Five Reasons I Became Anglican

I wanted to do a video giving 5 reasons why I am Anglican so a lot of people don't know but I used to actually be independent fundamental Baptist and as strict as you can get King James only women were not allowed to wear pants couldn't go to the movie theaters that sort of thing and while this video is not going to be explaining why I'm no longer that well it's gonna be doing the opposite it will be saying why I am so for a more positive spin I might be eventually doing a 5 reasons I'm not independent fundamental Baptists anymore sort of video but for now it'll just be the Anglican one so I do want to give a little bit of my back story beyond just that though before I get into that so like I said I was born into an independent fundamental Baptist family and you know we started I memorized verses from the King James since I was about you know 5 or 6 years old which you know I still I still love the King James I used it for my traditional prayer book and everything and obviously Anglicans gave us that and I always remind my mother who's still Baptist about that so when I went to college I moved from Florida to Tennessee I did but part of my college in Florida and then I moved to Tennessee for the rest of it and so while I was in C I started looking into different Christian traditions because I was finding problems with my beliefs as an independent fundamental Baptist because I was starting to talk with people who were Roman Catholic who were Presbyterian and all sorts of other you know different traditions and I was finding problems with the beliefs there so a friend of mine who is now an Eastern Orthodox Christian he and I started doing what we called church clubbing so every Sunday we would go to a different denomination and learn about the denomination so he went to Methodist Presbyterian and Lutheran Roman Catholic to an Orthodox oriental Orthodox Mormon just about every single type of tradition you could think of and excuse me and eventually what happened was we discovered Eastern Orthodoxy through all that and I was sort of floored by it I really loved a lot of the beauty within it and you know with you know liturgical beauty the the icons and all that sort of stuff it was just a completely different world to me so long story short I did not become Eastern Orthodox obviously my friend did and we're still we don't get to talk too much anymore but we still have friendly towards each other no animosity or anything and I had to make some decisions because there were some problems I had with the Eastern Orthodox theology so I decided at that time that I couldn't become Eastern Orthodox as much as I loved so much that was it within it so I had to find another tradition and I discovered anglicanism through there I'd been to an Episcopal Church through our church clubbing thing but not to a more conservative anglo-catholic sort of one so that was what led me to discovering anglicanism and then from there I ended up just falling in love and by the end of that year this was 2013 by the end of that year from January to August no excuse me August to October oh how I act over is my confirmation date October October 6th that was what I was confirmed so yeah these are the five different reasons I became Anglican and a lot of this is gonna be overlapping with Eastern Orthodoxy because you know obviously my attraction to Eastern Orthodoxy is what also led me to finding Anglicanism because I wanted something very similar to that so the first one is sacramental theology this was something that was entirely foreign to me as a Baptist growing up I knew that you know Roman Catholics and others sort of believed baptism saves you know and like if you if you get baptized it's the same thing as saying the sinner's prayer but for some reason that was a work but saying the sinner's prayer was not a work and so I I knew very little about it other than that but sacramental theology while that that phrase baptism saves is not only Scripture you know it's not only involving part of sacramental theology but it's also Scripture it's just so much more than that so with sacramental theology what we are saying is that God gives us grace mediated through material substance now with that understanding what we mean is that let's let's start with the Incarnation so in order for Christ to redeem us he became incarnate what that means is he took on flesh he became human like us so Jesus is fully God still but also fully man and the way that God works and we see this throughout Redemption history from the Old Testament all the way to today God uses physical matter as a way to bring us Redemption bring us his grace so Jesus is the ultimate sacrament is what we would say is as sacramental Christians because his death his physical death and his resurrected body his entire thirty-three years of life is what brings us Redemption now in a sense we don't have Jesus with us physically in that same way but he still brings us that physical Redemption through the sacraments the sacraments the two biggest ones I want to focus on we as Anglicans do believe in seven sacraments and I might have done a video on that already but I'll do one if I haven't but the two I want to focus on our baptism and the Eucharist so what this means is in receiving baptism I am joined to the death of Christ as Romans 6 talks about that through our baptism as many as have been baptized have been joined to the death of Christ and through the eating of the flesh and the blood or the bread and the wine we are partaking of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ this is very clear in John chapter 6 this is very clear and all the passages about the Last Supper this is very clear and first Corinthians by st. Paul and this is a belief that's held throughout the entire church so these