Anglican on ! Commonplacing

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 21:47:13 -0700

Currently reading: The Caroline Divines and the Church of Rome by Mark Langham 📚

Now that developments have occurred in the Episcopal Church of North America and the Anglican Church of Canada (and, to a lesser extent, in the Anglican Church in Australia) which are unacceptable to a large number of Provinces elsewhere, what can be salvaged of the notion of communion for Anglicanism?171 Calls to strengthen the internal bonds of the communion are read by some Anglicans as a move towards imposition of an un-Anglican uniformity, and they have in reaction emphasised the diversity that, for them, essentially characterises Anglicanism. In a 2007 address outlining the polity of the Episcopalian Church, the Bishop of Lexington rejected the concept of an Anglican ‘communion’, preferring to speak of ‘a voluntary association of autonomous churches bound together by a shared heritage from the Church of England and enjoying cooperative relationships for the purpose of mission [and] nothing more’.172 Such an assertion leaves no clear role or protection for the concept of orthodoxy, and consequently undermines the case for apostolicity and catholicity. It is for this reason that at this time the writings of the Caroline Divines are particularly important, as they express a clear vision, scripturally and patristically based, and guaranteed by a clear sense of orthodoxy, of the catholicity and apostolicity of the Church. Such a teaching can provide an important reference point for the contemporary Anglican Communion in its difficulties.

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 17:41:34 -0700

Whereas the Edwardian and Elizabethan divines had been interested in the Fathers chiefly as a means of proving what had or had not been the primitive doctrine and practice, the Caroline divines went farther in using the thought and piety of the Fathers within the structure of their of their own theological exposition. Their use of the Fathers had these two noteworthy characteristics. (1) Not having, as did the Continental Reformers, a preoccupation with the doctrines of justification or predestination they followed the Fathers of the Nicene Age in treating the Incarnation as the central doctrine of the faith. Indeed a feeling of the centrality of the Incarnation became a recurring feature of Anglican divinity, albeit the Incarnation was seen as S. Athanasius saw it in its deeply redemptive aspect. (2) Finding amongst the Fathers the contrast of Greek and Latin divinity, the Anglican divines could be saved from western narrowness, and were conscious that just as the ancient undivided Church embraced both East and West so too the contemporary Catholic Church was incomplete without the little known Orthodox Church of the East as well as the Church in the West, Latin, Anglican and Reformed. The study of the Fathers created the desire to reach out to Eastern Christendom. Thus did Anglican theology find in the study of the Fathers first a gateway to the knowledge of what was scriptural and primitive, subsequently a living tradition which guided the interpretation of Scripture, and finally a clue to the Catholic Church of the past and the future: in the words of Lancelot Andrewes ‘the whole Church Catholic, Eastern, Western, our own.

– Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, “The Ancient Fathers and Modern Anglican Theology”, Sobornost, Series 4: no. 6 (Winter-Spring 1962), p. 290.

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 11:08:52 -0700

Ultimately, the future of Anglo-Catholicism lies with Orthodoxy or a reconstituted Old Catholicism because they have held to the reformed catholic identity within Anglicanism whilst rejecting its doctrinal Protestantism. The neo-Evangelicals ultimately have more in common with the Holiness and Pentecostal churches through the Convergence Movement than they do with wider Anglicanism because they share the same sort of spirituality, albeit in a moderated form. This leaves the Confessional Anglicans who share more in common with moderate Lutheran and Reformed Christians than they do the Anglo-Catholics and the Neo-Evangelicals.
Source: PETER D. ROBINSON The Greater Church

a different three Anglicanisms, where Anglicanism disbands and starts side projects.

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 15:16:41 -0700

No one doubts that Cranmer, Jewel, or Hooker were deeply committed to the witness of the ancient Church and the Fathers. The real question is whether or not their reading of Christian antiquity and the Church Fathers was superior to that of the Caroline divines, non-jurors and Tractarians (the theological lineage from which Anglo-Catholicism derives). If not, the question then arises whether the Church should change, adjust, or nuance its theology and interpretation of the Formularies, or uphold Reformed doctrine over and against the witness of Christian antiquity as understood by our best scholarship. Anglo-Catholics answer yes to the first question, and then recommend adjusting the Church’s theology accordingly. In fine, you’re right that the Reformers were committed to, and saw themselves in continuity with, the ancient Church; but what matters is whether or not their reading of the ancient Church is correct. Some of the Reformation and Classical Anglicans’ arguments that our Formularies, read (so they think) according to their plain, historical sense, demand a Swiss/Rhenish Reformed interpretation, and therefore require of us Reformed theology, taken together with their subsequent pleading the English Reformers’ commitment to antiquity, seem to me an evasive attempt at not having to do any real, constructive patristics work against the Anglo-Catholics. And, if I had to place bets, a fiddle of gold against your soul to think Pusey, Austin Farrer, E.L. Mascall, et al. are better than you.

