“Fools rush in where angels dare to tread.” – Alexander Pope, An Essay in Criticism
Entering into the virtual (and, I hope, “real life”) debate over whether Anglicanism is Catholic or Protestant seems a little like an illustration of Pope’s epigram. But since I’ve already manifested the foolishness (or is it audacity?) to attempt a definition of Anglicanism, I figure – why not?
I’ve been pondering this issue since I became an Anglican in 1988, and I remember getting a kick out of the fact that the World Encyclopedia c. 1989 counted Anglicanism as something other than a Protestant body, which annoyed my Presbyterian twin brother to no end.
Defining Anglicanism
So is Anglicanism Protestant or Catholic or some tertium quid or via media?
It turns out that the answer to this question all depends on when you think Anglicanism began and which aspect of our English Church heritage you value the most.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to define Anglicanism, especially in my Orthodox Anglican Identity but also dealing with the issue in my forthcoming book, English Church History in 4 Acts: From the Beginning to Henry VIII. Particularly in English Church History in 4 Acts, I will emphasize the element of continuity in the English Church tradition, which I believe is one of the keys to understanding who we are as Anglicans.
For the record, I consider that the English Church tradition began in the first few centuries after Christ, even if it has undergone significant transformations over the centuries. This should not trouble us as Anglican Christians because Christianity writ large has undergone tremendous changes over the centuries, including each and every Christian Church tradition. We acknowledge the Roman Catholic Church to be the Roman Catholic Church, even though it is vastly different than it was in previous centuries.
The definition of Anglicanism I offer in Orthodox Anglican Identity is that Anglicanism is: “the Catholic Church that was planted in England in the first few centuries after Christ; reshaped decisively by the English Reformation and its formularies that reformed the received Catholic traditions and also by the Evangelical and Catholic Revivals and other historical movements of the Spirit; and that has now been inculturated into independent, global churches.”
Such a definition allows for both a fundamental Catholic identity and a Protestant re-shaping of this Catholic English Church tradition. In other words, Anglicanism is a kind of Reformed Catholicism, where Catholicism is the noun and Reformed is the adjective that modifies it.
Why Do We Disagree?
If Anglicanism is a species of Reformed Catholicism, then we should expect that Anglicanism has two primary ways of thinking about itself, one which looks to its Catholic heritage in terms of the Creeds, Councils, ancient liturgies, and writings of the Church Fathers, and one which looks at the English Reformation and especially her formularies of the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 Articles.
What all of this means for our current discussion about Anglican identity is that one of the reasons why Anglicans disagree about whether Anglicanism is Protestant or Catholic is because we disagree about which aspect of Anglicanism has the greatest weight.
If you especially value the patristic consensus as more fundamental than the English Reformation, then you’re likely to believe that Anglicanism is a Catholic tradition. If, on the other hand, you give more weight to the English Reformation, then you are likely to believe Anglicanism is fundamentally a Protestant tradition. And if what you value most is your own individual attraction to various bits of Anglicanism, then you are likely to believe Anglicanism is a vaguely ancient, reverent, and beautiful tradition without necessarily comprehending the whole.
Protestant and Catholic
There is undoubtedly more than one way to think about how Anglicanism is both Protestant and Catholic, but allow me to meditate on the ways in which we are both Protestant and Catholic but, ultimately, an especially Catholic tradition.
As an aside, one testimony to the Protestant and Catholic sides of Anglicanism is the succession of revivals that the Church of England experienced in the 18th and 19th centuries. When the Church of England needed a greater emphasis on the Scriptures, the heart, and conversion, God providentially sent the Evangelical Revival of the 18th century, and when the Church of England in the early 19th century was beginning to drift from the Catholicity of the Prayer Book, God sent the Catholic Revival.
In what ways, then, is Anglicanism a Protestant tradition?
