While Watts and Wesley got an earlier start, the Church of England didn’t really begin its widespread use of hymnals until the mid-19th century. In part it was due to doctrinal reasons, in part due to cost, and partly because there weren’t any good Anglican hymnals. One of the earliest examples of the latter was…
The Third Part of the Homily Against images and the Worshipping of Them Containing the confutation of the principal arguments which are used to be made for the maintenance of images: which part may serve to instruct the curates themselves, or good men of understanding Now ye have heard how plainly, how vehemently, and that…
The Ornaments Rubric has been the subject of much discussion in Anglican circles, and with good reason. T. W. Perry has written that the Christian Church in all its historical liturgies has “practically enunciated a law—that Divine Service is to be accompanied with external accessories.” “The Rule given by the Church of England in applying…
A Letter To a Friend St. Augustine of Canterbury, 2020 Dear Brother ————, I empathize with the tug you feel toward the Roman Church. In the face of regions where the ACNA is yet still feebly established, and in the midst of an ACNA that is a hodge-podge of practice and conviction, and tolerant of…
Many aspects of Anglicanism can perplex other Protestants—including at times the suggestion that Anglicans are Protestants (the English Martyrs, the 39 Articles, and all that notwithstanding).[1] Those things to which suspicion attaches are generally aspects of Anglican polity and liturgy that seem “Catholic”—that is, those things that share names or appearances with what one might…
The Second Part of the Homily Against the Peril of Idolatry You have heard, well beloved, in the first part of this Homily the doctrine of the word of God against idols and images, against idolatry and worshipping of images, taken out of the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the New, and confirmed by…
This morning she woke at 4:00 a.m. with an image in her mind; she had been dreaming of walking up the aisle of Christ Church toward the white Gothic altar. As she had done many times before, she was bearing something tall and weighty. In dream, it was not the processional cross but a lovely…
‘Sober delight and rational exaltation’[1] ❧ Easter Day, 1800 “In that vast and noble building no more than six persons were found at the table of the Lord.”[2] Thus did the then Bishop of London lament how Easter Day 1800 passed in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. This one statistic became the defining and oft repeated…
The Argument It’s difficult to be an Anglican today. Visit a church with “Anglican” on the door and the chances that you will hear the words of Thomas Cranmer are pretty low. The odds of encountering liturgical dance, praise and worship, t-shirted pastors perched atop stools, priestesses, chasubles, moral therapeutic deism, progressive therapeutic theism, conservative…
Time’s arrow from the past is launched With a force no bodkin may resist,And we have found eternal youthElusive too, the alchemiesAnd fountains long discredited. Yet immortality we have devisedTo preserve an endless, shining summer—To preserve them all, intact and whole,Not memories, but lived as new. Martin Crowe has died today, In middle-age—the cancer stoleWhat hair…