Recovering Confessional Anglicanism

I won't write a new article here but I do wish to highly recommend an article from The Church Society website, "Recovering Confessional Anglicanism." Please do read this excellent article outlining the critical differences between Anglo-Catholicism and Reformed/Evangelical Anglicanism, which is faithful to the historical English Reformation.

Quote:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—thatʼs all.”
(from Through the Looking Glass)

If the story of North American Anglicanism in the last generation has demonstrated anything, it is the catastrophic consequences of ignoring our Reformation formularies. Forgetting the Thirty-Nine Articles has, of course, been part of a larger assault on traditional doctrine. Relegating the Articles to the ʻHistorical Documentsʼ section of the 1979 American BCP was a small part of this shift but a revealing one nonetheless. As the costly results of a nonconfessional Anglicanism continue to work themselves out in the Episcopal Church and in the Anglican Church of Canada, orthodox Anglicans have homework to do. We need to revisit the Reformation formularies, study them afresh and work to restore them to a central place in the teaching and life of whatever orthodox body emerges from the current mess. A critical part of this study is learning how to interpret the Articles correctly in the wake of decades of misinterpretation and obfuscation.

My approach in the following essay is both descriptive (surveying quickly some of the history of interpretation) and also prescriptive, that is, arguing for what I think is the most responsible, historically-informed and fruitful way to read, understand and apply the Articles today.

Unquote.

From "Recovering Confessional Anglicanism, " by Gillis J. Harp, The Churchman, 116, vol.3.

(Click on the title above to read the entire article in pdf format. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader.)