To begin with, at the time of the English Reformation, Anglicans were part of the same variegated movement to reform the Western Church which had become infested with errors, abuses, and innovations. In addressing these issues, the English Reformers shared much in common with other Protestants: they did not consider the pope to have universal jurisdiction, they upheld the supremacy of Scripture, they adhered to the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they rejected transubstantiation, indulgences, and the penance system of the late medieval Church. among other things. Furthermore, the theology of the English Reformers was deeply influenced by the Continental Reformers.
So far, it looks a lot like Anglicanism is just one species of magisterial Protestantism.
But we also need to consider in what ways Anglicanism is also, and especially, a Catholic tradition. While much could be said about the Catholic face of Anglicanism, for the purposes of this essay I’d like us to consider one highly significant point that has great power to explain why Anglicanism is different from other Protestant traditions.
That point is this: at the time of the English Reformation, an entire national and ancient Church regained its independence from the Church of Rome. The Church which emerged from the English Reformation was not a new Church but truly a re-formed pre-existing Church and one that had been in existence in some form since at least the second century if not before. The DNA of this pre-existing Church was still present at the time of the English Reformation which, we should remember, began under Henry VIII, who effectively repealed the Papal Revolution of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, issued a vernacular Bible, and reduced the influence of monasteries[1], relics, and pilgrimages.
The English Church that came out from under the domination of the Roman Church remembered a time when, for 500 years or more, she was in communion with Rome but independent of her and was also able to reach further back into her history to remember a time when, for 400 years or more, she had very few associations with the Roman Church. In part, Henry VIII made an appeal to this ancient Church and its rights of kings as heads of the Church. He understood that the Church of England he reformed was still the Church of England.
This pre-existing Church had a long institutional memory which was embedded in almost every aspect of the life of the Church. Built into the DNA of Anglicanism is its very Catholic heritage of the threefold ministry, a revised ancient liturgy, an ancient Sunday lectionary, a revised ancient Church year, a continuity of educational systems, an architecture that reminds us of our past, and many other things. Even after the reforms under Edward VI, the Church of England was identifiably the same Church, with almost completely the same bishops, the same parochial clergy, the same university professors, the same diocesan and parochial structures, and more.
This essential fact of the pre-existent and ancient nature of the English Church means that in spite of similarities in theology, the English Reformation had a fundamentally different starting point than did the Continental Reformations. Unlike the Continental Reformations, in England, an entire national and ancient Church was intact, and it did not have to re-think everything, reforming primarily by looking at the Bible and, to varying degrees, apart from Tradition.
Even the similarities in theology between the English Reformation and the Continental Reformations are somewhat deceptive. While the Continental Reformers looked at the Church Fathers, they often did it in a different way than did Anglicans. The English Church Reformers appealed to the patristic consensus not only to criticize the errors, abuses, and innovations of Rome but also to defend aspects of the English Church which were ancient and which the reformed English Church retained.
The English theological method is also significantly different from that of the Continental Reformers. While Anglican theology is, at times systematic and propositional, this is not its only theological mode. Because of the continuity inherent in the intact English Church, her theology has tended to see more continuity with the Western theological tradition. Even the Anglican propositional theology enshrined in the 39 Articles is not the same theology, in method, as the Westminster Confession or Book of Concord, for the Articles make no attempt to be comprehensive.
Furthermore, the other great Anglican formulary of the English Reformation, the Prayer Book, is as much a theological norm and method of theology as are the Articles, and the Articles must be read with the theology of the Prayer Book in mind. However, the theology of the Prayer Book is not systematic or propositional but liturgical and, in many ways, pre-modern, reflecting a way of doing theology before the scholastic and university theologies that shaped all of the Continental Reformers became dominant. The theology of the Prayer Book (and the Articles to a lesser degree) is built upon the foundation of the Catholic faith of the early Church.
