When I was a new father, my brother Joel was holding our infant son Joshua over Christmas of 1997. Naturally, our little boy slept most of the time and didn't offer much in response to Joel's jabbering other than staring back. Upon one moment when he handed Joshua back to my wife, Joel remarked, "Well, babies usually don't start showing personality until seven months of age."
I don't know how Joel knew that, since it was a good six years before he became a dad, but his estimation wasn't far off. And like babies, it takes time for faith traditions to exhibit particular personalities. The Church of England--and truth be told, the entire Anglican tradition--is marked by different "tribes" of specific churchmanship and flavor. Depending which circle you intersect, you can run into someone identifying as Broad Church, as liberal, as High Church/Anglo-Catholic, as Low Church/Evangelical, and so on. Time doesn't permit me to ruminate on each tribe--suffice it to say my Reformed convictions land me in the Low Church/Evangelical community. But I did recently read through Anglican Evangelical Identity, a patchwork quilt of three previous works authored by Anglican theologians J.I. Packer and N.T. Wright, and it helps tremendously for those who wonder if there is room for evangelicals in today's Anglicanism.
This seems to beg a "yes" answer by a country mile, but when Packer penned his words, there were enough tears in the fabric for evangelicals in the Church of England. Packer--never one to move in a fog--carefully defines the unifying beliefs that make evangelicals who they are: the final authority of Holy Scripture, the Trinity, Christ's deity, grace correlated to faith, justification by faith through Jesus' substitutionary atonement, Christ's physical resurrection and present reign, new birth and growth in grace through the Holy Spirit's work in one's life, the church as the fellowship of believers, and the certainty of Jesus' return. Packer's goal is not so much to solve every quibble, but to demonstrate these convictions have been at the heart of Bible Anglicanism, so of course, evangelicals have a place at the table.
Wright's section in the middle of the book is helpful in points, as he seeks to build his case for the Biblical gospel, the nature of the Church, and what marks the Church out from the world. I should mention that Wright can be a polarizing figure amongst many in the Presbyterian tradition from which I come, mainly for his role in the movement known as the New Perspective on Paul [see here for a critique of the NPP by Ligon Duncan, and keep in mind that Michael Jensen gives a gentle and clear corrective to Wright in Reformation Anglicanism]. Wright plows through a good bit of material in this section, but I have never found him easy to track. That could just be me.
Packer closes the book with a flourish, speaking to those baffled and discouraged by Anglican theological drift in the early 1980s--discouragement that could be just as real today in many places. Packer doesn't mince words; the Church of England especially might seem like a Noah's Ark where all ideas are welcome, but Packer encourages readers with a manageable road map of true calculated inclusion that makes the best of the Reformation teachings that originally launched the Church of England and Anglicanism itself.
Not all points of Anglican Evangelical Identity flow at a crisp pace, but it is not a book designed to read as a novel. For curious souls who want to know more about how to navigate one's way in a church climate that presents significant challenges, or for those who need encouragement about their place in the larger order of things, Packer and Wright present a decent road ahead. Above all else, it serves as a reminder that the essentials of true Biblical faith can carry one through the roughest of waters.
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