Bruce Russell casts a skeptical eye the Advent wreath and makes some practical suggestions
Many familiar observances of the Church year are of more recent origin than we might suspect.
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Christopher Snook: Two Advent Addresses on Penitence & Joy, Love & Judgement
In the following two addresses, I hope simply to suggest images and themes for your prayers that emerge out of the Prayer Book lections for Holy Communion and Morning and Evening Prayer appointed for Advent, readings which teach us this season’s rhythms, themes and concerns.
288 Words on the Forgiveness of Sins: Michael Hawkins on the Gospel for Trinity 22
I believe in the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins.
The Gospel is that our King and Lord, moved with compassion for us, has loosed us from the chains and prison of our sin and guilt and forgiven us all our debt. And he has done this, not by pretending that we are better than we are, or that our faults are not that serious, but by himself paying our debt, by forgiving our faults in taking them on himself.
Gestures of Reverence in Anglican Worship
Frederich Engels once quipped that the English would never make a revolution until they learned to walk on the grass. It is I think debatable whether the good manners and deference of English society are an inherent national trait that influenced English worship, or if they are a mark of the influence of English spiritual tradition on national character. In either case the evidence of this influence can be traced in worship throughout the Anglican Communion today.
Diocese of Saskatchewan responds to the Inter-Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission
According to the traditional liturgies of the Anglican Communion, what unites the Church across time and culture is a simple claim: we are sinners saved by grace. Amidst the current struggles in our communion, a vivid realization of this truth and of the humility, submission and contrition required in the pursuit of fidelity to the Good News of Christ is the best way forward. The more we come to experience the current disagreements as demanding a renewal of contrition from all, the more competently, wisely and patiently we can move forward. Impatience, hostility, and pride and an unwillingness to bear one another’s burdens has characterized current debates. This road is hard and will mean for many having to witness to truths the Church is unwilling to acknowledge. Nonetheless, the road of suffering love is the only paradigm under which the Church can operate.
Response of the Diocese of Saskatchewan to the Windsor Report
This response to four questions posed by the Standing Committee of the Primates of the Anglican Communion was commissioned at the request of the Primate of Canada, the Most Rev. Andrew Hutchison. It is a synthesis by the Rev. Dr. David Smith of submissions from clergy and laity in the Diocese of Saskatchewan.
Thoughts on the Revised Common Lectionary by Bruce Russell
Many contemporary Western Christians would probably be similarly disconcerted by what the Orthodox theologian Father Georges Florovsky speaks of as “an ecumenism in time.” The implications for the lectionary debate here are self-evident: do we read the same passages and juxtapositions of scripture upon which the Fathers of the Church and generations of subsequent homilists have preached, or do we join with contemporary Christians in a new common system of readings from Scripture? Do we align ourselves in a horizontal ecumenism with our Christian neighbours or a vertical ecumenism with those who have gone before us marked with the sign of Faith?
St. Luke's Day by Robert Crouse
This Festival of St. Luke the Evangelist moves us to consider that fundamental aspect of all Christian vocation, which is evangelism. St. Luke is an evangelist: one who witnesses to the Evangel--the Gospel, the Good News of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ; the Good News of God with us in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Icons and Iconoclasm in the eighth-century Church by the Rev. Christopher Snook
The iconoclastic controversies spanning roughly 117 years between the 8th and 9th centuries concluded on the first Sunday of Lent, March 11, 843.
"Complete in The Beauty of Holiness": Anglican Identity & Aesthetics by Bruce Russell
I think it is accurate to say that Anglican self-confidence is at as low ebb as it has ever been. There have been episodes of profound adversity throughout the past five centuries of Anglican autonomy: the Civil War and the Commonwealth, the crisis of the Non-Jurors, hostility to the Wesleys and to the Great Awakening, the vicious party wars of the Victorian era, or the deep despair which followed the defeat of the 1928 Prayer Book. Nonetheless it seems that never has the Church been so torn internally on such a scale as it is today.
