laudable Practice

The services were decently and demurely read in their parish churches, chanting was confined to the cathedral, and the science of intoning was unknown. One young man who had come direct from Oxford as a curate to Plumstead had, after the lapse of two or three Sundays, made a faint attempt, much to the bewilderment of the poorer part of the congregation. Dr. Grantly had not been present on the occasion, but Mrs. Grantly, who had her own opinion on the subject, immediately after the service expressed a hope that the young gentleman had not been taken ill, and offered to send him all kinds of condiments supposed to be good for a sore throat. After that there had been no more intoning at Plumstead Episcopi. It is an amusing incident from Barchester Towers , Trollope's 1857 novel. Amusing as it is, it also reflects mid-19th century Anglican experience. We hear something of Mrs. Grantly in the 1862 edition of Reading the Liturgy , a work which originally had the subtitle "addressed ...

My three favourite books of 2025 were not only all written by Anglicans. They also have each something significant to say to contemporary Anglicanism.  Fergus Butler-Gallie's Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings That Made Christianity is an excellent reflection on place within Christianity. Church buildings, particular locations, national identity: the theological significance of each is considered. The book, then, provides a most welcome and necessary alternative to those voices who would suggest that none of these actually matter for Christian faith. But the thing is that as soon as a person encounters God in a place, it becomes a somewhere. Christians call these 'somewheres' churches.  God in Christ, we might say, makes Anywhere to be Somewhere. To be more precise, God in Christ makes every Anywhere to be Somewhere. This, the book suggests, is the significance of the Incarnation occurring in the provincial backwater of Bethlehem: Bethlehem, therefore, i...

'Christ has always been in Christmas.' So says a new campaign by the Church of England .  Reassuring, isn't it? The established Church has decided to confidently challenge the prevailing secularist presentation of Christmas as a midwinter commercial festival, 'liberated' from its unfortunate Christian roots, repackaged in a manner that conforms to the norms of ideological multiculturalism and EDI concerns. Except, of course, that this is not at all the intention behind the Church of England campaign. 'Christ has always been in Christmas' is not directed at secularism. It is, rather, directed at the disreputable anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson and - that new spectre haunting the Church of England hierarchy - ' Christian Nationalism ' (a desperately confused concept with little real meaning in the United Kingdom and Europe).  Odd, isn't it, that the Church of England has found its voice now. After decades of cold, haughty aloofness to cult...

Zwingli failed to work out any fully developed or coherent theology of baptism ... It is easy enough to detect the weaknesses in Zwingli's understanding. He isolates the various aspects of the sacrament. He has not true doctrine of sacramental efficacy. He has little or nothing to say about baptism as a sign of remission and regeneration. G.W. Bromiley's introduction to Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' - in the Zwingli and Bullinger volume (1953) in 'The Library of Christian Classics' series - offers a stark but accurate assessment of the failings of the Zurich reformer's sacramental theology, not least when contrasted with "Luther and the more developed 'sacramentalism' of the later Reformed school". As example of such richer Reformation sacramental theology we might particularly point to the BCP Baptismal rite, Article XXVII, and the Catechism: the Anglican eye will particularly notice how Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' significantly contr...

While doing some background reading on the Bible Society's excellent Quiet Revival report (it is required reading), I came across a very good reflection by Sarah Coppin , a theologian in the charismatic tradition. I will be addressing aspects of the report in subsequent posts, but - amongst many important and insightful points made by Sarah Coppin - this one particularly caught my attention: Be open about the cost of being a Christian. Young men in particular really want to be challenged. Talk about the ways that following Jesus has been hard, and then talk about why it was worth it. Talk about Christian views on sex and porn. Talk about giving money away to the poor. Talk about how Jesus teaches us to forgive our enemies. Talk about the spiritual disciplines. Talk about sacrifice. Tell them to read Bonhoeffer. The reason it caught my attention is that, with Confirmation soon to be administered in the parish, I have been re-reading Jeremy Taylor's A Discourse of Confirmation ...

#NoBadDays #GoodVibesOnly #ChooseHappy In a recent interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ' The Philosopher's Zone ', US philosopher Mariana Alessandri - author of Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through Dark Moods (2023) - provided a critique of "the tyranny of toxic positivity", the omnipresent platitudes of the self-help industry summarised in the above hashtags. While Alessandri seeks to encourage an understanding of darker moods and experiences through Existentialism, the interview did make me think about how the Book of Common Prayer also rejects "the tyranny of toxic positivity", taking up into prayer and devotion, thought and meditation, the darker moods and experiences. As Alessandri notes, toxic positivity is an attempt to deny that the darker moods and experiences are inherent to the human condition, thus rendering us "emotionally illiterate" when confronted with them: hence the need for a view of the human cond...

The backlash against New Theism has been swift. And, strangely, most of it hasn’t come from humanists and atheists, but from what one might call established Christians. George Pitcher's comment on the recent flurry of articles on 'cultural Christians' in the United Kingdom highlights the oddest feature of this phenomenon: the most intense opposition to the very idea of 'cultural Christians' comes from Christians. It is almost as if the failure of the New Atheist movement - and this is what 'cultural Christians' at least partly represent - comes as a disappointment to some of the theological despisers of cultural Christians. Perhaps this emerges from a desire for a combative, confrontational relationship between Church and Culture, rather contrary to the Apostolic exhortation that "we may lead a quiet and peaceable life". Sectarian existence, after all, can be a rather more heady experience than the quiet, peaceable, modest Anglican (or Presbyteria...

Arvo Pärt might not, to say the least, be the most obvious choice of a cultural figure to illustrate aspects of the Old High tradition. The Estonian composer, a devout Orthodox believer, and recent recipient of the Polar Music Prize , is rather far removed from the conventions of Old High piety. That said, Peter C. Bouteneff's study Arvo Pärt: Out of Slience (2015) reminds us of the "ecumenical nature of" Pärt's "Christian faith and identity", contrasting with the reactionary sectarianism of some elements in Orthodoxy, marked by the "kind of impassioned devotion one might have for a nation or a football team".  This, then, might allow us to reflect on some similarities between Pärt's music and the Old High tradition.  And so a  profile of Pärt  by conductor and composer Carmen-Helena Télle did bring to mind aspects of Old High piety: By the mid-1980s, Pärt began to be grouped among other composers labeled colloquially as “Holy Min...

Now I saw in my dream, that the highway up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart, "He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death." Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him, that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked therefore, and looked again, eve...