibrant English with which they ring; stylists find them incomparable in their use of our language at a time it was at its most supple; lovers of our language trace what is best in it to these twin roots. The language of the Bible and Prayer Book has formed a sacred language for us. Human beings need a sacred language, because we have in us a sacred aspiration, a sacred longing: we’ve been created with an inherent longing for Heaven, for friendship with God. Sacred language gives us a heavenly language we can speak here on earth.
Whatever else can be said of our Anglican tradition (and there is much that can be criticized), this much is true: we have produced and hold to a vision of Christian life grounded in Scripture and the ancient tradition of Common Prayer. And we do this in a sacred language which allows us here on earth, to join “with angels and archangels and all the Company of Heaven, to laud and magnify” the glorious Name of our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
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