What is an “evangelical”? In the preface to Christian Faith: Dogmatics in Outline (2016) B. A. Gerrish explored the question as an exercise in self-identification: “[O]thers, whether approving or scornfully, have called me a “liberal,” whereas I have always considered myself an “evangelical” in the old, Reformation sense: one who holds that “the real treasure…
The first time I ever preached on Psalm 24, I was struck by John Calvin’s gloss on verse eight. He wrote, “Mount Sion, it is true, is not at this day the place appointed for the sanctuary, and the ark of the covenant is no longer the image or representation of God dwelling between the…
William Law once remarked, “For singing is as much the proper use of a Psalm as devout supplication is the proper use of a form of prayer. And a psalm only read is very much like a prayer that is only looked over.” Anyone who has had the privilege of worshiping in a community that chants…
The blade, the cuts, the sighs. Inner pith grown hotter. A vase of injured limbs. Do this to resurrect: Rinse and gash, repeat. Hammer till fibers split. Blossoms’ bee-swarm (hurt-flecked By memories of heat) All loveliness and grit… Life rises from mangle, From stems slashed at angle.
In my first article for The North American Anglican, I envisioned a renewed traditional, Prayer-Book Anglicanism which I called “Tracts for the Times 2.0.” In retrospect, I see I equivocated in my meaning of the phrase, using it both to mean an actual set of Tracts and also a renewed movement in the Church akin…
A bum—a holy fool all I knew. I’d just redeemed some cans, a case or two And grabbed a single by the checkout queue. Not my proudest move. Remember though, Throwing stones is often quid pro quo. His robe of castoff clothes, his beard askew. He grabbed a bottle, then he bade adieu, Handing over…
No Christian communion asks itself what it is more than my own Anglican one. Protestant or Catholic? Traditional or Evangelical? Calvinist or Zwinglian? The question of Anglican identity is too often treated as a matter of theology or liturgics. Overeager liturgists (of both the Anglo-Catholic or High Reformed varieties) accumulate lists of Anglican ritual “distinctives,”…
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of your Son: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus…
By Rainer Maria RilkeTranslated by Susan McLean Versailles Like kings who ultimately merely pace, almost without a goal, unless to show themselves at times in robes of loneliness to those who bow to them on both sides, so, alone between the balustrades, which bowed already from the start, the stairs rise there, deliberately and by…
He’s watched his body age. Its taut topography — Never a greedy eater, always active — Loosens as its man-shaped coastline, worn By battering years, surrenders to the gravity That pulls the tides. If life means to dissolve — Is this the rule? And is the rule commutative: If birth is death, to die is…