ANGLICAN VALUES: THE VIRTUES AND VICES OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH

Anglicanism and the vices that have emerged over time. The author argues that a return

to these foundational values may offer guidance for navigating contemporary challenges

within the church.

BY GRAHAM TOMLIN

July 5, 2025

In the light of the changing face of Anglicanism and disputes as to what

it means to be Anglican, Graham Tomlin here goes back to the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries to find the central concerns of the Reformers

that may still guide us today. By doing so he provides us with six Anglican

values or commitments – Scripture, culture, modesty, accountability,

politics and community – which he discusses in order to highlight both

some of the virtues and some of the besetting vices of Anglicanism.

An email recently arrived in my inbox that read thus:

The ANGLICAN VIRUS: This has no effect whatsoever. It just sits on your

computer talking to lots of other computers. By the time it gets round to

changing anything, you’ve upgraded your machine and rendered the virus

obsolete.

Jokes like this demonstrate that Anglicans don’t have a great reputation for change.

However, the world is changing fast around us and, in fact, if we look carefully,

the church is changing too – Anglicanism is fast becoming much more varied than

it has ever been. The Anglican churches in most British cities display a huge variety

in their ways of worshipping and ordering church, and that’s not just to point up

the differences between Anglo-Catholics, Liberals and Evangelicals. Evangelical

churches, despite an underlying similarity of doctrine, actually express their faith

in very different ways: conservative, charismatic, contemporary or traditional.

Around the world too, many Anglican churches who don’t have the characteristics

we English think of as typically Anglican (for example establishment and a parish

system) are also asking what it really means to be Anglican. Again with new ways

of being church emerging around us all the time, from cell church to youth services,

from the Minster model to seeker-driven church, there’s a need in assessing all of

these to ask the question whether they are compatible with Anglicanism or should

be avoided as unAnglican.

This article seeks to answer this question by going back to a seminal period in

Anglican history – the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – when the church was

reformed (not formed!). It tries to ask what were the central concerns of the

Reformers as they re-shaped the church, in a process which has left an indelible

mark on Anglicanism ever since. This exercise might in turn help us to identify

the particular Anglican ‘style’ of doing church, worship, mission and everything

else a church does.

What follows is not an exhaustive list, but identifies six Anglican commitments

which at the same time might help us avoid some of our characteristic and

besetting sins. It also suggests that there are some tendencies in Anglican history

which have contributed to its decline in western societies, and that some of the

answers to our predicament may also be found within that very history, especially

in these years when the identity of Anglicanism took decisive shape. Perhaps if

we had kept more true to our heritage, we might have avoided some of the sins

which have sometimes led us into trouble.

SCRIPTURE

The Anglican church has always been a biblical Church. It has always made an

explicit appeal to Scripture, and its laity and clergy are encouraged to read Scripture

regularly. If they said morning and evening prayer daily, as they are encouraged

to do, then they would probably read more Scripture than that required by almost

any other church. It’s worth remembering that one of the first acts of the English

Reformation was the placing of an English Bible in every parish church in the land.

Throughout the troubled sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although deeply

divided over many issues, mainly about church order and ceremonial, the surprising

thing is that, even into the nineteenth century, the Church of England experienced

a basic unity over the supreme authority of Scripture. Whether you turn to the

seventeenth-century Puritans, the ‘High Church’ party of Archbishop Laud and

Henry Hammond, or the Latitudinarians such as Edward Stillingfleet and William

Chillingworth, all were committed to the principle of the authority of Scripture.

Now, of course, they disagreed on the nature of that authority. Some, following

Luther and, later, Hooker, took the position that Scripture taught all things

necessary for salvation, but where Scripture was silent, there was liberty of practice.

Hence, ceremonial actions, and liturgical nuances not explicit in Scripture could

still be permitted. Others at the more Calvinist end of the spectrum such as Thomas

Cartwright, the leader of the Elizabethan Puritans, claimed that what was not in

Scripture should not be allowed in the church. It is of course the former of these

positions that is enshrined in the 39 Articles. Yet the point is that the dispute was

over the extent and nature of that authority, not the authority itself.

Now this is not just an abstract point about dogmatic authority. It is at heart

an essentially pastoral assertion. It refers to the question of what Anglicans choose

to shape their lives, and on what they will feed their hearts, minds and souls. The

Anglican belief in the authority of Scripture asserts that Scripture is good for us –

it breeds good healthy Christians. As Cranmer put it in his Preface to the Great

Bible of 1540: ‘In the Scriptures be the fat pastures of the soul; therein is no

venomous meat, no unwholesome thing, they be the very dainty and pure feeding’.

