As an Evangelical, I approach the Bible as God’s supreme way of revealing his truth to me, and find it to be without error; I believe that salvation involves the conscious and intentional dedication of one’s life to Jesus as Lord; I affirm that we are accounted righteous before God because of our faith in Jesus alone; and, I place the atoning work of Christ on the cross and out of the tomb at the centre of my faith.

As a High-Church man, I view the Sacraments as God’s essential means of applying grace to our lives; I believe that God offers his Sacraments through the Church that was founded on the Apostles and ministered to by Priests; I strive after holiness as the necessary fruit of true faith; and, I prefer to worship God with the traditional forms of liturgy that we have received from ancient times.

I do not believe that these two labels contradict each other and I happily identify as an Evangelical high-churchman But why aren’t I a High-Church Evangelical? In other words, why am I an Evangelical first? While I do not believe that the terms are mutually exclusive, I do however believe that sometimes one must give way to the other.

The two most basic reasons why my Evangelical identity comes first, is that I believe the inward is more important than the outward, and, that Scripture is more important than tradition.

The Inward vs the Outward

If you look again at my definitions of Evangelicalism and High-Churchmanship, you’ll see that in general, Evangelicalism is more concerned with the inner workings of the soul, whereas to be High-Church is to be more concerned with external structures and behaviour. I believe that in the New Covenant those inner workings count more than the outward actions.

As a high-churchman, I regularly take the Eucharist and receive it as the medicine of life, but, as an Evangelical I know that the medicine is received by my internal faith and that taking it is useless, if not harmful, without believing Jesus is the Bread of Life. I believe that if an infant is baptised they are joined to Christ, but, if they do not grow up to have faith in him, it will be of no benefit to them.

As a high-churchman, I cleave to a Church that has an outward link to the Apostles via the historic succession of Bishops, but, as an Evangelical I will not cleave to those Bishops if their teaching is not based on the truth of Scripture, because Apostolic Succession is empty without the successive proclamation of God’s truth.

As a high-churchman, I strive after holy living, and value constant prayer and fasting, however, as an Evangelical I know that these things will not make me righteous at all, but merely prove my love for Christ, and that inner love alone makes me just because it points away from myself and towards Jesus Christ who is the only one that is truly righteous and just.

Finally, as a high-churchman, I adore liturgical and traditional worship, but, I know that liturgy is meaningless if you do not have a genuine devotion for God in your heart.

Anyone can take the Eucharist, anyone can be consecrated as a Bishop, anyone can do good deeds and anyone can say the words of the liturgy, but it is all meaningless if on the inside there is no faith or love.

Yes, it is true that our inward faith does not save us if it does not bear good fruits, but, that is only because without good fruit you are proven to not have faith, and so we are still saved by our faith itself, alone.

Having attended many High-Church parishes in my time, I can say that there are some that are frankly devoid of life. There may be a Eucharist every week, and the liturgy may be immaculate, but the Gospel is never peached from the pulpit, there are no Bible studies or home groups and most of the parishioners are sadly just going through the motions. I don’t want to come across as unfair, I am still High-Church after all, and the parishes where I have been the most spiritually fed were indeed High-Church, but, I am aware that the High-Church tradition is highly prone to fall into the deathly pit of nominalism. I think the reason for this is that it greatly values the externals of our religion, as we ought to, but once we value them above the internal heart of the believer, our religion starts to become empty.

Therefore, as an Evangelical, I am more drawn to the inward life of a Church than its outward ritual. Scripture does, after all, tell us that true believers “worship in Spirit and truth” (John 4:24), therefore without the proclamation of truth or the life of the Spirit, we are not truly worshipping God. Speaking of Scripture, we now turn to why I value it above and sometimes against tradition.

Scripture vs Tradition

First, let me affirm that there is no necessary tension between Scripture and tradition, and as a high-churchman I believe that most of the time they compliment each other beautifully. For instance, Scripture tells us that there is one God but refers to three distinct Persons as Divine, and this is extrapolated by tradition, which tells us that there are three Persons who are all of the same essence and thus God is one Being and three Persons. Scripture also hints towards the structure and content of the Eucharistic liturgy which is developed by the traditional liturgies of the early Church. It is also worth mentioning that the books we know to be Scripture are considered that way precisely because of tradition.

I also affirm as a high-churchman that the universal Church is inspired by the Holy Spirit to understand and proclaim the truth, and that it is indeed the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

However, this does not mean that Scripture is put beneath the teachings (or ‘Magisterium’) of the Church. The very reason why I believe that the Church is inspired to be truthful is indeed because Scripture tells me so. Moreover, the ‘truth’ that the Church is inspired to correctly interpret is Scripture itself. I believe that Scripture is wholly and completely reliable as God’s ultimate and supreme revelation of what is true, whereas the Church can and has been in error, and we know the Church is in error because of the comparison of its teachings to Scripture.

Furthermore, I believe, with Article VI of the Anglican Formularies, that the beliefs that are necessary to be held in order to attain salvation are only those which can be proved from Scripture.

As an Evangelical, I thus put Scriptural teaching above that of the Church, and am loyal to the Bible above all else. When Churches therefore go against the Bible by teaching contrary beliefs, I cannot assent.

Conclusion

All this is to say that I am a faithful Anglican. I believe the Bible is the ultimate source of truth, and that Church teachings that do not contradict Scripture should be assented to (Article XXXIV). I believe that we must dedicate our lives to Christ in our hearts, and that holy living will prove this commitment (Article XII). I believe that we are justified by faith alone (Article XI) and that Sacraments are how God communicates the benefits of our faith to us (Article XXV) and I believe that for a Church to be genuine it must proclaim the truth of Scripture. However, when all is said and done, my allegiance is always to the first of those confessions: the Bible is my ultimate authority.