Anglican Values

Abstract

"Jokes like this demonstrate that Anglicans don’t have a great reputation for change. However, the world is changing fast around us and, in fact, if we look carefully, the church is changing too – Anglicanism is fast becoming much more varied than it has ever been. The Anglican churches in most British cities display a huge variety in their ways of worshipping and ordering church, and that’s not just to point up the differences between Anglo-Catholics, Liberals and Evangelicals. Evangelical churches, despite an underlying similarity of doctrine, actually express their faith in very different ways: conservative, charismatic, contemporary or traditional. Around the world too, many Anglican churches who don’t have the characteristics we English think of as typically Anglican (for example establishment and a parish system) are also asking what it really means to be Anglican. Again with new ways of being church emerging around us all the time, from cell church to youth services, from the Minster model to seeker-driven church, there’s a need in assessing all of these to ask the question whether they are compatible with Anglicanism or should be avoided as unAnglican"