I never have been much into New Year’s resolutions. I tend to make my resolutions scattered throughout the year, especially at Lent and Advent as the Lord intends. But I just came across a word that resonates so and that I think a number of Anglican jurisdictions (I will restrain myself and not name names here.) need to take to heart that I have to publish it myself as a suggested resolution.
It comes from Gerald McDermott via Duane W H Arnold, who prefaces it as “a word to my Anglican friends who wish to be missional and contextual at the expense of the Tradition...”
Anglicanism without the beauty and power of liturgy and sacraments would become just another evangelical alternative. It might continue to use the "Anglican" moniker, but it will be indistinguishable from many nondenominational networks that are now denominations by another name. It will not be able to compete with its flashy competitors on the other side of town with more exciting youth programs, and sermons tied more directly to the latest cultural trends. People will wonder why they should be Anglican when they can get pretty much the same thing elsewhere without the name. But if Anglicans retrieve their ancient heritage of liturgy and sacrament they will have something unique to offer this new century when the beauty of holiness (Ps 96:9) is resonant in ways it has not been for centuries.
Amen! And Happy New Year.
1 comment:
This is a terribly frustrating trend as of late. I was raised in the nondenominational, Evangelical-Pentecostal church where pop culture and poorly Christianized versions of secular genres like rock, hip-hop, and rap reigned. I am familiar with the jurisdictions you've alluded to and they baffle me. It's not really their faults, though. Anglicanism is the smorgasbord church, and as much as I enjoy Williamsburg's famous food market, it is not a rule for the Church Catholic.
I am one of the biggest supporters of the Thirty-Nine Articles, "one canon, two testaments, three creeds, four councils, five centuries," and the writings of Cranmer, the Caroline Divines, and the Prayer Book as normative rules for what Anglicanism means. The fatal mistake we've made is allowing for differences in aesthetics (whether we should wear elaborate vestments or choir dress, incense, spoken versus sung liturgies) become profound differences in theology.
There are now Anglicans who term themselves Calvinists, Papalists, or Pentecostals, despite any plain reading of Anglicanism and her history repudiating all of those things! We are reformed, but not in the Continental sense, meaning that the splendors and richness of high church worship, upheld by our earliest divines, are ours also. Unfortunately, I feel that classical Anglicanism is becoming lost in the midst of Anglo-Papalism which imitates the modern Roman church with better ceremonial and Protestanizing Evangelical churchmen who disregard our Catholic legacy.
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