Lo! he comes, with clouds descending, Once for our salvation slain; Thousand thousand saints attending Swell the triumph of his train: Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ, the Lord, returns to reign. “Mark my words,” is the theme of this Sunday’s collect. Yet do we truly mark our Lord’s words? Hearing the Second Coming, the Judgment, and…
Part 3. Music in the Parish Church By contrast to the cathedrals, where a full choral establishment of organist, lay-clerks, and choristers was the norm, the musical resources of parishes churches were much more various. Some small and remote parishes simply had a clerk who would line out the metrical psalms that punctuated 1700s Anglican…
“See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand,” (Galatians 6:11) For the last two thousand years and for the rest of human history, people will read these words of St. Paul. Here we have, forever canonized in the Holy Scriptures themselves, the mysterious fact that the Bible was written…
This is the first in a series of reflections based upon a seasonal hymn, the collect of the day, and the ancient Western Sunday lectionary, as reflected in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Come, thou long-expected Jesus, Born to set thy people free; From our fear and sins release us, Let us find our…
Part 2: Music Anglicanism in the 1700s had two distinct musical traditions, which, for the sake of convenience I will call “cathedral” and “parish.” In using those terms, it must be remembered that the cathedral style of worship was also maintained by other places having a choral foundation including the Chapel Royal, the Royal Peculiars…
Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism. Edited by Charles F. Camlin, Charles D. Erlandson, and Joshua L. Harper. Anglican Way Institute, 2024. 478 pp. $29.99 (paper). In a recent review of the Nashotah House Press edition of Bishop A. P. Forbes’s Explanation of the Thirty-Nine Articles, Gerald McDermott describes Forbes as “reformed catholic.” A critical response to this…
Part 1: The Liturgy In the eighteenth century, liturgy meant the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The colonies used the BCP of the parent church, and Ireland’s 1666 edition was very little different from the main text. The American BCP, of course, does not appear until nearly the end of the century, and differed only…
It is generally agreed among commentators that Anabaptists are the primary target of Article XXVI: “Whatever may have been the popular feeling on this subject among the advocates of reformation in general, there is no doubt that the Anabaptists (in conformity with their general principle, that the whole Church should be pure and sincere) held…
In the previous article, I presented the problem of the divine sanction of violence in the Old Testament given the fact that Israel’s God repeatedly states that He hates violence. I then provided two arguments that serve to contextualize God’s commands or His seeming approval of violent acts committed by His people. First, violence occurs…
Donald Trump’s re-election victory stunned elites on both sides of the Atlantic and has unmasked the disconnect between the ideologies of Church of England Bishops and the daily lives of the people they serve. The reach of American media, combined with the global significance of its political outcomes, ensures that American political developments help shape political, media,…