Oddly enough for a person who yearns for the unity of Christendom, I have come to think that our abandonment of the distinctively Anglican “flavor” of worship and devotion, an abandonment variously justified as bringing us closer to other liturgical churches as well as making worship more accessible to moderns, has enormously harmed our witness and compromised our evangelism. A wise Bishop of Michigan, now in glory, once remarked that our contribution to unity had to come from the depth of our own tradition. That tradition was intimately anchored in our liturgical heritage and in its patient pastoral application.
Instead we seem to have morphed into “denominationalism”. By that I mean that the institution itself now claims our allegiance, a form of genealogical affirmation to structure as opposed to content. As I am not a “Receptionist”, one who believes that the faith of individuals or institutions enables God to act through Word and Sacraments, I am loathe to unchurch contemporary Anglicanism, as it is practiced in the US and perhaps even more alarmingly in England. Having said that I am confounded by the sort of lowest common denominator sacramentalism we offer to the communities where we minister….
Read it all.
Tony Clavier ponders what it is to be an Anglican in the United States as we enter 2010
Oddly enough for a person who yearns for the unity of Christendom, I have come to think that our abandonment of the distinctively Anglican “flavor” of worship and devotion, an abandonment variously justified as bringing us closer to other liturgical churches as well as making worship more accessible to moderns, has enormously harmed our witness and compromised our evangelism. A wise Bishop of Michigan, now in glory, once remarked that our contribution to unity had to come from the depth of our own tradition. That tradition was intimately anchored in our liturgical heritage and in its patient pastoral application.
Instead we seem to have morphed into “denominationalism”. By that I mean that the institution itself now claims our allegiance, a form of genealogical affirmation to structure as opposed to content. As I am not a “Receptionist”, one who believes that the faith of individuals or institutions enables God to act through Word and Sacraments, I am loathe to unchurch contemporary Anglicanism, as it is practiced in the US and perhaps even more alarmingly in England. Having said that I am confounded by the sort of lowest common denominator sacramentalism we offer to the communities where we minister….
Read it all.