The Anglican Quarterly

Greetings Anglican Quarterly Readers,

You will find enclosed the Summer Issue of The Anglican Quarterly which is our third published. Most of you received an email explaining why we did not publish a Spring Issue, but in the event that you did not, allow me to briefly explain.

Like many parishes in the Anglican Church in North America our home parish, St. Barnabas in Bay Village, Ohio has been involved in a lawsuit defending our property from the Episcopal Church. We had some major movement on our lawsuit this past spring which culminated during Holy Week – what timing the Adversary has in these things. As a result, both Andrew Holmes – who in addition to being our Chief Editor also serves as a Vestryman – and I found ourselves in a combination of emergency vestry meetings, contingency planning sessions, and consultations with lawyers for a good while. Of course, this was all in addition to the regular responsibilities of serving a mid-sized parish. Through it all Our Lord Jesus has been faithful as we have striven to be obedient to His Gospel and direction. Needless to say, it became prudent and eventually necessary to suspend the Spring Issue of The Anglican Quarterly. We have some good news as well.

We are happy to announce that while the trials for our parish go on, we here at the Dei Gratia Press are back on track and growing. We have made some fruitful new connections with writers and have found it happily necessary to add Sybil Mundy and Kevin Krumenauer to our team. Sybil will be another valuable set of eyes examining our articles and Kevin is joining us as a partner. He will be overseeing a new arts section of The Anglican Quarterly and is launching the Arts and Music Publishing Division of our parent company, Dei Gratia Press. Due to all this growth, we have relocated – please note the change of address.

What this all means to you as our readers is the same excellent quality of articles on a wider range of topics and a fuller understanding of the richness of the traditions of the ancient Church. Practically, your subscription will cover four issues so the loss of the Spring Issue will not count against you. Thank you for your support and please feel free to write us with any comments or recommendations in our common quest to seek the Truth and equip the thinking churchman.

Sincerely,

The Reverend Sean S. Templeton
The Anglican Quarterly
Dei Gratia Press, President

In the early 1990’s Christian Apologist Ravi Zacharias gave a series of lectures and forums, in union with the Veritas Forum[1], on the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. With the intent to bring a defense of the Christian faith, and possibly respond to the sharp and laborious questions posed by the atheistic community of professors and students, Dr. Zacharias gave a compelling defense of not only the Theistic worldview, but also of the Christian faith and many young scholars were able to come to know Christ as Lord and Savior at that time. While staying near the university, Dr. Zacharias had the opportunity to learn about the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts, and these conversations have become a central theme in many of Dr. Zacharias’ teachings. The Wexner Center opened in 1989 and was the crown jewel of the university at that time. It was named to honor of Leslie Wexner, the father of Limited Brands, which is based in Columbus, and was designed by architects Peter Eisenman and Richard Trott. Eisenman’s relationship to the designing of the Wexner Center is of particular importance. Eisenman’s work and ideas are often labeled as deconstructivist, which is a name often used when describing postmodern architecture.[2] Anyone who has toured the Wexner Center could immediately identify with how different and bizarre the design of the building is when compared not only to other buildings on campus, but also with building design and architecture in the contemporary era. However, design and architecture like that of the Wexner Center has become more popular since its creation over twenty years ago. Yet, this does not discredit the audaciousness and crassness of the philosophical worldview behind the design of such buildings.

Read the rest of this article »

Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.

Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.

Grace-filled communities are the number one thing I look for in a new church. Evangelical author Philip Yancey has imbued this value into my faith. What I’m starting to find, however, is that grace is easy in theory but difficult in practice. The reason is that grace for one group often collides with grace for another. The following two paragraphs illustrate this challenge. In both instances, I would ask readers to imagine that you’re the pastor and assume that these situations are being bathed in prayer.

 You’re trying to deal with the political beliefs of your congregation along with the spiritual needs of your city’s lost. There’s a man at your church who’s new to the faith. He has a bulldog personality and is strongly conservative. He’s even said that one of the reasons he came to faith is because political conservatism aligns with Christianity. In some ways, the merger of the two is the foundation for his faith. One of the things he continually brings up during corporate prayer is illegal immigration. No one comment is severe enough to warrant correction, but over time it fosters a lightly racist aura. The few Hispanic persons who visit never return, which you find out is because they feel uncomfortable. So do you give grace to the newly saved guy or to the minority community? Do you a) confront the Christian whose faith is yet unstable or b) concede that, for the time being, his comments might push away those who have no faith?

