The Anglican Way: A Guidebook

by Thomas McKenzie

All Christian Ways are like cups. There are many kinds of cups in the world, small and large, made of glass, pottery, plastic, etc. They can hold all kinds of things, from water to coffee to ice cream. Think of pouring wine into a cup. The wine itself is independent of the cup, but experts will tell you that the kind of cup you pour wine into will affect the taste. The cup won’t turn the wine into something else (wine doesn’t become beer when you pour it into a plastic cup), but it will change the experience, and the right wine glass can bring out the flavor of the wine. A good cup can lead to a better wine-drinking experience.

grace has room to operate in Anglicanism. In the Anglican Way, there is unity in the midst of diversity—and

Christians sometimes seem to say, “Of course we should love people, we all know that. So now let’s get on with what we really want to do—fight about theology!”

Unless the church is actively living out the reality of love, there is little reason to debate theology. And unless the church has a healthy theology we won’t recognize true love when we see it.

Jesus commands us to love one another. It’s easy to love someone I don’t have any conflicts with. But loving someone I have a real disagreement with? Loving someone in the context of hearing and telling the truth? That’s hard. It’s also precious. True love happens at the friction points of the church.

Thanks in part to a seventeenth-century theologian named Richard Hooker, Anglicans have often spoken of three ways to hear from God: Scripture, tradition, and reason.

In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton called tradition “the democracy of the dead.”

Our liturgies, our hymns, our structures, and our leaders are part of a tradition that, at its best, connects us with one another in God.

We must make use of prayer, study, and Spirit-inspired reason to hear from God in our modern context.

Tradition is in need of being reconsidered when it no longer serves the Gospel.

We teach that the sacraments are external signs of interior grace, signs commanded by Christ for the building up of his church.

We are called to lives that are both ordered and creative.

The Anglican Way lives at the center rather than the extremes. We have learned that it’s impossible to be radical about more than one thing. We don’t desire to be radical about politics, traditions, ideas, or even religion. We just want to be radical about the only thing worth being radical about: the amazing love of God in Christ.

The Anglican Church displayed one key difference from all these other new denominations; rather than being a church born of theology, it was born of geography. Look at the names of those groups. Lutherans followed the teachings of Martin Luther. Calvinists followed the teachings of John Calvin. Anabaptists are named after one of their primary theological beliefs, that a person should be baptized again as an adult. The Anglican Church was not named after a leader or an idea, it was named after a place.

Followers of the Anglican Way are evangelical, but we’re also catholic. We are charismatic, but we’re also orthodox. We are conservative and liberal, contemplative and activist. Some of us are more one thing than another, but all of us should have a healthy dose of each. None of us should be on the extremes, and none of us can be perfectly centered.

All our freedom is in Christ and because of Christ. Jesus has set us free. As Anglicans, we are at liberty to follow him in many ways, to learn from him and one another, and to experience the fullness of what life has to offer.

Sunday School was started by evangelical Anglicans so that children who were working in mines and mills during the Industrial Revolution could learn to read. The Church Army came together to bring the evangelical Gospel to the working class and the poor. The China Inland Mission brought the message of personal salvation in Jesus to Asia. All of these were Bible-based, highly engaged efforts led by Anglicans.

acknowledge Jesus Christ as your savior and as your Lord. By his grace, you can put your trust in his great love and mercy. You can turn away from your sins and receive his forgiveness. Tell him that you desire to be born anew into his eternal kingdom. You can ask him to forgive your sins and accept you into his kingdom. He always says “yes” to these prayers.

To be saved from your sins and given a place in eternal glory, you must put your faith in Jesus Christ. Does that sound like something you might hear from a fundamentalist preacher on television? Yes, it does. I grew up thinking that everything those kinds of people said was crazy. What I have discovered is that some of the things they say are judgmental and wrong, but on this issue they are in line with both the biblical Christian faith and the Anglican Way. You and I must be converted to Christ if we’re to have any hope in this world, and in the world to come.

The evangelical Anglican preacher Charles Simeon said, “My endeavor is to bring out of the Scriptures what is true and not to trust in what I think might be there.” He believed it was important to listen to what the Bible is saying and not to use the Bible as a source for proof-texts (out-of-context quotes that are used to back up a predetermined position).

Some people simply read the Bible for themselves. This is a good thing, of course. We should read the Bible on our own to know God better. At the same time, we aren’t all equally gifted in biblical interpretation. Some people reading the Bible on their own have taken words or passages to mean all kinds of strange things. Many cults, most of them quite destructive, have been started by well-meaning individuals reading and interpreting the Bible for themselves. For this reason, Anglicans read the Bible together as well as on their own.

John Stott, a well-known evangelical Anglican leader, said, “Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us.” Guilty feelings aren’t Stott’s point. Rather, he’s calling us to see our sins for what they are: deadly.

The Nicene Creed, the great statement of faith of Christianity that most Anglicans confess every Sunday morning, says that we “believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” This means that we are part of a single, undivided, worldwide church. Christ doesn’t have many bodies on earth, he only has one body. The church appears divided because of leadership differences and theological disagreements, but the church is one in a deeply mystical sense. We catholic Christians have a commitment to live out the oneness of the church whenever we can.

A sacrament is often described as “an outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”

In communion, as well as in baptism, we receive Christ. This encounter is sure and certain. No matter what is going on in our lives, we can receive Jesus in the simple actions of eating and drinking.

