Cranmer a Europhile, not an Anglican

Professor MacCullouch says Cranmer was a Europhile, which is a pity. Cranmer’s second wife was a German. Martin Bucer’s Strasburg was the closest relation to Cranmer’s Canterbury.

Paraphrasing the great Professor: Cranmer, the effective Father of Anglicanism, was very un-Anglican. He has no enthusiasm for Cathedrals or choral evensong. He did not believe in an Anglo-Catholic doctrine of the apostolic succession of the clergy. He was an enthusiast for clear thinking and thoroughgoing double predestination. He did not expect the Prayer Book to fossilise but to be further Reformed and he wanted a book more radical and evangelical than the eventual 1662 BCP was to become.

Cranmer would have been appalled, Professor MacCullouch said, by the idea that Anglicanism is a via media (middle way) between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism for you can’t have a via media between AntiChrist and Truth.

Cranmer was a Reformed Evangelical and his church has been hijacked. He wouldn’t be happy with the good old C of E.