Noting that this is the STR forum, I'll ask readers who are Anglicans in other countries or who are non-Episcopalian Anglicans in the US: The Anglican tradition, of course, allows for a range of views, including a Reformed view of salvation. How common among Anglicans in your church/community/country is the firm predestination view that Clare73 has described?
IME, extremely uncommon. In fact, it's a view I've only ever encountered online, from Americans.
I would note that Article 17 of the 39 Articles says this:
"XVII. OF PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION
PREDESTINATION to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.
As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfall, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.
Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God."
Now that can be read in more than one way, but personally I've always taken it as being cautious about making any claim about predestination to condemnation.
I would not say that Anglicanism, in general, lends itself to a hard determinism, although Article 10 also says this:
"X. OF FREE-WILL
THE condition of Man after the fall of
Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will."
(Note that "preventing" here is an archaic usage meaning "going before").
