Book Review - "Deep Anglicanism" | The North American Anglican

Deep Anglicanism: A Brief Guide, 2nd edition. By Gerald R. McDermott. Nashotah, WI: Nashotah House Press, 2024. 400 pp. $15.49 (paper).

In the ever-expanding market of introductory books on Anglicanism, it seems meet and right that Fr. Gerald McDermott, the retired Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson School of Divinity and the author of some two dozen books, would make an entry into this field with Deep Anglicanism. As one would expect from McDermott, this guide for what I like to call the “Anglo-Curious” is robustly erudite, practical, and even sharp at times. While other online reviews have already done a fine job of summarizing the most appealing features of Deep Anglicanism, in this review I aim to provide a more detailed analysis of some of the book’s main claims and offer some suggestions for how a future edition could further benefit newcomers to the Anglican Way.

Reading the Room

At the book’s outset, McDermott takes up a reasonable question: why write yet another book-length introduction to Anglicanism? McDermott posits that many such works either fail to address the kinds of questions that confront people interested in the Anglican tradition today, with Louis Tarsitano’s Outline of An Anglican Life serving as an example of this category, or are overly “breezy,” calling out Thomas McKenzie’s popular introduction as lacking “deep rooting in the tradition” (4).^{^[1]} Of course, the simple fact that Tarsitano and McKenzie, given the extent of their differences in churchmanship, aesthetics, and theology, purport to introduce the same topic, “Anglicanism,” demonstrates the inherently difficult nature of McDermott’s task.

In any event, McDermott characterizes the uniqueness of his offering as one that will both “address a broader range of the tradition,” from Anselm through the Caroline Divines and the Tractarians through more recent theologians such as C.S. Lewis and Martin Thornton, as well as answer those questions that seekers are most keen to ask (5). This aligns with McDermott’s description of his audience; he writes that this introduction is “not for fellow theologians but for Anglicans and Anglican-interested folks in the pews . . . or even those who are afraid of the pews but are considering them” (8). McDermott’s approach throughout the book, which combines a deep pastoral sensitivity to those coming from an evangelical background with a strong command of the relevant Scriptures, patristic texts, and Anglican formularies, strikes a good balance between accessibility and depth.

The title Deep Anglicanism sets up the primary image by which McDermott understands his book to be both relevant and also deeply grounded in the full sweep of the tradition. Borrowing from C.S. Lewis’ description of the anti-modernist “Deep Church” (4), McDermott uses the phrase “Deep Anglicanism” as a way of trying to transcend traditional categorizations of churchmanship (high, low, broad) as well as more recent language concerning the so-called “three streams” (charismatic, catholic, evangelical). McDermott explicitly equates this “Deep Anglicanism” with what he calls “reformed catholic Anglicanism” (6); this latter term is, in fact, more strongly carried throughout the book, introduced on the very first page of the prologue (vii).

In chapter 2, McDermott next uses the language of Anglicanism as a “via media” between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism (13; though note he later shifts from “Protestantism” to “hyper-Protestantism,” for which see below). Here McDermott, following John Keble, interprets this contested term as referring to Anglicanism as a tradition that draws upon “the best of catholic worship and the best of Protestant emphasis on biblical preaching,” with “catholic” referring to the undivided Church of the first millennium (14). “Deep Anglicanism,” then, would seem to be that which rightly locates Anglican theology and practice according to this conception of the via media.

