Sunday School | Foundations - History of Anglicanism

Welcome back. We're so glad to be with you guys. I'll try to be brief so you can get outside. Are you guys eager to go outside? Yes. I am so enthusiastic about this. I just love summertime and I want to go outside and do something.

So today, I want you to think about questions that you might have. I'm going to give you a couple different avenues for questions.

First of all, we will have this class next week on Palm Sunday. We will not have this class the following week on Easter. So next week Foundations, and in that class we're going to talk about Anglican worship. If you're new to Anglicanism—let me say this. If you're new to Holy Spirit and you're coming from like the Baptist side, and you're thinking, why in the world do you do all these things? Or you're coming from the Episcopal side and you're saying, why in the world don't you do all these other things? This next week's gonna be for you. We're going to talk about the peculiarities of a worship service at Church of the Holy Spirit. We'd love to shape that time around the things that you're actually most like—what's that about? To that end, you can email Dave and me at chsdoctrine@gmail.com. So you can email if you have questions like, hey, do you do this? Or why don't you do that? Or what does this mean? Or how does this work? Send that in and we'll incorporate the things that are most interesting to you into our time next week.

That's the first kind of question you might have. The second kind of question you might have is possibly you were here last week when from this stage I talked about the question: are men and women interchangeable? We had about seven minutes at the end of that time for Q&A. I'm hoping to save a little bit of time today if possible to review that. If you have questions about the things we talked about last week on egalitarianism and complementarianism, I'd love to answer those again today if need be. And if not, then maybe we'll just go outside early and that'll be fine too.

As we do with these questions, I would love to have anybody with oppositional questions come to the front. It's not really a comment and agree. It's more of a question or I'm confused or I don't understand how you could say that in light of this. We always love to promote those guys to the head of the line.

So, questions about how our services work, email those to chsdoctrine@gmail.com. Questions about complementarianism and egalitarianism, we'll address those hopefully today at the end of the time. Good enough?

The History of Anglicanism

What we're going to do right now is a really fun class or lesson or conversation about the history of Anglicanism. More or less officially in our series here—I told you last week was kind of a segue from pure biblical doctrine and into more like, how do we practice? How do we do this? So I want to give you a brief history of Anglicanism and a brief history of Church of Holy Spirit all at one time.

Probably most of you, if you had any knowledge or experience or storyline of the invention of Anglicanism, the story goes like this: There once was a wicked king named Henry, and he wanted to divorce his wife, but the church wouldn't let him, and so he started a new church, and thus was born the Church of England. Is this a story that you're familiar with? Yes. Okay.

So some of the particulars of that are accurate, in as much as there was a king named Henry, and he was wicked, and he did want to divorce his wives or behead them, either way, but whatever it takes to get another wife that can produce a male offspring because none of the other women were any good at doing that, not understanding the whole X-Y chromosome thing. It's like, Henry, it was your fault the entire time. Okay.

So all of those things did happen, but that is not why the Church of England was born and not by a long shot. The true history of the English Reformation is so much richer and better than the story of a very evil and selfish king. The work that God was doing in England—and we're talking the fifteen hundreds, fifteen hundred to fifteen fifty to fifteen sixty—this window is when the Reformation was taking place. And what God was doing in England paralleled what he was doing in Geneva, and in Germany, and really throughout the continent of Europe.

In England, who are the guys that you would think of as the reformers?

Who are the big names of these people that you know of? Martin Luther in Germany. Thomas Cranmer in England—he's our guy in England. John Calvin in Geneva. You might say Zwingli. Those are probably the biggies. Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, Thomas Cranmer—these were the guys. And so the stuff happening in the main continent of Europe was also happening in England. It was a remarkable transformation that was desperately needed because the medieval church had grown terribly corrupt.

John Wycliffe: The Morning Star of the Reformation

Two hundred years earlier, there was another Englishman who is sometimes known as the morning star of the reformation because he went first. He went like two centuries first. John Wycliffe is generally known as the morning star of the Reformation. He's more in the 1300s, very early, beginning the work. He's the first guy—we give Tyndale credit for translating the Bible into English because he did it from Greek, from the original languages. Wycliffe had done a translation into English from Latin, seeking to begin bringing the gospel back to this land that had not known it.

The English Reformation and Thomas Cranmer

In England, coming from Wycliffe with an early start at the beginning of the Reformation, continuing into around the 1500s when Cranmer is doing the same work that Luther and Calvin and Zwingli were doing elsewhere. He begins to transform the way the English-speaking world understands the gospel.

