There's much to that distinction.1. In college and seminary, I was drawn to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions, even though nothing really ever came from that wooing. That's probably because at my very core, much like my Anglican sisters and brothers, my faith has always had a distinctive flavor and independent spirit. Irish missionary monks evangelized the Britons, and it wasn't until the 7th century, at the Synod of Whitby, that Rome established its authority over Christianity in the British Isles. But those tensions maintained throughout the 700 or so years to follow. See Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
2. While the break from Rome in the 16th century certainly had political motivations, it also saw the emergence of an evangelical tradition. The Church of England wasn't just a protest over the Pope's power (no matter what The Tutors told you), because it was a church that produced a genuine evangelical theology that was distinctive from the Continental reform movements like Lutheranism or Calvinism. This is probably why I'm so at home in the Methodism of the Wesleys (not the same as American Methodism, by the way -- at least not after the 1808 Conference).
3. And while there are subtle differences to the Anglican tradition from Luther and Calvin, there's a lot of Calvin in Anglicanism. The theology of the founding documents of Anglicanism -- the Book of Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion -- are in keeping with the Reformed traditions of the Swiss and South German reformations. Which probably explains why I'm so drawn to Karl Barth.
4. No matter how we may be perceived in our use of the via media, Anglicans are committed to the supreme authority of Scripture. Article VI, "Of the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation", puts it this way:
Holy Scriptures containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.Don't get me wrong -- I'm neither a Fundamentalist who believes inerrancy nor do I believe that the Scriptures must always and only be taken "literally". But I do think Scripture is at the core of being Christian. As an Anglican, I think Scripture's power is the power of the living Word of God because of Jesus. Scripture is the living Spirit's breath in the very lungs (and lives!) of the Body of Christ in the world. That's the view of Thomas Cranmer and Richard Hooker. There's a popular myth that Anglicanism views reason, tradition and Scripture as a three-legged stool of authorities, but I can assure you, that's false. At least for the Anglicanism I've come to know and love. (It isn't true of American Episcopalianism, which probably explains why I grow increasingly uncomfortable in that church.)
5. The blood of Jesus Christ, and the redemption it brings, is the very heart and soul of Anglican life. In its liturgy, its view of the sacraments, in its founding documents, and in the mind of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Church of England holds that works do not save and cannot save a person. Only the blood of Jesus Christ is effective to save. You'll never hear me say otherwise. Because this is the truth: I preach none other than Jesus, and him crucified.
6. I realize that lots of folks think we Anglicans view the sacraments -- Holy Baptism and the Holy Meal -- as conveying grace in some automatic sense. We don't. The sacraments are "effectual signs" received by faith.
7. The Anglican liturgy -- most enshrined in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer -- means to immerse a congregation in Scripture, and to remind them of the primacy of grace in our daily lives. Again, if you read the Prayer Book, you'll find that it's more Bible than anything else, and that grace is the very life-blood of Anglican theology and spirituality. Everything in the Prayer Book intends to put God's grace in front of us, constantly.
8. Anglicans are missionaries. The sending and funding of missionaries to the far reaches of the globe to preach the gospel has been a constant feature of Anglican life at least since the 18th century, although this has happened through the various voluntary mission agencies as much as through official channels. (In fact, this is how John Wesley came to America, if only briefly, and why he later edited the Book of Common Prayer for Methodists in America following the Revolutionary War.)
9. Contemporary Anglicanism is far more African and Asian that it is American or European. The center of contemporary Anglicanism is found in places like Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. (Which, to my mind, is how it should be, since Christianity has a rich tradition in Africa that goes neglected, and which should, in my opinion, be regained.) In these places there are burgeoning Anglican churches, and a great deal of evangelism. There are strong Anglican churches too in Asia and elsewhere. Noticeably, where Protestant Liberalism has become dominant in Anglicanism -- mainly in the "first world" (like the Protestant Episcopal Church in the US) -- Anglicanism is rapidly shrinking, and is possibly only a generation from its demise. It's that Protestant Liberalism that pushes me further and further away from the ECUSA day by day.