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When a Culture Loses Respect For Life
The revised New York abortion statute, which basically allows abortion up to birth, throws into stark relief the difference of outlook that exists between the secular mindset, and that of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The whole ethical justification for abortion involves, at some level, the tacit rejection of the notion that firstly, God is the author…
Evensong at Home
They say the family that prays together stays together. Of course, it’s not the words spoken in prayer that keeps a family together, but the heart of devotion to Christ and to one another that fuels the prayer. C. S. Lewis argues that prayer without words can actually be more beneficial than spoken prayer, but…
A Review of the First Annual Anglican Theology Conference at Beeson Divinity School
Last Tuesday and Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Annual Anglican Theology Conference at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. It included an impressive roster of speakers: Archbishop Eliud Wabukala (Kenya), Archbishop Mouneer Anis (Egypt), Archbishop Foley Beach (ACNA), Ephraim Radner, Gerald Bray, Barabara Gauthier, John Yates III, Andrew Pearson, Gerald…
A Liturgical Bait-and-Switch?
I have long considered myself something of a liturgy nerd. I remember as a young child comparing various sections of the Episcopal 1979 Prayer Book and wondering why we always prayed the Nicene Creed on Sunday and never the Apostles’ Creed. When I was returning to the Anglican tradition as an adult, a significant part…
Dueling Pauls?
One of the tendencies in any theological tradition is to develop a canon in canonem (“canon within a canon”). The Anabaptists have the Sermon on the Mount, or so they claim. The Reformed supposedly have Romans. Catholics will always (falsely) accuse Protestants of reading Paul at the expense of James and Protestants will always (falsely)…
The Home Altar
A home altar is an Ebenezer, a stone of remembrance. It is a semi-public display of one’s priorities in life. You may hide it away in a back room, following the advice of Jesus to go into your closet to pray, but it is a shared space, available for your whole family and for guests…
No Health
In the classic Books of Common Prayer, Morning and Evening Prayer begin with a confession of sin. Modern liturgical revisers struggle with some of the wording, finding it too definite and too hard to say. The phrase, “…and there is no health in us…” is particularly troubling to them. It shouldn’t be. Because they are…
The 1537 Matthew Bible: More Anglican than Not
In part 1 of this article, we saw a brief history of the Matthew Bible, first published in 1537. It was the work of three Englishmen living in Antwerp: William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament and the first half of the Old from the Hebrew and Greek; Myles Coverdale, who translated the other Scriptures…
The 1537 Matthew Bible: More Anglican than Not
When the sixteenth century dawned in England, there were laws prohibiting the translation of the Bible into English. It was illegal to even own or to read English Scriptures.((In 1401, under King Henry IV, parliament passed a statute called De haeretico comburendo, or On the burning of heretics, targeting Wycliffe’s followers, the Lollards. Then in 1408…
The Via Media in Action
The Word of God and the Words of Man: Books II and III of Hooker’s Laws: a Modernization. By Richard Hooker. Edited/translated by Bradford Littlejohn, Brian Marr, Bradley Belschner, and Sean Duncan. Moscow, ID: The Davenant Institute, 2018. 142pp. $11.95 (paper). Due to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017, I have heard…