And you have to understand, the English-speaking world is massive because England was everywhere. The sun never sets on the British Empire. Cranmer was both a brilliant theologian and also a shrewd politician. Along with his friends Latimer and Ridley, he radically transformed England and therefore the English-speaking world's understanding of the gospel. Because he was also a politician and because he understood how the world worked, he persuaded Henry—this wicked king, King Henry VIII—to support the work. Henry was no theologian. Henry didn't care about the beauty of the gospel being seen, but Henry was a means to an end. To a large extent, Henry was a pawn, which is kind of crazy. But he was a pawn in Cranmer's game, and more accurately to say, in the Lord's game.

William Tyndale: The Other Giant

At the same time that Cranmer was reforming the entire nation's understanding of the gospel, there was another man working in England. We don't actually know if Cranmer and this other guy ever met, but he is the other giant of the English Reformation. William Tyndale. Tyndale was not in cahoots with Cranmer, but he is the guy that translates the Bible into English. If you were here a couple months ago when we were talking about Bible translation, I told the whole story of William Tyndale, and it is a phenomenal story. It's a gripping story, a compelling story.

So Cranmer and Tyndale and Latimer and Ridley and Wycliffe. When you think English Reformation, I would like to push Henry out of your mind and replace him with all of these astonishingly godly men. Every single one of them was killed for their faith—well, except Wycliffe. But check this out. Wycliffe died a natural death in the 1300s. But as the years went on and people realized that all of this work being done in the real reformation all traced back to Wycliffe. And so the Roman Catholic Church hated him so much that they dug up his body and burned him after the fact and scattered his ashes in the River Swift just to make good and clear that they hated this guy and that they considered him to be a heretic.

So Wycliffe, Tyndale, Cranmer, Latimer—all of these guys were just astonishing, incredible men. And all of that underscores what a dangerous time the Reformation was, particularly in England. A great deal of Cranmer's work took place while Henry was still king, and it required him to very deftly navigate a genuinely life-or-death situation. If you read Cranmer's writings in chronological order, he began his reformist work pretty gingerly—a little bit cautious, a little bit testing the waters. But as time goes on, Cranmer just throws caution to the wind, and the transformations that he is advocating for become greater and greater.

And the reformation spirit that was alive on the continent comes in full force under Cranmer. A little bit cautious in the beginning, but then he just goes crazy with it. He ends up taking things about as far as he can while King Henry is alive. There's even evidence, maybe, that Henry converted genuinely to Christ in the final days of his death under Cranmer's tutelage. Because Cranmer was an evangelist, he was an apologist, he was a theologian, and he had the king's ear. Now, whether he did or not, we'll find out eventually. He was pretty evil for a pretty long time, but the gospel of grace, salvation by grace through faith is available even to Henry. And he may have converted.

But when Henry died, his son—and that's notable because he was itching for a son—took the throne. Does anybody know? Any guys have your British history here? You know who took the throne when Henry died? Edward. Look at that. That is impressive. Okay? So Edward becomes king, and under a new king who's not as wicked as his father, really, Cranmer is able to lean in heavily into this work of really strengthening the Reformation. But there is a problem. Do you guys know how old Edward was when he became king? He was nine. Okay? So he's nine years old and he's weak and he is feeble. In fact, he's so weak that he dies by the time he's 15. But you've got this six-year window where Cranmer can really get stuff done. Right? You've got a nine-year-old king who's not a whole lot of resistance, who was on the side of the Protestants, and they were able to get a whole bunch of stuff done. And for better or for worse, for Cranmer, he really does throw caution to the wind during Edward and really presses the reforms. But then he died six years in. And do you know who became the monarch thereafter? Mary. You guys know—I'm shocked that you know this. You want to get up here? Okay. What was Mary's nickname? Bloody Mary. How do you guys literally know all this? Because you live in Virginia. Okay, Bloody Mary. Okay? William and Mary. Okay. So Bloody Mary was named Bloody Mary. So she was Catholic. And so everything, all of the freedom that they were living in under Edward, it all just swings back in this violent, miserable persecution. Mary puts hundreds of Christians to death. Right? And the preferred way to do this is burning at the stake.

So she burns people. And maybe her most famous burning—I probably talked about this during the Tyndale story—but the most famous burning was that of Latimer and Ridley. So Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, think of them as the three musketeers. These three friends were like the leading edge of the Protestant Reformation in England. And Mary has Latimer and Ridley put to death by fire. And she makes Cranmer watch. And this is all part of the strategy.