– Seth Snyder commenting on The Catholic Faith Once Delivered, Then Recovered: A Response to Fr. Wilgus

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 15:14:29 -0700

I disagree that ”The Thirty-Nine Articles are not just Protestant but distinctly Reformed in their soteriology and sacramentology.” This suggests that when the continental Protestant traditions disagree, the Thirty-Nine Articles side with ”Calvinism”. A case could be made for that if the only alternative to Calvinism in continental Protestantism was Anabaptism. It is much harder to argue that point when Lutheranism is considered as the alternative to Calvinism. Article XVII. Of Predestination and Election seems obviously worded so as to not choose Calvinism over Lutheranism. There is no affirmation of Reprobabation, which can be taken as either a refusal to choose between the Lutheran and Calvinist views, or a choice of the Lutheran. The fact that the second paragraph of the Article describes the doctrine as a comfort for the godly, but cautions against excessive preaching of it because of the various ways it can harm the not-yet-converted mind rather suggests the second possibility. Indeed, while the Articles affirm the general Augustinianism shared by Lutherans and Calvinists in Articles IX and X, absent is any affirmation of the ideas that the Grace by which God draws His elect to salvation through Jesus Christ is ”irresistable” or that Jesus died only for the elect. Article XVI. Of Sin after Baptism also walks the fence between Lutheranism and Calvinism. Both Lutherans and Calvinists affirm a form of the idea of ”The Perseverence of the Elect”. Calvinists, however, also affirm perpetual justification, the idea that initial justification is never lost (Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, and sometimes fundamentalists of other denominatiosn who have been influenced by the weight Baptist and Brethren views have in general fundamentalism often affirm prepetual justification without affirming the perseverence of the elect) and Lutherans do not (they think that after initial justification one can fall from Grace but that the elect will show their election by repeenting and returning to Grace through faith). Article XVI affirms that for sins committed after baptism, repentance and forgiveness are available and condemns the extreme views that say either one cannot sin after baptism or that one who falls from Grace cannot be forgiven. In doing so, while it does not explicitly affirm the Lutheran position, the language used strongly suggets it. ”Not every deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism is sin against the Holy Ghost, and unpardonable.” While this doesn’t actually say that such sins cause one to lose initial justification until he repents and is forgiven, the language of ”deadly sin willingly committed after Baptism” suggests the Lutheran conception of Mortal Sin.

When it comes to the Sacraments, at least the Eucharist, you are on firmer ground in asserting the Articles to be Reformed. ”The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith” sounds closer to John Calvin’s understanding than either the Lutheran doctrine or Zwinglian memorialism. The language excludes the Zwinglian view, although not as overtly and bluntly as the Roman. One could make a case that rather than affirming Calvin against Luther, the intention was to affirm the Real Presence in as vague a manner as possible, so as not to commit to any particular interpretation of it. Given that the Articles took their final form in the Elizabethan Settlement this seems rather likely. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the Church of England deliberately walked back from the more radical direction in which the English Reformation had seemed to have been heading before it was interrupted by the reign of Mary. In the second Edwardian Prayer Book (1552), for example, the Black Rubric had been inserted into the Order for Holy Communion. It had been intended as a compromise between what Scottish Reformer John Knox was recommending (sitting to receive Communion rather than kneeling) and Archbishop Cranmer’s more conservative position, but oddly was worded in such a way as to affirm the most radical view of the Sacrament, not Luther’s, not Calvin’s, but Zwingli’s. Elizabeth I excised the Black Rubric from the 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and when it was re-inserted into the Restoration BCP (1662) it was with the Zwinglianism, no longer compatible with the teachings of the Church of England after the adoption of the Articles of Religion in 1571 and their includsion in the BCP from 1604, removed. The direction of the English Reformation from Elizabeth’s Accession, therefore, was in a more conservative direction, which in terms of the continental Magisterial Reformers meant away from Zwingli and towards Luther, and on this issue stopping in the general vicinity of Calvin. Those who wished to push it in the other direction became, of course, further radicalized as the Puritans.

– Gerry T Neal in Commenting on Carrington’s “Response to Wilgus”

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:44:20 -0700

“These departures are indicative of a disconnect between two groups within the ACNA: former mainline Protestants, including former Episcopalians, standing against revisionist theology, and post-evangelicals reacting against cultural hallmarks of their prior church homes, such as complementarianism or Christian nationalism,” Walton said.

“The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others is among the largest and fastest growing dioceses in ACNA partly because it can speak to those originating from an evangelical, charismatic, or Pentecostal context. These three departing parishes were all within C4SO, but this isn’t exclusively a C4SO problem. It’s a post-evangelical problem.”
Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…… | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:42:13 -0700

the bishop of C4SO is reconsidering his role in helping these churches. For the congregations in Austin and Indianapolis, Hunter said his approach involved “giving them a lot of space” and “being very patient with their exploration.”

“Here’s what I regret and what I’ve learned: that while I’ve done a good job caring for the clergy, I don’t think I’ve done a good job caring for the people in the church who are not progressive,” he said. “By the time I’ve stepped in, everything’s too far gone.”

Going forward, Hunter is working with C4SO leaders and their canon lawyer to develop a clearer process for how and when the bishop “can have his voice in a church earlier, so that it doesn’t get to a place where it’s very far off from not only just what I teach, but what the rest of the diocese expects.”

Like other C4SO clergy, Hunter has been called out and labeled communist, Marxist, and woke for his concern for racial justice and for ordaining women. He says his willingness to engage in conversation attracts the sort of people who are asking questions and deconstructing faith.

“It’s fascinating in online and other spaces to be criticized for these things … I am thoroughly committed to orthodox Christianity,” he told CT, “but I’m equally committed to figuring out how to live that out winsomely and truthfully, without engaging in culture wars constantly.”

Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 22:01:19 -0700

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 18:26:05 -0700

Eucharistica: an Anglican High Church pocket devotional for Holy Communion. Dated 1844 on bookplate.

