Anglicanism is . . . 15. Embraces an Ordered Ministry

In the ordination of a priest, we are reminded that that “All baptized people are called to make Christ known as Savior and Lord, and to share in the renewing of his world.” This is an essential conviction. To lead, instruct, and equip all baptized people the church sets apart and “orders” some as Bishops, priests, and deacons. These ordained leaders are vested with the authority to teach, preach, and lead on behalf of the whole church. In many, if not yet most, Provinces of the Anglican Communion, both men and women are ordained to these offices.

 

Q. What is the duty of all Christians?
A. The duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate worship; and to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God.
– An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, Book of Common Prayer (1979)
 
Q. Who are the ministers of the Church?
A. The ministers of the Church are lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons.
– An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, Book of Common Prayer (1979)
 
“The true Anglican position, like the City of God in the Apocalypse, may be said to lie foursquare. Honestly to accept that position to accept, –
 
1st. The Holy Scriptures as the Word of God.
2d. The Primitive Creeds as the Rule of Faith.
3d. The two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself.
4th. The Episcopate as the key-stone of Governmental Unity.”
– William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), The Church Idea
 
“And they [clergy] cannot but lead us right, so long as they but teach us to 'follow the Lamb whither He goeth.’ For their office is but to lay forth before us the way traced by the steps that He went. Those steps, when all is done, are ever our best directions.”
– Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Sermons of the Nativity Preached Upon Christmas-Day, Sermon X
 
“Our Church, in the preface to her Ordinal, has declared, that ‘it is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient authors, that, from the Apostles' time, there have been three orders of ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.’”
– William Hale Hale (1795-1870) The Duties of the Deacons and Priests of the Church of England Compared with Suggestions for the Extension of the Order of Deacons, And the Establishment of an Order of Sub-Deacons
 
Bishops
 
Q. What is the ministry of a bishop?
A. The ministry of a bishop is to represent Christ and his Church, particularly as apostle, chief priest, and pastor of a diocese; to guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the whole Church; to proclaim the Word of God; to act in Christ's name for the reconciliation of the world and the building up of the Church; and to ordain others to continue Christ's ministry.
– An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, Book of Common Prayer (1979)
 
“The Church where a Bishop is set with his Colledge of Presbyters about him, we call a Sea; the Local compass of his authority we term a Diocess. Unto a Bishop within the compass of his own both Sea and Diocess, it hath by right of place evermore appertained to ordain Presbyters, to make Deacons, and with judgment, to dispose of all things of waight.
– Richard Hooker (1555-1600), Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity
“It is generally agreed that in the first age of the Church, bishops were chosen by the suffrages of the faithful, and then consecrated to their office and given authority to execute its duties by other bishops who had in times past been similarly empowered. It is thus that the American Episcopate is perpetuated to-day. Our bishops trace their consecration to the Anglican Church, and through the
Anglican Church to the Church of the Apostolical age; but they owe their election to the free voice of the people of their respective flocks, and exercise their authority in as strict conformity to constitutional law as a president or a governor.”
– William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), The Church Idea
 
“The Bishop . . . will help us to see that faith means standing near to the Cross in the heart of the contemporary world, and not only standing but acting. Our faith will be tested in our actions, not least in our actions concerning peace, concerning race, concerning poverty. Faith is a costly certainty, but no easy security as our God is blazing fire.”
– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), address at the opening of the 1968 Lambeth Conference
 
“I don’t want to see the church so balkanised that we talk only to people we like and agree with. . . a bishop is a person who has to make each side of a debate audible to the other.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), from Rowan Williams: God's boxer an interview with David Hare in ‘The Guardian’
 
As the chief shepherds of the church, Bishops are accorded a degree of respect. That is meet and right. But that respect should not be obsequious. But their authority is not absolute and there is the acknowledgement of their fallibility. They are human – and sometimes all too human.
 
“As for us over whom Christ hath placed them [bishops] to be the chiefest guides and pastors of our souls, our common fault is that we look for much more in our governors than a tolerable sufficiency can yield, and bear much less than humanity and reason do require we should. Too much perfection over rigorously exacted in them, cannot but breed in us perpetual discontent, and on both parts cause all things to be unpleasant.”
– Richard Hooker (1554-1600), Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
 
“The Divine Thing that made itself the foundation of the Church does not seem, to judge by his comments on the religious leadership of his day, to have hoped much from officers of a church. The most he would do was to promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against it. It is about all that, looking back on the history of the Church, one can feel that they have not done.”
– Charles Williams (1886-1945), He Came Down from Heaven
 
Priests
 
Q. What is the ministry of a priest or presbyter?
A. The ministry of a priest is to represent Christ and his Church, particularly as pastor to the people; to share with the bishop in the overseeing of the Church; to proclaim the Gospel; to administer the sacraments; and to bless and declare pardon in the name of God.
– An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, Book of Common Prayer (1979)
 
“The Greek and Latin words which we translate Priest, are derived from words which signifie holy: and so the word Priest according to the Etymologie, signifies him whose meer charge and function is about holy things: and therefore seems to be a most proper word to him, who is set apart to the holy publick service and worship of God: especially when he is, in the actual ministration of holy things. Wherefore in the Rubricks, which direct him in his ministration of these holy publick services, the word Priest is most commonly used, both by this Church and all the Primitive Churches Greek and Latin as far as I can find, and I believe it can scarce be found, that in any of the old Greek or Latin Liturgies the word Presbyter was used in the Rubricks that direct the order of service, but in the Greek, ἱερεύς (hiereus), and in the Latin Sacerdos, which we in English translate Priest, which I suppose to be done upon this ground, that this word Priest is the most proper for him that ministers, in the time of his ministration.
 
If it be objected, that according to the usual acception of the word, it signifies him that offers up a Sacrifice, and therefore cannot be allowed to a Minister of the Gospel, who hath no Sacrifice to offer.
 
It is answered: that the Ministers of the Gospel, have Sacrifices to offer, S. Peter 1 ep. 2. 5. Ye are built up a spiritual house, a holy Priesthood to offer up spiritual Sacrifices of prayer, praises, thanksgivings, &c. In respect of these the Ministers of the Gospel may be safely in a metaphorical sence called Priests; and in a more eminent manner than other Christians are; because they are taken from among men to offer up these Sacrifices for others. But besides these spiritual Sacrifices mentioned, the Ministers of the Gospel have another Sacrifice to offer, viz. the unbloody Sacrifice, as it was anciently call’d, the commemorative Sacrifice of the death of Christ, which does as really and truly shew forth the death of Christ, as those Sacrifices under the Law did foreshew it, and in respect of this Sacrifice of the Eucharist, the Ancients have usually call’d those that offer it up, Priests.”
– Anthony Sparrow (1612-1685), A Rationale upon the Book of Common-Prayer of the Church of England
 
“The priest is the teacher and preacher, and as such he [or she] is the man [woman] of theology. He[or She] is pledged to be a dedicated student of theology; and his [or her] study need not be vast in extent but it will be deep in its integrity, not in order that he [or she] may be erudite but in order that he may be simple.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), The Christian Priest Today
 
“What is the role of the parish priest today? It is to be in the middle of both the Christian and the non-Christian community as somebody who 'keeps the door of the empty tomb open' in people's lives. Someone who holds that openness of the world to God: that through that great emptiness, the empty tomb, and the stone moved aside; through that God came through and made a difference in the world. And we who preach the resurrection have that responsibility – our holding that door open. Now that means in terms of the Christian community that the parish priest is someone who preaches and celebrates and – if that's your tradition – hears confessions too: keeping the doors of grace open, reminding people in the household of faith that again and again God comes in and is free to come in. But in the wider community – because the parish priest is as we all know, not just there for the believers – it's finding all the ways possible of saying to folk 'there's more to you than you realise', 'things are possible that you didn't know'. And that's where the parish priest's involvement in all sorts of community work and regeneration and keeping the wheels of common life turning, is a theological thing: not just doing it for secular reasons, but doing it out of obedience to the Risen Christ. And that sense that here is someone in the middle of a community 'keeping the door open' I think that's the very heartbeat of the parish priest's life, and I find myself immensely moved by the courage and the imagination with which parish priests up and down the country do that day after day, hour after hour. I so glad that that is done.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), Risen Today: The Resurrection as Good News Now,  Part two of the Bishop of Winchester’s Lent Lectures, February 28, 2008
 