So Latimer and Ridley are going to be burned to death. When they were about to be burned, Latimer says this:

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.

Godly men, courageous men. Unfortunately, very two different strategies were employed by the friends of Latimer and Ridley to minimize their suffering in the burning. Latimer's friends—this is so unbelievable—Latimer's friends tied bags of gunpowder around his neck so that the flames would be greatly accentuated and burn hot and burn fast, and this is crucial, and do so in the right place that his death would come quickly. That strategy worked as expected.

Ridley's friends didn't employ that strategy. His brother-in-law piled extra wood on the fire thinking to accomplish the same effect. That more wood equals more flames, more flames equals more heat, more heat equals a quick death. But it didn't work. All that the wood did was keep the flames low. And so his legs burned in agony for a prolonged time while he cried out, "I cannot burn" because the flames wouldn't reach high enough to kill him.

And Cranmer was made to watch all of this. And he sees the sufferings of his friends, the particular suffering of one of his friends, and then he did something very famous in the story of the English Reformation. And what was that? He recanted. He watched his two friends suffer and die in such abject misery, and he recapitulated.

Now, Mary still condemned him to death. She condemned him as a heretic and he said, "Okay, just kidding. I didn't mean it. You were right. I was wrong." And she said, "Well, thank you, but you're still going to die." And so he recanted again, and she said, "Thank you, but you're still going to die." So he recanted again, and each recantation, each confession he signed was more abject and groveling than the last.

Because he was doing anything he could to avoid the misery and the dreadful agony that he had seen. And then he was still to be burned, and the date set for that was March 21—yesterday was the four hundred and seventieth anniversary of Cranmer's burning. At his burning, he was to give a speech to verbalize all of his recantations, but he switched the script. Instead of saying the things that Mary wanted him to say and expected him to say, he recanted his recantations. To a certain extent, there's nothing more to be gained. There is no amount of groveling, so he just said, fine. Here's the truth. Here are his last words in his speech:

I now come to the great thing which so much troubles my conscience, more than anything that I ever did or said in my whole life. And that is the setting abroad of a writing contrary to the truth, which here I now renounce and refuse, as things written with my hand contrary to the truth, which I thought in my heart and written for fear of death, and to save my life if it might be. And that is, all such bills or papers which I have written or signed with my hand since my degradation, wherein I have written many things untrue. And for as much as my hand hath offended, writing contrary to my heart, therefore my hand shall be the first punished. For when I come to the fire, it shall first be burned. And for the pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy and anti-Christ with all his false doctrine.

So Cranmer, as he is being burned, he holds his hand in the flame—the hand that signed his recantations—so that it might burn first. And he perished faithful to the gospel in deep agony so that for the next four hundred and seventy years and counting, we might know the truth of the gospel. That is the story of the English Reformation. It's not about King Henry; it is about these faithful men who knew the truth of the gospel, who suffered terribly so that it might be known by us.

It was all quite dramatic—from Henry to Edward to Mary, and then eventually her half-sister Elizabeth, who then restored things back to the Protestant Reformation and has remained pretty much ever since.

The Development of Anglicanism

Now, to speed things along dramatically, Anglicanism has basically existed in multiple centuries. You could think of it in three main blocks—roughly a century or more, then a century and a half each time.

The first block of the English Reformation was decidedly low church and reformed. Within Anglicanism, it's a relatively big tent. It runs from low church to high church. This high-to-low distinction is about the ceremonial nature. Higher is going to be more liturgical, more ceremonial. Low church is going to be more informal. Then it runs from Reformed to Anglo-Catholic. Reformed is more like the things we associate directly with the Protestant Reformation, and Anglo-Catholic retains more of the worship structures you'd see in a Catholic church. So: high to low, Reformed to Anglo-Catholic.

Sometimes we talk about the Via Media—the middle way—that Anglicanism embraces this full range of things. I would say today that generally is true. But as it began, what Cranmer was building was low church reformed. We are a church of the Holy Spirit, decidedly low church reformed. If you come from a Baptist perspective, we're going to look a little high church to you. If you come from an Episcopal perspective, we're going to look very low church relative to that. We are low church reformed. This was the first expression of Anglicanism, and we are of that strain.

The second block of time of Anglicanism, things really did move up the candle, as they say. It became more ceremonial. Higher church things were brought into the church—more of the religious aspects of it that we don't tend to embrace so readily at Church of the Holy Spirit.

