The Anglican Renaissance | The North American Anglican

The Anglican Renaissance Movement has recently gone through a changing of the guard as Joe Colletti (The Young Anglican) has transferred leadership to me, since he has decided it was in his best interest to join up with the Episcopal church. Some have approached me as the new leader (now co-leader with Sean Luke) to comment on Joe’s recent departure and why he decided to leave the church. I want to make it clear that I wish him all the best, and I have no desire to react publicly, negatively to his decision, as a respectful gesture to him. Joe is my dear friend, and it wouldn’t sit right with me to have this peaceful transition, then immediately “stab him in the back.” But I do believe now is the right and proper time to speak of what the Anglican Renaissance Movement is and what we represent. It must be said plainly that we are not the Reconquista nor have anything to do with Redeemed Zoomer’s movement. The Reconquista, as demonstrated by its leader, comes with rotten principles that claim to stand for conservative Christians. But as often as it makes these claims, Richard is unable to refrain from attacking said conservatives; he claims to stand for ideals he is often incorrect on, and when challenged or even given evidence to the contrary, refuses correction and doubles down on his claims.

Anglicans who do not wish to subject themselves or their children to false teaching from false teachers in a desperate hope that they one day disappear…have another option, one that is far more fruitful and impactful than Reconquista. This option is the Anglican Renaissance Movement. But you may be asking yourself? What is the Anglican Renaissance Movement (A.R.M.)?

One can get a good idea of what ARM is all about from our brief introduction that Joe wrote when he led the movement:

The purpose of Anglican Renaissance is to promote classical traditional Anglicanism. This means Anglicanism that conforms to the entire Apostolic Deposit, handed down to us in the Holy Scriptures and reflected accurately in the Three Creed, Thirty-Nine Articles, 1662 BCP, The Book of Homilies and the Ordinal.

This standard has not changed for the movement and our efforts we preach boldly, but since taking charge of the movement, I found myself wanting more for the movement and how it could truly reach people who desire an Anglicanism built on a solid foundation. Which is why I have introduced clear efforts that I believe will be fruitful and can be lived out by both laity and clergy.

Catechism Training

The unlearned mass is a mass easily controlled by wolves. The question often raised by those looking into Anglicanism is What even is Anglicanism? What should be an easy question is often one of frustrated complexity, as there are many flavors to the Anglican faith as we know it today. Part of this problem is the fact that many are simply unaware of what the church even teaches, what the Anglican divines taught, who they even were, why they mattered, the history of the church, and many other such questions that are raised. It is a tragedy that many of the great divines, manuals, catechisms, and other such works have fallen out of print. This has inspired men such as Sean Luke from the Anglican Aesthetics blog to devise an institute called The Anglican Catechetical Institute, a series that he runs on his channel where he goes over works from divines that should be read in a way that is easily accessible for those who are often intimidated by such massive tomes like Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. When I heard of his efforts, and him being a dear friend of mine (I owe him for suggesting to me to buy my first BCP, starting my walk into becoming an Anglican almost three years ago), I reached out to him and devised a plan to work together to have the Anglican Renaissance Movement and the Anglican Catechetical Institute work together. To my surprise, Sean not only agreed to work together but even offered the idea of combining efforts and placing it under the umbrella of the Anglican Renaissance movement.

Sean has since become a co-leader of the movement, and his dedication as a natural-born teacher is to educate those who wish to know what the Anglican faith is and present the untapped beauty of our heritage to those who don’t have access to such works as Jewel, Hooker, and others. The Anglican Renaissance Movement does not benefit, nor will it go far, if the people we claim to stand up for are not educated themselves. A small dedicated group of people can stand up and make a change in the world. When there is no proper Anglican understanding of the Christian faith, confusion and chaos will only continue to muddy the vision of the church and lead to more division. This is why I am proud of Sean’s efforts to lead the movement in these matters, because once people grasp what the Anglican faith is truly about, not only do they experience the beauty and joy found in the tradition, they will finally be able to understand what it means to be an Anglican. They’ll know what we believe, what traditions we follow, and what the purpose is to live a Christian life as an Anglican. This is why, as members of the Anglican Renaissance Movement, we regard the next items with much reverence and as authoritative.

The Articles, Homilies, and Prayerbook

Perhaps the section where I may be presented with the most pushback in this article, but one that represents the foundation of this movement. Indeed, the Anglican formularies are the foundation of our faith, besides Holy Scriptures themselves, which they are based on. The Articles, the Homilies, and the Prayerbook have always been foundations of our movement, and with careful observation (when one disregards a contrary priest’s opinion who had no real say in the church authority), have found these three items to not only be authoritative but also were subscribed to until recent history. Now, while subscription may be a contention, we can not deny the historic precedent and how vital these three items are to the Anglican faith. I am often perplexed by the hesitation that so many Anglicans have toward the items of our beloved faith, because these are things that help define who we are and what we believe. And if Anglicanism is to thrive in the modern world, which is riddled with nuisances, post-modernism, and confusion, we can have no room for hesitation on commitments that held such strong authority in our past.

This is why the Articles, the Homilies, and the Prayerbook are authoritative, and we will not relinquish these beliefs nor back down from them. We have seen what has become of the church when these have been attacked, rejected, or even seen as merely historical and holding no real importance. The results are the church losing her identity and creating this idea of Anglicanism being whatever one wants it to be. When these items are taken seriously, the ideas of Anglo-papists and Anglo-Baptists vanish. We are not liturgical-focused Presbyterians, or fancy-dressed non-denominational Christians. The Anglican Church is an ancient English church with its own identity, and placating these groups as the church has done has been against our best interests and has only made the church weaker over time. The Anglican Renaissance has no room for those who wish to turn our churches into anything other than our faith. We are not Presbyterians, we aren’t Roman Catholics, we aren’t Baptists, we aren’t Lutherans, we aren’t Eastern Orthodox, we are Anglicans, and we have our own traditions, history, theology, and aesthetic. It is time we stop pretending that we don’t and stop giving up our own traditions to satisfy those outside of our faith.

