‘As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.’ Simple enough, the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God have been given to us. Jesus tells us in this very gospel reading today. The…
American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order. By Jerome E. Copulsky. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024. 384 pp. $40 (hardcover). “The concept of heresy,” Jerome Copulsky observes, “is…relational—it is a term deployed by a group to mark out its boundaries, define its foes, and police deviance within its ranks” (3). That is to…
Fight the good fight with all thy might; Christ is thy strength, and Christ thy right; Lay hold on life, and it shall be Thy joy and crown eternally. A shark will sink if he does not keep swimming. A Christian shall succumb to the depths, should he not keep running. A Christian is not…
Contemporary eucharistic liturgies tend to follow a standard “shape” – a ministry of the Word, culminating in the exchange of the Peace; next, a ministry of the Sacrament, based on the “four-fold shape” of liturgical action first proposed by Dom Gregory Dix: taking, giving thanks, breaking, and giving; and a eucharistic prayer that conforms to…
There is an odd rubric at the back of the 2019 Book of Common Prayer: “The last three Sundays before Lent may be observed as Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima.”[1] When I first encountered this direction, it confused me. Having grown up in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and then transitioning to the Anglican Church…
For North Americans, an obvious feature of our culture is consumerism. This is equally true of the church world as it participates in the wider culture. Most everyone who attends a church has (or will) attend numerous other churches of various denominations over his or her lifetime, often solely based on personal choice or preference….
Alleluia, song of gladness, Voice of joy that cannot die; Alleluia is the anthem Ever dear to choirs on high; In the house of God abiding Thus they sing eternally. “Life is complicated,” the saying goes, yet our faith is simple. God holds us, Christ keeps us, and the Spirit fills us for all is…
Introduction: Is theological rigorism—insistence on conformity to the Prayer Book, and other traditionally “high church” distinctives—conducive to mission and evangelism? The assumption of many (even many high churchmen themselves) is that in order to do successful evangelism, many of their distinctives have to be downplayed. However, history tells another story. Even here in America, in…
An encouragement to the readers and authors of the North American Anglican Of the Authority of the Church. The Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith: and yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither…
O Zion, open wide thy gates, Let symbols disappear; A priest and victim, both in one, The Truth Himself, is here. The Presentation of Christ in the Temple is an oft-neglected feast of the church, despite being a “red-letter day.” Although forgotten or overlooked by busy Anglicans and utterly foreign to non-liturgical Christians, this day…