Additionally, theology (in its more academic sense) in Anglicanism is not seen as the primary task of the Church but is done in conjunction with the ancient ecclesial structures and practices of the Church. Finally, Anglicanism has no one theologian that has a uniquely privileged status: there’s a reason Anglicans are not usually called Cranmerians in the same way that Calvinists are Calvinists and Lutherans are Lutherans.
Even where the English Reformers agreed with the Continental Reformers in matters needing reform, there was a difference in tone. For example, Anglicans were less likely to believe that the Roman Church was a false Church, perhaps, in part, since this would mean denying a part of their own history.
Because of the fundamentally Catholic nature of Anglicanism, it was practically inevitable that when this Catholic deposit was in danger of being eroded too severely, a Catholic response emerged. One example was the reaction of the “avant-garde conformists” of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, including the Caroline Divines, when Puritans threatened to envision Anglicanism as being more purely Protestant. The other notable example is that of the Oxford Movement (I prefer the term “The Catholic Revival”) when the Prayer Book Rule of Life had been lamentably emaciated by the beginning of the 19th century. Such revivals are not extrinsic to Anglicanism but are attempts to reclaim and retain what had been there from the beginning, long before 1549.
Conclusion
Is it not possible, therefore, to cherish the 16th-century Anglican formularies and English Reformation while also acknowledging that they themselves are founded upon something deeper and more ancient? They are not the only starting point for Anglican identity and theology because Anglicanism did not begin in the 1540s but sometime in the first two centuries after Christ. Anglicans are Catholics because our ecclesial structures, theological method and content, and practices are but reformed versions of the Catholic faith of the early Church. We are also Protestants because the Catholic faith once delivered to the saints has, in the English Church tradition, been shaped decisively by the English Reformation.
Notes
- By dissolving them. ↑
'Is Anglicanism Catholic or Protestant?' have 33 comments
September 8, 2023 @ 10:12 am Sudduth Rea Cummings
Excellent article! You took the words out of my mind and mouth. I recall a professor for my D.Min. program at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology calling Anglicanism’s spirituality a form of “domestic holiness.” I’ve always wondered why Protestantism and Catholicism are considered to be such polar opposites. Except, of course, for the extreme partisans in the Reformation and some of their descendants who insist upon keeping up a tragic and unneeded antagonism. The character of Anglicanism is to recognize and live the unity of the two in an authentic Scriptural and Traditional Christianity.
September 12, 2023 @ 8:00 am Justin
Well said! I echo your sentiments about the article and Anglicanism\’s identity as thoroughly Catholic AND Protestant.
July 30, 2024 @ 9:02 am Sennen
Thoroughly protestant while claiming to still be Catholic
September 8, 2023 @ 10:39 am Fr Michael Flowers
I’m curious why you omit any mention of the Celtic Church. Bede reaches back, although with a western lens, to give the Celtic foundations primary attention. This give us more historical weight with a non-Papal Catholicism.
September 8, 2023 @ 11:34 am David Kirkland
Hey Father Michael Flowers this is David Kirkland from ORU ! I live in Dallas now and am a member of Church of the Holy Communion Dallas. I was surprised to see your comment here! Where are you serving these days?
September 10, 2023 @ 8:56 pm Fr Michael Flowers
Wow! Greetings to you! We are in KCMO having planted St Aidan’s in 2012. So good to hear from you.
September 11, 2023 @ 4:01 pm Sudduth Rea Cummings
Dear David Kirkland,
You live in Dallas were we spent happy years as urban pioneers in Munger Place just south of Swiss Avenue in old East Dallas. We got our house for a song which was what we could afford then when I served on the staff of the Church of the Incarnation. We couldn’t afford to live in that area now!!!!!
July 30, 2024 @ 8:20 am Sennen
You do realise that not all Catholics became Catholics because the Pope sent missionaries to them. Independent Catholic missionaries evangelized them. They shared the same faith and were not less Catholic and no less in communion than those with formal episcopal links with the Holy see. This was the case before St Augustine arrived. What St Augustine did was establish formal episcopal offices for those already professing the faith while expanding the faithful. After the reformation we now had a different church not in communion with Rome and professing a different faith, not Catholic but Anglican. You cannot leave the Catholic church and still be Catholic.