Theologically, McDermott continues, Anglicanism retains the creeds and much of the theology of the first millennium, while rejecting certain Roman Catholic innovations of the late medieval period, not to mention those Roman doctrines promulgated in recent centuries (16‒17). Likewise, McDermott declares Anglicanism, rooted as it is in the teachings of the undivided Church of the first millennium, incompatible with common evangelical Protestant attitudes towards sola scriptura, the relationship between faith and works, and the need for personal holiness (19‒20). Thus Anglicanism is neither Roman Catholic nor “hyper-Protestant,”^{^[2]} nor is it anti-Roman Catholic or anti-Protestant. Echoing Caroline divine John Cosin, Anglicanism is “protestant and reformed according to the norms of the ancient Catholic Church” (20). In a footnote, McDermott acknowledges the deeply Reformed nature of reforms under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, but notes the continued presence of “catholic” witness of men like Lancelot Andrewes and Richard Hooker and the more “catholic” nature of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (21n15). McDermott also supports this claim by arguing that Anglicanism’s origins are to be found not in the messy circumstances surrounding Henry VIII but in the long story of Christianity in England even before the arrival of the Angles who would give the kingdom its name; Augustine’s arrival in England in the late sixth century suggests that “already there was developing a distinctive English way of worshipping the Triune God.”^{^[3]}

In sum, in trying to introduce his approach to Anglicanism McDermott provides three different images or phrases: Deep Anglicanism, reformed Catholic Anglicanism, and the via media. The multiplicity of images, each used roughly synonymously, may overcomplicate the point in some readers’ minds, but provide different lenses on the single idea that McDermott is trying to communicate.

Practicing Anglicanism

The next section of the book focuses on Anglican liturgy. McDermott offers a brief definition and defense of liturgical worship, tracing its origins to early Christian adaptations of existing Jewish patterns of prayer and worship and emphasizing its ability to unite us with Christ and all the company of heaven in the worship of God. Similarly, McDermott explains the origins and basic pattern of the Church year as giving further shape to the Anglican liturgy. McDermott singles out the use of candles and the Psalms in liturgical worship as illustrations of how Jewish liturgy was adapted for early Christian worship. This discussion then gives way to a description of the Anglican Eucharistic liturgy. Somewhat surprisingly, McDermott describes not the traditional Anglican rite (found in, e.g., the 1662 BCP and the largely similar American 1928 BCP, or as what the ACNA 2019 BCP terms the “Anglican Standard Text”) but what the 2019 BCP calls the “Renewed Ancient Text” (drawing on liturgies from the early Church and the work of the liturgical renewal movement).^{^[4]}

McDermott then turns to a description of the Daily Office, its origins in Judaism and the early Church, its development in the Middle Ages, and its reform under Thomas Cranmer. He walks through the order for Morning and Evening Prayer, here pointing out some of the differences between the 1662 and 2019 prayer books. It is precisely this level of care in differentiating small but significant differences between prayer books that would have strengthened the previous chapter’s description of the Eucharistic rite. In sum, the Daily Office “takes us through the Scriptures in a regular cycle and teaches us to pray in a profoundly biblical manner,” to the end that we “grow in holiness” and “are joined by the Spirit to our high priest who takes us before the Father’s throne” (58).

Having introduced these foundational liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer, McDermott then turns to a section on the prayer book itself. Here McDermott provides a brief history of the Book of Common Prayer, beginning with Cranmer’s initial 1549 edition, the more Protestant edition of 1552, the mediating Elizabethan book of 1559, and the Scottish prayer book of 1637 before arriving at the classic 1662 book. McDermott then looks outside of England and discusses the American prayer books of 1928, 1979, and 2019. McDermott’s comments on each of these prayer books are largely helpful and even-handed, though I would have expected McDermott to at least raise the issue of the lack of truly “common” prayer in the books of 1979 and 2019 given the diversity of rites and options within those services. The shift to modern language in 1979 is mentioned but, surprisingly, not explored for what the theological or aesthetic implications of such a linguistic change might be. McDermott then leads a brief exploration of other Anglican prayer books from around the world, drawing upon Articles XXIV and XXXIV as justification for adapting the prayer books to local needs (75‒76). If nothing else, this section is a helpful reminder of the global nature of Anglicanism today. McDermott concludes this section with a quick walkthrough of the overall structure and contents of the 1662 and 2019 prayer books, which will surely be helpful for newcomers to Anglicanism struggling to make sense of how to use these books.