“The pastor’s whole job is to safeguard the community’s joy, to guard against how we so easily slip back into fear, and cover ourselves with despair. There aren’t enough people. There isn’t enough money. We tried that once. No one will like that. Fear is the spiritual practice of looking at the darkness and giving up. Hope is the practice of looking at the world’s darkness and remembering God’s faithfulness. As a priest, your job is to call people back to hope, and to safeguard their joy.”
– Craig Loya, Bishop of Minnesota, Sermon Preached at the Ordination of Cody Maynus as a Priest in Christ’s Church, Friday, June 12, 2020
 
“Preaching is like weaving. There are the two factors of the warp and the woof. There is a fixed, unalterable element, which for us is the Word of God, and there is a variable element, which enables the weaver to change and vary the pattern at his will. For us, that variable element is the constantly changing pattern of people and of situations.”
– Stephen Neill (1900-1984), On the Ministry
 
“The point of preaching is actually to open people’s horizons in a new way, to open places in the heart they didn’t know were there.”
– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), I am afraid I failed to write down the source of this quote
 
Deacons
 
Q. What is the ministry of a deacon?
A. The ministry of a deacon is to represent Christ and his Church, particularly as a servant of those in need; and to assist bishops and priests in the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.
– An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, Book of Common Prayer (1979)
 
“The duties of the Deacons. . . are evidently of two kinds, Ecclesiastical and Temporal. Their Ecclesiastical ministrations are all public in their character: ‘to assist the Priest in the divine service, specially in the Holy Communion and in the distribution thereof; to read Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church to the people there assembled; to instruct the youth in the Catechism; to baptize infants in the absence of the Priest; to preach, if admitted thereto by the Bishop himself.’
 
The Temporal ministrations of the Deacons are, ‘to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the parish, and to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell to the Curate’ (who has the cure of souls), ‘that by his exhortation they may be relieved,’ &c.”
– William Hale Hale (1795-1870) The Duties of the Deacons and Priests of the Church of England Compared with Suggestions for the Extension of the Order of Deacons, And the Establishment of an Order of Sub-Deacons
 
“The role of a deacon is to learn and communicate to the church the needs, hopes, and concerns of the world.”
– Ormonde Plater (1933-2016), Many Servants: An Introduction to Deacons
 
Laity
 
Anglicans embrace an ordered ministry. But those ministers are set apart for the sake of the whole body of Christ. And the whole body of Christ is called to bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ and serve the world in his name as healers, reconcilers, peacemakers, etc. In the Anglican tradition, we sometimes say we are “episcopally (bishop) led and synodcially governed.” That is a fancy way of saying that lay members of the church have an essential role in determining how the church functions.
 
Q. What is the ministry of the laity?
A. The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ's work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.
– An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, Book of Common Prayer (1979)
 
“Our bishops trace their consecration to the Anglican Church, and through the Anglican Church to the Church of the Apostolical age; but they owe their election to the free voice of the people of their respective flocks, and exercise their authority in as strict conformity to constitutional law as a president or a governor.”
– William Reed Huntington (1838-1909), The Church Idea
 
“Christianity . . . is the hallowing of all human interests and occupations alike. Worship is a very small fragment of devotion. The Christian does not offer to GOD part of his life or of his endowments in order that he may be at liberty to use the rest according to his own caprice. All life, all endowments, are equally owed to our Lord, arid equally claimed by Him. Every human office in every part is holy. Our conduct — our whole conduct — is a continuous revelation of what we are.”
– Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), Incarnation and Common Life
 
“As Christians we hold that the faith does cover every fragment of life. As Christians we hold that the greatest thoughts are for every believer.” 
– Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), From strength to strength : three sermons on stages in a consecrated life

“The Anglican Church preserves . . . the rights of both clergy and laity. She believes that the laity are sharers in the priesthood, royalty, and prophetical power of Christ.

The laity have thus a choice for their vestries and officers in the selection of their pastors. The laity and clergy assemble yearly together in Diocesan Council, and pass their own canons, regulating the government and discipline of the Diocese. The clergy and laity can vote separately, and thus have a veto power on each other.” 

– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Some Characteristics of the Episcopal Church

“The temptation to establish a ‘set apart’ ministry of the ordained haunts the church. We have great difficulty grasping the idea that all of us are called, all of us are ministers. Confronted by God
The separation of the body into clergy and laity was not intrinsically sinful. … The sin lay in what we did with the division, assigning to one part the designation that belonged to the whole people of God—holiness.”
– Verna Dozer (1917-2006), The Dream of God
 
“There are no second-class citizens in the household of God. Religious authority comes with baptism, and it is nurtured by prayer, worship, bible study, life together.”
– Verna Dozer (1917-2006, The Calling of the Laity
 
“I define ministry as service in response to the dream of God, the restoration of the good creation that God brought into being at the beginning and that ‘groans in travail’ as Paul put it, for the people of God to wake up to the reason why they are called.”
– Verna Dozer (1917-2006), The Dream of God
 
“If I believe that there is a loving God, who has created me and wants me to be a part of a people who will carry the good news of the love of that God to the world, what difference does it make when I go to my office at 9 o'clock Monday morning? What difference does it make in my office that I believe there is a loving God, that God loves me, and that God loves all human beings exactly as God loves me? What different kinds of decisions do I make? What am I called to do in that office?”
– Verna Dozer (1917-2006), Authority of the Laity

Anglicans have an number of influential lay members, some of whom became public teachers of the faith. Here are some examples:

William Wilberforce
Evelyn Underhill
Charles Williams
Vida Dutton Scudder
Dorothy Sayers
C. S. Lewis
William Stringfellow

Verna Dozier

Frances Perkins

Thurgood Marshall
Rodney Clapp
Stephen Fowl
Liza Anderson

Religious Orders

Anglicans also have Monastic communities—often known as religious orders— which are communities of men and women, lay and ordained, who live under a common rule of life, often taking vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience. 

“We must see that we go on learning to be true Religious by a constantly-increasing attention to the mysteries of God’s Word. Wonderful is it how the life of God opens to the soul—but we must watch. It is a laborious and a detailed exercise; the same consonants as it were, but speaking in such fresh fulness of meaning with fresh vowels. The same routine of outward observance, time-table, earthly work, but continually renewed affections, gifts of grace, intentions, joys of heaven.”

