–for Jacqueline Cooley, 1944-2018 Last night the trees changed color while I slept. One moment at my window: a new world. Love, do you continue transmuting where you are? Pandemonium of the color wheel. That raucousness. Noise the sky can hear I call October falling. Now, outside, calling you to join me, Love, I kick…
When Constantine entered Rome on October 29, 312 after the battle of Melvian Bridge, after what was essentially his conversion to Christianity following a vision of the cross, he staged a grand arrival ceremony in the city called an adventus, whereat the conquering king was met with popular jubilation. The party lasted for weeks. Finally,…
Allow me at my end to be like these Descending leaves that elegantly dance Their final scene, expressing festive peace As they take leave of life. Still colorful, They ornament the sky as Fall’s sun slants To warm their gold, release their sweet fragrance. They’ve felt their feebling stems, and known the call Of gravity’s…
[M]orality enjoins no observance of one day in seven – no feast of faith in sacramental rites upon the body and blood of the Redeemer.[1] It is a commonly told story in Anglicanism. In the century before 1833, Anglican sacramental practice and spirituality was a “drab and spiritually barren environment.”[2] Communion was infrequent; altars (or should…
One of the several contentious issues that pits Anglican against Anglican today is the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Unlike other controversies, such as the insights or errors of women’s ordination, or the insights or errors of adopting elements of the Pentecostal tradition into our own, the question of baptismal regeneration is actually directly addressed within…
A Response to Fr. Ben Jefferies’ “Is the Eucharistology of the Anglican Reformation Patristic?” As a regular reader of the North American Anglican, I understand that Fr. Jefferies’ recent triple-header of articles taking up (editor) Mr. Ramsey’s challenge to demonstrate the contradiction between the fathers and reformers on sacramental theology is a major event. It…
What if choosing the right kind of school could help students stay committed to their faith, their church, their society, and their Lord? We would want more of those schools! A recent study from the University of Notre Dame’s sociology department—sponsored by the Association of Classical Christian Schools—reveals that former students of classical Christian schools…
It seems plain that the Roman and Orthodox traditions have been more right than wrong about Mary. As a purely historical and scriptural matter, the perpetual virginity seems a fact so plain–even to the great Bible-men Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli–that it is astounding to me that the idea got lost along the way in American…
The Second Part of the Information for them which Take Offence at Certain Places of the Holy Scripture Ye have heard, good people, in the Homily last read unto you, the great commodity of holy Scriptures: ye have heard how ignorant men, void of godly understanding, seek quarrels to discredit them: some of their reasons…
We all know the dangers of the pot calling the kettle black. Professor Gillis Harp’s review of The Future of Orthodox Anglicanism is an illustration of this truism. He charges that the theology of several of its essays (mine and Barbara Gauthier’s) is “wishful” because they evince a “romantic sacramentalism” derived from “outdated” histories of…