News, commentary, reviews, and theology in and for the Anglican Communion: the Living Church magazine, the Covenant blog. Sponsor of The Living Church Podcast.
Much has been written about Queen Elizabeth II since her death, but little about her Anglican faith. Rowan Williams reflects upon her Christian faithfulness.
Dr. Elizabeth Anderson on the difficulty of traditional language for the Trinity and the consequences of revision:
"At what cost do we tear down all of our false and incomplete images of the invisible God, the God of whom Christ is our only true image?"
Telling someone, “'Only go into ministry if you can’t see yourself being happy doing anything else' assumes that each individual has a 'right way to be' decided primarily by whether it will lead to happiness as self-fulfillment. This...harms the church."
Wesley Hill writes on why he is "hoping my progressive fellow Episcopalians find a way to make it possible for me to stay in good conscience and, Lord willing, serve this church as a priest."
Fr. Mac Stewart: "What we need are priests and teachers of the faith who actually like this religious stuff, and who enjoy nothing more than teaching people how to pray."
Bishop George Sumner reviews The Universal Christ: "Rohr caricatures the creedal tradition as fundamentalist, tightly rationalist, or intent on exclusion."
Tim O'Malley: "Preachers now speak about the intentions of the author of the Gospel of Mark rather than Jesus Christ. To the listener of the preached Word, the approach erects an obstacle to an authentic encounter with divine love…"
Winfield Bevins: "Let’s be honest. When you think of Victorian England, church planting is hardly the first thing that comes to mind, but a significant and well-documented movement swept across the country, resulting in thousands of new churches."
As the Episcopal Church has transitioned from a parish-oriented model to a niche-demographically-oriented one, it has lost much of its missional edge. The way forward may involve a robust recovery of the parish. — The Rt. Rev. Anthony Clavier
Latest
#News
: “I have been in love with the Episcopal Church since it opened its doors to me and my family in the 1960s." -Bishop-Elect Paula Clark
@diocesechicago
#CovenantTLC
: "I was wrong."Victor Lee Austin reflects on Episcopal identity and laments his past emphasis on the
#EpiscopalChurch
as essentially catholic.
We're thrilled to welcome
@roddreher
as one of our plenary speakers for "The Future of Christianity in the West: Augustine and Benedict." Get more information at the link below.
Wesley Hill: "To arrange Scripture as the BCP does is itself inescapably, and wonderfully, theological. And it is theological in a particularly potent and important way."
Canon Dr Mark Clavier
@BreconCathedral
: "Until the baptized imagination has been formed, there’s little point in teaching ordinands skills and techniques — it’s like teaching people how to build and sail ships before they’ve been enchanted by the sea."
Preaching creates a frame on which the Holy Spirit can be the artist. Nine not-so-easy steps to such a sermon by Dan Martins
@BishSpringfield
#CovenantTLC
Wesley Hill: "If doctrines were from their inception hammered out through close reading of the Bible, might it not be a reasonable assumption that those same doctrines could lead their adherents back into that same close reading?"
Fr. Stewart Clem: "We should not neglect Saints. We need flesh-and-blood examples of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this strange world we live in — to remind us of the demanding nature of Jesus’ teachings."
Fr. Robert Hendrickson: "The persons of the Trinity are not a doctrine circumventing our ability to wonder at the mystery. They are the persons with whom we are ever in conversation, ever in relationship, and ever in love: This is the mystery of faith."
New on the
#Podcast
: "I grew up with football determining life. Sometimes it could even trump Southern Baptist life." Listen now to Stanley Hauerwas discuss football, virtue, and ethics with PB Michael Curry.
@iamepiscopalian
@DukeDivinity
@AEHSatDuke
Hannah Bowman on angelic ministries and the struggle against demonic forces warping human society: "Angels are a challenge to our modernism. They are also a challenge to our tendency to give up when progress toward justice seems further away than ever."
Fr. Zac Koons: "If we really believe we’re onto something with these scripted prayers and scented candles, why are we keeping it from the youth group?"
Covenant's most popular post of 2018 is by Sarah Condon: "Can’t I just leave the gin and tonic-guzzling, Great Gatsby wannabe characters alone in the corner to hiss Cradle Episcopalian at every visitor who crosses the threshold into church? No. I cannot."
#CovenantTLC
: "I am dazed and depressed by these developments. They bode ill for the future of the Episcopal Church."
@BishSpringfield
on the resignation of Bp. Love of Albany:
Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2018) is Fleming Rutledge's latest offering, a collection of 46 sermons, paired with other theological writings on the season's themes of evil, judgment, wrath, and hope.
Dr David Goodhew and Dr Jeremy Bonner take a look at the growth of ACNA over 10 years: "Understanding ACNA matters … both for Anglicans in the United States and, as similar divisions spread to other areas, for the Anglican Communion more widely."
Hannah Bowman on charism, thriving churches, and the difficulty of finding a congregation to join: "The most important thing a church can do in order to thrive is to discern and pursue its charism from the Holy Spirit."
The Rev. Sarah Condon: "There is a major tendency in progressive circles to proclaim everything new as normal. And the new things (or people in this case) suffer."
Latest
#News
: House of Bishops passes resolutions to acknowledge two teachings on marriage, protect access to ordination, deployment, and canonical residency.
#GC81
“Climate change will create unavoidable homesickness,” Hannah Malcolm said in the first Theology Slam. “This is the world in which the image bearers of God reside. … This is the world where God himself died. … This is the world whose renewal we seek.”
The Rev. Robert Price: "Why have we not expended the same level of energy to reach the same kind of agreements and offer the same kind of ecclesial affirmations with black denominations that are just as similar to the Episcopal Church?"
Benjamin Guyer: "If you live comfortably in the developed world, you need Lent more than you know. Of all the seasons in the Church’s calendar, none preaches more forcefully against bourgeois complacency."
The Rev. Rebecca Osborn is calling on her fellow traditionalists to repent towards the LGBTQ Community, even as they hold to conservative views on sexuality and marriage.