The Protestant Face of Anglicanism

by Paul F.M. Zahl

This volume tells a story that is virtually unknown today: The Protestant background and history of Anglican Christianity. Through a fascinating exploration of the development of Anglicanism and its wider Protestant context, Paul Zahl attempts to show-contrary to the opinion of many present-day "Anglican writers"-that Anglicanism is not just a via media (between Rome and Geneva, for example) but has been stamped decisively by classic Protestant insights and concerns. He also discusses the implications of Anglicanism's Protestant history for our own age, suggesting that this dimension has an important contribution to make to the worldwide Christian community in the new millennium.

Genres: Theology

Paperback

First published September 1, 1994

About the author

The Very Rev. Dr. Paul Francis Matthew Zahl is a retired Episcopal priest. He formerly was rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Chevy Chase, MD, and dean and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, Ambridge, PA.

He studied at Chapel Hill, Harvard, St. John's College (Nottingham), the University of Nottingham, Trinity College (Bristol), Wycliffe Hall (Oxford) and the University of Tubingen, where he received his doctorate in systematic theology in 1994. He has also served as rector of Episcopal churches in Scarborough, NY and Charleston, SC; was Curate of Grace Church in New York City; and was Dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent (Episcopal) in Birmingham, AL. He and his wife, Mary, are the parents of three sons, John, David and Simeon.

Reviews

[Samuel Sadler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very helpful history of the Anglican church, focusing on Protestant distinctives. Zahl recognizes that simply being a "middle way" isn't sufficient to define a church. By reclaiming its Protestant history and identity, the Anglican church would build itself a house on solid ground.

[Rex Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second half of this book was far better more helpful than the first half!

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a polemic, and not in a good way. Like many recent political books, it does not aim to persuade the unpersuaded--it only seeks to confirm the views of the already persuaded.

The author's thesis is the the protestant "face" of Anglicanism has been hidden by the enemy: Broad Church liberals and Anglo-catholics. He argues there is no via media or synthesis of Reformed and Catholic. Of course he hates the 1979 BCP. He ignores large swaths of Anglican history such as the Anglican Divines (he barely mentions Hooker) and grossly simplifies English history, specifically the Elizabethan Settlement, Archbishop Laud, and the Glorious Revolution. Of course he loves the Puritans.

Finally, the author picks and chooses (scanty) authority to prove his tendentious points. One humorous example of this cherry-picking of authority to prove a point is the following: "An important glimpse into the Protestant self-understanding of the vast majority of English people at mid-century is crystalized in a letter of Queen Victoria ..." We are not amused.

I was very disappointed by the book.

[Honza Prchal · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were some lines in this book that were revelatory to me, in particular the distinction between the Anglo-Catholic focus on the presence and incarnation versus the Protestant focus upon the redemption.
The book is decidedly fair to his intra-church, even to Rev. Zahl's intra denominational, antagonists without ever watering down his argument.
I'm not entirely convinced by his argument, as I lean both broad-church and high church simultaneously, and I don't think Luther's desire to strip theologically uncongenial bits out of the Bible almost disqualifyingly bad for someone arguing most of the time for "sola scriptura". I don't give him credit of his use of "reason", which I find in far greater share in Erasmus and Thomas Moore, who remained within Roman Catholicism and became Protestant villains. (Luther's clear faith and hymn writing are more to my taste, as are even his reforming spirit and humility before the secular powers.) But these are theological preferences in our joint quest to approach the godhead, quibbbles, really, at least for the fair-minded. After all Rev. Zahl closes by acknowledging those quibbles when pointing out that the godhead both everywhere around us and somehow more appropriate in dedicated sacred spaces designed to make our approach seem easier (in his remeniscences of contrasting Anglican Churches in England and reformed versus Roman Catholic churches in Switzerland's Protestant heartland).
In this acknowledgement of intra-church opponents, Rev. Zahl is an example to me. When I sang at a "progressive" church a few years back (he'd call them "liberal" that had actually managed not to replace Christianity with its secular idols but somehow managed to retain faith (see also German progressive churches' consistently lousy record during the Second World War and it's antecedednts, in shameful contrast to Roman Catholics, who were cowed politically in order to avoid the fate of Catholics and other Churchmen under Nazism's banker and ideological cousin, Communism, but didn't compromise their faith or their tradition of refusing to carry out plainly immoral orders, or German Fundamentalists like Bonhoeffer's even greater resistance - being faithful and progressive is a historical anomaly), I was convicted by their faithfulness. Most such folks are arguing from a falling away from faith, and their claims to "reason" have always struck me as anything but (the nuclear freeze is anything but reasonable, whereas the immoral and horrid doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction/MAD is anything but unreasonable), though they've dominated the non-specialist historiography by claiming reasonableness as the quality justifying their unreason. The claim fits culturally, if not, well, reasonably. (Seriously, read Voltaire and tell me he's reasonable, or even accurate, in comparison to the Catholic opponents of the deeply immoral French Crown that preceded poor Louis XVI, or that con-artist, Freud, or even that serial child killer, Jean Jacques Rousseau - the tone of reason isn't a substitute for the real thing.)
In those ways, Rev. Zahl's book reads true. It illuminates it's subject, that's for certain. it also has one of the most readable and accessible iterations of the 39 Articles that I've seen. It takes a task and sticks to it clearly and entertainingly, while illuminating various side issues along the way (like the difference between the proposed 1928 Prayer Book in the UK and the American 1928 Prayer Book, and its replacement by a Trojan Horse of an anti-sacralizing replacement that also suppressed a number of bracingly clear Protestant tendencies in the aulde version. These issues were deeply confusing even to a long-time Episcopalian Anglophile like myself. Rev.Zahl makes them clear, and he presents them fairly while arguing a particular case.
It's really a lovely book. I'm not surprised that he told me that it's his only book where he wouldn't change a single word.

