Politics Finds a Home -- at Church

Of course, things inside the evangelical camp are divisive. According to one study, 29% of pastors considered quitting in the last year, and Wehner suggests why: "the aggressive, disruptive, and unforgiving mindset that characterizes so much of our politics has found a home in many American churches."

Politics, in and of itself, makes for a lousy worldview.

Anglicans believe that grace is given in the sacrament of Holy Communion ("effectual signs of grace"), and that the real presence of Christ is spiritually experienced in the believer's heart when they receive the grace by faith with thanksgiving. Jesus is spiritually present everywhere ("I am with you always"), but, after his Ascension, he is bodily in heaven where he sits at the right hand of God the Father until the day he will return ("I will return in the same way").

Somehow these advocates of the pure gospel of God are overlooked and other camps within the borders of our Communion associate with them, regarding them as normally or nearly their own by a common conviction, unaware of their deep attachment to tendencies of theological thought that do not chime with the major emphases that characterize the particular movement with which these mistaken supporters happen to identify.

Thomas Cranmer came to the evangelical faith a bit later in the Reformation and he obviously did not attend the Colloquy, but he (and John Calvin) settled on a middle way between Luther and Zwingli.