Anglican Spirituality

In the next sections, McDermott focuses on some foundational elements of Anglican spirituality. First, drawing on the work of Martin Thornton, McDermott unpacks the English approach to ascetical theology as a synthesis of Augustinian and Benedictine elements. McDermott then extends this discussion by examining the lives and contributions of four fourteenth-century English mystics (Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe, and Julian of Norwich), who demonstrate the existence of “a distinctive English spirituality before the English reformation” characterized by “a basic optimism and moderation” (106). This gives way to a chapter on the seventeenth-century Anglican divines (Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, and Jeremy Taylor). The chapter is introduced with the claim that these men “looked to the undivided Church of the first millennium for authority and inspiration” (107), again reinforcing McDermott’s understanding of the catholicity of Anglicanism. The sections on Herbert and Taylor, however, could include more specific evidence for this particular claim, given this was how the chapter was introduced. Still, these chapters cover important luminaries from the Anglican tradition who are not often described in other books introducing Anglicanism, and McDermott is to be commended for helping us remember that our “own tradition contains a veritable library of spiritual classics” (116) for us to draw upon today. Still, given the importance of the Oxford Movement for McDermott’s understanding of Anglicanism (and his promise of an introduction to the Tractarians on p. 5), an additional chapter on the nineteenth century seems like it would be a useful, perhaps even necessary, addition.^{^[5]}

The next section, on Anglican liturgies surrounding marriage and death, is introduced without comment and makes for an abrupt transition from the preceding historical material. McDermott provides helpful explanations of each step of the 2019 marriage rite, noting differences with the 1662 BCP and clarifying what Anglicans mean by calling marriage a sacrament. Likewise, McDermott’s explanation of the distinctive character of an Anglican funeral does a good job of showing the biblical, theological, and historical foundations of this rite, with a particular focus on defending the liturgy’s prayers for the dead. Drawing on C.S. Lewis and Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), McDermott seems to endorse (without explicitly saying so) the existence of “a place for purification after death” (135). While his quotation of Lewis signals the distinction between this view of purgatory and the medieval Roman Catholic understanding of purgatory as a place of “retributive punishment” (136), many Protestant readers of this book will no doubt be disconcerted by McDermott at this point. Thankfully, in a brief appendix McDermott spells out his rationale for some kind of intermediary state (“purgatory”) in more detail. While his reliance on Ratzinger will no doubt not assuage those who will use this section as evidence that McDermott is insufficiently Protestant, McDermott does include references to Protestant writers such as John Stackhouse and C.S. Lewis, who espoused similar views.

All About Sacraments

In the next major section of the book, McDermott sets out the Anglican understanding of the sacraments. By way of overview, McDermott claims that the English Reformers “accepted the broadly catholic understanding of the sacramental system and most of its approaches to the individual sacraments,” emphasizing continuity with Augustine and Aquinas (139). They are, indeed, the means by which “the union of God and man in Jesus Christ is extended to the mystical Body of the Church” (143). Referencing Article XXV, the sacraments “are not only pictures but also channels of grace” (144). The primary point of discontinuity with the medieval understanding of the sacraments, according to McDermott, is Anglicanism’s “new stress” on the need for their right reception (cf. Article XXV), though even this does not technically differ from “the catholic consensus that a person who rejects God or the meaning of a sacrament cannot receive the grace of that sacrament” (145).