– Richard Meaux Benson (1824-1915), Letters of Father Benson [Benson was one of the founders of the Society of St. John the Evangelist monastic community]

“It is the blessedness of our Religious Life that we have already died to all that are upon the earth, and our portion is much more with those that are at rest than with those that are struggling. And yet none have such a struggle as we have. The world cannot even realize what our struggle is. But in our struggle our true strength is to be restful, buried with Christ, abiding in God, that Satan may do what he will, but may find us unmoved.”
– Richard Meaux Benson (1824-1915), Letters of Father Benson

“The vows of the Religious Life had their meaning because through them the soul was dedicated to God to a degree and after a manner which would not otherwise be. Humility was but a necessary consequence of the attitude which the creature must hold towards the Creator, on whom all created being depends. Self-denial was an instrument for clearer vision of God and closer conformity to the divine will.”
– Harwell Stone (1859-1941), An Appreciation, Appendix in Letters of Father Benson
 
“‘The innate principle of monasticism,’ writes Rev. F. C. Woodhouse, ‘is the life of God.’ The devout soul ‘desires God above all things, and God alone’. It seeks solitude that it may better commune with God. As it grows in likeness to Christ, it is forced to imitate His life of mercy for the bodies and souls of men. ‘They do not flee away from the world in order to escape duties, trials, or temptations, but to meet them as valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ.’ It is ‘an honest and literal acceptance and fulfilment of our Lord’s precepts in the Sermon on the Mount, and has adapted itself to the requirements of all times and all environments’.”
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), A Journey Godward [Grafton was one of the founders of the Society of St. John the Evangelist monastic community and later co-founded the Sisters of the Holy Nativity along with Sister Ruth Margaret Vose (1826-1910) who was that order’s first mother superior]

Previous:

14. Committed to Common Prayer

 Next:

 16.  Passionate, but Balanced, Patient, Humble, Comprehensive

Back to the beginning:

1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

Anglicanism is . . . 14. Committed to Common Prayer

Nothing is more distinctive to Anglicanism than the Book of Common Prayer. It contains the forms of our public worship and abundant resources for our private prayers. It shapes our imagination. If one wants to know what Anglicans are about, the best thing to do is to join us in worship. But it is also possible to discover what we believe by reading through the Book of Common Prayer (traditionally, many Anglican theologians have suggested paying particular attention to the Baptismal rite, the Eucharistic prayers, and the ordination rites). The emphasis in Anglicanism is on our communion with one another and with God. Common prayer is how we live that out.

“Almighty and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, restored the language of the people in the prayers of your Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may worthily magnify your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

– Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Collect for commemorating the First Book of Common Prayer, 1549
 
“To know what was generally believed in all Ages, the way is to consult the Liturgies, not any private Man's writing. As if you would know how the Church of England serves God, go to the Common-Prayer Book, consult not this nor that Man”
– John Selden (1584-1654), The Table Talk of John Selden
 
“What better method can be adopted to disseminate the truths of the Bible than by dispersing a book which, exhibiting these truths in the affecting language of devotion, impresses them on the heart as well as on the understanding?”
– John Henry Hobart (1775-1830), Address Before the New York Bible and Prayer Book Society
 
“Christian prayer always involves a corporate element, with liturgical prayer—common prayer—as its foundation and fulcrum.”
– Martin Thornton (1915-1986), English Spirituality
 
“There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things, it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers of the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation of God’s word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth. And further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion.”
– Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (1549)

“The Poor Liturgy [the Book of Common Prayer] suffers from two extreams, one sort says, it is old superstitious Roman Dotage. The other, it is Schismatically New. This Book endeavours to shew particularly, what Bishop JEWEL (Apol. p. 117.) says in general, 1. That it is agreeable to PRIMITIVE USAGE, and so, not Novel. 2. THAT IT IS A REASONABLE SERVICE, and so, not Superstitious. As for those that love it, and suffer for the love of it, this will shew them Reasons, why they should suffer on, and love it still more and more. To end, if the Reader will cast his Eye upon the sad Confusions in point of prayer, (wherein are such contradictions made as God Almighty cannot grant) and lay them as Rubbish under these Fundamental Considerations; First, How many Set Forms (of Petition, Blessing, and Praise) be recorded in the Old and New Testament, used both in the Church Militant and Triumphant; Secondly, How much of the Liturgy is very Scripture; Thirdly, How admirable a Thing Unity, Unity in Time, Form, &c. is; Fourthly, How many Millions of poor souls are in the world; ignorant, infirm by nature, age, accidents, (as blindness, deafness, loss of speech, &c.) which respectively may receive help by Set Forms, but cannot so well (or not at all) by extemporary voluntary effusions, and then upon all these will build what he reads in this Book; he will, if not be convinced to joyn in Communion with, yet perhaps be so sweetned, as more readily to pardon those, who still abiding in their former judgments, and being more confirmed hereby, do use THE ANCIENT FORM.”
– Anthony Sparrow (1612-1685) A Rationale Upon the Book of Common Prayer
 
“Cranmer lived in the middle of controversies where striking for a kill was the aim of most debaters. Now of course we must beware of misunderstanding or modernising. He was not by any stretch of the imagination a man who had no care for the truth, a man who thought that any and every expression of Christian doctrine was equally valid; he could be fierce and lucidly uncompromising when up against an opponent like Bishop Gardiner. Yet even as a controversialist he shows signs of this penitent scrupulosity in language: yes, this is the truth, this is what obedience to the Word demands – but , when we have clarified what we must on no account say, we still have to come with patience and painstaking slowness to crafting what we do say. Our task is not to lay down some overwhelmingly simple formula but to suggest and guide, to build up the structure that will lead us from this angle and that towards the one luminous reality. ‘Full, perfect and sufficient’ – each word to the superficial ear capable of being replaced by either of the others, yet each with its own resonance, its own direction into the mystery, and, as we gradually realise, not one of them in fact dispensable.”
– Rowan Williams, The Word of God Is Not Bound, The Prayer Book Society of Canada website
 
“There is no such sharp break between the Book of Common Prayer (1549) and earlier liturgical prose as there is between Tyndale and the medieval translators of scripture. It is an anonymous and corporate work in which Cranmer bore the chief part, and it is almost wholly traditional in matter though some of the excellences of its style are new. It has two main sources. One of these is that form of the Latin service used during the Middle Ages in the diocese of Salisbury and known as the Use of Sarum. The other is the long series of books of devotion called hours or primers which had sometimes appeared in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in English as well as in Latin and which after a long interval are again found in English from 1534 onwards — reflecting, of course, many doctrinal changes. . . Sometimes, but very sparingly, the compilers borrowed from the recent liturgical experiments of the continental Reformers Some prayers they translated from the Greek, and some they added of their own, but these were closely modelled on scripture They wished their book to be praised not for original genius but for catholicity and antiquity, and it is in fact the ripe fruit of centuries of worship.”
– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama
 
“The one corporate vernacular devotion of Catholic times of which we have certain knowledge—the Bidding of the Sunday Bedes [prayers prayed before the Eucharist] —shows already this homely, practical, incarnational temper of English piety, its close and determined association of religion with all the events and anxieties of daily life. This devotion is really a detailed family intercession for the necessities of that daily life, and for all who have a claim on their fellow Christians’ prayer; for ‘true tythers’ and ‘true tyllers’, for all the ‘grains and fruits sowed, set, or done on the earth’ for merchants, seamen, and travellers, for all who have given to the Church for God’s service ‘any behests’—'book, bell, chalice or vestment, surplice, altar-cloth or towel’ and for the donor of that day’s ‘holy bread’—for the sick, all ‘women in Our Lady’s bands,’ and for all departed Christian souls. After each bidding, the people said the Lord’s Prayer in silence. The Reformers, ruthlessly expelling the sacrificial element from the Mass, reducing with a heavy hand the symbolic setting of expressive worship, and in general stripping the mediaeval colour from English religious life, yet left in such devotions as these the deepest roots of that religious life, the homely and filial dependence on the Providence of God, almost untouched.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
 
“The great outlines and chief values of the traditional Christian cultus were faithfully conserved in [the Book of Common Prayer]; and it developed under the religious leaders of the Caroline Church—Lancelot Andrewes, Laud, Jeremy Taylor, and their associates—that sober but Catholic English tradition, based on the Divine Office and the Eucharist, and faithful to the ancient disciplines of ordered prayer, fasting, and communion, which survived the disasters of the Puritan dominance and subsequent periods of reaction and of indifference, and is now again recognized as the classic norm of Anglican worship.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
 
