Reformation Anglicanism:
A Vision for Today's Global Communion.
Edited by Ashley Null and John W. Yates III, Crossway, 2017

Michael Nazir-Ali’s excellent opening chapter, ‘How the Anglican Communion Began and Where It Is Going’ is worth the price of this worthy book. Starting with the Roman occupiers Nazir-Ali traces the spread of the gospel at first through Celtic Christians and later by the Roman mission. There were differences, and clashes until the Roman church got the upper hand. Ali comments, ‘In short, the Roman missional strategy was to stress founding structures capable of shaping a message, whereas the Celtic way was to proclaim a message with the power to create a community.’ He continues with terrific thumbnail sketches of the Reformers (who wanted to evangelise whole nations), the Evangelical revival, the spread of the gospel through missionary societies (a big section), and the various issues in church state relations. Anglican ecclesiology and unity are discussed and finally a proposal about the way forward. He says, ‘Once again, it is very likely that the renewal of Anglicanism will come about not through the reform of structures (necessary as that is) or through institutional means but through movements, raised up by God.'

Ashley Null provides an overview of the Reformation in his chapter, ‘The Power of Unconditional Love in the Anglican Reformation’. He traces its beginnings back 200 years and locates its power in the new desire to read and listen to the Scriptures, which led people to believe the promise of justification by faith and so to experience the love of God. The chapter gives a good picture of what Null calls a six-act drama: the pre-Reformation Scriptural meditation reform; an underground evangelical movement in the 1520s and early 1530s; an independent Church of England under Henry VIII from 1534 to 1547; a fully Protestant church guided by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer under Edward VI (1547–1553); the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church under Mary (1553–1558); and the restoration of Cranmer’s Protestant church under Elizabeth (1558–1603). Like the first chapter this is a masterful summary of a complex picture.

The next four chapters pick up the four big themes of the reformation: sola Scriptura (John W. Yates III), sola gratia (Ashley Null), sola fide (Michael Jensen), and soli Deo gloria (Ben Kwashi). Each of these is full of interest and insight, and is made more interesting because of the use of original sources and quotes. They are not dry expositions of doctrine but a kind of devotional historical theology embedded in real world issues of the time.
In the final chapter Ashley Null and John W. Yates III offer ‘A Manifesto for Reformation Anglicanism’. The foundations are in the nature of Anglicanism: it is apostolic, catholic, reformational, mission-focussed, episcopal, liturgical, transformative, and relevant. All very good. But my reading of it was that it was written from inside the reformed walls. Many of us live outside the walls in an Anglican church which ignores or denies these Reformation themes and practices. Although the keys are there for a new reformation of a captive Church, some further application to that context would have been good.
Dale Appleby, WA