We are, by our God-given nature, religious beings. We long to have a spiritual life, and we want that spiritual life to flourish in the context of community.

One of the sins of evangelical Christians is that they can be consumers of church, using it as a source of entertainment and inspiration. One of the sins of catholic Christians is that they can use church as a replacement for genuine faith and personal spirituality.

In an Anglican understanding, any baptized person fully belongs to Christ and is part of his church. If that person is baptized as a child, at some point that person will need to come to a personal faith in order to continue to grow in Christ. Personal faith is required to be a living part of the church. The baptized belong first, and we pray that someday they will believe. In my ministry with adults, I have often met people who convert to the community of the church first, and then later convert to the beliefs of the church. They belong before they believe.

We believe in authority, but we don’t believe that our authorities are closer to God than anyone else. They aren’t more Christian, more beloved, or more saved. They’re simply the ones who are given the great burden and joy of leading others in this Anglican Way.

“Charismatic” is a word used to describe Christians who believe that the supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit seen in the New Testament may be normally experienced today.

the Pentecostal understanding of baptism in the Holy Spirit is neither good Anglican theology nor even good Christian theology. There aren’t two classes of Christians. Any person who’s been baptized with water in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit has been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Anyone who confesses that Jesus is Lord is already filled with the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Freedom is important, but so is Spirit-led order. God is the Lord of truth and beauty, not the bringer of discord and confusion.

The result of being filled with the Holy Spirit is that the fruits of the Spirit grow in me: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV).

I have witnessed many miracles. I have seen a woman come back from sure and certain death as the metastasized cancer that had invaded her body disappeared. I have seen a marriage that was totally wrecked come back to full health. I have spoken to a crowd in a language I barely knew, using words and phrases I had never studied, telling them the Gospel. I have seen men and women who didn’t know God, and ones who hated God, give him glory for what he had done in their lives. Yet, I have been with a woman who died of cancer even though she was godly and faithful, and had hundreds of people praying for her. I know a child who suffers from a painful disorder, though I have prayed many times for her healing. I know a husband who destroyed his marriage, even though he was part of a strong group of Christian men. As a believer, and as a charismatic Anglican, I don’t know why God answers some prayers and not others. I don’t know why he intervenes sometimes and doesn’t seem to other times. I’ve been angry with God. I’ve been heartbroken by his lack of action. In the midst of all that, I still believe that he intervenes in our lives. I believe in him more than I believe in his actions. He is still a mystery to me.

In the Old Testament, God declares his name “the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6, NIV). That word, “compassionate,” comes from the Hebrew for “womb-like.” In Genesis 1:27, God makes both male and female equally in his image. I saw that this mystical experience was not opposed to the Bible, but was supported by the Scriptures. It has helped me to know God more fully, more personally, and more biblically than I knew him before.

He gives us these moments to increase our faith, deepen our peace, and open us to more of who Christ is in our lives.

the creed isn’t about her. It’s about the faith of the whole church. On the days that she believes it all, she’s in harmony with “the great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1). On days when she doesn’t believe it, those witnesses carry her along.

The word “creed” comes from the Latin credo, which means “I believe.” But in the church, a creed is not about what “I believe” as much as it’s about what “we believe.”

We should be concerned about the Anglican who puts his foot down and declares “I do not innovate.” But we should be equally concerned about the Anglican who plans for Sunday worship in a board room filled with unlimited possibilities and tired men.

Anglicans place a high value on beauty, especially when it inspires worship. We have many windows into heaven. We take care of our sanctuaries and church grounds. We tend to seek out the best quality in music, objects of art, food, and architecture. We value good writing and speaking, thoughtful children’s ministries, and aesthetically pleasing spaces. We love to see God through the beauty around us.

Care for the poor is about more than money. People or churches who simply fund agencies so that others may minister to the poor are missing out on an important aspect of our faith. Loving our neighbors is a commandment of Christ. Love is best lived out up close, not from far away. Anglicans live out our call to love in actual, active relationship with those in need.

serious spiritual problems arise when someone believes that their faith is about what they do for God. Salvation is the work of Christ alone. No amount of good work will save anyone from their sins.

Striving for God is often a form of self-righteousness.

Whatever we receive from the Lord comes through Jesus’ loving work, not because of our striving. This is true of salvation, and it’s true of all the good and perfect gifts that God gives us, including his presence in our lives.

With a new understanding of what is and isn’t valuable, loving others becomes easier. We want to love the things of the world less in order to love the people of the world more. As I need less from others, the needs of others become more crucial to me.

The fruits of contemplation—knowing God’s grace, resting in his presence, being detached from the world—can fuel our service to others.

Don’t be the person who found the grace of God in the Anglican Way, then built a temple to Anglican religion! Rather, allow the Holy Spirit to use this Way to build you, your family, and your church into a living temple devoted to the Lord.

Followers of the Anglican Way are given tools to nurture our lives. We call them spiritual disciplines. They help us to establish good patterns. We can do our part to participate in these disciplines, but it’s the Lord who will bring both the peace and the joy that we seek.

Even the smallest changes can give you a sense of the Spirit’s presence in your daily life. Remember that Christ is always more present than you are. He’s always ready to be with you, no matter what.

said, “If the church doesn’t tell us what time it is, the surrounding culture surely will, and we usually end up all the worse for it.”