“The Book itself is the product of a phase of violent struggle within the Church between Catholic tradition and Protestant reform. It bears marks of the struggle everywhere - even in the vague and careless rubrics, where the parson is sometimes called ‘the priest’ and sometimes ‘the minister’ – as though the reform had been hastily made by people who were not very good proof-readers. Yet the outline of the original structure still persists, though a good deal pruned, cut up, and dislocated. There was never any break with tradition so violent as to destroy altogether the liturgical framework which preserved continuity of form between the pre-Reformation and the post-Reformation worship of the Church.”
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Worship in the Anglican Church
 
“Mr. Duncon found him [George Herbert] weak, and at that time lying on his bed, or on a pallet; but at his seeing Mr. Duncon he raised himself vigorously, saluted him, and with some earnestness enquired the health of his brother Farrer; of which Mr. Duncon satisfied him, and after some discourse of Mr. Farrer’s holy life, and the manner of his constant serving God, he said to Mr. Duncon,—'Sir, I see by your habit that you are a Priest, and I desire you to pray with me:’ which being granted, Mr. Duncon asked him, ‘What prayers?’ To which Mr. Herbert’s answer was, ‘O, Sir! the prayers of my Mother, the Church of England; no other prayers are equal to them! But at this time, I beg of you to pray only the Litany, for I am weak and faint:’ and Mr. Duncon did so.”
– Izaak Walton (1593-1683), The Life of Mr. George Herbert
 
“I believe there is no liturgy in the World, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational Piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England. And though the main of it was compiled considerably more than two hundred years ago, yet is the language of it, not only pure, but strong and elegant in the highest degree.”
– John Wesley (1703-1791), Preface to The Sunday Service of the Methodists; With Other Occasional Services, 1788
 
“The English Book of Common Prayer is not merely a permissive liturgy, like the Prayer Books of the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches. It forms, with the Bible or Lectionary, the authorized Missal and Breviary of the English branch of the Catholic Church. Its use is obligatory, and its contents declare in unmistakable terms the adherence of that Church to the great Catholic tradition of Christendom and the general conformity of its worship to the primitive ritual type.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
 
“The liturgical services for Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Churching of Women, the Visiting of the Sick and Burial of the Dead, witness to the continuing desire of the Church to sanctify and weave into her worship every circumstance of human life. The Prayer Book is therefore in itself a Catholic document; though a Catholic document which has been subdued to the penetrating influence of the Reform, and bears many marks of the vicissitudes through which it has passed.”
– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Worship
 
“Early in June, 1940, I went to St. Deniol’s Library to meet Mr. Vidler, and at the very first Matins at the little chapel I knew that I had come home. I had not attended an Anglican service before. I was fifty years old. I was not a raw youth to be impressed. I came with a lifetime of suffering, and found that ‘I was in the spirit’, deep called to deep. Late that first night I sat up reading, for the first time in my life, The Book of Common Prayer. ‘How is it’, I asked myself, ‘that I have never read this before?’ I found the Prayer Book to be more exciting at that first reading than any novel. I experienced a sense of ecstasy, I knew that I had found my spiritual place of abiding, that my buffered, storm-tossed barque had reached its haven.”
– David Richard Davies (1889-1958), In Search of Myself [wikiquote.org, Book of Common Prayer]

“In the Daily Office we are lifted beyond the contemporary . . . praying with the church across the ages and with the communion of God’s saints.”
– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), The Christian Priest Today
 
“One of my earliest loves was the Book of Common Prayer. I was seduced by it, by its beautiful words and the sense of history.”
– P. D. James (1920-2014), P. D. James, interview with Victoria McKee, The Times Magazine, 22 May 1993
 
“My love for the Prayer Book began in very early childhood, before I could read – when I could only listen to it. Of course, it was the only book used then. . .
 
There is so much history, romance, and great beauty in it. And the prayers like the General Thanksgiving and the prayers after Communion are so superb that they meet my need in praying much better than my own words do, and I still use them in private prayer.”
– P. D. James (1920-2014), quoted in Remembering P.D. James, The Prayer Book Society of Canada website
 

“One could argue that Cranmer’s chief reason for implementing standard liturgies was to provide a venue in which the Bible could be more widely and thoroughly known.”
– Alan Jacobs (1958 - ), The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography
 
“But if roteness is a danger, it is also the way liturgy works. When you don't have to think all the time about what words you are going to say next, you are free to fully enter into the act of praying; you are free to participate in the life of God.”
– Lauren Winner (1976 - ), Mudhouse Sabbath

“Sam McDaniel, a 27-year-old assistant organist and choirmaster in the Diocese of West Tennessee, said he appreciates how Episcopal liturgy is less individualistic than his Baptist upbringing. He names the prayer book as a central aspect of why he became an Episcopalian in his early 20s.

‘Where else would I go that’s going to have the same respect for tradition and that sort of thing while still also being open to listening to how God is speaking today to us?’ McDaniel said.”

– Logan Crews, Book of Common Prayer draws Gen Z to the Anglican, Episcopal Tradition, Episcopal News Service, posted April 28, 2026

“Anglican Christians often speak about the Book of Common Prayer as ‘the Bible arranged for worship’. . . if the BCP is the defining document of our theological tradition, then it turns out that we do have a distinctive and significant theology to lay claim to, because to arrange Scripture as the BCP does — to place parts of it alongside other parts and thus invite reflection on their relationship, their resonance one to another — is itself inescapably, and wonderfully, theological. And it is theological in a particularly potent and important way.”

– Wesley Hill, The Trinitarian Theology of Morning Prayer, Covenant, TLC’s Online Journal, November 20, 2018

“If you ask an Anglican what it means to belong to the church, the answer might well be, ‘Come and worship with us.’ Being an Anglican means doing what the church does ― and what the church does, first and foremost, is worship the living God. It is out of our common worship that out understanding of God proceed and our ethical and moral decision-making take shape.”

– Jeffery Lee (1957 - ), Opening the Prayer Book

Previous:

13. Committed to the Pursuit of Justice

Next:

15. Embraces an Ordered Ministry

Back to the beginning:

1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

Anglicanism is . . . 13. Committed to the Pursuit of Justice

“Rarely have we dared to demand of the powers that be, justice; of the wealthy men and the titled, duties. We have produced folios of slavish flattering upon the Divine Right of Power. Shame on us! We have not denounced the wrongs done to weakness. And yet for one text in the Bible which requires submission and patience from the poor, you will find a hundred which denounce the vices of the rich.”

– F. W. Robertson (1816-1853), quoted in Frederick Denison Maurice by C. F. G. Masterman, 1907

It is true that Anglicans have too often been enmeshed with the status quo and too cozy with the rich and powerful. We have been complicit with colonialism and other evils. But Robertson's denunciation is not the whole story. Anglicans have also been committed to caring for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. William Wilberforce was instrumental in ending slavery and the slave trade in the British Empire. Leaders like Frank Weston, Trevor Huddleston, and Arthur Shearly Cripps spoke out on behalf of Africans in the British colonies and Anglican leaders like Desmond Tutu actively resisted Apartheid in South Africa. There is also the tradition of Anglo-Catholic “slum priests” in England. There have been few Anglo-Catholic Socialists. Anglicans like Charles Gore Gore and William Temple influenced the post-war development of the British welfare state. That is but a sample.

“I am inclined to think that we had better look unflinchingly at the work we have done; like puppies, we must have ‘our noses rubbed in it’. A man, now penitent, who has once seduced and abandoned a girl and then lost sight of her, had better not avert his eyes from the crude realities of the life she may now be living. For the same reason we ought to read the psalms that curse the oppressor; read them with fear. Who knows what imprecations of the same sort have been uttered against ourselves? What prayers have Red men, and Black, and Brown and Yellow, sent up against us to their gods or sometimes to God Himself? All over the earth the White Man’s offence ‘smells to heaven’: massacres, broken treaties, theft, kidnappings, enslavement, deportation, floggings, beatings-up, rape, insult, mockery, and odious hypocrisy make up that smell.”

– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Christian Reflections, The Psalms

“Look with pity, O heavenly Father, upon the people in this land who live with injustice, terror, disease, and death as their constant companions. Have mercy upon us. Help us to eliminate our cruelty to these our neighbors. Strengthen those who spend their lives establishing equal protection of the law and equal opportunities for all. And grant that every one of us may enjoy a fair portion of the riches of this land; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

– Book of Common Prayer (1979)

“The Christian Church . . . has the difficult but fascinating task of living in the heart of the secular world, coming alongside all the good which is there, and at the same time lovingly upholding a critique of the secular world in the light of the supernatural.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988) Sacred and Secular

“We must needs suffer pain with Christ to do our neighbor good, as well with the body and all his members, as with heart and mind.”
– Hugh Latimer (1487-1555), Sermons on the Card
 
“What Blindness can well be greater, than to think that a Christian Kingdom, as such, can have any other Goodness, or Union with Christ, but that very Goodness, which makes the private Christian to be one with Him, and a Partaker of the Divine Nature? Or that Pride, Wrath, Ambition, Envy, Covetousness, Rapine, Resentment, Revenge, Hatred, Mischief, and Murder, are only the Works of the Devil, whilst they are committed by private or single Men; but when carried on by all the Strength and Authority, all the Hearts, Hands, and Voices of a whole Nation, that the Devil is then quite driven out of them, loses all his Right and Power in them, and they become holy Matter of Church Thanksgivings, and the sacred Oratory of Pulpits.”
– William Law (1686-1761), An Humble, Earnest, and Affectionate Address to the Clergy
 
“Blessed be God, the real religion we recommend has proved its consistency with the original character of Christianity, namely its concern for the poor. It has proved this by changing the whole condition of the mass of society . . .”
– William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Real Christianity
 
“The crowning sign of the Christ was the proclamation of a Gospel to the poor (Matt. xi. 5)—to the poor in the largest acceptation of the term, the poor in means, in intellect, in feeling, all whom the world holds to be weak.”
– Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), The Gospel of Life: Thoughts Introductory to the Study of Christian Doctrine
 
"The Church is all aglow with enterprises ameliorating the condition of labor, making all classes, rich and poor, feel their interdependence, and their duties to one another. . . Let us go out of ourselves and live for other men. O! Christian friends and brothers, as we read the lives of these great devoted Churchmen and servants of Christ, shall not our hearts be stirred afresh within us to do something more for the Master’s sake, and press on the Kingdom?"
– Charles Grafton (1830-1912), Pusey and the Church Revival

“‘Thy kingdom come:’ let the righteous socialistic order, which Thou revealest as the true human order, spread throughout the world: let the Devil’s selfish competitive anarchy, and all who support it, be brought to utter confusion: let none of thy children sink so deep into the abyss of selfishness as to invert Thy prayer, and say ‘let me go to Heaven when I die,’ but rather ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:’ Thy will which Thou hast revealed to be that all men should be saved, that disease and premature death should be abolished, that men and women should live happy, orderly lives on a beautiful earth. ‘Give us this day our daily bread:’ us not me. If I am getting my daily bread at the cost or at the risk of depriving others of theirs, I pray Thee, oh Father, take it from me. If I have bread enough for many days, and others have not bread enough for to-day, I pray Thee to take it from me and to give it to them. I pray for a distribution of wealth according to Thy just and Fatherly laws.”

– Stewart Headlam (1847-1924), The Laws of Eternal Life, Studies in the Church Catechism

 
“Now go out into the highways and hedges where not even the Bishops will try to hinder you. Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet."
– Frank Weston (1871-1924), Our Present Duty

“It is useless to utter fervent petitions for that Kingdom to be established and that Will done, unless we are willing to do something about it ourselves. That means trying to see things, persons and choices from the angle of eternity; and dealing with them as part of the material in which the Spirit works. This will be decisive for the way we behave as to our personal, social, and national obligations. It will decide the papers we read, the movements we support, the kind of administrators we vote for, our attitude to social and international justice.”

– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Spiritual Life

“[The goal of the human enterprise] is fullness of personality in community. . .

If our concern as Christians is bound to be with the development of persons in community – the divine purpose in Creation, we shall concentrate our attention on the [political, social, and economic] influences making for true fellowship on the one side or for gangsterism or sheer self-seeking on the other.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Social Witness and Evangelism

“Social witness is a consequence of the Gospel for those who already believe, because that Gospel, accepted in their hearts, impels them to do all they can to remedy injustice, to alleviate distress, to create fellowship, and to promote the development of fully matured persons in fellowship.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Social Witness and Evangelism

“If we are going to show a real respect for each individual as a child of God, we must see that from infancy to full maturity every child is set in such a social context will best develop all the powers which God has given him. To provide such an opportunity, not for a favoured few but for all children, is an urgent national duty. To fail here on the ground of the large expenditure required would be a national sin.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Christianity and Social Order

 
“Two forms of faithlessness are equally dangerous. One rests in natural good as a finality, the other dreads or despises it, drawn to the ever-barren quest for discarnate Spirit. Only the Catholic faith escapes these evils. Indifference to earthly life and satisfaction in it are alike denied to him who kneels before the Babe. To him, the world of sense is neither illusion nor enemy; but still less is it his object. It is the sacramental instrument of the Spirit, and he would fain ensure its health and purity with as anxious care as men show in preparation of the Eucharistic Host. All those labors, which seek for the race a healthful and decent physical existence, are preparations that men may be born from above; it is our high privilege to make the social organism a fit home for the Indwelling God.”
– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), Social Teachings of the Christian Year
 
“Unless we do change our whole way of thought about work, I do not think we shall ever escape from the appalling squirrel cage of economic confusion in which we have been madly turning for the last three centuries or so, the cage in which we landed ourselves by acquiescing in a social system based upon Envy and Avarice. A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand..”
– Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Why Work from Letters to the Diminished Church
 

“I am sorry to hear of the acute pain and the various other troubles. It makes me unsay all I have ever said against our English ‘Welfare State’, which at least provides free medical treatment for all.”

– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Letters to an American Lady

“There is no doubt that the biblical concept of the Kingdom calls for a ministry to the suffering, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the hungry and whomever is dehumanized by an unjust society.”
– Urban T. Holmes (1930-1981), What Is Anglicanism?

“On the one hand, we cannot conceive the coming of God’s kingdom in the world apart from the consummation in heaven. On the other hand as we look towards the vision of God in heaven, we know that just because heaven is the perfection of love we do not advance one step towards heaven unless the same love is showing itself in our service of the human race here and now and in our healing of its wounds and divisions.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), Christian Responsibility in a World Society in Canterbury Essays and Addresses

“Christian thought is unable to conceive the reign of God upon earth apart from a transforming of humanity into the likeness of Christ at his coming and history into a new and unimaginable relation to God beyond history.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), Sacred and Secular

“Our faith will be tested in our actions, not least in our actions concerning peace, concerning race, concerning poverty. Faith is a costly certainty, but no easy security as our God is blazing fire.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), address at the opening of the 1968 Lambeth Conference

 
For the Christian, racial prejudice is an intolerable evil and has to be fought at every level where it shows itself, because man is made in the image of God; because God, by Christian definition, has clothed himself in human nature; because any offense against the dignity of man is therefore not an offense against man alone, but a blasphemy, a denial of God’s truth, a violation – or an attempted violation – of  his very person. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye have done it unto me.’”
– Trevor Huddleston (1913-1998), The True and Living God

“We are sent into the world, like Jesus, to serve. For this is the natural expression of our love for our neighbors. We love. We go. We serve. And in this we have (or should have) no ulterior motive. True, the gospel lacks visibility if we merely preach it, and lacks credibility if we who preach it are interested only in souls and have no concern about the welfare of people’s bodies, situations and communities.”

