"The true importance of the spiritual hope": A Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter. The sermon opens with a recognition of the continued season of Easter, "these days of religious celebration and memorial in the Christian Church". It then focuses on the reality and significance of the spiritual life ("the one great interest"), a good example of the spiritual vitality of pre-1833 Old High tradition:

Let us, then, as the general lesson to be gathered from our past reflections, bear in mind, at all times, the true dignity and the real value of the soul. Let us learn frequently to put the question which our Lord framed for us, "what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Upon this ground of just comparison, we may bring all things temporal, all the glories of this world, and all its benefits, to the test, and learn to keep them in due dependence and subordination to the one great interest.

The clear delights of an approving conscience, the testimonies of good hope for the days to come, the joy and peace of reconciliation with the Father of mercies, the assurance of endless ages of security and happiness, will thus be the solace and the riches of their present state. A right sense of the true importance of the spiritual hope, and prospects of the deathless soul, will induce us to recommend its interests to God, that under the guidance of his saying grace we may cherish its advancement, and promote its welfare by the increase of faith and charity; a faith built upon the two-fold testimonies of the Redeemer's saving death and glorious resurrection; a charity grounded on his precepts and illustrated in its whole extent by his example.

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Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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