As a result, the Anglican church places a great stress upon the private and public

reading of Scripture, even before it is preached on. Before we speak about Scripture,

we must first listen attentively to it. Bishop Jewel, in his Apology of 1562 boasted:

‘There is nothing read in our churches but the canonical Scriptures, which is done

in such order that the Psalter is read every month, the New Testament four times

in a year, and the Old Testament once in a year.’ How many of us do anything

near that today?

Being gradually imbued with Scripture, steadily absorbing its mindset and its

spirit (of course canticles and Psalms are Scripture just as much as the readings

from the New and Old Testaments), the aim is familiarity with Scripture and basic

Christian doctrine. It aims at slowly cultivated holiness of life, rather than dramatic

but short-term spiritual special effects. The Book of Common Prayer commends

the patristic idea of reading through the Scriptures every year, so that ‘the clergy…

should by often reading and meditation in God’s Word be stirred up to godliness

themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine… and that

the people, by daily hearing of Holy Scripture read in the church, might continually

profit more and more in the knowledge of God.’

Here is a church that sees the reverent, expectant and attentive daily listening to

Scripture as the key to holiness. Perhaps the decline of personal daily Bible reading

among Anglicans is both a sign and cause of our plight.

Besides its pastoral function, this Anglican insistence on the authority of

Scripture is also a polemical assertion. Scripture is the text that is final and

constitutive for Anglicans, not papal decretals, canon law, unwritten traditions, nor

even psychological theory, sociology, opinion polls or the voice of the media,

however important it may be to listen and learn from them.

This is an important assertion of the distinctiveness of Christianity as opposed to any

other way of life on offer in our culture. Too often in the past, Anglicans have been

seen as

lukewarm, conformist, socially conservative. Now, along with so many other

institutions in the west, we are disdained as part of an old passing established order.

If we were more true to our heritage and identity, we might realise that our appeal

to biblical authority is a call to live by the story of the Bible, and no other story. It

is a call to be different, to live by a different set of rules, to march to a different

drumbeat, to avoid the social conformity which has been one of Anglicanism’s

besetting sins.

CULTURE

One of Anglicanism’s more regrettable characteristics is a form of cultural

imperialism which has insisted on imposing forms of worship, architecture and

language on alien cultures. Sitting in nineteenth-century Anglican churches in

Jerusalem or Lahore can feel little different from sitting in an Anglican church in

Surrey (though it’s usually a littler warmer in Jerusalem or Lahore). In the arena

of worship, we have often clung to forms of liturgical rigidity and correctness which

don’t always take into account changing patterns of life or culture.

The early sixteenth century in particular was a time of great cultural change.

As the Renaissance re-introduced the virtues of classical culture into European

minds and burgeoning urban life, and as new worlds and continents were being

discovered through the explosion of travel and exploration, this was a period in

which those at the cutting edge of developing thought, including the reformers,

were very aware of the shifting sands of culture.

As a result, we find in the writings of those very reformers, a refusal to prescribe

too closely forms of worship and order for everyone. There is a recognition that

the form in which the gospel is expressed, both liturgically and ecclesiastically, is

not fixed and must change with changing culture. They tend to see in the silence

of Scripture on these kinds of questions, a mandate for flexibility and adaptation.

John Calvin had some important things to say on this, for example, in book four

of his Institutes:

But because (God) did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies to

prescribe in detail what we ought to do (because he foresaw that this depended

upon the state of the times, and he did not deem one form suitable for all

ages), here we must take refuge in those general rules which he has given,

that whatever the necessity of the church will require for order and decorum

should be tested against these. Lastly, because he has taught nothing

specifically, and because these things are not necessary to salvation, and for

the upbuilding of the church ought to be variously accommodated to the

customs of each nation and age, it will be fitting (as the advantage of the

church will require) to change and abrogate traditional practices and to

establish new ones.

The same principle is present among Anglican reformers as well. Article 34 of the

39 Articles (which was present in Cranmer’s original articles as well) reads:

It is not necessary that Traditions and Ceremonies be in all places one and

utterly like; for at all times they have been divers, and may be changed

according to the diversities of countries, times and men’s manners, so that

nothing be ordained against God’s Word.