McDermott then transitions into a defense of the Eucharist as the central act of Christian worship, which he describes as an “enacted drama” in which “the Church not merely remembers Christ’s past redemption but mysteriously participates in its ongoing enactment” (148). McDermott, appealing to the Anglican formularies, Church Fathers, and Scripture, calls this a “realist” view of the Eucharist, by which he means “the view that the bread and wine do not merely symbolize but actually convey the body and blood of our risen Lord” (149).^{^[6]} McDermott acknowledges the “distortions” of late medieval beliefs and practices around the Eucharist (156; cf. Articles XXVIII, XXXI). McDermott devotes an entire chapter to defining the Roman Catholic understanding of transubstantiation and rejecting it from an Anglican perspective (cf. Article XXVIII). It might be helpful for McDermott to also distinguish the Anglican view of real presence from the Lutheran view of consubstantiation, especially insofar as he writes that Anglicans believe that “in, with, and under the bread and wine are also the real body and real blood of the Messiah (160, italics original). Similarly, later in the book, McDermott notes that Reformed Christians teach the real presence but “stress its ‘spiritual’ sense to the near-exclusion of a realist understanding of the risen Lord’s humanity in his Body and Blood” (302), a claim that could be unpacked with a little more detail and support. A little more explanation of these alternative views would help the reader more precisely situate McDermott’s own “realist” view.^{^[7]}

Staying on the theme of potential stumbling blocks to evangelical Anglo-curious readers is the issue of infant baptism, not to mention the notion of baptismal regeneration (cf. Article XXVII).^{^[8]} McDermott again appeals to the Anglican formularies, Church Fathers, and Scripture for his defense. As McDermott summarizes, “Faith is necessary to keep us united with [Christ], but in baptism a mysterious work of God by the Spirit begins” (170). This clear and succinct defense of infant baptism does a strong job of responding to potential objections and would make a great chapter to pass along to friends and relatives that question why we persist in this supposedly “unbiblical” practice.

McDermott next takes up the five “sacramentals,” using the prayer book liturgies and associated Scripture to explore confirmation, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and extreme unction. Throughout, McDermott helpfully points to some minor but significant differences between the 1662 and 2019 prayer books. Again, with wise sensitivity to the most likely evangelical objections to Anglican doctrine and practice, McDermott decides to devote an entire chapter to the issue of priestly authority to absolve sins. After addressing criticisms of priestly absolution, McDermott makes a careful distinction between Anglican and Roman Catholic approaches to the practice, especially emphasizing the voluntary nature of Anglican confession. These thoughtful explanations of potentially troubling issues are one of the strongest points of the book.

Concerning the Church

McDermott launches the next section of the book with a broadside against the “Me and Jesus” approach to Christianity that diminishes or even deletes the need for a Christian to belong to the gathered Body of Christ (199). Drawing on his own journey from evangelicalism to Anglicanism, McDermott rejects an emotion-driven approach to Christianity which, in his estimation, results in a downplaying of doctrine and a “new antinomianism where God never holds us accountable, the call to holiness is verboten, and there are no boundaries” (201), or perhaps even universalism. This is not, however, to discount the evangelical emphasis on a personal relationship with God: “That which evangelicals have sought in personal experience with Jesus can now be enriched by the sacramental presence of Christ in the historic Eucharist” (204). A beautiful line!

McDermott then proceeds to discuss, one chapter at a time, the four marks of the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. McDermott uses these chapters to bring in some other points of Anglican doctrine and practice. Thus, the discussion of the Church’s oneness provides the occasion for a defense of the episcopacy, while the study of the Church’s holiness leads into a digression on sainthood in the Anglican tradition. McDermott’s discussion of the Church’s catholicity provides an occasion to return to his view of Anglicanism as the via media, and his commentary on the Church’s apostolicity sets up an entire additional section devoted to the important concept of apostolic succession. Throughout these chapters, McDermott continues to pull together important points from the Bible, the Fathers, and the Anglican formularies, showing patterns of continuity that anchor the Anglican understanding of these marks of the Church in Scripture and tradition. On the topic of apostolic succession, McDermott argues that the episcopacy is of the esse, and not simply the bene esse, of the Church (238, 241), but then also says that Anglicans nevertheless “do not un-church those who disagree or judge their sacraments” (241; cf. 341). A little more attention to explaining how these two claims cohere would help clarify McDermott’s position on this topic.

