Anglican Adjectives pt. 3: Evangelical

For those of you desiring to learn more about the Anglican tradition and its history, I invite you to pick up JI Packer’s wonderful book The Heritage of Anglican Theology. In this book, Packer lays out seven shared “Anglican adjectives” — essentials shared by all Anglicans.

The seven adjectives are: biblical, liturgical, evangelical, pastoral, episcopal, national, and ecumenical. In this series of brief posts, I plan to tease each of those adjectives out.

What It Means To Be “Evangelical”

When you hear the term evangelical, many different images probably flash before your eyes (some good, some less favorable). By evangelical, Packer surely includes some of those elements but rejects others. With the term evangelical, Packer is emphasizing these five features: (1) a love of the Bible, (2) a central emphasis on the cross, (3) an orientation to evangelism (inviting others into the life of Jesus and His church), (4) emphasis on mission, and (5) a high view of the church.

Packer writes, “The Anglican Church is evangelical. That means that our worship and our thinking about Christian life, testimony, and influence center always on the gospel, a full-orbed gospel, which includes the incarnation, the atonement, bodily resurrection, present reign, and forthcoming return of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ fills the mental horizon of mainstream Anglican believers; the claim and the purpose is that in all we do, we are seeking Christ’s glory and furthering his kingdom.”

Amen to that!