The third block is when liberalism just completely decayed the church. Right now in the United States, the Episcopal Church—and when I say liberal, I really do mean theological liberalism: a rejection of the inspiration of the scriptures, the full deity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith. These doctrines that we hold to be central are not likely to be found in very many Episcopal churches, and in particular, they are not to be found in the Church of England.

We are Anglicanism—an expression of the Church of England. Everywhere the English Empire went, the English missionaries went, and so you've got expressions everywhere. When Anglicanism came to America, we called it Episcopalian.

The name "Episcopal" comes from the church government structure which focuses on bishops. Today, the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Church of England in England proper are, with very few exceptions, dead institutions. They don't believe the scriptures. They don't believe the gospel.

Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a significant declaration made by an organization known as GAFCON—the Global Anglican Futures Conference. For about twenty years, GAFCON has been warning the Church of England: you've left the gospel. You no longer hold to the scriptures. You have institutional framing, but you do not have doctrinal fidelity to the place where this thing started.

At a major global meeting just two weeks ago, GAFCON changed its name to the Global Anglican Communion, which is to say: we are not the future of Anglicanism, we are Anglicanism. They've basically declared England to be in full apostasy. Every time I read the quote from Latimer and Ridley—

Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.

—I wince, because they're doing all that they can to put it out in England. The candle is being faithfully carried in other places, but England needs another reformation. Maybe we all do. The Church of the Holy Spirit is the proper heir of the work that was done by these incredibly godly people.

The History of Church of the Holy Spirit

This body in particular, Church of the Holy Spirit, was born as an Episcopal Church. Quigg was not the first pastor—he was the second, but by far the longest, serving for thirty-five years. He grew up in an Episcopal context and came into ministry through the Episcopal Church. In the beginning, all was well. But eventually, the Episcopal Church sank deeper and deeper into theological liberalism and apostasy.

Lawrence Quigg, being faithful to the gospel, would not countenance the decay happening all around him and became somewhat of a pariah in the body. Eventually, they defrocked him and kicked us out. In terms of cultural issues, it was our position on abortion and homosexuality that they would not tolerate, and nor would we tolerate theirs. But those are really surface issues. At the core of it was that they stopped believing in the authority of the scriptures, and we did not, and we will not.

Their view of the scriptures, the gospel, basically everything important is grossly erroneous. As this was happening here, it was happening across the country. All these faithful episcopal churches got booted from a dying, faithless denomination. Their buildings were stolen. It was messy for a while. This thing was breaking down. There were all these different attempts to recombine, and it was very complicated.

There was something called the Anglican Mission in America. There was PEAR USA, where for a while we were under the authority of the faithful Rwandan Anglican Church. Eventually, it all shook out into what we now call the ACNA—the Anglican Church in North America. We are part of the Anglican Church in North America, which is basically a collection of former Episcopalian churches and a whole bunch of new churches that were planted, churches that were never part of the old history but have always been part of the ACNA.

What's been happening here in the United States has been happening on the world stage. I can't imagine the Church of England is going to say, "Yeah, you're right. We're apostate. You are the Global Anglican Communion." It's not going to end like that. We're a little bit like we've made a declaration of independence, but we haven't fought a revolutionary war. So it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out over the next ten years.

But nevertheless, whatever happens in the next decade, there really is no mistake that theologically, doctrinally, spiritually, we are the heirs of Latimer, and Ridley, and Cranmer, and Tyndale, and Wycliffe. And ironically, the official church of England is not. And so, we stand here in a rich tradition of what were once called derisively "gospelers."

When the Anglican Reformation was taking place, there were all these people that just believed in the simple, foolish gospel of salvation by grace through faith. Who just believed that we should do evangelism because God might be pleased in his mercy to open the eyes of unbelieving sinners. All of that—they were called "gospelers." You might think of it in a little bit the way we might have heard the language of fundamentalists—it's kind of like, "stupid fundamentalists," as if believing the fundamentals is something unworthy.

Well, friends, we are gospelers to our very core. We believe the gospel, and we proclaim the gospel, and we delight in and rejoice in the simplicity of God's mercy to unbelieving sinners. And we're altogether too happy to pick up that mantle and proclaim it in this generation. Amen?

So that is briefly how we get from there to here. Now, I'm happy to take questions about that or questions about last week. If you have questions about how we do our worship service, save those and email them and then we'll bundle that into next week. The last two classes are live, and only if you're mad at me can you speak. Start there. You don't have to be mad at me, but let's talk about something meaningful.

