Thou Shalt be Buried. By Bishop Thomas Gordon. Exemplar Media, 2022. 110 pp. $10.00 (paper). While cremation has become increasingly common in the United States, its acceptance in Christian circles is often still controversial. In this short book, the Most Reverend Thomas Gordon, presiding bishop of the Orthodox Anglican Church and Metropolitan Archbishop of the…
It was just after Ascension Day that we packed up our family and drove over the Blue Ridge Mountains, eastward into the setting sun. Our destination was nowhere, not yet a place, but some land somewhere past the Wintergreen Resort in Nelson County, Virginia. There are few places in America like Appalachia. It is the…
When my review of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism was published, Fr. Ben Jefferies—a former member of the Liturgy Task Force of the Anglican Church in North America, and a once frequent contributor to The North American Anglican who cut ties after my review was not retracted—posted a comment calling both the book…
There is a tendency among our evangelical brethren to see the creeds as distractions from true, Biblical Christianity; a human addition that is non-essential at best and a “vain philosophy” at worst. I will grant that the concern is noble. They fear going beyond the scriptures, and they are right to do so. This voice…
While the Articles only mention the concept of merit de congruo by name in Article XIII, Browne explains the term earlier in his commentary on Article X: [The school-authors] thought…that some degree of goodness was attributable to unassisted efforts on the part of man towards the attainment of holiness; and, though they did not hold…
Political theology is the order of the day, and my, does it make people emotional. Different tribes of Protestants denounce each other for being un-American, or theocratic, or giving away the gospel in search of power. The war is not even between denominations; even within Calvinist churches and their Baptist adjutants in the United States,…
As a son of Chinese immigrants in America, I read with interest an article by David Choi at Mere Orthodoxy, “Becoming an Asian-American Church.” Anglicanism is an international family of autocephalous national churches, and our post-Reformation experience of adaptation to local, non-English cultures goes as far back as the 17th century, with successes and failures….
Why Believe? A Reasoned Approach to Christianity. By Neil Shenvi. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022. 272 pp. $19.99 (paper). “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31‒32 (ESV) We live in a world and an age where no…
The necessity of good works for Christians is clearly established in Article XII: good works “do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith,” we are told, “insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known, as a tree discerned by the fruit.” The necessity spoken of here is a logical…