McDermott concludes this section with chapters on sola scriptura and the three-fold ministry. McDermott correctly observes that what many modern evangelicals mean by sola scriptura is not what Luther and Calvin would have meant by the term. Anglicans, like the Fathers and Magisterial Reformers, insist that Church tradition is necessary for rightly interpreting the Bible, an approach which might better be described as prima scriptura (244). For McDermott, women’s ordination is a case in point of how the traditional sense of sola scriptura was replaced by “a new hermeneutic” that “dismissed both tradition and the plain sense of Scripture to make spurious biblical arguments about justice and equality,” which in turn has “opened the door to approval of same-sex blessings because the new hermeneutic using sola scriptura and ignoring tradition was already at hand” (248). This is, according to McDermott, a “devolution to heresy” (249). McDermott does later mention that the ACNA approves the ordination of women to the orders of deacon and priest (270); if, indeed, McDermott thinks this is “heresy” (which is at least how McDermott’s comments on p. 249 could be read), how does McDermott envision the “dual integrities” of the ACNA continuing to hold together? An Anglo-curious reader unfamiliar with all of the institutional history here might wonder how McDermott squares his firm beliefs on this issue with the reality of the ACNA.

In the chapter on the three orders of bishops, priests, and deacons, McDermott acknowledges that the leadership structure of the early Church “developed” over the course of the first century, and that “it is only in the second century” that the three-fold order becomes standard (255). McDermott also provides a helpful explanation of the meanings of the terms “priest” and “father” for those who might be uncomfortable with them, which is another instance of McDermott’s keen eye for potential evangelical objections to the Anglican Way. As a deacon myself, it would be nice to see a little further discussion of the purpose of the diaconate as a unique calling and order in its own right (not simply a step on the pathway to the priesthood).

Question Box

The final sections of the book provide McDermott’s answers to some hard questions that might be posed to “Deep Anglicans.” The first concerns women’s ordination, and McDermott provides a robust, traditional defense of male-only clergy while allowing for a lay order of deaconesses. McDermott aims to show the many ways in which, apart from Holy Orders, women can still engage in ministry (e.g., through the so-called Marian charism), with several notable figures from Church history brought in as examples. McDermott could perhaps even draw upon evidence from the parish life of medieval England, in which it was not uncommon for wealthy women to serve as churchwarden.^{^[9]} In sum, McDermott writes that women have been “misdirected” in thinking that ordination is required to do “real” ministry, when in fact a more nuanced understanding of the wide range of ministries available to women would have resolved most of this problem to begin with (270). In the following two chapters, McDermott defends “an eternal hell with conscious suffering” (271) and the traditional view of marriage as being between one man and one woman (thus leading him to make a timely condemnation of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2023 approval of same-sex blessings).^{^[10]}

The final section of the book asks why Anglicanism should be preferred to the Reformed tradition, Lutheranism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. McDermott acknowledges the many Reformed influences on Cranmer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, but notes that, by the seventeenth century, “Anglicanism matured” and “the final synthesis was more catholic than Calvinist” (300). McDermott identifies Richard Hooker’s attacks on Reformed Puritanism as a key development in this story, with Anglicanism’s normative principle set against the Puritans’ regulative principle. Still, having brought up the seventeenth century, McDermott would do well to elaborate some of the developments or figures (Archbishop Laud?) that led to further degrees of separation between Canterbury and Geneva during this period. McDermott also acknowledges Anglicanism’s debt to Luther while showing how Article XII does a better job than Luther of holding together works and faith, law and gospel, Old and New Testaments. With regard to Roman Catholicism, McDermott takes on the issue of the papacy, hitting Pope Francis’ Fiducia Supplicans as a particularly grave blow to the notion of papal infallibility (329). As McDermott summarizes recent Roman Catholic theological innovations, “Rome’s last 150 years do not make it easy to have confidence that this is the one and only true Church” (332).