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 22:38:08 -0700

Bishop Paul Thomas - Catholic Anglican Episcopacy

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:03:28 -0700

“The American Missal” and “The Anglican Missal (American Edition)” are basically the BCP liturgy embedded in the context of the private prayers of the Tridentine Missal, which alters the theology quite considerably. Hence the old joke about the Anglo-Catholics being prepared to fight to the death for the 1928 Prayer Book provided they never actually have to use it.
Source: The 1928 and Cranmer’s Shape | The North American Anglican

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:40:26 -0700

A very large percentage of people were legitimately unaware of the history of the ACNA and its policies about women/sexual minorities, until the clergy started talking about it as a preface to why they felt at odds with the denomination. It seems as though many folks came to Anglicanism to heal the wounds they received in evangelical churches, stumbled into a welcoming and loving parish, and never gave it a second thought. It would be very easy to assume we were in an affirming denomination, because there are numerous openly LGBTQ folks around the church who are valued and beloved members of the community. Source: Ladies and gentlemen: we got ‘em. : r/Episcopalian

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 19:26:46 -0700

Wonderful used book find, Adolph Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life published by the [Anglican] Society of Saint John the Evangelist.

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 12:34:37 -0700

Currently reading: The Caroline Divines and the Church of Rome by Mark Langham 📚

For the Anglican theologians, the supposed identification of gazing at the monstrance or the elevated host as a form of spiritual or ‘ocular’ communion was a perversion of the intention of Christ in establishing this sacrament (Pope Clement VIII had promulgated the Quarant’Ore devotion in 1592). It took considerable subtlety and scholarship to disentangle popular devotion from genuine Eucharistic theology. John Bramhall seems to have understood the problem when he spoke of the ‘gross mistaking and misstating of the question on both sides’ and saw the nub of the controversy as the inability to distinguish ‘what is the proper adequate Body which is contained under the species or accidents; whether a material Body, or a substantial Body, or a living Body or an organical Body, or a human Body’.

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:22:07 -0700

Until there is such clarity, there will be no unity among those of us who like to think of ourselves as Catholic and Anglican Churchmen. There will be no unity because you cannot be a pure cup of water in a dirty puddle. That is the simple, basic message of the Continuing Church to the neo-Anglicans. You have gone a very long way down a very wrong path, and that is true even if all the time you were avoiding a still worse path. You have a journey home to make, things to unlearn and to remember and recover. We want to welcome you at home. But there can be no restored communion with us without hard decisions and firm actions from you.

Source: Anglican Catholic Church Archbishop Mark Haverland’s Sermon at ICCA

I remember talking with a bishop who attended ICCA 2015, and this presentation stuck out as singularly off-putting –especially to the international bishops– to most of those present, that “home” was to be the Anglican Catholic Church for all the other Anglo-Catholics, and ACC was setting the terms. It appeared a public assertion that everyone in the room had strayed from the way, but could be welcomed into ACC. Two years after this, the continuing groups began the “joint synods” called the G4. In 2021, DHC was absorbed into ACC, making it G3. So it did work, but just for other continuing groups. Those outside the 1979 secession from the Episcopal church remain, apparently, part of a dirty puddle.

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 13:44:11 -0700

Since the English Reformation, Anglican theologians have been keen to retain inherited liturgical practices that do not violate Scripture and have support in the tradition. Bishop John Jewel wrote, “Kneeling, bowing, standing up, and other like, are commendable gestures and tokens of devotion, so long as the people understandeth what they mean, and applieth them unto God, to whom they be due.”¹ Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote a tract, dripping with Scripture and typology, called “On the Reverence due to the Altar,” that makes a biblical case for the use of our bodies in proper adoration while critiquing abuses.² Archbishop Laud similarly insisted “‘tis no Popery, to set a Raile to keep prophanation from that Holy Table.”³ All of this is to point out that Kay’s concerns are not new and have been addressed by a number of Anglican Divines quite extensively.

Source: On Railing Against Rails – Theopolis Institute

Bishop John Jewell, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), article 3, division 29. ↩︎
anglicanhistory.org/taylor/reverence.html ↩︎
anglicanhistory.org/laud/laud1.html ↩︎

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 10:02:19 -0700

The recent actions of the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), which purport to upend the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the life of the Anglican Communion, can be traced by a very clear line back to what the Episcopal Church did in General Convention 20 years ago this summer.
Source: Dealing with the Detritus of General Convention, 2003 – Covenant

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 13:53:42 -0700

Working on a project–TBA, if ever–that has encouraged me in the Anglican tradition in contrast to the ‘state of the institution.'
Feeling overwhelmed or discouraged about the church? Start ministering & working towards what supports the church you would like to see.

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 21:17:00 -0700

“A Form of Penance, Laid Before the Synod by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with his directions for it” (1580)

(via anglican_net)

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 15:14:37 -0700

Forward in Faith Mission:

Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) is a fellowship of people and churches who embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who uphold the Evangelical Faith an d Catholic Order which is the inheritance of the Anglican Way. Our fellowship works, prays, and witnesses for reform and renewal of the Church without compromise of truth or limitation of love. Our fellowship includes faithful Anglicans spanning many jurisdictions and structures, with the mission to witness to the “faith and order of the undivided Church.”