 A situation that I think almost all churches in America face but few pastors address: the anti-intellectual culture. Imagine there’s a woman with deep, abiding love for God. By temperament she’s quite sentimental. Her church is in a university town and she feels intimidated by academia. Without consciously realizing it, she picks fight over flight; only her “fight” takes the form of heartfelt comments about love, relationships, and that sort of thing. She genuinely believes that “heart knowledge” is more important than “head knowledge,” so she makes disparaging remarks about “cold, dead rationalism” week in, week out with no nuance. Over the years various persons–including your predecessor–have gently tried to encourage a more balanced perspective of heart and mind together, but it’s an uphill battle. That’s just how she’s wired. Unfortunately, students whose souls are nourished and who worship best in deep thought are made to feel unwelcome by her comments. They’re struggling mightily with their faith, and feel like she’s passive-aggressively belittling their struggles; kicking them while they’re down. They’ve tried to explain this to her, but she won’t listen. Every time she insists that doubt is the opposite of faith, the apostles were unlearned fishermen, knowledge puffs up, and fancy arguments and technical terms that having nothing to do with loving people. Most folks in the congregation feel strengthened and encouraged by her, but she leaves the students feeling beat up and discouraged. Literally the exact same words are rejuvenating for some and poisonous for others. In that scenario, do you give grace to her because she obviously feels inadequate/threatened or to the students who need encouragement to keep asking the questions, to work out their faith with fear and trembling? Do you a) rebuke her for the pain she is causing or b) tell the students they have to live with it because she doesn’t seem capable of changing?

 Those are over-simplistic summaries of complex situations. To do them justice would require much more clarification, but you see the larger point I’m wrestling with. This predicament reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ observation that sometimes loving one’s neighbor means harming another neighbor. He used the example of the RAF vs. the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. That was a perfect illustration for him, but a bit epic for us. I think of the subtle racism, anti-intellectualism, class warfare, political/theological disagreements, and the like that we all face in our churches. In other words, part of what I’m struggling with is that, although nearly all of us believe in having grace-filled communities, grace is often difficult to discern in practice.

 Both these examples are based upon real life circumstances.

We are happy to announce the Winter Edition of the Anglican Quarterly! Below you will see articles from the first and second editions of the journal. There are a mixture of free and locked articles. Feel free to peruse and comment. We have added a few short articles spotlighting churches and clergy from the Anglican Church in the United States. We want to be a forum for ideas and therefore everyone is welcome to register and comment on this site. In order to have full access to all the articles, one must buy a subscription – we offer several choices. Once again, thank you for checking us out and come back soon!

Andrew Holmes
The Rev’d Sean Templeton

Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.

Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.

Reflections on My First Christmas Eve Services

This was my first Christmas Eve within the Anglican tradition. I was blessed to attend two separate services. Each was beautiful though there were few commonalities beyond the liturgy, songs, and Eucharist.

The first was an informal, intimate candle light service of an AMiA church plant. It felt very evangelical. There were 12 people meeting in an unfinished living room. Pre-consecrated elements were used since we have only a deacon. We sat around a large metal table, which pulled double duty as our dinner table and altar. It still had dirty dishes on it, which the deacon half-jokingly said symbolized the coming of Christ into a broken, “messy” world. Everything was pragmatic, with no hint of pretension. There was no homily, vestments, or choir–just regular folks singing along with an acoustic guitar. We sat throughout the entire service. The final song was “Joy to the World,” which we intentionally sang loud and fast in a celebratory fashion. The service lasted no more than 20 minutes. Afterward there was a brief conversation about Anglican polity in which an irreverent comment was made about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lack of authority, whether tangibly or spiritually.

The second service was a formal, public Midnight Mass at a Communion Partners TEC parish. The aura was Anglo-Catholic. There were probably 50 people in a fairly ornate sanctuary. There were two priests. The congregation sat in wooden pews. There was rich aesthetic beauty. Everything was in pristine condition. Lining the front were stunning poinsettias. A gorgeous Christmas tree stood in the corner. The altar and pulpit were draped with… pardon me for not knowing the fancy nomenclature… special, almost tapestry-like, material corresponding to the liturgical calendar. There was a full choir with an organ. We stood to sing, sat to listen, and knelt to pray. The priest delivered a moving homily. The final song was “Silent Night,” which was sung more softly with each verse to usher in a sense of calm, reflective reverence and appreciation. The whole service ran just about an hour. The final two pages of the program contained a special Christmas message from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Needless to say, the juxtaposition was almost comical. As I’ve reflected on the evening, Alister McGrath keeps coming to mind. His 1993 book, The Renewal of Anglicanism, explores the shifting meaning of Anglicanism’s via media principle. He writes that one of the things it has come to represent is the inclusion of low church and high church models within a nevertheless distinctly Anglican expression of worship.

As a hard-lining moderate, I’ve appreciated the whole notion of via media ever since I began exploring the tradition. But, to be perfectly honest, I had little appreciation for low church worship. Years of Pentecostalism and other low church evangelicalism had exhausted my patience. That is, I had a less than well-rounded perspective on the contrasting worship models. I wouldn’t have said that either style had a greater or lesser objective value, but I would have said that, on a subjective level, I greatly preferred the history and tradition of high church worship.

What those Christmas Eve services helped me see is that McGrath is right. There really is great value in the breadth of Anglican worship practices, and both forms represented true Anglicanism. Though they facilitated vastly different thoughts and emotions, each illuminated the wonderful Good News that the “Word made flesh joined heaven to earth and earth to heaven”; each cast a different light upon the wonder that is the incarnation. Thanks be to God.