– John Stott (1921-2011), Christian Mission in the Modern World

“‘Blessed are the poor’ ‘The poor have the Gospel preached to them’. The theme of good news to the poor, the anawim, the little people, is crucial to Christianity. . . So the test of spirituality is a practical test, and particularly the test of attitude to the poor.”

– Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), True Prayer : an Invitation to Christian Spirituality

“When will we learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed. They need each other to become truly free, to become human. We can be human only in fellowship, in community, in koinonia, in peace.

Let us work to be peacemakers, those given a wonderful share in Our Lord’s ministry of reconciliation. If we want peace, so we have been told, let us work for justice. Let us beat our swords into ploughshares.

God calls us to be fellow workers with Him, so that we can extend His Kingdom of Shalom, of justice, of goodness, of compassion, of caring, of sharing, of laughter, joy and reconciliation, so that the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Amen.”

– Desmond Tutu (1931-2021), Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 11, 1984

“To work for healing, restorative justice – whether in individual relationships, or anywhere in between – is a primary Christian calling. it determines one whole sphere of Christian behavior. Violence and personal vengeance are ruled out, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear. Every Christian is called to work, at every level of life, for a world in which reconciliation and restoration are put into practice, and so to anticipate that day when God will indeed put everything to rights.”
– N. T. Wright (1948 - ), Simply Christian

“But the whole point of the Gospels is that the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven is precisely not the imposition of an alien and dehumanizing tyranny, but rather the confrontation of alien and dehumanizing tyrannies with the news of a God–the God recognized in Jesus–who is radically different from them all, and whose inbreaking justice aims at rescuing and restoring genuine humanness.”

– N. T. Wright (1948 - ), Kingdom Come: The Public meaning of the Gospels

 
“God is not neutral when it comes to injustice. God enters history on the side of the marginalized and oppressed, in their struggle to live free of unjust social, cultural, and political realities. It is when those who are on the underside of justice begin to experience justice that we know we are at least on the arc that bends toward the justice of God. Thus, while we are not called to engage in partisan politics, to do the work of the cross is to be partisan when it comes to the values of God. These are values that promote justice and thereby preserve, cherish, respect, and enhance the sacred dignity and worth of every single human being. They are values that free people to live into the fullness of their sacred humanity, as opposed to values that betray the sacred humanity of us all. Moreover, if the cross means anything to us, these values cannot simply be rhetorical—they must come alive in the decisions and choices we make in our social/political living.”
– Kelly Brown Douglas (1957 - ), What does it mean to be a Christian in these times?, Christian Century, February 2025

“We are to live as if the bigotry, fear, stereotypes, and hateful ‘isms’ that separate us one from another are no more. We are to live as if compassion not condemnation, justice not judgment, and righteousness not self-righteousness are the watchwords of our humanity. We are to live as if the peace of God that is justice has come to earth. Even if these ways of acting are not the ways of our world, we must be daring enough to make them the way of our living.”

– Kelly Brown Douglas (1957 - ), How is it That God Speaks? in Feminism and Religion, January 21, 2014

Important as the pursuit of justice is, Anglicans also recognize that justice, as well as political and economic policies more generally, must be pursued with humility and mercy

“Man cannot meet his own deepest need, nor find for himself release from his profoundest trouble. What he needs is not progress, but redemption. If the Kingdom of God is to come on earth, it must come because God first comes on earth Himself.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Nature, Man and God

“A social order for which humanity hungers is beyond the reach of merely human expedients. Nothing will establish peace on the earth but a new creation from God in response to repentance and prayer.”

– Lambeth Committee Report on International Relations (1920)

“Political issues are often concerned with people as they are, not with people as they ought to be. Part of the task of the Church is to help people to order their lives in order to lead them to what they ought to be. Assuming they are already as they ought to be always leads to disaster.

It is not my belief that people are utterly bad, or even that they are more bad than good. What I am contending here is that we are not wholly good, and that even our goodness is infected with self-centeredness. For this reason, we are exposed to temptation as far as we are able to obtain power.

The Church’s belief in Original Sin should make us intensely realistic and should free us from trying to create a Utopia.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Christianity and Social Order

“It is of crucial importance that the Church acting corporately should not commit itself to any particular policy. A policy always depends on technical decisions concerning the actual relations of cause and effect in the political and economic world; about these a Christian as such has no more reliable judgement than an atheist, except so far as he should be more immune to the temptations of self-interest.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Christianity and Social Order

“It is one thing to state main Christian principles, or to denounce a particular downright evil. It is another thing to commend a particular programme, on which the technical skills and wisdom of competent Christians may differ, and to say ‘This is the Christian programme,’ as if to unchurch or label as second-grade any Christians who might for good reasons dissent.”

– Michael Ramsey (1904-1988), The Christian Priest Today

Previous:

12. Committed to the Pursuit of Holiness

Next:

14. Committed to Common Prayer

Back to the beginning:

1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic

The Impossibility of Religious Pluralism

This Sunday's Gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary includes Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). It is something that some of a more liberal or progressive bent find troubling. But is is a central claim of Christianity. I suggest that this claim and others like it actually point to something we cannot get around. Christians cannot get around it if the want to be faithful. But, in the end, everyone believes something like this. If it is is not Jesus, it will be something else.

In the 20th century, there was a great religious leader who also became a great political leader. After some time in exile, he returned to lead the people of his country as they threw off their oppressors and the forces that threatened their cultural integrity. When he died, the whole nation was frantic with grief. The leader’s name? It could be Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual founder of modern India. But, Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual father of the current Iranian theocracy, also fits the profile. He remains in very high esteem, not only in Iran, but throughout the Muslim world.

Can we say that both these religious and political leaders had equally valid and appealing grasps on the nature of the divine and what it means to be human? Or that either’s guess was as good as the other’s when it came to pointing to the ineffable, the sacred, or the holy? Will we not inevitably credit one more than the other? On what basis? Their respective effects on American foreign policy? The degree to which their words and actions comport with certain intellectual currents in the West? How they conform to our own priorities, preferences, and prejudices? Our individual taste?

The Mahatma or the Ayatollah. If we prefer one over the other, it will be based on something. Nobody actually in practice accords all religions and all religious or ethical teaching equal respect. Everyone uses some standard by which to measure their merits – our cultural/political/class/national/spiritual prejudices and convictions etc. There is a presumed superiority in whatever standard we use and however conscious or unconscious its application. Something will be trump.

It is no more presumptuous for Christians to say that we measure Gandhi and Khomeini and everything else against the example of Jesus Christ because we understand him to be the definitive revelation of the divine-human drama than to use something else as the measure.

The earliest Christian creed was “Jesus is Lord,” i.e., Jesus is the true standard, the one to whom allegiance is owed, and the key to understanding God. It also meant that it was through Jesus that the contradictions and tragedies of human existence would eventually be resolved. It had to be declared. It had to be lived. It had to be, if it came to it, died for. Because it was true. If Jesus was just one among many “spirit persons,” even though a particular favorite, he could not – cannot – be Lord. And there would be little point in paying him any more attention than Spartacus or Socrates. Nor would there be any conflict between worshipping God and worshipping Caesar. To claim Jesus as Lord means that everything else, personal preferences, familial traditions, political ideologies, national loyalties, other religious teachings – everything – is measured in light of what we know of God and life in light of the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This does not mean that there is no truth or wisdom to be learned elsewhere. One can hold emphatically that Jesus is uniquely Lord and still believe that the Holy Spirit sings in and through the hearts and scriptures of those who do not acknowledge him as Lord. Listening carefully and respectfully to their wisdom can be edifying. I have read widely the teachings of other faiths and philosophical traditions and learned from them. 

Nor does claiming Jesus is the way the truth and life necessarily mean everyone who does not acknowledge that that is going to hell. It is possible to hold that no one comes to the Father (the ultimate Good) except through Jesus and remain a hopeful universalist (see Gollum's Choice or, What is Your Precious? Some thoughts on Judgment and Hell).