In 2017 FiFNA defined its mission:

VOL: How does your message and appeal for the fullness of Catholic faith and practice within Anglicanism, address or speak to the particulars of people in TEC, the Continuing Churches, and the ACNA (and perhaps the wider Anglican Communion)?
BAUSCH: By not taking a position on jurisdictional membership, we want to be able to offer tools which can help any and all of our members to fulfill our mission in their particular context. […]

VOL: FIFNA operates across North America within a number of Anglican churches, including the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America, the Diocese of the Holy Cross, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church in America, and the Episcopal Church (United States). However, FIFNA is not a diocese of the ACNA, which is predominantly evangelical in theology and ethos. Clearly there are tensions there. How do you think you can resolve them? Do you see a time when FIFNA would be a full partner (diocese) in the ACNA?
BAUSCH: FIFNA is not itself an ecclesial entity, and is not in itself within any jurisdiction. However, some of our members within the ACNA are within the Missionary Diocese of All Saints, which is comprised of FIFNA-member parishes and priests. The tensions you describe between some of our perspective and the ACNA are real, but not necessarily negative. At our Anglican best, we strive to see these as differences of emphasis rather than substance, and then continue to promote the understanding of our essential Catholic identity as particularly expressed such things as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. It is also noteworthy that, in the production of the ACNA Catechism, there were FIFNA members involved.
Source: Canon Lawrence D. Bausch

Later that year, following the a dissapointing-for-both-sides College of Bishop’s resolution, alongside a change in finances, it refocused towards education, and as a more volunteer organization:

So as a living organism Forward in Faith’s proclamation of the historic Catholic faith of the undivided church has not changed as much as it is being refocused.
Forward in Faith is refocusing its understanding of its place in mission by putting a renewed emphasis upon the financial support of men headed for the priesthood and training already ordained priests to better evangelize and present the Gospel message in today’s world.
Source: Forward in Faith-North America changes focus

FIFNA has since refocused again under a new president, Bp Menees:

In fulfillment of our mission FIFNA seeks to be leaven in the ACNA, offering retreats, seminars, tracts and more. (Source)

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 10:57:32 -0700

It is not a church plant per se, at least not yet, but rather a space for brothers and sisters with a shared love of the Lord Jesus Christ to gather for refreshment, nourishment, and encouragement, and also a space where they can invite others to experience genuine Christian fellowship, discover the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness in the Anglican tradition.

Source: What is Church House?

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 11:21:59 -0700

ALL churches are a mess right now, doctrinal pure or no. Churches either have problems with beliefs or praxis. Very rare to find a parish healthy in both areas. Might as well make things better where you are, then to be a gyrovague and run around!
…
Saint Benedict’s call to Stability, and having a Rule of Life helps in these matters. It sounds like the Author is sticking to his, and that’s commendable.
Source: COLUMBA SILOUAN, Comments in Why I Stay

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 10:13:02 -0700

Again, when modern Anglicans move on to Rome, they are following through on the logic of their position. They have been taught that they have no beliefs except for those of “the Catholic Church,” and they have been nurtured with a profusion of pre-Reformation ceremonies. Why is it surprising, then, if they embrace a church that lays claim to precisely the same inheritance, but with a more perfect unity of its pre-Reformation ceremony and pre-Reformation doctrine?

Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

In point of fact–er, experience: lay and clergy that I know who jumped from ACNA over to Orthodoxy or Rome did so largely because of ACNA’s stalemate on female ordiantion, and either persecution for opposing such, or discouragement at the lack of direction towards a solution. The former’s explicit support alienates the classical, the reformed, the catholic; the latter’s implicit support breaks confidence there is ultimately any doctrinal core in the Anglican church, which includes consequences when doctrines are not upheld.

For example, the conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali to Rome appeared to be about the total breakdown in governance in Gafcon: Kenya consecrated two women to the episcopacy in violation of standards agreed upon, and nothing happened except “well it doesn’t matter that much anyway; it isn’t like Gafcon is a jurisdiction” 2) the issue of female consecration/ordination itself, which negatively impacts talks with Orthodoxy, Catholic, Coptic, PNCC; any Apostolic church except Anglican and liberal, affirming Old Catholics.

The above statement then is, in my experience, is inaccurate. People have been taught Anglicanism, including a rich doctrinal history of the classical and Anglo-Catholic luminaries. What they see in Anglicanism is a total lack of gumption to actually be Anglican, and may as well move on to a place that, like the post-Vatican II RC, and Western Rite Orthodox are each more “Anglican” than many Anglicans.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 09:56:05 -0700

Zero was not the right number for ceremonies, but the number should be pretty low. And Cranmer anticipated in “Of ceremonies” that over time more ceremonies would need to be excised as they proved to be distracting or grounds for superstition.

One can see in this a very modern recognition of the scarcity of human attention: something will attract the attention of the congregation, something will occupy the rector’s explanatory time, something will be the focus of observation and remark for visitors. The traditional Anglican practice strips away much of the outward trappings, fixing the attention on the Word of God, prayer, and music (the one place where ornate elaboration in the service was most characteristically Anglican).

In short, before the twentieth century Anglicanism was a religion of the word. It appealed constantly and pervasively to the ear.

Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 09:46:27 -0700

The English reformers hacked away at the medieval ceremonies with a vengeance. Archbishop Cranmer banned all of the Catholic sacramentals—no candles at Candlemas, no ashes at Ash Wednesday, no palms at Palm Sunday. He prohibited lighted candles on the Communion table. Not only did he remove all crossings in the Communion service, he even revised the text of the service to remove the places where late medieval priests had been in the habit of making the sign of the cross. The mass-associated eucharistic vestments—the chasuble and stole—were gone.

Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 11:42:33 -0700

After the vote reaffirming the decision to oust Saddleback, Warren said in a YouTube video that he wasn’t surprised and that he made his appeal “knowing we weren’t going to win.” He compared the movement to that of William Wilberforce, a British politician who lobbied to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain and triumphed after 17 years.
“I wanted to push the conversation,” Warren said. “I wanted to speak up for millions of Southern Baptist women, who I believe their spiritual gifts and their leadership gifts and talents are being wasted. And we can’t complete the Great Commission if 50% of our population sits on the shelf.”
Warren highlighted that the vote wasn’t unanimous.
“The next generation of Southern Baptists, they’re not here,” he added. “I can guarantee that change will happen at some point.”

