The latest recording of three Protestant history professors talking shines the spotlight on Anglicanism with Dr. Miles Smith taking heat and receiving praise for his communion's contribution to confessional Protestantism. The conversation (with Dr. Korey Mass, the Lutheran, and Dr. D. G. Hart, the Presbyterian) began with recent news about Episcopalians' apologies for hosting evangelical celebrity pastor, Max Lucado, at the National Cathedral to preach. This item provided space for distinguishing Anglicans from Episcopalians. And that distinction in turn led to various questions about Anglican identity. Two recent books, mentioned at least, Gerald Bray's Anglicanism: A Reformed Catholic Tradition and Charles Erlandson's Orthodox Anglican Identity are valuable for answering those questions. Much of the discussion, though, revolved around the appeal of Anglicanism to evangelicals in contrast to the limits of such attraction among confessional Lutherans and Presbyterians. To borrow a line from H. L. Mencken, heave an egg down the hall of an evangelical institution in Wheaton, Illinois and you'll hit an Anglican.

No one died.