Anglicanism Alive and Well

Brian Miller
February 3, 2014

Anglicans have never been very showy people. There was once that G.K. Chesterton fellow, but he eventually moved on. Not that Anglicans don’t talk about their faith or excel in their given fields. If it weren’t for Anglicans, Anglo-American culture as we know it simply would not exist. However, it remains a curious fact that most famous Anglicans are not necessarily famous for being Anglicans. Edmund Burke, and even the theologian Richard Hooker, are remembered as great political thinkers. John Donne, Samuel Johnson, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and countless others are remembered as poets. Even great Anglicans who are remembered primarily for their Christian works are hardly ever remembered as Anglicans per se. The Wesley brothers and George Whitfield are remembered as evangelicals. C.S. Lewis, depending on which circles you run in (and I run in both), is either a great evangelical or an almost Catholic. Similarly, it is often taken for granted that the works of men like John Henry Newman and G.K. Chesterton are all “Catholic Works” when the reality is decades of their writings were produced while they remained members of the Church of England.

It sometimes seems that Anglicans, at least in America, are like something out of a fairy-tale. We read about them occasionally, but when pressed we would have a hard time saying who they are and what exactly they have done for Christianity. It doesn’t help matters that much ink has been spilled, including by myself, about the demise of the Church and its never ending controversies. But this is really only half the picture. Conservative Anglicans are ever present, and influentially so, in our current public discourse. the rest