Gary: Should we be sending missionaries to England?

Yeah, yes. I wouldn't be surprised if we were. And there are faithful remnant churches everywhere. Frankly, somebody could be sending missionaries to us. So there is vast unbelief on this continent, in Europe, and England. But for sure, we should be. Does somebody happen to know if we are sending missionaries? Lily, tell us.

Lily: Most recently, I read that 40% of missionaries being sent out are actually from the global South currently. And so we actually have many people coming from countries that formerly were missionized by western countries, and the trend is the opposite now.

When Lily uses the language "the global South," what she's saying is that 40% of missionaries are coming from the global South. That's not like from Alabama. That's from Sub-Saharan Africa. So the global South is a way we describe what you would think of probably as the third world. Western Europe and North America are the places that fancy ourselves like we've got the established economies, we are like we've got all of our ducks in order. Well, spiritually, that has changed profoundly. So global South, Sub-Saharan Africa—these places, GAFCON is, I mean, I don't know the numbers, but I would imagine it's more African than anything else. There's a faithfulness there. Kim and Ben, you guys have been there so much. Would that feel fair to you? Fair language that the majority of Anglicans are probably African?

Kim or Ben: I don't know if that's statistically accurate or not.

I heard recently there's 22,000,000 Anglicans in Nigeria and like 50,000, maybe 500,000 in England. Crazy numbers. So yeah, the global center of this has kind of moved there. Great.

Adam: A question came up in our group this week. What do we make of Deborah in relation to last week's discussion?

Deborah from Judges? Yeah, how are we making of Deborah? Okay. So this is great. So let's go back. We're going back to last week. Grab your Bible and go to Judges.

When I make the claim that it's God's intention that we would see—hang on, let me find this. Go to Judges four. Let's see. Okay. So the book of Judges is a complete and absolute train wreck. This is what you need to know: read Judges. It is a disaster on every page. The refrain of Judges is:

In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as he saw fit.

The thing is meant to show Israel in complete raging apostasy. And so God raises up leaders, he raises up leaders, he raises up leaders, and there's a brief moment of like national resurgence under some leader and then it decays. It raises up and then it decays. One of those leaders that leads is Deborah.

Now, a couple of things that are worth saying. Judges four four is where you begin to read her story.

Now, Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. So, judge is not like an official office, but they were the people that were the de facto leaders at each season and there's this very clear cycle. People are in misery, God raises up someone to rescue them, they in their misery turn to the Lord, and then everything gets better, and they're like, yeah, let's leave again. And just over and over again, you just read it. It's like you get seasick reading this book. Okay? And so people have pointed out, Deborah, absolutely female and leading. And so what is up with that? And I'll do this really quickly, but come down to verse seven. Now, I'll start on verse six.

She sends to Barak, the son of Abinoam from some place, and says to him, "Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you go gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun, and I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the River Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand." — Judges 4:6-7

She is telling this man, the Lord wants you to do this, you sissy. Okay? And Barak says to her:

"If you will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go."

And she said:

"I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman."

And then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kadesh. Okay. What you see in that is she is saying to the man, dude, this is your job. Step up. Lead like a man. And he's too cowardly to do it. And so she rebukes him and he says, the particular shame that will come to you because of this is that the victory will belong to a woman who is willing and courageous and capable of doing what you are not. Okay?

And I think in a lot of cultures, a lot of different situations, this is the situation that we have. God has called men to this role of leadership, but when the men will not lead, that leaves literally two possibilities. The women and the children will lead. And they do. And there's lots of situations where women fill the role that God has called men to do because they are compensating for the men who are disobedient. Right?

Now, there's more that we could look here. It's interesting. Over and over again in the book of Judges, it says that God raised up this judge. God raised up this judge. It never says that about Deborah. It simply says that she was judging. So we don't see the Lord putting her in that position. We see Deborah stepping into a gap that has been created because of men who would not lead. So that's a very short version. So I have absolutely no shade to throw at Deborah, nor do I have any shade to throw at women. When we say that men should lead their families, well, does that mean that single mothers are in sin? Obviously not. Right? Obviously not. Women are very often left in a position to do what no one else will do. And I think that we should honor them and appreciate them, but we should also rebuke the men for creating these cavities that need to be filled. Okay? So that's a brief touch.

