For Anglicans, the words reform and catholic go together; the English Reformation was more about reforming, or better re-forming, the Medieval Western Church where she had drifted away from the Ancient Church. It was an effort to return or to restore what is catholic or truly universal to the Christian faith. An English Bishop named John Jewel (Salisbury) in his classic, Apology for the Church of England (1562), simply described English Christianity as based "in the Holy Gospel, the Ancient Bishops, and the Primitive Church." It was not about completely throwing out what existed. Nor was it about creating new theology or new structures. It was about recovering or returning to the model of the Undivided Church. Even the method was reformed catholic according to the motto of the day, "back to the sources" (ad fontes). The sources for Anglicans were the Holy Scriptures and the early church fathers. And by means of these sources, the reformed catholic model of Anglicanism was to re-form the Medieval Western Church by returning to the Catholic faith. The essays in this volume present a Re-formed Catholic Anglican approach on a number of foundational topics such as hermeneutics and the interpretation of Scripture, theology, spirituality, worship and the prayer book, the doctrine of the church and the sacraments, and a variety of biographical and historical examples in terms of scholars and movements important to Anglicanism.
Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism
For Anglicans, the words reform and catholic go together; the English Reformation was more about reforming, or better re-forming, the Medieval Western Church where she had drifted away from the Ancient Church. It was an effort to return or to restore what is catholic or truly universal to the Christian faith. An English Bishop named John Jewel (Salisbury) in his classic, Apology for the Church of England (1562), simply described English Christianity as based "in the Holy Gospel, the Ancient Bishops, and the Primitive Church." It was not about completely throwing out what existed. Nor was it about creating new theology or new structures. It was about recovering or returning to the model of the Undivided Church. Even the method was reformed catholic according to the motto of the day, "back to the sources" (ad fontes). The sources for Anglicans were the Holy Scriptures and the early church fathers. And by means of these sources, the reformed catholic model of Anglicanism was to re-form the Medieval Western Church by returning to the Catholic faith. The essays in this volume present a Re-formed Catholic Anglican approach on a number of foundational topics such as hermeneutics and the interpretation of Scripture, theology, spirituality, worship and the prayer book, the doctrine of the church and the sacraments, and a variety of biographical and historical examples in terms of scholars and movements important to Anglicanism.