are not works that we are doing so as Anglicans we do not believe in a works based salvation no Christian who believes in sacramental theology because of that therefore believes in a works based salvation what the sacraments are are the works of God God is telling us covenant with us and we are receiving the baptism for the remission of sins as Acts talks about and we are receiving receiving the life-giving body and blood of Christ through the sacraments as well I do want to point out that this is not something that's done apart from faith if these are done apart from faith these are actually two our condemnation as st. Paul talks about in first Corinthians so we have to understand that faith is still a central and essential aspect so it's by grace in the sacraments through faith so grace is what we receive through the sacraments and again this is a mediated grace through Christ through the sacraments so the benefit of that is that growing up we believed two different things we believed in the sinner's prayer being what saved us so we would pray a sinner's prayer and then that would work but only if we quote really meant it and we also believed in once saved always saved so that you could be you know dirty heathen right after you prayed their sinner's prayer and as long as you really meant it at that one time you quote go to heaven after death so the problem with that belief though is well a few ones it's not biblical but another one is that in a practical sense it does not help or give any sort of assurance so as a teenager I was for a few years constantly praying the sinner's prayer because I was afraid that I didn't mean it enough I didn't even know what it meant to mean it enough so you know you're just having the sort of perfect mind set I was trying to have that perfect mind self like okay I don't want this for any other reason than just to be you know because I just want to be a child of God or something like that because I was I would have been told like well if you're doing it because you just won't we don't want to go to hell then you never were saved to begin with and there is that key phrase you know you never were saved to begin with because people who walked away were you know the pastors and you know other church leaders and stuff we're saying oh well they just never were saved to begin with and that's hard to say when you've got people who do seem faithful for years and then they walk away like that so what the sacraments provide is a an objective external assurance so whenever I feel like I'm not being a good Christian or I'm not living up to my faith well it might be true I'm not living up to my faith but that doesn't mean I'm not a Christian any longer you see I have been baptized as a Baptist believe it or not I still look to my like I was not rebaptised as an alien looking we don't we don't do that and so as a Baptist I was baptized and I look to that and I say because that is what God says of me I am a Christian because I've been Baptist but baptized rather than because I prayed a prayer and I I you know made this decision so thing rather instead it's God's decision saying he is baptized he is a part of my family and nothing can be can be done to take away the fact that I've been baptized likewise with the Eucharist I received the body and blood of Christ and in that I am receiving life through Christ so that's the first reason the second reason is the importance of church history so growing up I was in a lot of Baptist private schools Christian schools and we did have a very popular I won't name a very popular Christian fundamentalist curriculum that was used and in their church history I was always confused by how they did stuff so I was I was really attracted to the name Ignatius I thought that was a really cool name and in our history classes and about this is probably fourth grade I want to say we heard about this guy named Ignatius and he lived in the second he died in the second century the very beginning of the second century and I thought oh wow and the book said something to the effect of that we have writings of his I thought oh wow if only we could read those like I want to read those writings so I can learn more because he if he died in the beginning of the second century that means he knew the Apostles and and other Christians like what what does he have to say but the book either implied or outright stated that he was a heretic because he didn't believe what they what Baptist believed and we had other people like that too so Justin Martyr and in st. Irenaeus st. just a martyr Saint Irenaeus and others like that st. Clement of Rome and it was basically like the the mines that we were being given in this history book was basically as soon as the Apostles died the church fell away and then when Saint Agustin came then the church sort of got back and then the church died away again that was the argument within the history textbook and I I was always troubled by that even as a kid I always thought well then how do we have any assurance that we're following the right thing if there was no continuity and then there was a book actually I have it right here and not on purpose I just happened to have it here that I was introduced to called the trail of blood so the trail of blood okay so this is getting a bit too much into the why I'm not Baptist thing rather so I'll get away from that but the point being that as an Anglican I we are not only you know we are not only friendly towards church history we look at that as an important lens to look at scripture through now that does not mean we place church history on par with Scripture or Scripture or even above course or saying is that we have to look we always have to interpret scripture through a lens so we're either going to do it from the lens of the 21st century or from other