Anglicanism - Western Orthodoxy

From Bishop Geoffrey Rowell:

When, in the sixteenth century, ecclesia Anglicana – ‘the English Church’ – was reformed, those, like Bishop John Jewel, who defended that reformation, did so not by saying it was adapted to contemporary culture, but by a return to the faith and order of the early church. Very deliberately, unlike the Protestant reformers of continental Europe, the Church of England maintained the historic, apostolic, three-fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons. The Church of England did not abandon the historic apostolic ministry but sought to reform it. Ever since Anglicans have held that those ordained as bishops, priests and deacons, are ordained as bishops, priests and deacons of the Church of God. Change in that ordering of ministry is therefore a matter not just for the Church of England or the Anglican Communion but for all those churches who claim to share that ministry. Developments in faith and order need this wider reference....

The Anglican patrimony is not just a matter of hymn-books and liturgy, of Evensong and the English choral tradition, important as those things are. It is a sacramental way of living out a catholic identity, expressed in relation to the community and in a wise application of moral ideals to personal and pastoral realities. It is what the churches of the East have sometimes recognized as a Western Orthodoxy. Above all it is about a faithfulness in a way of Christian living that expresses the beauty of holiness, which is about transfiguration into the likeness of Christ, living out the maxim often attributed to St Augustine but originating in the theological conflicts of Reformation Europe – ‘in essentials unity, in doubtful things liberty, and in all things charity.’