This is all down to two particular aspects of Anglican theology. One is the Anglican

view of authority: that Scripture alone has authority, not any particular

interpretation of Scripture, or cultural reading of it, however compelling or

contemporary that reading may be. Such a view of authority is very liberating. As

a result, Anglicanism has an inbuilt flexibility to respond to different cultures and

people, as long as this does not run counter to Scripture. The other aspect is the

Reformation doctrine of adiaphora, the belief that although there are central gospel

issues which are not negotiable, others are secondary and changeable. Of course

it is not always easy to discern which category some doctrines or practices fall

into, yet, as Oliver O’Donovan points out, ‘the point of a good theory is not to

save us the task of thinking, but to organise our thoughts fruitfully’.

In the 1960s, it was common amongst Anglicans (as well as others) to hear

the opinion that, in response to a changing culture, we need to change the gospel

message yet leave the rest of the church intact. Now perhaps we can recognise

that this approach has not worked. Instead perhaps we are rediscovering that there

is little wrong with the gospel. Instead it is the forms in which the gospel is

presented, lived and expressed which need to change. Anglicanism is in fact entirely

happy with this approach – from its (re)formation, it has always believed that, in

changing cultures, our customs and habits need to change. It therefore has an ability

to create new forms of Christian living and belonging and worshipping.

If innovation and Anglicanism have often seemed unlikely bedfellows, then

perhaps it’s because we have been untrue to our roots. New emerging forms of

church and evangelism such as Alpha, Cell Church, Café church, Alternative

Worship, so long as they are within the boundaries and under the authority of the

Scriptures and relevant church authorities (see the fourth value below!), must not

necessarily be assumed too quickly to be unAnglican. Instead, they must be tested.

Then, if they meet with the deeper essences of Anglican faith and practice, they

should be welcomed and embraced. Again Calvin gives us good advice: ‘love will

best judge what may hurt or edify; and if we let love be our guide, all will be safe’.

MODESTY

Another of Anglicanism’s besetting sins has been arrogance. Ecclesiastically, we

have often been condescending to other churches, especially those who have

seceded at different times from the established church. We have disparaged, or

even created, other churches by our casting out of different groups, such as the

Puritans, Wesley’s Methodists or the non-Jurors. Yet again this assumption of

superiority is outlawed by the reformers. For example, consider the position taken

up by Anglicans over episcopacy.

After the Reformation, all churches in Europe faced a choice over what to do

about bishops. Some (for example the Roman Catholics and conservative Anglicans

such as William Laud) retained the idea that bishops were of the esse of the church,

guaranteeing continuity from age to age. Others (‘free’ churches and Presbyterian

puritans within the Church of England) argued that they were unnecessary. The

position taken up by the mainline Anglican reformers was different from both of

these. It was that bishops were not essential to the being of the church, but useful

for guaranteeing good order. They were not of the esse but they were of the bene

esse of the church.

Most Anglicans (even Laud himself!) didn’t argue that the three-fold order of

bishops, priests and deacons was the only possible pattern for church leadership.

They simply argued for it on the basis of long custom in the church and its provision

of a good workable system of government. What they refused to do was to

9 O’Donovan, Thirty-Nine Articles, p 110. 10 McNeill, Calvin’s Institutes. 4.10., p 1208

Graham Tomlin Anglican Values: The Virtues and Vices of a Christian Church

unchurch non-episcopalian Christians. Whereas the Roman church effectively

decreed that in the absence of bishops there was no real church at all, most

Anglicans held back from this stance. They saw episcopacy as a matter of

pragmatism, not dogma, a matter of external government, not necessary for

salvation. Continuity of the identity of a church depends not on the presence of

an office or person, but on the presence of Jesus Christ through the Spirit and the

good news of his grace, expressed in word and sacrament. If that is lost, then there

is no church, no matter how many bishops it has!

The result of this attitude and perspective is a church which acknowledges the

right of other churches to exist. Perhaps the fruit of this came in 1689 with the

Act of Toleration, at the time of the ‘Glorious Revolution’. This Act, which allowed

dissenting congregations to meet, and took away the right of clergy to compel

attendance at Anglican churches, was on the one hand the surrender of the Church

of England’s claim to be the only legitimate form of Christianity in England, but

on the other, a right and proper act of humility and modesty, true to its reformed

and catholic identity.

