Welcome Erin Ortlund! Erin is one of my heroes. She’s an amazing woman of God. In her spare time, she also blogs, and besides some great recipes it’s also THE place to get information about Americans living in Canada.

Welcome to Dustin! Dustin’s Anglican journey began five years ago when he and his family found themselves as part of a parish in the Diocese of Niagara. They currently attend a wonderful little parish in the Diocese of Qu’Appelle. His day job is to serve as an administrator and teacher at a Christian liberal arts college and seminary.

******
Why I am an Anglican
By Dustin Resch
Why am I an Anglican? In short, I became an Anglican because I felt compelled to do so. I don’t believe that my “eternal salvation” necessarily hangs on my status as an Anglican. Nor do I think that Anglicanism is the only way of being authentically Christian. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to become an Anglican.

Where does this compulsion come from, then? I think it originated in a discovery of the fundamentally ecclesial (churchly) nature of Christian existence that is, to greater or lesser degrees, embodied in the Anglican Communion. In a sense, I am an Anglican because I am a Christian. Though again, let me say that I do not think that everyone who is a Christian must become an Anglican.

What do I mean by the ecclesial nature of Christian life? Quite simply, I am trying to express this idea that the union of the Christian with Christ, which is the very basis of Christian identity, necessarily involves a relation to a people. There can be no sense that the church is a bonus or an option or an add-on to Christian faith. The church is integral to salvation. To put it in even stronger terms, being part of the church is salvation. It is this because God has called to himself a people with whom he elects to have life-giving (saving!) fellowship. To exclude oneself from the church is to risk excluding oneself from the people whom God has brought into communion with himself.

How does the Anglican Communion embody the ecclesial nature of Christian life in such a way that I feel compelled to be a part of it? This is the most difficult element of what I have written thus far, I think. It is difficult because Anglican teaching is so notoriously diverse and does not lend itself to being used to shape air tight arguments. As I have thought about that, though, I’ve wondered if there isn’t already a faithful witness to the truth of the church being made in the very open-endedness of Anglican theology: the church is ultimately a theological mystery, the contours of which we can speak about faithfully, but whose essence we can never master or contain in doctrinal formulae. Specifically, though, here are some elements of the Anglican tradition that aid its witness to the ecclesial character of Christian existence.

First, Anglicanism attests to the history and embodied nature of the people of God. Episcopal succession, I think, illustrates this point nicely. Anglican views on episcopal authority appear to me to be quite diverse. Some in the Anglican tradition have thought of episcopalianism simply as a matter of efficiency, while others have viewed it as an essential element in the church’s claim to apostolicity. By maintaining the episcopate while also acknowledging that other Christian groups are still legitimate churches, Anglicanism attests to the mystery that the faithfulness of the church is ultimately a work of the Holy Spirit, but that the Spirit’s work takes place in the embodied structures of human community.

Second, Anglicanism attests to the authority of Scripture in the Christian community as a central element in God’s self-communication. Though Anglicans are hardly known for their monolithic presentation of biblical teaching, large portions of Scripture continue to be read and preached regularly at Sunday gatherings, in Morning and Evening Prayer, and Scripture is a touchstone for doctrinal and ethical reflection. With this commitment to the authority and use of Scripture, there is also an awareness of the diversity of its interpretation and the normative conclusions that are to be drawn from it. The self-revelation of God in Scripture is authoritative for the Christian community but this revelation in Scripture cannot be finally mastered by exegetical technique or hermeneutical savvy. Anglicanism’s practice of Scripture in the community and its open-ended posture toward interpretive diversity attest to the freedom of God’s Word that promises to speak amidst the community gathered by the Spirit.

Third, Anglicanism attests that worship and piety are primarily corporate practices in which the individual finds a voice. This is illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer itself. Not only is this book an order for public services, it is also a book for personal devotion. When the Christian prays these collects and psalms, reads these designated texts, follows this way of marking time and observing the saintly lives of men and women, they do so in concert and continuity with the broader church. The diversity of Anglican liturgical and devotional practice manifest both in the ongoing adaptation of the prayer book and in the way it has been contextualized in various ways mean that Anglican worship is not static. Anglicanism attests to the mystery of the God who is worshiped in spirit and truth and who also gifts the church with the help and structures to do so in human community.

In the Anglican tradition, self-understanding and, especially, corporate life, I see embodied the ecclesial nature of Christian existence in a way that can be instructive for other sectors of the Christian church. I’ve sometimes wondered if Anglicanism’s distinct vocation is to be a microcosm of the church itself. Here is a communion that exists only by the maintenance of the Spirit’s bond of love, but that also suffers the darkness of a human community deeply marred by sin. Persisting in this situation is to persist as a Christian.