McDermott contrasts Rome, “the Church legalized,” with Constantinople, “the Church ossified” (333). As his first example, McDermott takes up the issue of supersessionism. Here he commends the Roman Catholic Church for “renouncing” supersessionism at Vatican II, noting that “more and more Protestants and Catholics are adopting post-supersessionist approaches to the question of Jerusalem and Jesus” (333‒34). This is an important topic in McDermott’s overall academic output, and so unsurprisingly he criticizes Eastern Orthodoxy for not committing to “this new development in understanding” (334). As it is presented here, this example would appear to be an uneasy fit with his stated method of practicing “Deep Anglicanism,” which would seem to caution us against accepting such new developments. McDermott makes his case in more detail in his new book A New History of Redemption, but it might make sense to footnote some of his key points in this section to help readers understand how this particular example can still fit within his overall theological method.

Conclusion

Gerald McDermott’s Deep Anglicanism is indeed a most helpful entry into the pool of books aiming at introducing Anglicanism to those new to the tradition. By adopting and defending a view of Anglicanism as “reformed catholicism,” McDermott succeeds in providing an introduction that will appeal to dioceses and parishes committed to recovering the catholic nature of the Church. Particular areas of strength include the book’s discussion of Anglican spirituality and its consistent focus on addressing the potential (and often, in my experience, real) objections from the Anglo-curious, especially those coming from evangelicalism. The book’s position on women’s ordination will no doubt limit its appeal within the broader ACNA, but for those Anglicans who hold to traditional views on male-only clergy, the book’s clarity on the issue of Holy Orders will come as a welcome breath of fresh air.

A future edition, I hope, would further clarify and center the influence of the Oxford Movement on McDermott’s understanding of the Anglican Way; a chapter in the section on “Anglican spirituality” that focused on Pusey, Keble, and Newman, as well as later Anglo-Catholic writers that seem to have influenced McDermott, including Mascall or Thornton (the latter, if not himself an Anglo-Catholic, is certainly held in high esteem in those circles), would help clarify McDermott’s own approach to Anglicanism and fulfill the promise of the book’s introduction to introduce these figures (5). Given the state of political polarization in the United States today, not to mention the current discourse on “Christian nationalism,” a chapter on the often-neglected topic of Anglican political theology might also provide an interesting topic for a third edition.

I will happily suggest Deep Anglicanism to newcomers to my parish, and suspect that many other Anglican clergy will be quick to recommend it as well. With a few further refinements, clarifications, and expansions, McDermott’s book will be well on its way to solidifying its status as the go-to introduction to reformed catholic Anglicanism.