Here, Anglicans ate a good slice of humble pie, and rightly so. The particular

decisions taken about episcopacy in the sixteenth century are an illustration and

indication of the principle of Christian modesty which lies at the heart of

Anglicanism. Since then we have hopefully learnt from, rather than disparaged,

Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists. Maybe today we can learn much from

Vineyard churches, Korean Pentecostals and home churches. In particular, western

Anglican churches must adopt the same modesty, humility and willingness to learn

towards their younger and more vigorous sister churches in Southeast Asia and

Africa, rather than feeling superior to them, insisting they fall into line with western

(and often failing) ways of doing things.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Having said all this, the Reformation in England did insist on keeping hold of

bishops. Apart from the brief and chaotic period of the Commonwealth in the mid

seventeenth century, the Anglican church which emerged from the Reformation

retained the medieval threefold order of ministry - bishops, priests and deacons -

rather than move over to a Presbyterian system as many Elizabethan Puritans

would have preferred.

One of the ongoing tendencies, particularly true perhaps of evangelical

Anglicans, has been a tendency to go it alone. John Berridge in the nineteenth

century, for example, argued that he was quite entitled to cross parish boundaries

without permission, on the grounds that his neighbouring clergy were not preaching

the gospel: ‘if they would preach the gospel themselves, there would be no need

of my preaching it to their people; but as they do not, I cannot desist’.

Charles Simeon on the other hand held the more mainstream evangelical Anglican view

that it was right and proper to keep to one’s own patch: ‘a Preacher has enough to

do in his own parish’.

Sometimes evangelical impatience with the rest of the Church of England has led to a

spirit of independence, autonomy and, dare we say it, spiritual pride, claiming that God

speaks to us alone, and no-one can argue with that.

The Anglican commitment to episcopacy in this context is not a claim that only

episcopal churches are real churches. Instead it is a commitment to right and proper

accountability within the church. It derives from a healthy theology and spirituality

that knows that, left to ourselves, we are quite capable of getting it wrong, reading

the signs badly, and mistaking God’s will. We need other Christians, older, wiser and

more experienced than us, to check our bold ideas, discern whether they are of the

Lord, and to ensure our vision and passion does not trample on the ideals and godly

plans of others. And so, while Anglicans can dream up new ways of being church,

new styles of worship, new approaches to ministry, we try to do this with right and

proper consultation, and submitting ourselves duly to authority - the authority of

those God has placed over us, just as the Scripture says (1 Cor. 16:15-16).

Of course, this sometimes feels uncomfortable. We may often feel that bishops

get it wrong (and being human they sometimes will). However, this is, at least so

Anglicans tend to think, far better than the alternative that is sometimes glimpsed

in the more radical wing of the Reformation (and in some forms of popular

American Christianity) where everyone who wants to plant a church does so,

regardless of the needs of the wider church, ending up with a different kind of

church on every street corner, and the Christian witness broken into a thousand

tiny fragments.

Accountability is a sign of health and not inertia. It connects us to others, and

prevents a damaging spiritual independence that ignores the whole body of Christ

in favour of the particular part of the body which may be my responsibility. And

that is what episcopacy preserves. It connects the local church with the regional,

national and global church. It maintains the Christian virtue of humility and

correctibility. It is, in other words, a response to the biblical doctrine of sin – my

tendency to see and do things my way. Yes there are limits – bishops themselves

need to be held accountable to the will of God revealed in Scripture and due

processes must be in place to ensure that happens. Yet that does not take away

this precious and vital Anglican value – the discipline of accountability.

POLITICS

The churches of the Reformation related to their respective state powers in a

bewildering variety of ways. Calvin’s Geneva was a city state, independent of wider

regional powers, and it established a delicate balance between the roles of minister

and magistrate in the order of a Christian society. Zwingli saw state and church in

Zürich as two sides of the same coin so that, as a pastor, he could play both a

political and a pastoral role at the same time. Lutheran churches often saw religion

imposed and protected by state authorities. Calvinist churches in France operated

under suspicion and distrust from the state, having to function largely as underground movements.

In England, the Church that emerged from the Reformation was tied closely to

the realm, with the monarch as supreme governor of both church and state – a

unique arrangement among Reformation churches. Clergy were both pastors of

the church, yet also servants of the monarch, taking a strict oath of allegiance to

the Crown, a position which has not been without its tensions then and ever since.

