It just occurred to me that the first generation Anglican leaders in America were pragmatists, not theologians. The second generation Anglican bishops were solidly grounded theologians and wildly successful missionary bishops.

The extent of the change would have been obvious to anyone walking into a fully reformed English church building in 1553.

It is completely possible (even probable!) that you can go to an evangelical church and hear a thoroughly biblical message about what we can and should do for God, and never once hear what God in Christ has done for you.

Catholic scholars claim that he was too gentle and kindhearted to support the systematic extermination of evangelicals in England, but in fact this last Roman Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury led a cleansing at Cambridge University of the menacing evangelicals January 26, 1557.

What would a one-stream Anglican Church look like - - the biblical, evangelical stream that’s front-and-center in the Articles of Religion, the Homilies, and in the Book of Common Prayer? We all know that three-streams sounds nice and agrees with our digestive sensitivities (Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal), but it’s a new idea - only from 1954 (Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God). We also know that there is not a hint or suggestion of more than one stream anywhere in the Formularies.

Perkins passionately believed that Scripture can be best understood and preached from a reference of law & gospel: the law (the Bible’s commandments and imperatives) show us God’s standard for living and our failure to live up to it, and it then leads to our need for a righteousness beyond our own self-righteousness. The gospel is the word of Scripture about God’s solution for human sinfulness: Jesus who lived the life we failed to live in our good efforts, and who died the death that we deserve because of our sin.

Words and meanings change over time. “Evangelical,” for example, was the term used for sixteenth century English Protestants, but it has been kicked around so much that today almost any Christian who reads the Bible will slap it on their website. Pentecostals, Anglo-catholics (Evangelical Catholics), three-streamers, and seminaries who self-identify as evangelical are often very separated from it’s original context and meaning.