Source: Southern Baptists finalize ouster of O.C.’s Saddleback Church - Los Angeles Times

A few points:

Warren wanted to push the conversation. This was a provocative effort to change a denomination’s core doctrine and identity, with a ‘Walk Together’ paradigm.

Warren said. “No one is asking any Southern Baptist church to change their theology. I’m not asking you to agree with my church, I’m asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines.”

Warren is astute that the denomination, like all denominations, will be facing new challenges as cultural norms have changed for younger generations.
Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedixt XVI:

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members."
[…]
“It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.”

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 21:12:43 -0700

I believe that without such clarity and catholicity in theological method the ‘conservatism’ of, say, ACNA on sexual morality or of a traditional Old High Churchman on the ordination of women will prove to be merely the slow lane to the destination already reached by TEC, the CofE, and the Anglican Communion in general.

Source: Old High Churchmen and Continuing Anglicans – Anglican Catholic Liturgy and Theology

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 15:48:59 -0700

We who are Evangelicals recognize the need to address the widespread misunderstanding in our community that sola scriptura (Scripture alone) means nuda scriptura (literally, Scripture unclothed; i.e., denuded of and abstracted from its churchly context). The phrase sola scriptura refers to the primacy and sufficiency of Scripture as the theological norm—the only infallible rule of faith and practice—over all tradition rather than the mere rejection of tradition itself. The isolation of Scripture study from the believing community of faith (nuda scriptura) disregards the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding the witness of the people of God to scriptural truths, and leaves the interpretation of that truth vulnerable to unfettered subjectivism.

Source: Evangelicals and Catholics Together

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:05:32 -0700

The danger of departure from the hermeneutic of the Anglican Reformers has already become clear. The Kigali Commitment promises to “affirm and encourage . . . leadership roles of GAFCON women in family, Church and society.” This statement implicitly ratifies women’s ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. All three are already being practiced in several GAFCON provinces, and the first two in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).

We believe in ministry for women in a large variety of roles that the ancient fathers endorsed, including the order of deaconesses. But the ordination of women to sacramental ministry violates the plain sense of Scripture, which the English Reformers prized.

Disagreements among Anglicans about women’s ordination (as well as homosexuality and other controversial issues) make clear that this plain sense can be arrived at only by reading Scripture through the lens of the tradition of the Church.

Furthermore, women’s ordination breaches the conciliarism that the English Reformers practiced and esteemed. They knew that the rule in the early Church in resolving disputes was to accept only rites that agreed with Scripture as understood by the whole Church. The biblical authors insist not only that Scripture is the Word of God, but also that the Church of the living God [is] a pillar and buttress of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Their criterion is Scripture as understood by the whole Church.

Rites for women’s ordination have been approved without the consent of the whole Church. They have come primarily from a minority of the world’s churches, those that are heretical and dying. This is a new and (mostly) Western development. The ACNA College of Bishops insisted upon this in 2017 when it concluded that women’s ordination is a “recent innovation” with “insufficient scriptural warrant.” This salutary statement recognizes that the recent departure from the traditional understanding of man and woman within the Bride of Christ deviates from the way the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church has understood Holy Order for two millennia.

Source: Is the Anglican “Reset” Truly Anglican? | Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, Greg Peters | First Things

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:41:12 -0700

The truth is that the GAFCON primates have expressly chosen language that shows they are bent on forgetting that there is still great division, especially on issues of the ordination of women to the episcopate. They have chosen instead to move forward in a way that relegates these very serious issues to secondary, adiaphora, hang-ups. The problem is, if I may be utterly clear, they have even misrepresented the language of the Jerusalem Declaration. This is particularly dangerous.
Source: Convenient Forgetting and the Jerusalem Declaration - The North American Anglican

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:23:39 -0700

The ordination of women has halted Anglican-Roman Catholic negotiations, for now; but if Anglo-Catholics have a place in GAFCON, they could bring Grafton’s dream of reunion with the Old Catholics and Orthodox closer to fruition. GAFCON has essentially exorcised latitudinarians from the Anglican picture, leaving them to fade away in their Canterbury ghetto. It is undoubtedly an evangelical-dominated movement. Nonetheless, that leaves a significant Anglo-Catholic minority, particularly in the U.S. and Africa. That minority could be all that is needed to graft the majority of Anglicans firmly onto the apostolic vine. The Union of Scranton founded by the Polish Old Catholic hierarchy that Grafton once courted is already moving toward reunion with some Anglo-Catholic jurisdictions, and the Anglican Church of North America, which split off from the U.S. Episcopal Church in 2009 to join GAFCON, could become a bridge between the Old Catholic movement and the worldwide Anglican majority. This could help GAFCON to decide whether it is just evangelical, or both evangelical and Catholic. If it opts for the latter course, then Grafton’s thesis may not yet be a dead letter.
Source: Anglicans and the Reunion of Christendom | Thomas Plant | First Things

Excellent thoughts, although I believe that the PNCC halted discussion with ACNA because of its unresolved policy on gender & holy orders.

