Online Communion: A Lutheran Perspective
Covid-19 has sent all of society into crisis mode, but the church has felt most acutely the effects of the pandemic. Worship services have been cancelled, hospital visitation curtailed or eliminated, and bible studies have been put on hiatus. Clergy, not knowing the right response, have sought to care for souls in the most readily…
An Homily of Good Works: And First of Fasting
An Homily of Good Works: And First of Fasting The life which we live in this world, good Christian people, is of the free benefit of God lent us, yet not to use it at our pleasure after our own fleshly will, but to trade over the same in those works which are beseeming them…
Fourth of July
The streetlights flicker, set to hummingLike mosquitoes in the amber nightOf tree frogs and fireworks, unforked lightning,Spine-tickling rivulets of sweat. This is the stuff, I think, this the life I recall from my youth by the ocean, Days of marsh grass and the sun’s gold-leaf,Heinekens, Merits, the soulful motion Of lights across the bay. A couple thereSits…
Book Review: William Tyndale: A Very Brief History by Melvyn Bragg
William Tyndale: A Very Brief History. By Melvyn Bragg. London: SPCK (2017, 2019). 106 pp. $18.00 (hardcover). $12.00 (paper).[1] $6.99 (Kindle). William Tyndale gave us the English Bible and thereby also the English language as it has been read, written, and spoken since. Melvyn Bragg believes that Tyndale nonetheless is largely a forgotten man—his story,…
Godric of Finchale as a Thorn Tree
Homage to Frederick Buechner The thorn was bronze and wonderful to see,Though no one’s safe around such scimitars That escalade against the very sky. Yet scimitar by scimitar it rose,And being made so barbed and barbarous, Perhaps it meant no harm but harmed by chance. Woodcutters could have axed and hacked the treeTo toss a greenwood crackle…
Am I a Soul or a Body?
An Excerpt from An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine There exists a growing trend in theological anthropology toward what has been called Christian materialism. By Christian materialism, I am referring to the position that we are strictly identical to our bodies—albeit sophisticated bodies, our brains, or our animal (i.e., a biological…
In the Footsteps of the Warden: Reflections on The Rev’d Septimus Harding
A few days ago I finished The Chronicles of Barsetshire, a six-book series by Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, for the second time in as many years. An immediate personal favorite, I was introduced to the series by Anne Kennedy’s blog and podcast, Preventing Grace. For those unfamiliar with the series, all six books take place in…
The Virginia Bishops and Classical American Anglicanism
In January of 1800 Rev. Dr. James Madison, Bishop of Virginia, wrote his cousin, James Madison Jr. The former hailed the congressman and “Father of the Constitution” for his past work on the basic law of the still-new American republic. “You have really swept the Augean Stable; at least, you have cleansed the Constitution from…
For Repairing and Keeping Clean the Church
An Homily for Repairing and Keeping Clean and Comely Adorning of Churches It is a common custom used of all men, when they intend to have their friends or neighbours to come to their houses to eat or drink with them, or to have any solemn assembly to treat and talk of any matter, they…
Pre-Orders for The Foolishness of God Are Open
We’re very excited to announce that pre-orders for the new book from North American Anglican Press The Foolishness of God by J. Brandon Meeks are now available over at Amazon!