August 14, 2024 @ 1:49 pm Petros
It did not leave the Catholic Church but the Roman church. For the first 6 centuries it was not under Roman jurisdiction but was fully Catholic. This itself is proof that Roman jurisdiction does makes you Catholic. The break from Roman communion in the 16th century simply returned it to its roots. The Anglican reformation did not bring in a new faith but eliminates the accretions of Rome. It is actually Rome church in the 16th that fell short of thempatristic Catholic faith.
September 8, 2023 @ 2:52 pm PWH
Thank you so much for this thoughtful essay (and I should like to get hold of your book when I can)! I value both of the aspects you mention, partly because I was raised in an American evangelical non-liturgical tradition and then spent 22 years in the Roman Catholic Church. I am distressed at the continued in-fighting between these factions in modern-day faithful Anglicanism, but I don’t see much hope for an immediate solution to that.
Having said that, I tend to be a traditionalist as far as the use of the BCP is concerned, and so the post-1979 trend to “re-Catholicize” the liturgy by changing or adding to the Prayer Book that Cranmer and his colleagues wrote is distressing to me. This is partly BECAUSE I came out of the RCC four years ago. Most, but not all, ordained clergy in the Reformed Episcopal Church, as you are, seem to prefer to add back the Benedictus Qui Venit to the Sanctus, thus ignoring Cranmer’s choice to leave it out. I am aware of Bishop Sutton’s theological justifications for this practice, passed to me by the courtesy of our mission’s vicar, who discussed it with him at my request, but all the reasons seem to be drawn from the Anglican continuity with the English Church of the early Christian era. The practice still seems to me to be an overly eager attempt to regain a Catholic part of the liturgy at the expense of the Prayer Book, and I find it suspicious that it only began being used again after TEC’s 1979 book came out, showing that TEC was re-inserting a lot of Catholic liturgical practices.
Have you any comments about that? I would appear to have no choice but to use it when I am worshipping with a parish which does so, especially since the Revd. Damien Grout, formerly of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church (REC) in Appomattox, is now retired. I am not sure what St. Paul’s in Lexington, VA does, or All Saints in Lynchburg, VA. Both use the 1928 BCP rather than the REC book, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t use the Benedictus Qui Venit (since the latter is also not in the REC BCP).
September 13, 2023 @ 7:17 am Francis R Lyons
And why not an ecumenical use?? Our prayer books are now based upon ecumenical sharing and ICET texts. Is this an important consideration??
September 13, 2023 @ 9:37 am PWH
The 2019 ACNA book seems to be a more doctrinally correct and linguistically graceful adaptation — not of the 1928 (or 1662) BCP, but of TEC’s 1979 book. It thus carries over some of the same problems. If it’s desired to have a prayer book which is closer to the Roman Catholic ICEL texts, then you have one. But if one is using a text purporting to be from the 1928 and earlier American BCP, or directly from the 1662 BCP, as the REC BCP says it is, then why not stick to the text that was used, pretty much without alteration, from 1552 to 1979? Why the sudden desire to “swim the Tiber”, and force upon the 1662 BCP tradition something that was carefully taken out?
August 14, 2024 @ 2:16 pm Petros
I understand your frustration. But it rare to find any communion today without factionalism. The RC and the EO have also much factionalism within them but they are in denial as they continue to peddle that they alone offer unity. At least Anglicans are more honest about it because our ecclesssiolgy does not force us into this form of triumphantism.
September 8, 2023 @ 5:51 pm Alice Christine Linsley
In as much as our worship draws on forms and prayers which predate the 16th century, and the outline of our Faith is stated in the Nicene Creed, Anglicans must be said to be “catholic”, though not Roman. Our denominational identity is tied to the Articles of Religion. Denominationalism is divisive.