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:12:40 -0700

let us remember that we are fighting for God’s Truth: truth revealed in Holy Scripture; truth more fully shown to us in modern discovery; and for the liberty of the sons of God; liberty ecclesiastical, political, intellectual. The Anglican Communion, and the Anglo-Catholic Movement which is its spearhead, its only consistent manifestation, are the only hope for the re-union of Christendom and the reconciliation of the modern world to Christianity. Roman propaganda, both inside and outside the Church, is an effort to pervert and ultimately to destroy that movement. I have avoided making accusations, but I cannot but warn you, that there are very sinister elements in what we are fighting against. If there is a “Protestant underworld,” as we are sometimes told, there is also an Anglo-Catholic underworld, and a very queer region it is. The use that is being made of the confessional and of the retreat movement in certain quarters, may lead to very disastrous results; and some of our smaller religious communities need watching carefully.

Source: English Catholicism, by CB Moss

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 12:40:12 -0700

Dr Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1928 to 1942, successfully cursed a hotel when a friend complained that it ruined the view at his lake house. The hotel burned down — twice. Thoroughly pleased with his success, the Archbishop went on to curse other minor items, such as ugly windows, when asked by his friends and fellow clergy. Anecdotes such as these might suggest that, if Anglicans were dabbling in the occult, it was all nothing more than the idiosyncrasies of strong personalities.

In truth, Anglo-Catholic involvement in the occult is much broader and deeper than most would suspect. Take, for instance, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, established in 1887. Devoted to the Western esoteric tradition, and practising various forms of initiatory ritual magic, the Golden Dawn recruited heavily from the clergy. Some of these men were, indeed, simple eccentrics.

The Revd William Alexander Ayton, Vicar of Chacombe, in Oxfordshire, was one such case. A Freemason of extraordinarily deep occult learning, he maintained a clandestine alchemical lab in his rectory basement, and declared that he had made the Elixir of Life […]

The Revd A. H. Baverstock, twice Master of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) in the 1920s, was a member [of the Golden Dawn], as was the Very Revd Frank Selwyn Bennett, the Dean of Chester Cathedral, a formative influence on the culture of Anglican cathedrals in the 20th century.

The Revd Francis Heazell, secretary of the Church of England’s committee on ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox from 1917 to 1929, was a Ruling Chief of the Order’s London Temple. His duties would have included teaching the Order’s hermetic doctrines to new initiates. […]

So were some of his brothers at Mirfield. In fact, Rees, and a fellow monk of Mirfield, Fr Charles Fitzgerald CR, helped to found a Golden Dawn temple in New Zealand while on mission there in the 1910s. The chapter that they started eventually came to include several Anglican bishops from that country. […]

Although the Golden Dawn and its daughter organisations had a notable contingent of clergy and Anglican laity, the Order was necessarily restrictive. It remained, primarily, a phenomenon of a very select elite. Theosophy, by contrast, was more widely diffused within the Church of England. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a popular interest in “mysticism” which took various forms. […] ANGLICAN clergy were not immune to this wider cultural force. Sermons on Theosophical topics could be heard in some early Edwardian parishes. Many Anglo-Catholics of the era were able to blend beliefs in the astral body, reincarnation, and root races with Catholic doctrines and ritual practices. But the Anglican liaison with Theosophy was not to last. At the 1920 Lambeth Conference, Theosophy was formally condemned, alongside Spiritualism and Christian Science. Some Theosophical Anglicans, such as J. I. Wedgwood and C. W. Leadbeater, eventually decided to leave the Church of England and start their own Theosophical churches as episcopi vagantes.

Source: On the wings of the Dawn — the lure of the Occult

Sat, 03 Jun 2023 10:28:49 -0700

This long-held sacred principle called the Seal of the Confessional should be upheld whenever possible. However, according to the guidance of many dioceses, an exception may occur when the life or well-being of the penitent or another person is in potential danger. This exception is becoming more prevalent as many states have attempted to pass laws that compel clergy to breach confessional privilege in these situations. — Jacob Davis

Following the recent article from Anglican Compass, it is worth remembering that many ACNA dioceses, including The Diocese of Western Anglicans no longer honor the seal of confessional.
This is a notable departure from not just Catholic tradition, but the classical Anglican tradition itself. Such is a capitulation to culture versus the authority of the church, both reformed and catholic.

Note that in addition to a permeable seal, this practice includes recording confessional meetings. —
will be adding supplements here:

This motion to legally protect the seal was affirmed unanimously in both York and Canterbury, as recently as 1959:

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 14:23:38 -0700

A Parent’s Prayer from the St Augustine’s Prayer Book

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 08:31:12 -0700

From the composer:

It is a combination of the Collect for the Heathen and the Collect for Heretics from the Solemn Collects for Good Friday from the People’s Anglican Missal.

Sat, 20 May 2023 22:15:12 -0700

In that reluctance to come to grips with “Classical Anglicanism” (despite protestations to the contrary), the ACNA project remains strongly entangled with the theological, historical, liturgical, and institutional perspectives that so disastrously reshaped the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church in Canada in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Source: A Curate’s Egg - The ACNA Prayer Book of 2019 - The Anglican Way

Sat, 20 May 2023 22:07:33 -0700

the modern English liturgy is clueless about the wedding ring: ‘I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage.’ Whether at a coronation or a wedding, if you have to say that something is a symbol and a sign, it is not a very good symbol and it fails to signify. ‘With this ring I thee wed,’ says nothing about a symbol but actually symbolizes. ‘This is a symbol’ merely asserts something that is not in fact the case. Source: The Coronation of King Charles III – Anglican Catholic Liturgy and Theology

Wed, 17 May 2023 19:30:34 -0700

Anglicanism is not confessional. In the United States, Anglicanism has never been confessionally binding like some Reformed and Lutheran churches are. While there have been binding statements in place to be employed at some Episcopal churches or institutions, the PECUSA never had a united document for discipline that all Anglicans agreed to beyond the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer is a wonderful liturgy, but it is not a confessional statement upon which negative sanctions like ex-communication could easily be applied to one who dissents from some aspect of it not common to the catholic creeds.

