by Rainer Maria Rilke The angel spoke to him and took great pains to reach the man, whose hands were tightly balled: “But don’t you see that in her every fold she is as cool as God’s own early morn?” Yet back at him the other darkly stared, muttering just “What’s made this change in…
“Dearly beloved” is one of the most well-known phrases from the Prayer Book. Virtually anyone who hears it (regardless of religious affiliation), thinks of weddings. But this form of address is not unique to the marriage liturgy: the phrase (or variations of it) is found all over the Prayer Book. It is the principal formula…
—June 2001, June 1940 I We take the train, a friend and I, northeast from Paris. Old Compiègne has cobblestones, fine buildings, souvenirs of war (not least, an empress’s museum), overtones of failure. First, we visit the château, have lunch at a café, outdoors, in shade, then find a taxi driver free to show us—somber…
Should churches obey government restrictions on public services due to COVID-19? This has been a controversial question among Christians, and this essay will not answer it. Partisans on both sides, after all, are motivated by non-negotiable common goods: health on the one hand, religion on the other. Many Americans, of course, are particularly concerned with…
A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation. By Benjamin P. Myers. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020. 140 pp. $39 (cloth); $19 (paper). Benjamin P. Myers begins A Poetics of Orthodoxy with what is by now a familiar argument, namely that “the church needs art” (1). By this Myers does not mean we need…
Today, we remember the life and death of Charles I, king and martyr. For many of us, our association with Charles I is one in which we remember the sad saga of a fight between crown and parliament over the monarch’s role in the British constitution. Here in the “Roundhead” stronghold of Cambridge, it may…
“The crowned knot of fire” Protomartyr, Royal Martyr and the politics of grace[1] Cranmer’s collect for Saint Stephen’s Day was significantly altered by John Cosin for the 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Alongside new compositions by Cosin for the Third Sunday in Advent, the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, and Easter…
Autumn’s flaming color scheme has faded; Dusk has smothered shortened day’s last ember. Can the brown chrysanthemums remember When their blazing hues became outdated? Last month’s lawn was jewel-green brocaded Tapestry inlaid with red and amber: Autumn’s flaming color scheme unfaded. Now, dusk has smothered shortened day’s last ember. Days ago two seasons, still…
It can be tempting to exaggerate the darkness of our current cultural moment. The word “unprecedented” has become a cliché, generally pressed into the service of political point-scoring. One wants to resist over-inflation, appearing to be ignorant of seasons in our country’s past that were no less grim than the present. And yet, as American…
While some of my Tracts for the Times 2.0 have been more academic (especially the ones on English church history), my goal in the Tracts on Anglican spirituality is, at least in part, to provide brief but substantial works on topics essential to an understanding of Anglican spirituality. While much of the material in these…