July 30, 2024 @ 8:29 am Sennen
Roman is a pejorative construct of Anglicanism to seek to portray itself as Catholic even after leaving the Catholic Church, hence the Branch Theory which even Catholics and Orthodox, who are said to be part of this three branch catholic church, neither understand nor profess.
August 14, 2024 @ 2:26 pm Petros
The term “denomination” historically belongs to those groups that actually broke away from the AC. The AC is a communion. The articles of faith are broad not narrow, thus it allows for more inclusivity than you find in “other” Protestant groups. The articles are affirmation of what is in the creeds and a response to controversies of the time. There is nothing in the articles that is contrary to the patristics and they derive from scripture.
September 9, 2023 @ 8:49 am Joe Neff
I attend the Church of England…in England. Like a lot of denominations there is a range of belief and practice. But in our parish, I am regularly encouraged and sometimes surprised at the high view of Scripture and it’s heavy use in every service. And the clarity of faith in Christ alone and telling others the Good News, locally and globally. What else does it take to be Protestant?
September 9, 2023 @ 1:12 pm PWH
Thank you so much for that good news. Sometimes all we hear over here is news of the Church of England falling away from the faith. You remind us that there are still faithful parishes, and faithful people in them.
September 11, 2023 @ 10:24 am Daniel Hixon
Is Anglicanism Protestant or Catholic? Yes! Yes it is. This is a great piece and I hope it will at least add some nuance to those reductionist online discussions that assume the words “catholic” and “protestant” must be antonyms. The fact that, unlike with the continental Protestants, no new church was formed should by itself indicate that, while Anglicanism clearly holds to the major doctrinal truths recovered by the Reformers, it also had a continuity with the Medieval church unlike that of other Protestant groups. It is hard to say that the same people, worshiping in the same parish churches, led by the same priests, under the oversight of the same bishops, organized according to the same institutions, are a completely new and different church than the Ecclesia Anglicana of the Late Middle Ages.
July 30, 2024 @ 8:33 am Sennen
A completely new Church was formed with a different doctrine, different ecclesiastical structure and started off persecuting those who refused to conform. They refused to conform because they recognized that they were being forced to join a new and different church
July 30, 2024 @ 8:37 am Sennen
And the original Church was banned and was only allowed freedom two centuries later
July 30, 2024 @ 8:39 am Sennen
The same congregation worshipping in the same church under the same clergy (and by the way this was not always the case, hence the persecution) can change their faith and profess different things and cannot then claim to be the original church
August 14, 2024 @ 2:02 pm Petros
It was not a new church but Renewed church. The Catholic creeds were retained and the Catholic threefold ministry. Yes, it was different from Rome but it was Rome that departed from the patrist faith.Also who began persecution? It was mary who took the Ac back under Rome and began murdering the reformers.
July 30, 2024 @ 8:40 am Sennen
The same congregation worshipping in the same church under the same clergy (and by the way this was not always the case, hence the persecution) can change their faith and profess different things and cannot then claim to be the original church
August 14, 2024 @ 2:04 pm Petros
Sounds like your talking about the modern Roman church which is totally different than it was in the 16th century
August 14, 2024 @ 2:28 pm Petros
AMEN!
August 14, 2024 @ 2:31 pm Petros
My AMEN was in response to Daniel hixon post. It was right on.
September 11, 2023 @ 3:44 pm Sudduth Rea Cummings
Thank you, Daniel Hixon, but expressing my thoughts so clearly and so eloquently!!!!
August 14, 2024 @ 2:06 pm Petros
Thank you Charles for a well balanced understanding of Anglicanism.
August 22, 2024 @ 4:25 pm Scott
So your belief. You just start a new religion. When it doesn’t work for you.
