The Renewal of Anglicanism
Save on Publisher Spotlight through April 30!$18.89
Overview
Anglican belief and practice allows that God communicates through his Word as well as through the beauty of his works. The trick, of course, is to keep the two sources of communication in balance. Nowhere is this balance better struck than in the writings of the atheist-turned-Anglican-clergyman Alister McGrath. McGrath takes Scripture very seriously as an unshakable source of truth for belief. At the same time, McGrath recognizes that God also communicates through art and literature. McGrath draws on these two different sources to teach us more about God and about how to live in light of what he has communicated. McGrath also offers a thoroughgoing defense of God’s existence, again drawing not only evidence from Scripture but from the beauty of creation.
This work sets out to inspire new hope for the future of Anglicanism. Indeed, it is the start of a renewal, showing readers the first steps in the thinking, talking, and action that, under God, will bring life to his people.
- Challenges the reader to renewal and evangelism, in response to the Anglican weariness beginning in the 1960s
- Recommends the reconstruction of the via media or ‘middle way,’ the bringing together of diverse groups
- Urges the Anglican church to renew their roots, as they did in reformations of the past
- Anglicanism in Transition
- A Lost Generation
- Evangelism and the Renewal of Anglicanism
- The Renewal of Anglican Theology: Addressing Experience
- Reconstructing the Via Media
- The Renewal of Anglican Theology: Returning to Roots
- Theological Education and the Renewal of Anglicanism
Top Highlights
“Western Christianity has been deeply affected by this concern for roots. In differing ways, both the sixteenth-century Reformation and the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement represented a systematic attempt to return to the vision of the New Testament or apostolic church. One of the central insights of both reformers such as Luther and Calvin, and Anglo-Catholic writers such as Newman and Liddon, is the realization that the church of today needs to be constantly challenged and nourished by returning to its roots in the apostolic era. This is no historical romanticism, based on the belief that things were better in the past than they now are.” (Page 135)
“The idea of a via media has fascinated Anglicans, especially during the nineteenth century.1 Much has been made of the manner in which the emerging English national church attempted to steer a middle road between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The notion of mediation between two extremes has become, for many, a central element of Anglican self-definition. Historically, there is ample evidence to lend weight to this contention. The Elizabethan Settlement (1559) is widely regarded as a studied attempt to steer a middle course between a somewhat conservative Catholicism, which had gained the ascendancy during the reign of Mary Tudor, and the more radical forms of Protestantism which were attempting to displace it.” (Page 99)
“It is thus potentially meaningless to talk about ‘making Christianity relevant to the modern world’. This implies a theoretical universality to ‘the modern world’ which is absent in reality. Every attempt to accommodate Christianity to the beliefs of one social grouping proves to make it irrelevant to another. The paradox underlying the entire liberal enterprise is that for everyone for whom the gospel is made ‘relevant’, there is someone else for whom it is made irrelevant.” (Pages 120–121)
- Title: The Renewal of Anglicanism
- Author: Alister McGrath
- Publisher: SPCK
- Publication Date: 1993
- Pages: 176
Alister McGrath
(DPhil, DD, Oxford University) is the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University. He previously held the chair of theology, ministry and education and was head of the Centre for Theology, Religion Culture at King's College, London. He is in constant demand as a speaker at conferences throughout the world and is the author of many books including The Dawkins Delusion? and Christianity's Dangerous Idea.
.
Save on Publisher Spotlight through April 30!