The Anglican Genius

The Church of England is the world's most notable balance of two separate traditions: Catholic and Protestant. Now & again, the balance is strained. Latest symptom: high-church Anglo-Catholics, who object to being called Protestants, have been bucking hard at all suggestions of closer cooperation with Britain's Protestant "Free Churches" (Methodists, Congregationalists, etc.).

This month London's Church Times, unofficial voice of the Anglican hierarchy, spoke out in admonition to Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals alike, reasserted the church's traditional balance.

"The terms Catholic and Evangelical," said Church Times, "rightly stand for different traditions of emphasis. But of emphasis only. The great Catholic tradition . . . emphasizes the importance of due order and authority, the vital place of the sacraments . . . The Evangelical tradition stands primarily for emphasis upon the saving power of the Gospel . . ."

The two traditions must help each other or be lost. Catholics need "a passionate Evangelical zeal for teaching and preaching the truth. They must not neglect that sword of the spirit which is the Word of God." Evangelicals, in their turn, "must recognize the need for due order and authority within the Church. They must recapture the reality of the supernatural in the sacraments . . . With the common enemy at the gate, how criminal that the garrison should be divided by labels which in reality are . . . but obverse and reverse of the one saving truth . . .

"After all, the genius of the Church, and perhaps of the English nation, is that it has held these two strains of tradition together. They are held in tension, but the tension need not be an unhealthy one. The mischievous thing is to suppose that the two traditions are in opposition. The simple truth is that any true Catholic must be evangelical. Any true Evangelical must be Catholic."

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