This allows for far greater flexibility of Anglicanism than many other church traditions, but it also makes internal policing almost impossible. Such a wide range of beliefs makes systematic treatment of theology difficult and discipline based on deviant theology very difficult. Even if many dioceses come to affirm a common statement on theology, that other dioceses do not affirm the same standards opens the door to future infiltration and compromise at all times. In other words, an almost complete consensus is needed before any hope of discipline can be successfully employed. As an Old School Presbyterian minister said about his New School counterparts in the denomination, “The measure of the strength of a machine is the strength of its weakest part.”

The ACNA’s diversity also means that different cultural traditions like Low Church and Anglo-Catholic are at high risk for entirely different forms of infiltration. In theory, a denomination with a single confessional tradition has a finite number of discernible weaknesses which can be enumerated and protected against. As we will see, the PECUSA had and the ACNA has an infinite number. Policing all possible forms of heterodoxy is an exhausting task, and cultural distinctions, or prejudices, will begin to emerge in order to signal conformity to certain parties. This has the positive effect of building homogeneous, high-trust churches, but the potential downside of people taking on the social identity without the theological content, and never being vetted, a common occurrence in early 20th century Episcopalianism. For instance, the aforementioned Joseph Packard was an incredibly staunch Calvinist, almost out of place by the early 20th century. He defended an explicitly Protestant and Bible-centered identity around the PECUSA. Yet in his autobiography, he referred only positively to Charles Briggs, a newcomer to the Anglican tradition who had been effectively forced out of the Presbyterian church for his promotion of higher criticism. Packard selectively had his guard up, choosing to make certain social identities enemies (critics of the 39 Articles, like Tractarians), and certain social identities friends (New England Calvinists, like Briggs), without considering how his prejudices blinded him from his own side’s weaknesses. Unsurprisingly, it wouldn’t even take two decades from the publication of Packard’s autobiography for VTS to fall to modernism.

There has yet to be a method proven within the Anglican tradition to successfully police institutions while maintaining the breadth of theological diversity within Anglicanism. The Anglican micro-denominations which supported the Congress of St. Louis recognized this, and opted for a distinctly Anglo-Catholic identity, making them more internally stable, but at the cost of losing their public, national, and outward-facing identity altogether. Many of their parishes are almost unrecognizable, highly combative, and very focused on internal church politics–all traits of less wealthy, ethnically centered, confessionally bound denominations more than any historic Anglican Province.

Anglicans Shouldn’t Be Building New Colleges

Sat, 13 May 2023 12:41:53 -0700

Msgr Jeffrey Steenson, P.A, who also worked on the Anglican Service Book when at Good Shepherd Rosemont

Peter Toon Memorial Lecture This lecture seeks to articulate contemporary challenges and to point to the archaia agape (‘ancient love’) as a way to engage with the contending groups that are part of the modern church.

Sat, 13 May 2023 04:31:59 -0700

“… noble, but bare and quiet, without the lofty aspiration of the French Gothic or the devotional intimacy of an Italian chapel … the dignity of an architecture that speaks for itself and largely without the benefit of images” — Roger Scruton on the Anglican parish church

St Peulan’s, Llanbeulan on Anglesey

Sun, 07 May 2023 21:15:53 -0700

In what does this joy consist? It is a hard concept for us, because we live in, and are heavily influenced by, a culture that defines happiness as possessing stuff. The Puritan concept that God materially blesses those whom he favors leads in a direct line to the Prosperity Gospel. Yet, despite the affluence and consumer goods, the nation seems increasingly unhappy and angry. Millions get through the day only by dulling their psychic pain with mountains of legal and illegal drugs to stave off anxiety and depression. Is it time to reject the Puritans and Prosperity Prophets? Jesus notes that Mammon is a hard master, not a source of joy.

To use the Pauline analogy, as newborn babes can only tolerate milk, perhaps we can only begin with small steps to recapture the joy. “You must be joyful” is, of course, an exhortation of no value. Joy is not an obligation any more than it is a consumer product. Our source of joy is not found in religion, cultic observance, nor obedience to commandments. It comes from the power of the Resurrection, from that single, transforming fact, both historical and contemporary, “Christ is risen.”

Without that single fact, even the richest world is desolate. With it, even the most hopeless world is rich. Therein lies the joy.

– Bp Win Mott

Sun, 07 May 2023 12:00:00 -0700

American 1928 Revisers keeping the ‘national church can do whatever’ ball rolling.

Some selections both of Epistles and Gospels which seem less happy have been emended in various recent Prayer Book revisions, as we shall see. While such changes are sentimentally regrettable, as putting sister branches of the Anglican church out of step with each other, and with Western traditions of some eleven hundred years, on certain occasions, yet plainly there is nothing in the history of our liturgical lectionaries which entitles them to more respect than their intrinsic merits deserve; and it is quite within the competence of any National Church to make such further improvements as may be demanded in the lections for our cycle of Sundays.

from Parsons & Jones, The American Prayer Book: Its Origins and Principles, p.85

Fri, 05 May 2023 05:55:00 -0700

“Often we have prided ourselves since the formation of the Anglican Communion on being delivered from being a national or regional sect when all that we have really become is a world sect.”
– Wolf, p. xxxii, Kingdom of Christ

Thu, 04 May 2023 14:32:40 -0700

“Three Streams” is a phrase that has come to the fore in the last 10 years or so, especially amongst Anglicans in the ACNA and in continuing Anglican churches. The phrase is meant to suggest (a) that there are three historic “streams” within historic Christianity — the Catholic, the Evangelical, and the Charismatic — and (b) that Anglicanism embodies these in a distinct way that can serve the renewal of the Church.