Notes

To this category, more recently, we might add Winfield Bevins’ Simply Anglican: An Ancient Faith for Today’s World (Anglican Compass, 2020). ↑
This is an important shift from the first edition, in which McDermott argued that Anglicans are “neither Protestant nor anti-Protestant.” By shifting the first part of this slogan to “hyper-Protestant,” McDermott better acknowledges how many Anglicans have argued for the distinctively Protestant nature of Anglicanism (I am thinking, for instance, of the pre-1964 denominational name of “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America”) or, at least prior to the nineteenth century, considered themselves Protestants. Cp. the comments of Gerald Bray (Anglicanism: A Reformed Catholic Tradition [Lexham Press, 2021], 1) that prior to the 1830s, “most people assumed that the Church of England was a Protestant body that had separated from Rome in the sixteenth century along with several others…almost all members of the Church of England saw themselves as Protestants and regarded Rome with varying degrees of enmity.” Likewise, Morris comments that the Tractarians were “startling” because “most Anglicans saw their Church as part of the family of Reformation churches, closer to them than to the Roman Church” (Jeremy Morris, A People’s Church: A History of the Church of England [Profile, 2022], 245). However, accepting this notion of the fundamentally Protestant nature of (at least Reformation-era) Anglicanism complicates the idea of Anglicanism as a via media between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Thus I am sympathetic to the critique of Sutton and prefer simply to speak of “reformed catholicism” (Ray Sutton, “The Anglican Way: Both Catholic and Reformed,” Anglican Compass, 22 March 2023, https://anglicancompass.com/the-anglican-way-both-catholic-and-reformed/. McDermott acknowledges some scholars have disliked the term via media (13n10), but further clarification around this term and a brief response to Sutton’s argument would be an interesting addition for a future edition. McDermott himself wrestles with some of the issues in his article “The Via Media‒Between What and What?” The North American Anglican, 17 May 2020, https://northamanglican.com/the-via-media-between-what-and-what/. ↑
Interestingly, the different traditions of the Celtic church only get one sentence in McDermott’s story of the English Church prior to the Reformation (28) and then a brief mention in the context of discussing priestly absolution (194‒95). Given its influence on later Anglican spirituality, more attention to the Celtic tradition would be a welcome addition. ↑
McDermott briefly comments on the different origins of each rite (42n23), but more specifics on how the Renewed Ancient Text differs from the Anglican Standard Text, and why McDermott chooses to walk through this particular Eucharistic rite, would be beneficial. ↑
McDermott does engage the Oxford Movement elsewhere; see, e.g., McDermott, “John Henry Newman,” in Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism, ed. Camlin, Erlandson, and Harper (Anglican Way Institute, 2024), 331‒39; idem, A New History of Redemption: The Work of Jesus the Messiah through the Millennia (Baker Academic, 2024), ch. 26. ↑
As the book progresses, McDermott switches back and forth between the terms “realist” and “real presence” for his understanding of the Eucharist, which could be confusing for some readers but perhaps signals his discomfort with the variety of meanings that the term “real presence” has taken on over the centuries; see, e.g., the reference to Zwingli (163). ↑
Later in the book, McDermott makes some distinctions between the Anglican and Calvinist views of the Eucharist (301‒302), as well as between Anglican and Lutheran views (322‒23), but it might be helpful to gesture at these distinctions here as well. For his part, Browne (An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion: Historical and Doctrinal [repr. Classical Anglican Press, 1998], 684) declares that “the doctrine of a real, spiritual presence is the doctrine of the English Church, and was the doctrine of Calvin” (684). Therefore, it might be helpful for McDermott to distinguish between the views of Reformation-era Anglicans and the views of those influenced by the Oxford Movement. To this end, McDermott’s engagement with the key language from Article XXVIII (156) could perhaps further unpack what he means by the bread of the sacrament being “the Body in the heavenly mode.” Cp. how Crockett explains the development in Eucharistic theology by noting that the Tractarians continued to affirm “that the manner of the presence is spiritual and not physical and local” while also going beyond earlier Anglicans “in making a clear distinction between the presence of Christ in relation to the elements and the presence of Christ in relation to the worthy communicants”; thus, Christ is “objectively present” in “a sacramental union” (William R. Crockett, “Holy Communion,” in The Study of Anglicanism, rev. ed., ed. Stephen Sykes, John Booty, and Jonathan Knight [Fortress Press, 1998], 314‒15). McDermott also uses the language of Christ being present in the Eucharist “sacramentally” (156), but another few sentences expounding this idea in more detail would do a lot to help readers confused by this whole business. ↑
Bray (Anglicanism, 113), in his commentary on Article XXVII, suggests that Anglicans “do not teach baptismal regeneration,” pointing to the Gorham judgment of 1850 in what would appear to be a fairly clear contradiction of what the Article says. It would be nice to see McDermott address this, at least in a footnote. ↑
See, for instance, Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England (Yale University Press, 2022), 81. ↑
This section includes some asides on the impact of gay marriage on our broader society, but the research McDermott cites is relatively old; appeals to more recent research would perhaps help buttress his claims, but no doubt there is likely more “affirming” research at present and there are ample reasons to cast doubt on the whole field of social “science” more generally. The work of Rosaria Butterfield would make for an interesting source on the subject writ large. ↑