On the Roman Catholic Church

Is the Roman church still off track in the eyes of the Anglican Church of America? So, meaning, is the... Today, when we say the Roman Catholic Church, I would absolutely say that the Roman Catholic Church is not... I believe there is erroneous theology in the Roman Catholic Church, but I would not describe the Roman Catholic Church today as corrupt as I would describe the medieval church. The medieval church was full blown corrupt. Sorry, not sorry. It was horrific. That is not our present case.

I would absolutely have theological differences with the Catholic Church, but I have multiple friends who are faithful followers of Jesus, who worship in a Catholic context, and I don't think that they're apostate to be there. But I would have a very hard time being a part of a Catholic church based on the likelihood of being nourished in those environments. I don't think that Catholic teaching and theology tends to be very nourishing.

But no, I would not equate today's Roman Catholic Church with the medieval church that these guys were reforming against. I think that's a very different situation. Okay?

Book Recommendation on Anglicanism

You got a book to recommend on the history of Anglicanism? Let's see. Were you at the first service? So Dave quoted a guy named Ashley Null. And I love Ashley Null. He and John Yates Junior have a book called Reformation Anglicanism.

So I think that is a fantastic book. Reformation Anglicanism by Ashley Null and John Yates the third, I think. That might be a great place to start.

Lily, also Awakening of Washington's Church was written by a member of the Falls Church and it chronicles much of the schism that happened between the Episcopal and Anglican church. It's very approachable and it's a really good proof text for precisely what leaders of the Episcopal church actually said that was so condemning. This is called the Awakening of Washington's Church because Washington was on the vestry of the Falls Church.

I was curious also, one of the things that is interesting to me about the beginning of the English Reformation is that when Cranmer was first there and things were first moving, there was this going in the reformed direction and the low church direction. So you had some throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. And then in later, but not too much later iterations, there was this "well, no, this isn't really wrong. We just kind of got rid of everything because we really just rebelled."

Let me repeat your question so everyone knows what you're saying.

My question is: could you talk a little bit more about just the way that they decided what to keep and what to lose?

So Lily's observing that when the Reformation is taking place, imagine you're in this medieval church with all of its corruptions. You have two options. One is that you just clear the table and start over, and the other option is that you retain all that you can and just cut away the bad parts. And in either strategy, if you clear the table and build again, you still have to decide what are you building? And if you're cutting things away, then you have to say, "Well, do we keep this? Do we not keep that?"

The Anglicans, the Church of England, did retain more than anybody else did. I think that's real. The Presbyterians nuked everything. The Lutherans are a little bit more. The Anglicans kept other things. For instance, the order of bishops—that is something unique to Catholics and Anglicans. We maintained the church government. Whereas others came more out of a Baptist kind of framing, a very different understanding of church government, as do the Presbyterians.

As far as what rubric existed to guide their decisions about why to retain this, why not to retain that—I don't honestly know. My knowledge is gonna grow pretty thin on this pretty quickly. But it is the case that in the beginning, as I mentioned, Cranmer was more modest in his reforms because he was navigating a political situation in which people were literally getting killed. He wasn't just going to be bombastic about it. But then, as he thought he had—mistakenly thought he had—more safety, he began to play it less discreetly as time went on. And then the whole thing got shut down and it was just painful.

I don't know if they had some particular rubric that they were evaluating to decide what to retain. I would hope that what they were trying to do was be biblically faithful to what Scripture teaches. But, of course, they, just like you and I, were culturally conditioned. If you thought the Church of the Holy Spirit was hopelessly corrupt and you wanted to go start a new one, you might still sit in pews. You might still have windows in your church because, of course you do. There are certain things that just feel natural and normal. So I'm sure there are things that they retained that we might look at and say, "Well, I don't know about that." And there were things that they chose to do that we wouldn't have fully understood.

I will say this, and then maybe I'll shut up. The more that I've read the original writings of Cranmer, every time I read Cranmer, I'm shocked by how low church and reformed he was. He has a series of homilies that he required all the new pastors to read once a year. Like, "I'm gonna write your sermon once a year. You got this handful of messages." His homilies are so on point, and they are so absolutely low church reformed. It's like reading a Campus Crusade for Christ booklet.

I mean, things are like—I am shocked because I have often experienced Anglicanism through the last three centuries of this higher church thing that has been laid on it. That was not Cranmer's original vision. It was the simple, foolish gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone. And it's lovely and beautiful and I really do have to stop talking.

That is all for now. Thank you for coming and next week we'll talk about how do we do it here, so email us your questions.