We hold to the 1662 prayerbook. While I mainly use the 1928, and others use the 2019, the prayerbook is often a landscape of ridiculous tribalism, so to come together, I selected the 1662 as this prayerbook is virtually accepted by all Anglicans uncontested. There will be a time when I’d like to introduce other prayerbooks into the movement, but to prevent petty tribal skirmishes so early, the 1662 is the official prayerbook and is the foundation for the movement going forward into the foreseeable future.

Inerrancy of Scripture

Because we take such a strong stance on the Articles, Homilies, and Prayerbook, it should be of no surprise to the reader that we take a strong stance on scripture. We in the Anglican Renaissance movement take Scripture to be inerrant and infallible. For too long, biblical critics have attacked God’s Word by generating distrust in the Scriptures, “fresh perspectives” (that often spout modern innovations and philosophies), and other areas that cause the Bible to be viewed with suspicion, diminishing its authority. But as Anglicans, we know that without the Bible, the prayerbook is meaningless, as it is filled with quotations and affirmations of what scripture teaches. An Anglican without the Bible is like a soldier charging into battle without his sword; what good is he? And the soldier needs all his trust in his sword if he is to survive the battle against the forces of this world; he can not afford time in speculating whether his sword will hold up or not, whether it is really a sword or not at all. Which is why, as our divines in the past have held to scripture as being the word of God and inerrant and infallible, and if we are to create a strong foundation for Anglicans to cling to while standing up for our church, then we must affirm this as well. We hold to the King James Bible as authoritative; some translations may be introduced later, but like the prayerbook, we need to be united around one firmly first.

The Desire for Clergy

Now that the foundations have been presented, the desire for this movement and what I believe will be its greatest strength comes from the backing of the clergy within the Anglican world. A movement of laity can be a powerful force, but without those in clerical positions, one could assemble a thousand laity and only result in a noisy gong held by a paper tiger. I call on and advocate for the clergy to stand up for their church against the onslaught of confusion and heresy constantly slamming against the gates of the castle of our faith. Without the clergy, there is no Anglican Renaissance movement, there is no real change, there is no real strength or foundation to this movement. While I am thankful for the laity’s support, we would be nothing without them, the people need guidance. The clerics are called shepherds for a reason. These must be men who are biblical, traditional, and not afraid to stand up against heretics or modernists.

Growth and Defense

The Anglican Renaissance is not just a movement of education and clerical support, but it is an offensive effort against those who stand against scripture, tradition, and reason. Unlike the Reconquista, as stated before, we don’t go into churches and try to take over from the inside by sitting, waiting, and praying that the corruption will disappear one day. The effort I believe will be effective can be imagined as a massive, moving wall. We tried talking with those corrupted by the world, and for the most part, these attempts were met with compliance, takeover, expulsion, and destruction to the Anglican faith (examples being CoE, CoI, and the Episcopal church). This is the reason why churches like the GAFCON, ACNA, UECNA, ACC, APA, APCK, and others exist in the first place. So, with diplomatic talks not working and the result being a failure, it’s time to stop talking and start acting. It is sad that it has come to this, but if a church wishes to stay liberal, shrink and die, and refuses to accept help or even change its ways to live again, then there isn’t anything one can really do to save it. We become a wall to keep our traditions safe and to keep out those who don’t belong, but it is a moving wall to push out those who wish to further corrupt the faith.

This means we go to the public eye outside of the church and inside the church with conferences, councils, meetings, and promote traditional, Anglican theology, neither ashamed nor timid about what we believe. This must all be done in love (1 Corinthians 16:14) as Christ calls us to be. If we are militant and doing things in a fleshly way rather than a godly way, then our movement is null and void. One can be zealous without being abusive, and this is what I expect the Anglican Renaissance to be. Clerics are called to defend their flock, and this must be done for the Anglican world, and we must make what the church has always held a standard by which we live.

Monasticism

One final idea I wish to raise is the proposition of monastic traditions as an alternative lifestyle. Some Anglican traditions have monks who live in monasteries, others are more missional focused like the Order of St. Patrick, of which I am a part. The reality is the world is infatuated with lust, pride, greed, and all other sins that have become the norm in our life and I believe offering the way of the monastic life is something many will find as a breath of fresh air. English and Celtic monastic traditions have much to offer us, and I believe many would benefit from a rich spiritual life within the Anglican world, provided by these ancient traditions.

Conclusion

“The Anglican tradition in my belief represents the Christian faith in a purer form that can be found in any other Church in Christendom.”

– Geoffery Fisher, 99th Archbishop of Canterbury

The Anglican Renaissance Movement is a movement with a motive, the motive is the love of the church, the beauty and tradition of the church, and the desire to have others like myself seek it and find it and be submerged in the truth that it holds. While the church has crashed through rough waters, experienced drama and tragedy, it is not defeated or vanquished by Satan. Many young men and women are flocking to these churches and are desperate for what the church has to offer, which is why I believe this movement may be the answer they are looking for. I have high hopes for the future and all that we will accomplish, but it won’t be without you, reader. If you agree with what we stand for, then I call you to be more than an audience member, I call on you to join those who wish to see a change, a movement that promotes a brighter future filled with tradition, loved and lived by those of days gone by, by those today, and those of tomorrow. Amen.