Today, we remember the life and death of Charles I, king and martyr. For many of us, our association with Charles I is one in which we remember the sad saga of a fight between crown and parliament over the monarch’s role in the British constitution. Here in the “Roundhead” stronghold of Cambridge, it may…
“The crowned knot of fire” Protomartyr, Royal Martyr and the politics of grace[1] Cranmer’s collect for Saint Stephen’s Day was significantly altered by John Cosin for the 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Alongside new compositions by Cosin for the Third Sunday in Advent, the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, and Easter…
Autumn’s flaming color scheme has faded; Dusk has smothered shortened day’s last ember. Can the brown chrysanthemums remember When their blazing hues became outdated? Last month’s lawn was jewel-green brocaded Tapestry inlaid with red and amber: Autumn’s flaming color scheme unfaded. Now, dusk has smothered shortened day’s last ember. Days ago two seasons, still…
It can be tempting to exaggerate the darkness of our current cultural moment. The word “unprecedented” has become a cliché, generally pressed into the service of political point-scoring. One wants to resist over-inflation, appearing to be ignorant of seasons in our country’s past that were no less grim than the present. And yet, as American…
While some of my Tracts for the Times 2.0 have been more academic (especially the ones on English church history), my goal in the Tracts on Anglican spirituality is, at least in part, to provide brief but substantial works on topics essential to an understanding of Anglican spirituality. While much of the material in these…
Baptists and the Christian Tradition: Toward an Evangelical Baptist Catholicity. Editors Matthew Y. Emerson, Christopher W. Morgan, R. Lucas Stamps. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2020. 400 pp. A number of Protestant traditions are engaged in renewal projects. The North American Anglican is a publication dedicated to the renewal of Anglican tradition, and organizations such as…
For some in the Anglican faith, the topic of the ordination of women to holy orders is a long-settled one. However, for those of us in the ACNA, like all of our editors, it is an ever-present conversation, dominating matters of ecclesiology and communion. All parties have agreed that “dual-integrities” means a house built upon…
“It’s hard sometimes not to measure by the world’s ruler.” I can still hear Miss Lila’s voice saying those words, though I can’t remember now if she spoke about the need to avoid measuring by the world’s measures, to turn away from the things that the world values—that would have been like her—or whether she…
. . . for the World is both a Paradise and a Prison to different persons.—Thomas Traherne A blizzard more than fifty years ago. Wind-gusted snow took its sweet time to fall, Twenty-nine hours from start to stop. Snow shock. Cars sideways, stuck. People cut off from home, Stranded. Unhurryable shoveling. Troubles that…
At dawn, the cranes that slept along the margins of the lake begin to stretch their wings and murmur. Mist ascends around our rowboat. Then in sudden clamor they splash and rise, trumpet across the sky to feast on corn before their long trip south. The sun lifts, silent, from the east. And now the…