[Ben Crosby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. Although my churchmanship is decidedly high, I think the near disappearance of low-church piety and evangelical belief in today's Episcopal Church is indeed a tragedy. I have some Reformed sympathies, especially in soteriology. I've enjoyed Zahl's other books. And his fundamental thesis, that the idea of Anglicanism as a 'via media' between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism would have been incomprehensible for most of the history of Anglicanism as a distinct ecclesial body, is sound. But alas! On my reading, this is more of a morality play than a history: Queen Mary, the Laudians, and the Tractarians are all villains, effacing the purity of the Gospel and spitting on religious freedom. The embattled evangelicals, then, stand boldly against their catholicizing enemies. For all Zahl's assurances that this is not a polemical work, I found it rather unfair. That said, it was a valuable introduction to a couple centuries of evangelical thought and practice within Anglicanism, and gave me some books to add to my reading list.

[Xavier Tan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent (brief) survey of Anglican history, though overly simplified at many junctures. I do wish Zahl would show his working a little more when making assertions, eg. when tying the downplaying of Calvinism with a veiling of Protestant theology (though he does speak of non-Calvinists like Wesley in a positive tone by virtue of their evangelicalism) and when arguing that to be truly Anglican is to push back against the Anglo-Catholicism (eg. citing Cranmer and Ridley concerning the Lord's Supper (rather than merely asserting that they "argu[ed] against [transubstantiation] with massive learning and irrefragable logic" and the Anglican divines concerning ecclesiology)

[Joseph Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

helpful for me to better understand Anglicanism.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like historical origins of religions this book is for you. It is somewhat difficult to read, but interesting and enlightening.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Paul Zahl provides an excellent and engaging defense of a thoroughgoing Protestant reading of the Anglican tradition.

[Patrick Schlabs · Rating 3 out of 5]

A helpful contribution to the ongoing discussion of Anglican identity. But a bit dated and unnecessarily dense.

[Darren · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author puts forth a pretty good (but not ultimately compelling) argument for more emphasis on the Protestant side of Anglicanism.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 3 out of 5]

I myself am not an Anglican. I think that is the reason I did not enjoy this book. In this slim book, Zahl provides a helpful history of the Anglican/Episcopal Church in both England and America (the history of the Anglican Church in England I had previously gleamed from Alister McGrath's book "Christianity's Dangerous Idea").

However, his central aim is to demonstrate the Protestant nature of Anglicanism. He separates Anglicanism into Anglo-Catholics, Evangelicals, Protestants, Liberals and Charismatics. This is ultimately the point at which I felt completely lost. Not being an Anglican, I am not so aware or attuned to the varying traditions within the Anglican Church (I believe Zahl would consider himself an Evangelical Anglican, but I cannot be certain). For instance, how does Zahl define a Protestant compared to an Evangelical? This is never made clear.

He ends with suggestions for recovering a Protestant Anglicanism. Many of his suggestions I can affirm. He points to the three-pronged Anglican approach of Bible, tradition, reason. He also stresses the importance of the Christian's unmediated relationship with God, a Protestant point he believes needs to be recovered, especially from Anglican churches that may have moved closer to Anglo-Catholicism.

Personally, I would rate in 2/5, but that's because I had just learned about much of Anglican history in England and so a lot of the history outlined by Zahl in the book was redundant. But if you are unaware of the struggles between the Catholic, Anglican and Puritan Christians, then Zahl's review of Anglican church history is valuable.