Weekly essays inspired by Anglican themes and theology.
Vol. 57 No. 44 | The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity | September 27, 2026 Savannah would hardly be Savannah without its trees. The great canopy of live oaks spreading above our streets and squares seems almost timeless. Yet much of the canopy we now inherit is the result of deliberate choices made more than a century…
Vol. 57 No. 43 | The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity | September 20, 2026 This reflection is based on the first of three Forums on the Anglican Future, concerning Memory. The next Forum is Sunday, October 25th, on Identity. When we are talking about the Anglican future, why begin by thinking about the past? Why does…
Vol. 57 No. 42 | The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity | September 13, 2026 When the Gospel Goes Missing Some people on their vacations go wine-tasting, but I go sermon-tasting. It is a rare opportunity for me to hear what other preachers are teaching their people. What are they saying is wrong with the world? How…
Vol. 57 No. 41 | The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity | September 6, 2026 The Last Old Book Years ago, in my final year at seminary, I was in the library when another seminarian returned a book of assigned readings. It was Richard Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, a monument of English prose and Anglican theology.…
Vol. 57 No. 40 The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity August 30, 2026 For the Edifying of the Body The Prayer Book of 1552 explains that Confirmation should be administered “to the more edifying” of those who receive it, appealing explicitly to St Paul’s doctrine that everything in the Church should be done for its edification (1…
Vol. 57 No. 39 The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity August 23, 2026 Strengthened for the Fight The classical Prayer Book’s Confirmation prayer asks for the baptized to be strengthened by the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit—wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and godliness, and holy fear. But if Baptism has already given regeneration, forgiveness, why…
The Spirit upon Christ and in Us Last Sunday, the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, we heard St Paul’s teaching on the gifts of the Holy Spirit: “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:4). It’s remarkable that the Prayer Book gives such an established place to this teaching of Saint Paul,…
Vol. 57 No. 37 | The Tenth Sunday after Trinity | August 9, 2026 According to the fifth-century Creed of Saint Athanasius, the union of divine and human natures in the person of Christ does not consist in the “conversion of the Godhead into flesh,” but in “the taking of the Manhood into God.” The mystery…
Vol. 57 No. 36 | The Ninth Sunday after Trinity | August 2, 2026 The Feast of the Transfiguration on August 6 has not always occupied the place it does now. Though long celebrated in the Christian East as one of the Twelve Great Feasts, in the West, it was not observed universally until 1457, when…
Vol. 57 No. 35 | The Eighth Sunday after Trinity | July 26, 2026 Earlier this summer I had occasion to read the Burial Office with a congregation that was unfamiliar with the Book of Common Prayer, and I realized how perplexing this service may be to those encountering it for the first time. To be…
Vol. 57 No. 34 | The Seventh Sunday after Trinity | July 19, 2026 Suffering and Hope The Prayer for the Church ends where every Christian life must finally end: in suffering, death, and the hope of eternal life. After praying for the Church throughout the world, for rulers and ministers, and for the faithful gathered…
Vol. 57 No. 33 | Sixth Sunday after Trinity | July 12, 2026 Hearing and Receiving Having prayed for the Church as a whole, for the rulers of society, and for those entrusted with the ministry of Word and Sacrament, the Prayer for the Church now turns to the people who are to receive that ministry:…