Naturally not all Anglican churches remain established in this same way, but this

historical fact still has important implications for Anglicans today.

As a result of this history, the Anglican church has always been a political

church. Not in the narrow sense of being allied to any particular political party,

but in being concerned for the polis, the city, the public life of the wider society

and community. We have never been keen on the gathered church model of a pure

group, separate from public life. Instead we have wanted to be involved in and

committed to society, even if that sometimes is a difficult place to be. This has

imposed upon Anglican churches a prophetic role. We may prefer to avoid this -

our leaders will get criticised for poking their noses into ‘political’ matters – but,

to be true to our identity, we must not run away from this responsibility. Whether

at a national or local level our history of intimate relationships with government

means that we must take an interest in issues which affect all the people in our

parishes, not just the Christians. We must articulate with boldness the principles

and vision which should shape public life. It is part of our care for whole people,

not just disembodied souls. This is in a sense a central part of a distinctive Anglican

missiology. How do Anglican churches relate to the wider society? Yes, by

evangelism, but also by taking a keen interest in the whole of life, not just the

religious aspects of it.

Since the Enlightenment, the temptation for all religion in the west has been

to buy into what Lesslie Newbigin calls the split between private values and public

facts.

Thus Christianity (and Anglicanism) can be tolerated as a spiritualizing force,

speaking only about the inner life, a retreat into the private sphere of beliefs, not

addressing the public world of facts. There is a real temptation to build separatist

church communities which glory in their vertical privileges but shun their horizontal

responsibilities. Our identity-forming history denies us that option. By sticking close

to our heritage we can avoid the temptation to pietistic withdrawal and public

irrelevance.

COMMUNITY

The English Reformation was, among many other things, a reassertion of the

importance of the laity in church life. The reformers insisted worship must be done

in the vernacular – an end to Latin, the private language of priests and theologians.

Clergy were to be like other Christians, married, bringing up children, no longer

the only ones allowed access to the cup in the Christian family meal. Holy

Communion was just that – communion both with the Lord at his Supper, and with

each other. The distinction between clergy and laity was primarily to be one of

function not status. Children were seen as included within the covenant, belonging

to the family, still baptised and welcomed. Luther’s belief that the rite which confers

the right and responsibility to engage in Christian ministry was baptism, not

ordination, also finds an echo in our Anglican formularies. Printing made Bibles

available to all, so that Cranmer’s preface to the Great Bible of 1540 could urge

lay people to take responsibility for their own reading of the Scriptures: ‘for the

Holy Ghost hath so ordered and attempered the Scriptures, that in them, as well

publicans, fishers and shepherds may find their edification, as great doctors their

erudition’.

Not put off by the possibility that they might not understand the Bible,

Cranmer urges them to read it for themselves, due to the great benefit they will

derive from it.

At least this was the theory. The practice was a bit different. The laity were in

fact only partly ‘released’ by the Reformation. Clericalism soon raised its head again

and catholic priests were often replaced by protestant preachers, every bit as

authoritarian as their forebears! One only needs to read the novels of Jane Austen

or Anthony Trollope to get a sense of the way in which Anglican churches soon

developed a clerical monopoly that effectively distanced lay people from true

Christian liberty and responsibility.

At least the idea was there. That ideal - of a church as a community of people

ministering to one another, of every believer as a priest, standing in the place of

Christ to offer counsel, encouragement, even absolution to Christian brothers and

sisters - remains. This was a distinct move away from the medieval notion of church

as a place where the laity were largely passive recipients of grace dispensed by

the clergy in the form of sacraments.

This was a vision of church as community rather than institution. Lay people

were intended to be active ministers, not passive observers, taking responsibility

for their own & each other’s growth in faith, understanding and holiness, even taking

responsibility for the church itself. If we had remained a little more true to the

vision of church laid out in the time of the Reformation, perhaps we might have

avoided clerical domination, another besetting Anglican sin.

CONCLUSION

The past often contains the secrets of the future. As we search for a way forward

for the Anglican churches into the twenty-first century, these commitments made

in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may help point a way ahead. If we can

rediscover a church shaped by Scripture, quick to respond to cultural change,

humbly willing to learn from others, properly accountable, committed to the public

life of society and with a strong sense of mutual life and community, then perhaps

God may be able to use us as he has done in the past.

The Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is Principal of St. Paul’s Theological Centre, based

at Holy Trinity, Brompton, London.