I was heartened to see the Rev. Canon Phil Ashey’s series of articles which respond to and build upon Warren Cole Smith’s assessment of the existential challenges affecting the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). I was particularly interested in his second installment: Turning the Church into the Winds: Church Discipline, Canon Law, and Women’s…
On Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry announces that the Lord is nigh; awake and hearken, for he brings glad tidings of the King of kings. Advent is a season of preparation. Oftentimes, we see it as a time of preparing the People of God for His return. However, we are called to always be…
Part 4. Ceremonial We do not think of 1700s Anglicanism as being particularly interested in ceremonial, but there was a good deal left over from Lancelot Andrewes and his school, with their concern for the beauty of holiness. There was a basic decorum to public worship, which included the basic Anglican rule of “sit to…
Reputation for Constitutional Cynicism It may come as no surprise that many colonial Anglicans at the time of the Revolutionary War were Tories, who broadly opposed the Revolution. Gregg Frazer has provided the most recent history of this faction. The most famous example of the loyalist clergy is the first Bishop of the New World,…
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…
