The Anglican Tradition: A Handbook of Sources (Paperback)

The editors Evans and Wright worked in chronological arrangement to incorporate sources from the early church to the present. They do not include canonical texts, as these are assumed to be foundational already as part of the Anglican triad of scripture, tradition and reason. The first text included is a piece by Clement, Bishop of Rome; a letter to the Corinthians, addressing various contentious issues in a way that continues to speak to the church. Other early authors incorporated include Irenaeus, Melito, Ignatius, Cyprian, Origen, and others. These are writings shared by the whole church, East and West; part of the intention of the editors, reflecting the will of the Lambeth Conference, was to stress the historical continuity of the Anglican Church in its various provinces today with the church historically over time, all the way back to the earliest post-canonical writings.

The writings from the sixteenth century forward are primarily drawn from Church of England and other Anglican sources. As a result, even in the index there is no entry for John Calvin or Martin Luther, a remarkable thing given that their theology and influence has had some impact on the development of Anglicanism; this I feel is the one drawback of the book, that it takes a bit too narrow a focus sometimes in the effort to adhere to the catholic rather than protestant strands of Anglican history, save where those protestant strands are directly English in nature.

The material included here includes both 'acta', the official documents or texts, and 'exempla', writing from later authors who reflect the concerns and ideas of the time. Some are from later historians or church officials; most come from the mainstream of church history and documentation. However, the 'acta' generally carry no more 'official' weight than the 'exempla' -- this is not an effort to create an official Anglican canon of documents with, in the words of the editors, 'automatic and binding authority for all Anglicans'. In many ways, there is no distinctively and definitively Anglican theology, so such a canonical effort would unlikely succeed in any case.

For most readers (including most Anglicans), this material is the kind of optional-extra reading they don't need to be able to participate in the life of the church. This really is a book for scholars and those concerned with the historical progression of the church; in that sense, this book would be of value for any Anglican library, particularly clergy and academic professionals.