September 3, 2024 @ 3:24 pm Professor D
While I found this article to be well written and thought provoking. The question can be answered definitively. The Anglican embrace of Sola Fide (by faith alone, Article 11 of the 39 Articles of Religion) and Sola Scripta (Scripture Alone, Article 6), by definition makes the Anglican Church solidly Protestant in its theology. To be Catholic means that you believe that salvation requires faith and works and that the tenets of the faith come from both scriptures and sacred traditions. Of course, Catholics would say that to be Catholic you must also acknowledge the supreme authority of the Pope and the Pope’s authority to make infallible declarations.
The fact that the Anglican church has retained many of the liturgical practices of the Catholic Church does not make it Catholic. The discussion as to which church is truer to the teachings of Jesus and the beliefs of the early church is a completely different subject.
September 4, 2024 @ 9:39 am Daniel
Professor D,
It seems to me that one of the underlying debates, both within Anglicanism and between Anglicans and Roman Catholics actually comes down to the word “Catholic” itself. As you point out Roman Catholics make submission to the pope part of the definition of the word. Many Protestants tacitly agree because they see “Protestant” and “Catholic” as mutually exclusive of one another. But the word “Catholic” originally meant “universal” or “of the whole”, so a “Catholic” church is one that holds to beliefs and practices that were held by the whole/universal church all the way back to the beginning. By this definition Roman teachings like papal supremacy are thoroughly Un-catholic because they were not universally held in the early centuries of the undivided church. It is with this definition in mind that English Reformers like John Jewel in his “Apology” argue that the Reformational/Protestant churches are actually MORE catholic than Rome because they do not accept Un-catholic accretions. So the claim is that Anglicans are Catholic not in spite of but because of our acceptance of things like Justification by faith and the primacy of Biblical authority and married clergy and so on, which are to be found in Scripture and the Fathers.
Of course, this debate has continued and will continue precisely because of different assumed definitions of the word “Catholic” itself.
September 5, 2024 @ 12:48 am Professor D
Daniel,
In general use today the word big C Catholic refers to the Catholic Church which is made up of the Latin or Roman Church and 23 other Eastern Catholic churches all in full communion with the Pope but using different rites (for example: Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, Hungarian Greek Catholic Church, Macedonian Greek Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church, etc.). I think that is how Fr. Erlandson used the term in this article.
Many people incorrectly think the term Roman Catholic refers to the whole Catholic Church. The Orthodox Church which has every right to call itself Catholic (they were the same church until 1054 AD) seems to have stopped using the term Catholic in their name externally because of the confusion it causes. However, the term Catholic is not trademarked or copyrighted, so any church can use the term at the risk of confusing people and some churches do use the term that are not affiliated with the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church).
So, when people mean the universal church, they generally use little c catholic to avoid all that confusion. Every Christian church that I have attend, including Anglican, considers itself part of the holy catholic church.
Your point that papal supremacy was not universally held in the early centuries of the church is well taken. I was recently studying that topic. I concluded that there has never been a time in the history of Christendom that all Christians accepted the Bishop of Rome as the supreme authority in the church with the ability to make infallible decrees. The East/West split in 1054 was in part about Papal Supremacy as was the Protestant reformation in the 1500’s. Of course, the Church of England split from the Catholic Church over issues with Papal authority as well. It is not clear that Jesus intended anything like the Catholic Church and the Papacy when he said upon this rock I found my church. That is a longer discussion.
Your use of the term, “the undivided church” is puzzling. When was that? Maybe you could say it was undivided in the early first century before the Romans caused the Apostles to scatter. But after that Christianity was not unified. In part it was distance, but there were also competing beliefs. Look at Coptic Christian history or, take a look at this article where somebody tried to list the early schisms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schism_in_Christianity not authoritative, but it is an okay starting point). They came up with over twenty before the big one in 1054AD with the earliest around 150AD. The bible was not even created until the late fourth century and was not fully settled and generally accepted until the fifth century. It was hard to be undivided or unified when there were a wide variety of beliefs and no firm cannon. Of course, the creation of the bible didn’t unify Christians either.