Anglican Identity: Keeping the Global Family Together

One major theme of Dr. Peter Toon's recent writing has been that Anglicans in the West/North have lost their way - at least in part - because they have set aside, forgotten, or neglected the very basis of the Anglican Way of Reformed Catholicism. In contrast to their African and Asian brethren, they seem, he believes, to have lost the conviction that the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation and that also the Bible is authoritative in the Church through the appropriate guidance and use of the historic Formularies (The Book of Common Prayer, The Ordinal, and The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion). In this essay - "Anglican Identity" - Dr. Toon explores critically yet sympathetically three recent international Anglican reports (Eames, Virginia, and Windsor) in order to ascertain what is being said, and what needs to be said, about Anglican Identity in the present crisis of the global Communion of Churches.