laudable Practice

In a recent essay , Alan Ford - a leading historian of the Church of Ireland - considered the Jacobean and Caroline Irish Church in the context of what he termed "the wider perspective of Atlantic Protestantism". Alongside Ford's essay, I was also reading Plantation Churches: Places of worship in early Seventeenth-century Ulster (2025). In its concluding chapter, the book refers to The Middle Church, at the heart of Jeremy Taylor country. While built at Taylor's direction and consecrated in 1668, it is noted that a worshipper "would have seen little difference" between The Middle Church and Jacobean churches in Ireland. Around the same time, I also stumbled across online pictures of the Reformed church in Vámosatya , on the eastern edge of Hungary's Northern Great Plain. Ford's essay and the pictures of Vámosatya church provoked me to consider looking in the other direction - not across the Atlantic, but across Europe, to the continent's eastern...

As Hungary will be featuring in Monday's post, I thought it would be appropriate today - as Saint Bartholomew's Day approaches, the anniversary of the implementation of the 1662 Act of Uniformity - to consider how Episcopalian divine John Durel, in his A view of the government and publick worship of God in the reformed churches beyond the seas wherein is shewed their conformity and agreement with the Church of England (1662), points to the government, ceremonies, and liturgy of the Reformed Churches of Hungary and Transylvania as he defends the episcopal and liturgical order of the English Church. On the matter of church government, Durel notes the account given by the Episcopalian Isaac Basire, who had spent time in Hungary and Transylvania during the Interregnum: Reverend Doctor Basire sheweth out of the very Canons of the Hungarian Churches that they have Bishops both name and thing for their Governors and Pastors; that they think themselves bound to have those several Orde...

This year's parish Lent book is Lent With The Beloved Disciple , by Michael Marshall. It is, as we would expect, a thoughtful, theologically serious work, inviting us into a deep, rich reading of the Fourth Gospel. One reference in the book, however, did rather annoy my Old High prejudices.  In the first chapter, Marshall notes how the Tractarian Edward King approvingly quoted John Wesley condemning 'Conventional Christianity', "prevalent in his day", as inferior to the "experiential religion" of the Revivalists. I have added this to the now rather large file entitled 'Contemporary Anglicans still not understanding 18th century Anglicanism'. (And, yes, it does give me an excuse to again point readers to my views on this matter .) Shortly after encountering the above reference in Marshall, I happened to read a very fine Living Church article by Mark Clavier , reflecting on the meaning of rural churches in a secular culture: Rural churches are te...