Wheaton College Students Increasingly Transition to Anglicanism Amid Liturgical and Doctrinal Shifts

Three days a week, all undergraduate students at Wheaton College attend chapel — a required 45-minute Christian devotional service that often includes congregational worship songs, call and response, and a 20-minute guest lecture. Within this service, many students participate in some formulation of traditional liturgy. They respond to the Scripture reading with “Thanks be to God,” recite the Lord’s Prayer by memory, and participate in corporate confession.

This practice is a first for many students coming from an evangelical background and may be a foundational explanation for what is commonly known as the “Wheaton to Anglican Pipeline.” The phrase refers to the phenomenon where students en masse enroll in Wheaton College and change their denominational affiliation to Anglicanism. This reality is so well known within the student body and by its professors that those off campus have begun to take note. After hearing that I would be enrolling in Wheaton College, my Presbyterian pastor jokingly warned, “Do not become Anglican.”

An explanation for this phenomenon could be the liturgy of chapel, world-renowned Anglican professors in the Bible and Theology department, or the numerous Anglican churches in geographical proximity to the college. However, I believe it points to a larger trend among young Christians in the United States. As a person in my 20s, I have first-hand witness of growing trends among Christian young people. My time at Wheaton has made it clear: young people want tradition.

These young people are in a pendulum swing away from the free-flowing worship or extemporaneous prayer that characterized much of late 20th century Evangelicalism. But every tradition has its liabilities. These young Christians are amidst a gradual gravitation toward traditional liturgy and established churches with historical continuity, traditional hymnody, church authority, etc.

American Evangelicals include a plethora of Protestant denominations in the United States, among them the Evangelical Free Church in America, the Southern Baptist Convention, some Presbyterian denominations, and many non-denominational churches. These churches, although diverse, often emphasize a personal (individual) relationship with Jesus, preaching of the Word, and sometimes lack liturgical structure. This compares to other classical Protestant traditions including Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, and some other Presbyterians, where the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is the focal point of the service, there is corporate recitation of historic creeds and confessions, and a liturgical structure.

Although I have noticed young Protestants migrating to the latter group of churches, I also see some depart Protestantism altogether for Rome or Constantinople. This trend reflects a broader search for liturgical stability and doctrinal continuity in a generation seeking deeper spiritual engagement.

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