lenses like the 16th century the Reformation or what we're going to do is going to try to see what the consensus of church history has said about these passengers because what we want to do is we don't want to have innovative theology we don't want to make things up new off the spot the Holy Spirit is not giving new interpretations the Holy Spirit is not giving new theology or anything like that so we want to do is we want to stay consistent with what the church has taught so I saw that as a very big important emphasis within Anglicanism and I really loved and appreciated and respected that I think not a little crooked I don't know I'm still learning but I think it's fine so that leads to the third point what's known as the Via Media so one of the things I really appreciated with in anglicanism was that we we don't quite have a confession some people say we do and it's kind of one but regardless it's a very it's not as specific we'll say that as the Westminster Confession the London Baptist fashion the Belgic confession or the Alex Berg condition we don't want to we want to cast as wide a net as possible with an orthodoxy so when it comes to things like predestination we have a understanding of predestination that the reformed would agree with while not while saying it doesn't explain it enough and Lutheran's would agree with that as far as I understand and even Roman Catholics would agree with it and the reason we're we're doing that is we don't want to speak dogmatically beyond what Scripture in the father's reveal we are Augustinian in our understanding of predestination or semi Augustinian depending on how you interpret st. Augusta and himself definitely earlier san agustin and elements of later but anyway that's regardless so as a Via Media as an in-between what we're saying is we're not trying to go too extreme towards something like Roman Catholicism or too extreme towards like the Puritanism where I mean we want to not be too dogmatic on uncertain things now that has good things and then there are bad things because of that so one of the problems that we have today with an Anglican ISM is that people have pushed that via medium mentality to make it to where it's how sure okay so like you know the whole gay marriage thing and all that sort of stuff we're dealing with that but to be fair I mean if you look at a lot of Lutheran Church churches or I mean even with Roman Catholicism today you know that that hasn't guarded too much too well against it we're just the most obvious because we've had major fights recently because of that and I'm gonna switch four and five not that it matters to you guys because it goes hand in hand so the fourth one would be we're both reformed and Catholic with a little bit of Lutheran mixed in now this is connected to the Via Media obviously but I think it helps understand that we're taking we're understanding ourselves as wanting to draw from the best from the consensus traditions so with an anglicanism we see a lot there's a lot to appreciate with Calvin I'm not going to deny that if you actually study Calvin himself and his Institutes I have a lot more respect for him and while I disagree with him on a number of things but I have a lot of respect for him over over a lot of the more modern understandings of Calvinism even as Eucharistic theology I don't think is as weak as some people would say as well we want to hold to the cath lissa T of the church so we hold to the Catholic tradition and within the Catholic tradition what I mean by that is not Rome or the papacy or anything like that I just mean like sort of the consensus of church history that that's our grounding we want to be Catholic and our grounding and with that little bit of glue Tharin in Lutheranism mixed and we do hit see a lot of that with especially the early parts of the formularies with the understanding of Eucharistic theology we were sort of in between both Luther and Calvin I would say sometimes leaning more towards Calvin but our formularies are a little bit tricky with all of that so we we see ourselves as wanting to embrace the best out of the Christian tradition and I have a great appreciation for that and then the fifth one and this one is probably one of the more important ones for me the first and you know the sacramental theology is one of them and the other one is the liturgy liturgical worship has something been something along with sacramental theology that has changed my life as a Christian it has helped me understand that I am going to worship not to get something out of it but specifically because I am wanting to be formed by it more into the image of Christ I guess you could say that's quote getting something out of it but that not for my entertainment in other words so as independent normal Baptists we we did not have the whole concert venue thing and all that which you know I'm thankful for that I didn't grow up like that however when I went to college I started going to a Southern Baptist / nondenominational church it branded itself as nondenominational but it was Southern Baptist and in that it was a concert it was a flat-out concert and I had always found myself troubled by it as much as I enjoyed it because I I wouldn't have formulated it this way but I felt like I was training myself to treat church like a an entertainment venue so I would I would have problems with it because it was catering to me but I still went into it and then that's when I discovered in Eastern Orthodoxy and liturgical worship so what happened was when I became Anglican or when I first started visiting an Anglican parish I was just impressed by the beauty they have you know they have iconography they have incense they had used ad orientem worship which is where the priest is facing the same direction as all the people so we're all facing the same