Category: Church
Two Cheers for Gregory’s Augustinian Civic Liberalism
In a recent essay, “Liberalism, the American Right, and the Place of Love in Politics,” Jake Meador attempts to move beyond the terms of the recent, ostensibly existential, debate within American conservatism. The opposition between libertarian proceduralism — represented by...
The Via Media of George Herbert
In these pages, M.H. Turner and Paul Owen ably articulate and defend the Reformed and Anglo-Catholic manifestations of Anglicanism, respectively. In doing so, they reflect a tension that has existed since the English reformation. As someone standing between these two...
Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?: A Defense of Anglo-Catholicism
M. H. Turner’s “Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?” seems to be written largely as a lament of the influence of the Oxford Movement on the ACNA. Turner calls Anglicans back to what is characterized as “Anglicanism in the...
Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism?
By M. H. Turner If you have been an Anglican in North America for more than a decade or two, there is an experience you have almost certainly had. You have known someone who got up one day and jumped...
How Not to Talk About Pastoral Ministry During a Plague
I’m generally not one to complain about tone when assessing a book or article; I don’t love the foray into hopeless subjectivity that such a move (to me, anyhow) usually represents. But there are times when tone matters and you...
The Stripped Altar and the Body of Christ
If this were a normal Holy Week (it isn’t), and if I were presiding over a Maundy Thursday service (I’m not), then the service would typically conclude with the stripping of the altar. As Psalm 22 is read, we would...
The Church Speaks to the World: On Pope Francis’s Urbi et Orbi Blessing
Pope St. John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris broke new ground with its greeting: It was the first encyclical addressed not just to the Church but to “all men of good will.” Thus, in the midst of his Second...
Sacraments, Technology, and Streaming Worship in a Pandemic
To stream or not to stream? That is the question facing empty churches across the country. At least, that is, how to stream and what to stream—few appear to have considered the possibility of not streaming at all. But why...
Reasonable Service: What the PCA’s Latest Controversy Says about Its Understanding of Outreach, Evangelism, and Ethics
Earlier this month, members of the Presbyterian Church in America learned that one of their congregations had allowed a theatre production titled “Transluminate: A Celebration of Transgender, Agender, Non-Binary, Genderqueer and Genderfluid Artists” to be held at one of its...
The Hidden Transubstantiation of Contemporary Worship
In countless churches across America’s denominational landscape, contemporary worship practices have won the day in the name of cultural relevance and stylistic preference. But inherent in contemporary worship is a dangerous dichotomy of style and substance that if not remedied,...