Most of our parishes are small. Many of our parishioners are “retirement-eligible,” a new euphemism I heard this week. The language of our worship, tracing back before Shakespeare, isn’t easy to follow, the majority of tunes in our Hymnal aren’t very catchy, our Faith seems to be more fitted to times past than a Faith for the present—or the future. So why are you an Anglican?
In a sense, of course, there may be as many answers to that question as there are Anglicans. Each of us has our own reasons for believing, our own experiences of faith.
Anglicanism points us to the past. That’s an essential part of Anglicanism, its tradition. It insists that the past matters. Anglicanism, like Christianity itself, is grounded in history. “I believe in God…and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord…Who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate…the third day He rose again…” We recite these words, day after day, because they’re true, historical facts, like the Battle of Waterloo or Charlie Chaplin’s birthday. We look back to discover who we are.
For all its backward glances, though, Anglicanism also insists we take our place in the present. We face the same questions everybody else does. And that’s just how God wants it. All of us have friends or relatives, for example, who are homosexuals. Even if we wanted to, there’s no way to avoid the issue. Our world is rife with inequalities and injustices, with undeserved pain and unpunished vice. Today piety is mocked and evil admired. Our faith doesn’t allow us to ignore these challenges—on the contrary—it requires us to face them. It takes either a genuine faith or a profound ignorance to believe that Anglicanism enables us to confront today’s world.
Obviously I believe Anglicanism is not only “up” to the challenge, but that it has special gifts to meet the challenges of the past, present and future with beauty and God’s Grace.
The antiquated language of the Prayer Book—indeed, even the notion of a Book of Common Prayer itself, a worship stretching back to the first centuries of the Church, an ethical life embedded in living reality of the Gospel words spoken by the Lord Jesus so long ago, the doctrines of a Faith “once delivered to the saints,” and the life of prayer, the struggle with sin and growth in Grace, these are the great treasures of the Catholic religion, of which Anglicanism is a most happy part.
“Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.” That truth our Faith not only enshrines, but brings us into, nurtures us in, and grows us to a maturity which will blossom in eternity.
That’s why I'm an Anglican. Why are you?
-Fr Gregory Wilcox
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