“Fools rush in where angels dare to tread.” – Alexander Pope, An Essay in Criticism Entering into the virtual (and, I hope, “real life”) debate over whether Anglicanism is Catholic or Protestant seems a little like an illustration of Pope’s epigram. But since I’ve already manifested the foolishness (or is it audacity?) to attempt a…
O how sweetly the voices resound there when all the Holy Ones sing the praises of God saying: sanctus Thus we also praise the Lord on earth whom the holy angels praise in the highest saying: sanctus You alone make clean from unclean cleanse us, as long as we are in the world because you…
The pernicious doctrine opposed by Article XVI—that deadly sins committed after baptism cannot be forgiven—is rarely encountered in our dissolute age. If anything, we are more likely to fall into the opposite error of diminishing the seriousness of sin and the damage it inflicts. Yet tender consciences, suffocating beneath the burden of grievous sins, are…
The Anglican Office Book, 2nd Edition. Edited by Charles Lance Davis. Lake Almanor, CA: Whithorn Press, 2023. 2,247 pp. $125 (leatherette). The first edition of The Anglican Office Book was published in 2021, with the purpose of presenting “the entire Divine Office, through the prism of the classical Prayer Book tradition, in a format designed…
If you begin a lullaby, You’ll know what words, what tune. The harder question, though, is why, Which—like a red balloon Floating along, as evening comes, On soft, pale purple air, Just out of reach of laws and sums, Unanswered—hovers there. The red balloon floats there alone, Dark seeping in from shade. No wonder we’re…
The alarm blares as I slide off the bed and somehow make it into the shower – nearly blind without my glasses and halfway sleep-walking with my eyes closed as I turn the shower on. My routine begins. It mirrors the daily lives of so many Anglicans across North America and beyond. Before anything gets…
Browne’s Exposition originally appeared in two volumes, the first volume—which ended with his discussion of Article XV—being published in 1850, a few years before the Romish doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854: We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed…
Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself). By David Zahl. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022. 208 pp. $16.38 (cloth), $20.99 (paper). We all have an anthropology (i.e., the study of what it means to be human). But do we have an anthropology that keeps us exhausted, overworked, anxious, and…
Scanning through the documents pertaining to the Anglo-Prussian Bishopric of Jerusalem recently helped to focus my mind on what one might call the proto-ecumenical movement. The nineteenth century was an age of rampant denominationalism, but it also saw the first tentative moves toward ecumenicism. Unlike twentieth-century ecumenicism, which at times sounded like an exercise in…
In his treatment of Article XV, Browne makes the following comment on the relationship between Adam and Christ: Adam had a liability to sin, and therefore was susceptible of temptation, before he was actually guilty of sin, and so defiled and corrupted by it. And Christ, who was the second Adam, who came on purpose…