Prof. Gillis Harp has suggested that the notion may have its origins in Lesslie Newbigin’s The Household of God (1953) or possibly an article by Richard Lovelace in Charisma magazine in 1984. Regardless, it was brought to prominence by the late Wheaton College professor Robert Webber in his wide corpus on “Ancient-Future” worship, sometimes called the Convergence Movement. In an article for ACNA’s newsletter Apostle, Trinity School for Ministry’s professor emeritus, the Rev’d Dr Les Farfield writes:

The genius of Anglicanism is that for five hundred years it has held in creative tension three different strands of Biblical Christianity. Those three streams are the Protestant, the Pentecostal/Holiness and the AngloCatholic [sic] movements.

I must say I find this a problematic argument from a historical perspective: How many Anglicans before the twentieth-century charismatic movement would have found recognizable the claim that the “Pentecostal/Holiness” stream is an integral part of Anglicanism?
Source: Three streams (but not the ones you’re thinking of) – Covenant

Tue, 02 May 2023 11:27:39 -0700

The Protestant movement recalled the 16th century Church to the primacy of the Word—written, read, preached, inwardly digested. The 18th century Holiness movement reminded the Church of God’s love for the poor. The Anglo-Catholic movement re-grounded the Church in the sacramental life of worship. All three strands are grounded in the Gospel. Each one extrapolates the Gospel in a specific direction. No strand is dispensable. Other Christian bodies have often taken one strand to an extreme. By God’s grace the Anglican tradition has held the streams in creative tension. This miracle of unity is a treasure worth keeping.

Dr. Les Fairfield

From the Anglican Church in North America website. Rather than the sometimes-given definition of “three streams” being Evangelical, Charismatic, and Sacramental; Three streams in Anglicanism is Reformed, Wesleyan/Holiness, and Catholic.

Tue, 02 May 2023 09:02:05 -0700

The revival also appears to transcend the normative Anglican tribal divides of ‘High’ and ‘Low’ church. A few church schools have taken to assimilating the Book of Common Prayer into their curriculums, providing the prospect of growing future Anglican leaders fluent in the deepest parts of their heritage. Even Roman Catholics are having a go. For the Ordinariate – an enclave for ex-Anglicans, including the former Bishop of Rochester Dr Michael Nazir-Ali – the Vatican has assimilated an adjusted 1662 text.

It would be a mistake to misinterpret renewed interest in the Prayer Book as a purely aesthetic enterprise, a sort of religious Classic FM. What is clear is that the appeal is not just about Shakespearean language, beautiful though it evidently is. The Prayer Book is theology at its best. It is a manual of spiritual disciple that is as far removed from modern, cringe-inducing ‘wellness’ gobbledygook as can be. Its uncompromising opening, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts’, is a brick through the window to many facets of modern living including narcissism, egotism and the crocodile tears of identity politics.

– Rev Daniel French, Why millennial men are turning to the Book of Common Prayer

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 05:13:00 -0700

“if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God." Acts 5:38

What of the state of global Anglicanism? Thinking on the difference between the two: of men, or of God: from the perspective of the adherent, the faithful minority (or remnant) and the ‘losing side’ of the ‘movement’ appear similar; the difference may not be known in a single lifetime. How does this awareness change one’s spirituality?

Minimizing Eastern Customs, Retaining Catholic Practices. (from Feb 2020)

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 10:00:00 -0700

Interesting news from the Orthodox Church in South Korea. With the imminent threat of COVID-19, they are recommending modified church customs:

For this reason, we urge all believers to follow the following instructions until the problem ends:

During the Divine Liturgy all believers will wear masks.

Before entering the Church, they will disinfect their hands with a disinfectant present at the entrance of the Church.

They will not shake hands with anyone.

They will not kiss the hand of the Clergy.

They will not kiss the Icons, but they will bow before them.

They will not use the liturgical books at the time of prayer.

They will not receive the Antidoron from the Clergy, but on their own as they leave the church.

The Agape Meal will not be served following the Sunday Liturgy.

The various group meetings of the Faithful as well as the Catechumens will not take place.
<www.orthodoxkorea.org/instructi…>

Note that modifying Eucharistic practice to something more ‘modern’ is not mentioned.Certain practices that are difficult for Westerners are more negotiable than some Orthodox might otherwise express, and this shows at times of challenge rather than ease. I have been in relaxed and uptight Orthodox contexts, so those that are already relaxed should be able to keep on truckin'.These observations do not diminish the importance of the practice but rather, that these are interesting hints at how Orthodoxy itself could be contextualized for different cultures and customs (we all have a terminal illness, after all).
3. Reduce or remove The Peace. Anglicans, Catholics, everyone. Theologically, The Peace is a moment of reconciliation, not a meet-and-greet or chance to catch up / make plans.
4. Many Anglicans and most protestants would be very uncomfortable with this, even after catechizing the role of Clergy and usefulness of a blessing.
5. Similar to #4. Modern westerners generally feel weird about kissing stuff, but can show proper reverence in other ways.
6. Bring your own prayer book & Bible to church. No more pew bibles, handouts, etc. Save church funds, encourage liturgical familiarity, uniformity to published works, and personal ownership of your communal faith.