laudable Practice

An Anglican should sound like a reformed Catholic Christian, grounded in the genuinely humanist implications of the Bible and the writings of the church Fathers. Someone committed to an authentic local and rooted expression of a universal faith. Someone with a strong sense of the integral unity of reason, scripture, and tradition. Of the unity, also, of artistic expression with care for nature and metaphysical vision. John Milbank, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham - Church Times 1st October 2021. John Milbank's words were in response to a Church Times request for "concise suggestions ... about what an Anglican sounded like".  Note, not a definition of doctrine (a debate for another time), more a description of ethos. I confess that I think Milbank has done so in a superb and deeply evocative manner.    Reading the description over the past week, I was particularly struck how it brings to mind what it...

On Friday it was Jeremy Taylor.  Today the Church of Ireland commemorates another of its post-Reformation 'worthies',  Charles Inglis , first Anglican bishop in Canada. Inglis was born in Ireland, his father a parson in the Church of Ireland diocese of Raphoe (in County Donegal). In his first  Visitation Charge to the clergy of Nova Scotia in 1788 , Inglis set forth a vision of Anglican order, liturgy, and sacramental life suggestive of the vitality of the pre-1833 High Church tradition. Noting that the extension of the episcopacy to North America was necessary in order "complete the Polity of the National Church in this country", Inglis also emphasised the ordained ministry as of divine institution, with "the intention of our Lord in appointing these different orders" being "to promote the salvation of souls". In light of this, "Theology is the subject which should chiefly engage a Clergyman's time and attention", with particular att...

We don't preach morality, we plant churches   - Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, Church Times , 2nd July 2021. Compare the Archbishop's comment with some classical statements of the Anglican tradition: The Wise Man saith, He that believeth in God, will hearken unto his commandments. For if we do not shew ourselves faithful in our conversation, the faith which we pretend to have is but a feigned faith: because the true Christian faith is manifestly shewed by good living, and not by words only; as Augustine saith, Good living cannot be separated from true faith, which worketh by love ... Now forasmuch as he that believeth in Christ hath everlasting life, it must needs consequently follow that he that hath this faith must have also good works, and be studious to observe God's commandments obediently - 'A Short Declaration of the True, Lively, and Christian Faith', Book of Homilies . Faith may not be naked without good works; for then it is no true faith ... If h...

In his excellent Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (2019), Andrew Davison notes that the English legacy of "the organic weaving of statute, precedent, and tradition within a common law tradition" can be understood as an expression of "a participatory understanding".  Such a participatory understanding reflects the need for "human creativity and discernment ... since the natural law does not stipulate how to work out principles of human flourishing in detail, particularly as that pertains to individual human societies".  The process of "promulgation by parliament and Crown, observation of precedent, and interpretation by the judiciary" also has the character of "a common participation", a seeking out and discerning of the "the objectively just and good". In other words, there is a significant theological rationale for recognising and giving thanks for these political, constitutional, and legal...

YE are to take care that this Child be brought to the Bishop to be confirmed by him, so soon as he can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments in the vulgar tongue, and be further instructed in the Church Catechism set forth for that purpose - the final exhortation to Godparents in the 1662 Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants . Connecticut's Samuel Johnson told Bishop Gibson [of London] in 1731 that his fellow Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionaries were either omitting the exhortation entirely or else inserting the phrase "if there be opportunity".  What made sense in Connecticut would seem to have been serviceable in Virginia as well.  In 1724 Hugh Jones reported that Virginia parsons omitted the final injunction  - John K. Nelson A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parson, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 , p.219. If the presence of Anglicanism in the North American colonies is dated from the first parish founded in...