Why Aren't You Anglican? | Douglas Wilson

so your teaching on emphasis in Covenant has really helped to impress upon me the Catholic universal not popery of Christ Church my family and I have found a nice biblically faithful Anglican Church near us which we are considering joining what is your take on traditional reformed Anglicanism and why aren't you 9 can also what do you do with apostolic succession laying on of hands and all that stuff Wow okay that kind of question is very hard to answer because you have to ask you know compared to what right so so let me say before we get into the all the Anglican stuff let me give my shout out to some of my favorite Christians in all church history who were Anglicans you know whether it's CS Lewis or Latimer or Ridley and you know there are there are places in the world and places in history where anglicanism was that was where faithfulness was going right and so in any given situation what you want to do is find where the Spirit of God is at work and throw yourself into that and so this is not sort of an I'm not saying anything here perched from a balcony looking down in all human history saying that in every case in every way even if you even if you lived in 9th century AD Bavaria you had to be a Presbyterian sorry there weren't any Presbyterians no yes there were you know um so I'm not a purist in that way so a shout out three cheers for three cheers for godly Anglicans everywhere and also three cheers for people who grew up in a faithful Anglican Church and who loved the Lord and who have grown and and are thriving under that kind of ministry three cheers for them but if the question is I'm live in a moderate big city and there's a faithful Anglican Church and a faithful Presbyterian Church and a faithful non Baptist Church and so forth I would say well join the faithful Presbyterian Church every says well why well because I'm a presbyterian she wants another answer then that's you know ask someone and this is not jingoism or sort of vaunting over everybody else it's just I'm just telling you what I what I think the Bible teaches now having said all that having qualified this one of my concerns is that evangelicals modern conservative evangelicals are liturgically rootless they don't know their own tradition and consequently they're starved for something any kind of substance and so what they do is they go into you know they get it they look up a couple of Wikipedia articles and start donning articles of ecclesiastical clothing that that are random and and they and they start doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that as though church history we're a smorgasbord and the end result is that it's Anglican Anglican II but it's not it's not historically Anglican and it's it's like playing dress-ups and so I have a real problem with playing Anglican dress-ups but that's not a problem with anglicanism it's a problem with liturgical ii starved Baptists and Presbyterians who don't know their own who don't know their own heritage okay so if but if you were to try to justice a glee define he says here let's say you've got a reformed Anglican congregation well so that congregation and in Christ Church is going to hold a number of things essentially in common both being reformed but there are going to be certain things that distinguish it as distinctively Anglican right what are a couple of the premier convictions of Anglicanism that's going to distinguish it from a Presbyterian congregation one of the things that mentioned there is a particular view of apostolic succession I know that you've got there are variants trains within angry where there would be differences of opinion over that I hold something that I would call baptismal succession so I think that there is a historic succession in the church but I don't think it's an act of government which is what ordination is I think it's an it's an act that has to do with the sacramental sacramental impartation of life so so I'm not I don't believe in order to be lawfully ordained you have to have hands laid on you by someone who had hands laid on him by someone who had hands laid on him going back to the Apostle Paul I don't think it's like an electrical circuit but church governments not like that with the Reformers I believe that when a congregation of believers gathers as John Murray argues you've got a bunch of Christians washed up on a desert island and they start worshiping they have the authority bestowed on them as a worshiping congregation by the Holy Spirit to establish an order of worship to establish the church government to to do all these things and that's a baptismal succession another another thing distinct distinctive mark would be sort of the relative altitude of the worship so higher liturgy so Anglican worship tends to be more ornate more defined more specified than then I am comfortable with but we have Christ Church we have a liturgical form of worship it's but it's not baroque it's not a baroque liturgy it's it's structured and obvious and you can follow along but I have actually aesthetic objections principally to an overly ornate liturgy but that would be that that's how I would answer the question if someone would ask me how but how are they different in terms of the nature of the hierarchy in Presbyterian or in continental reformed you don't you have sort of a broader church where here's here's the best way to illustrate it in political terms Congregationalism is like democracy Presbyterianism is like a republic and Anglicanism privacy of different kinds of that with a hierarchy is like a monarchy so you have top debt and you know sort of top-down authority bishops Archbishop's that sort of thing in in a republic you've got authorities but the authority flows from from the bottom up but it's a specified representative Authority and then democracies you know Congregational churches are like Greek city-states we're anything right

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 102,235

Keywords: Ask Doug, Federal Vision, Christ Church, Calvinism, Reformed, anglican hymns, anglican church, anglican chant, anglican songs, anglicanism, anglican mass, anglican church service, anglican anthems, anglican apostolic succession, presbyterian college, presbyterian diet, presbyterian church in america, presbyterianism, presbyterian hymns, presbyterian sermon, presbyterian service, canon press, anglican, doug wilson, douglas wilson, acna, calvinism vs anglicanism

Id: EshQXwcRv38

Length: 7min 22sec (442 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2011