We lose something essential when we abandon the scandal of particularity that is the declaration that Jesus is Lord. If we are faithful to Jesus, we will do so with reverence, with gentleness, with humility, with forbearance, with curiosity, and with hospitality toward those of other faiths. But we will still bear witness to that truth and invite others to enter into the truth that Jesus is.

While there are certainly similarities across faith traditions, there are also fundamental, meaningful, and irreconcilable differences. Even to say that they are all about love is an assumption. And it obscures the fact that love is defined quite differently across religions. Not all faiths, for example, insist on loving one’s enemies.

Religions are based on metaphysical claims that ground and give meaning to their worship and ethics. To gloss over those differences and their importance is no way to respectfully engage them. And it betrays a modern agnostic bias.

It is also the case that each religion contains wide, sometimes contradictory differences. Ayatollah Khomeini does not represent all Muslims. His contemporary, Anwar Sadat, was a faithful Muslim and a different kind of leader. He was assassinated by other Muslims in 1981 because of his pursuing peace with Israel. Mahatma Gandhi does represent all Hindus. He was assassinated by another Hindu because of his efforts to foster peace between Hindus and Muslims. Each faith tradition has considerable diversity of belief and practice within it. It is also the case that it is not hard to find examples of Christians who claim Jesus as Lord and do not do what he tells them (Luke 6:46) or walk in love as he loved us (Ephesians 5:2). But hat only means they fall short of the Christian ideal. It does not invalidate the ideal.

I am concerned that in our reaction to simplistic, heavy-handed fundamentalism, we do not slip into a simplistic religious pluralism that has more to do with the intellectual agnosticism of modernity than with Christian witness to the mystery of God. We can slip into a false humility that says something like, “There are many of ways to understand or of entering into the reality of God” while  actually judging their final legitimacy based on whether they affirm of offend things we consider non-negotiable. It is a false humility because it is not as humble or generous as it sounds. There is still judgement. There is the hidden hubris of presuming to know what the criteria are for adjudicating which teachings of any faith are better than others. Those criteria are not neutral. They are based on other preconceptions – the flotsam and jetsam of the religious, philosophical, and political prejudices of our age.

This is important because we do live in societies with a plurality faiths and philosophies. Embracing religious plurality is not the same as the ideology of religious pluralism. Religious plurality can be a good thing if we seek to truly understand one another and are willing together in harmony. But acknowledging and respecting the very real differences is a better place to start than assuming or imposing a sameness.

There is no getting around it. We all stand somewhere whether we acknowledge it or not ad we evaluate everything based on that. It is just a question of how honest we are about it. And how generous and hospitable we are towards those committed to other ways of believing and being.

See also: What I said at the Mosque

Anglicanism is . . . 12. Committed to the Pursuit of Holiness

“Holiness” is one of those churchy concepts that has negative connotations for lots of people. It conjures images of rigid people who look like they’ve been sucking on raw persimmons tut-tutting anyone who looks like they might be having fun. It is often presented as following a set of stultifying rules and minding your p’s and q’s, emphasizing lesser things at the expense of “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23). And too often it has been used to insist that some people deny parts of themselves not as a living sacrifice for the sake of their souls but as a soul-killing sacrifice of death for the sake of narrow ways of understanding God and humanity. But it need not mean those things. Rother it is a serious call to an uncompromising orienting of all that we are and all that we have to the double love of God and neighbor.

Holiness in fact is a deeply Anglican commitment. One of our great early theologians, Jeremy Taylor wrote two influential books on the topic in the 17^th century. In the same century, “the most popular book of devotion England has known,” ‘The Whole Duty of Man’ was published anonymously. Benjamin Franklin commended that book to his daughter. In the 18^th century, William Law wrote ‘A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,’ another work that proved hugely influential. It had a profound impact on John Wesley. Other Anglicans like R. C. Ryle, J. I Packer, and Rowan Williams have written important works explicitly on the topic. Others Anglican writers, like Evelyn Underhill, have not written explicitly on the topic, but their works are soaked with it. We cannot reject the idea of holiness without rejecting something fundamental to the Anglican way. But how we understand the concept matters.

“Almighty God, by our baptism into the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, you turn us from the old life of sin: Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness and holiness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

– Book of Common Prayer (1979), Collect for Baptism

“If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronising and spoiling sport, and back­biting; the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self-­righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”

– C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Mere Christianity

“By a hideous irony, our shrinking reprobation of [sexual] sin has made us too delicate so much as to name it, so that we have come to use for it the words which were made to cover the whole range of human corruption. A man may be greedy and selfish; spiteful, cruel, jealous, and unjust; violent and brutal; grasping, unscrupulous, and a liar; stubborn and arrogant; stupid, morose, and dead to every noble instinct- and still we are ready to say of him that he is not an immoral man. I am reminded of a young man who once said to me with perfect simplicity: ‘I did not know there were seven deadly sins: please tell me the names of the other six.’”

 – Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), The Other Six Deadly Sins from Creed or Chaos? [The other six Deadly Sins according to Christian tradition are Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Envy, Anger, Pride]

“The order of purging is according to the seven deadly sins of the formal tradition of the Church. The Church is not a way for the soul to escape hell but to become heaven; it is virtues rather than sins which we must remember.”

– Charles Williams (1886-1945), The Figure of Beatrice

“It is extraordinary how little the New Testament says about God’s interest in our success, by comparison with the enormous amount that it says about God’s interest in our holiness, our maturity in Christ, and our growth into the fullness of His image.”

– J. I. Packer (1926-2020), Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God

“The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.”

– Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Via Intelligentiae

“They that will with profit make use of the instruments of virtue, must so live as if they were always under the physician’s hand. . . they must be used like nourishment, that is by daily care and medication; not like a single medicine, and upon the actual pressure of present necessity.”

– Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), Holy Living

“It is necessary that every man should consider, that since God hath given him an excellent nature, wisdom and choice, an understanding soul and an immortal spirit, having made him lord over the beasts and but a little lower than the angels; He hath also appointed for him a work and a service great enough to employ those abilities, and hath also designed him to a state of life after this, to which he can only arrive by that service and obedience.”

– Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667), Holy Living

“It is sure God hath given these promises to no other end, but to invite us to holiness of life; yea, he gave his Son, in whom all his promises are as it were summed up, for this end. We usually look so much at Christ’s coming to satisfy for us, that we forget this other part of his errand. But there is nothing surer than that the main purpose of his coming into the world is to plant good life among men.”

– The Whole Duty of Man (1658), Anonymous

“If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.”

– William Law (1686–1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“Would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it turns all that it touches into happiness.”

– William Law (1686-1761), A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

“Because Holiness has entered our world, and appeared in our nature, we know that men and women can become holy; and are bound, in spite of all discouragements, to take an optimistic view of human life. The Church is an undying family which has its face set towards Holiness, and is fed upon the food which can – if we let it – produce Holiness.”

– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The School of Charity

“The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost.”

– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The School of Charity

“Every Christian communicant volunteers for translation into the supernatural order, and is self-offered for the supernatural purposes of God. The Liturgy leads us out towards Eternity, by way of the acts in which [people] express their need of God and relation to God. It commits every worshipper to the adventure of holiness, and has no meaning apart from this. In it the Church shows forth again and again her great objective; the hallowing of the whole created order and the restoration of all things in Christ. The Liturgy recapitulates all the essentials in this life of sanctification — to repent, to pray, to listen, to learn; and then to offer upon the altar of God, to intercede, to be transformed to the purposes of God, to be fed and maintained by the very life of God.”

– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Mystery of the Sacrifice

“We in ourselves are fragile, fugitive things, faulty, clumsy vessels which yet can be used to hold an unearthly treasure: shrines which are nothing in themselves, but can become homes of the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life. The New Testament is full of this idea. Let us consider ourselves from this point of view. It will mean revising a good many of our ordinary ideas before we have done: more and more emphasis on God and his love, less and less upon ourselves.”

– Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), The Fruits of the Spirit

“Repentance does not merely mean giving up a bad habit. What it is concerned with is the mind; get a new mind. What mind? The mind of Christ ―our standard of reference; learn to look at the world in His way. To repent is to adopt God’s viewpoint in place of your own. There need no be any sorrow about it. In itself, far from being sorrowful, it is the most joyful thing in the world, because when you have done it you have adopted the viewpoint of truth itself, and you are in fellowship with God. It means a complete re-evaluation of things we are inclined to think good. The world, as we live in it, is like a shop window into which some mischievous person has got overnight, and shifted all the price-labels so that the cheap things have the high price-labels on them and the really precious things are priced low. We let ourselves be taken in. Repentance means getting those price labels back in the right place.”

– William Temple (1881-1944), Christian Faith and Life

“Personal indulgence is a poor preparation for the difficult experiment of fraternity. . . For fellowship is the hardest of adventures. It can only be achieved by people far advanced in self-subordination, in whom the impulse of unregenerate human nature to have its own way has been supplanted by the carefully developed intuition of the Whole. The old interior training of the Christian life was admirably adapted to further this end. It produced unselfish and self-controlled people; if it is tossed on the scrap-heap and replaced with easy-going practices and a defiant claim to follow one’s own will, any community will make ship-wreck.”

– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), Social Teachings of the Christian Year

“The spiritual wisdom of the Church Catholic has taught, indeed, the supreme importance of personal holiness. To this end she has enjoined keen self-searching; penitence, confession, reparation; the yearning of the soul toward personal communion with the living God. . . Social morals must always be founded on individual virtue. To attain this virtue man must examine himself straitly, must know the agony of self-abasement, must recognize his failures, and must seek inspiration in the arduous struggle through placing his own life beside the highest he knows. The drama of the inner life must be eternal, whether that drama pass beneath a cloud earth-born or open to the spiritual heavens.”

– Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), The Witness of Denial

“The simple but important point to be made, then, is that the Christian life – faith, hope and love; the transformation of the ordinary, mundane and humane; the turn from self-enclosedness toward God and neighbor – is not an inhibiting, externally or internally imposed self-discipline; instead, it is identical with, indeed it is the gift of liberty in and by God the Spirit.

Most of us know what this means in the Christian life of interpersonal relations. In all their many varieties, there is nonetheless a similarity about the ways Christian people are disposed toward others, Christians and nonChristians alike; there is a quiet and nonoppressive dedication to the good of other human beings for their own sake under God.”

– Hans Frei (1922-1988), On the Thirty-Nine Articles in Unpublished Pieces: Transcripts from the Yale Divinity School archive edited by Mike Higton

“Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism.”

– N. T. Wright (1948 - ), Surprised by Hope

“The only excuse for writing about holiness or about holy lives is something to do with . . . a way of pointing to those lives in which something 'works', some wholeness comes through; lives that come across like a brilliant performance of the music or drama of God's action. It helps to notice and think about this or that detail, this or that transition, even if you recognise how far you are from realising it yourself,”

– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), Holy Living

“The holiness of Jesus and the holiness of the church is something a great deal more than being ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’; it is being in the place where God through Christ makes peace between earth and heaven. It is being under the cross, in short. For a Christian to be holy is to be under the cross. A person may lead a deeply impressive moral life; they may even have a deeply impressive spiritual life, and yet if they don’t ‘live under the cross’, we can’t call them holy, in the biblical sense; and that living under the cross I first of all am acknowledging the unique and unrepeatable debt that we owe to the grace of God in the death of Jesus, living in gratitude for the gift given by Christ’s death and it is the seeking, day by day, to let that Cross live and work in us as we carry the cross in putting away our self-defending, self-justifying, self-protecting habits in every area of our lives. Holiness is living under the cross, the place where Jesus makes himself holy, so that we may be made Holy. It has all been done for us in the cross; God be praised; it is all, for each one of us to discover, day after day, in that self-emptying, that self-forgetting struggle to let Jesus live in us. No-one else, no other power, no other spirit.

So to be holy is to be found in the neighborhood of Christ’s cross. And that means that our holiness takes us where Jesus goes; our holiness takes us to those Jesus died for; it takes us into the neighborhood of those who are forgotten, who have no voice; those who need healing and forgiveness. It takes us into very strange places indeed and the holy person, as we all know, is often found in very odd company. The holy person, like Jesus himself, is to be found not among the righteous but among sinners, not among the healthy, but among the sick and a holy church is one that goes with its proclamation and integrity and its fidelity, among those who need healing - literally who need healing - those whose physical lives are wrecked by pain and disease and disaster.”

– Rowan Williams (1950 - ), One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church

“A deeper crisis in the workings and siftings of desire . . . Seen in such theological terms as these, the current crisis is about the failure in this Web-induced culture of instantly commodified desire, to submit all our desires to the test of divine longing. . . Is the 'right' to various pleasures superceded by the call to fidelity? Is my desire for wealth at the cost of Africa's ravaging ultimately disconnected from my assessment and testing of other desires, including sexual desires, before God? Thus to bind all one's desires 'into a tether' is to move beyond the false secular disjunction between 'libertinism' and 'repression', which is based on the presumption that freedom is found only by throwing off constraint. It is, in contrast, to re-glimpse a vision of 'freedom' obtained precisely by specific, freely chosen ascetic narrowings of choice, fuelled by prioritizing the love of God.”

– Sarah Coakley (1951 - ), The New Asceticism

“The double love of God and neighbor is not simple, sentimental, or easy. It requires self-denial. To love God requires us to know God – through the witness of the Bible, through worship and prayer, through the witness of tradition and the saints, and through the witness of creation. That also requires continual self-scrutiny lest we construct an image of God that suits us and then love the image we have formed for ourselves. To love our neighbor also requires that we actually come to know our neighbor. That too requires continual self-scrutiny to examine our own resistance to love and our tendency to project onto others what we already think they are or should be as characters of the story of our own making. The double love of God and neighbor requires taking up the cross and denying ourselves in order to be open to the Other (God) and the other (our neighbor).”

– Matthew Gunter (1957 - ) How I Came to Change My Mind on SSU: Part 4. Some Thoughts on Interpreting Scripture, An Odd Work of Grace: A Bishop’s Blog, Tuesday, May 26, 2015

“The first word for Christians is grace. The last word for Christians is grace. And every day, along the way, is grace, grace, grace. There is nothing we need do – or can do – to prove ourselves worthy of God’s gift of God’s love and God’s own self to us. It is freely given to be freely received. And it sets us free – free to orient ourselves toward the call of Jesus to take up the cross, deny ourselves and follow him in the way of self-sacrificing, self-giving love. In doing so, we find our truest self, our deepest joy, our most abundant life, and peace that passes understanding.”

– Matthew Gunter (1957 - )

“We renounce the spiritual forces that rebel against God, the, powers of this world, and our sinful desires. The ways of this world can be cruel and dehumanizing. And from time to time, we feel compelled to act on our self-centered interests and impulses Becoming a follower of Jesus does not insulate us from the world's destructive energies or exempt us from selfish impulses. Instead we commit ourselves to a lifelong pattern of resisting those unholy, dehumanizing forces and choosing to participate in God's grace. . . It's the ongoing day-to-day work of living in a fractured world that God is actively mending.”

– Jake Owensby (1957 - ), A full-Hearted Life

“The deepest word that can be spoken about sanctification is that it is a progress towards true humanity.”

– J. I. Packer (1926-2020), Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God

Previous:

11. Committed to the Coinherence of All Humanity and All Creation

Next:

13. Committed to the Pursuit of Justice

Back to the beginning:

1. Biblically Focused, but not Literalistic