direction and worshiping together rather than the priest facing you and like I'm having it that way so and on top of that what we did pad was we use what's called the 1928 Book of Common Prayer the 1928 US Book of Common Prayer there were some others that were 1928 as well but those are different this is the one people are usually talking about when they talk about the 28th and this is what's considered in the US the last of the traditional prayer books the 1979 is the current one used by the Episcopal Church and then my own province which is known as the Anglican Church in North America uses the 2019 and this one solid as well but what I really love about the 28th and the traditional prayer book is that it uses traditional language sort of a King James II and Elizabethan sort of language and it's just incredibly poetic I mean it like it's literally song people singing the traditional prayer book it is it just drew me to the beauty and beauty is different from entertainment so the way entertainment works is it sort of it's the difference between candy and a steak I guess you could say so candy sort of fills your immediate needs and all that sort of stuff and it gives you that sort of sugar high and as far as steak though steak what it does is it actually satisfies and fulfills you and it actually you know nourishes you so with the Liturgy of the traditional prayer book especially although I would say liturgy in general if it's done well does this it it actually feeds a nourishes you spiritually rather than just giving you that sugar rush of the entertainment and I I don't mean to knock I I'm not saying the people who do sort of the modern worship service with the concert venue and all that are not Christians or anything like that or I'm better than them but I do think that there is a severe fundamental problem with that sort of approach to worship so the Liturgy I'm gonna have to read this one prayer I closed the book that then realize I have to play this so my favorite prayer in the entire prayer book and probably my favorite prayer ever is what's known as the prayer of humble access and this is a prayer that we pray with well the priests praise it in the 28 prayer book but if there are allowances made to where we all pray it together it goes like this this is right before we're about to receive the Eucharist we do not presume to come to this thy table o merciful Lord trusting in our own righteousness but in thy manifold in great mercies we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table but thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy grant us therefore gracious Lord so to eat the flesh of the eye dear son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood and that we may ever more dwell in him and he in us amen and the importance of liturgy besides his beauty is that it helps form you as a Christian so what it does is it shows you this is this is what we should be looking for when we pray this is what we should be looking for in our confessing of sins this is what we should be looking for in our you know preparation for reception of Holy Communion and it helps make a sort of structure for us so as an example I use this example a lot when I I don't have kids but if I were to have children I would teach them the ABCs how would I do that I wouldn't be saying okay well whatever order you want kids you know start with F FB g dr k s like like that's not how we were doing we have a structure ABCD efg and then we even have a song for it now could you do it in a different order could you sing a different tune I suppose you could but why are we fiddling with something that works it was the idea there's nothing inauthentic that does not make me less of an authentic reader because I memorized my letters by doing it the traditional ABC's way likewise in in learning liturgy this is not a vain repetition thing because that's one of the sort of critiques I get often from my sort of nondenominational or Baptist friends or family is that well this is vain repetition well yes if it's vainly done it is repetition but I've growing up I've heard a lot of quote vain repetition of Baptist prayers or nondenominational prayers you know father just we just want to just and just father and thank you just and all that you know everyone has quote vain repetition what this is is it is a structure for us to follow and we always have to make sure that we're putting our heart into prayer whether or not we're repeating words on a on a page in a prayer book and in fact actually one of the problems I had growing up as a Baptist was like with my prayers I was always you know wanting to make sure I was doing it you know eloquently and I don't have to worry about that at least not nearly so much as doing with the liturgy what I can do with the liturgy is just read the liturgy now with that I have to put my heart into it and and you know am i believing these words but again that's with every single sort of prayer that you do and we also don't say that you only do liturgical prayers and you don't do extemporaneous prayers I did a podcast episode a few maybe two years ago now where I was explaining the different types of prayer that we have the two of them and I think I have I think I did pointed out five but two of them are liturgical prayer which is from a prayer book and then extemporaneous which is the whole talking to God like a conversation sort of thing and both are needed I will say so yeah that's it and so those are five of the reasons I became Anglican and there's a whole story background behind all of that then I might get into one day in one of the videos but for now that will be it thank you very much for watching

Channel: Barely Protestant

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Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020