Where did this all begin? September, 1981, at St Peter’s Toton outside Nottingham Kris and I and kids wandered into the neighborhood Anglican church, loved both Curate John and Elisabeth Corrie, and we began our lifetime appreciation and formative influence of The Book of Common Prayer, and you may have detected my own interest in prayer books through my small book Praying with the Church. So there’s nothing at all close to any kind of major shift in our life to become Anglicans ”” we have sustained an Anglican connection for three decades.
Wonderful news. Scot McKnight will be a major addition to the small number of notable biblical scholars in the ACNA. I’m especially fond of his popular book powerfully arguing the case for allowing women an equal place in ministry (including ordained ministry), Blue Parakeet. Given the continuing controversy over WO in conservative Anglican circles, including the ACNA, McKnight’s move into the ACNA will be a welcome strengthening of the pro-WO cauise among us.
But he’s also just a fabulous Bible teacher in general, with a particular flair for translating complicated scholarly issues into accessible language that ordinary Christians (lay and ordained) can readily understand. Like N. T. Wright, McKnight writes two kinds of books, the scholarly tomes that basically only other scholars read, and then books like Blue Parakeet, that are wonderfully lucid and edifying to a much larger audience. Not many people have the gift mix and skills to do both extremely well, but Scot McKnight is one of the few who does.
David Handy+
P.S. Let me clarify what I meant in commending McKnight’s best-selling book I mentioned above. The full title is The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible, published by Zondervan,in 2008. As the subtitle suggests, the book is actually about the general topic of hermeneutics, or the art of interpreting the Bible. He merely uses WO as an illustrative case. There’s a great deal in this exceptionally clear and convincing book that I wish all Christians in America would read and take to heart. In particular, McKnight is terrific at explaining the crucial difference that it makes if you take seriously the fact that the dominant genere in the Bible is narrative. That is, it makes a big difference if you realize that the Bible is largely the Story of God’s Saving Deeds, rather than a law code, or a collection of miscellaneous promises, etc. Even diehard opponents of WO should be able to read McKnights’ outstanding book with profit.
David Handy+
This seems to be yet more confirmation of an Evangelical trail to Canterbury (or is that Nairobi?) Hunter, McKnight, the Deacon at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, the list goes on.
Recently I was chatting with an official of an institution that serves the Episcopal Church. Understandably, he was skeptical about ACNA’s prospects for success. But I was taken aback by one of his points: “How can ACNA grow? The conservatives who would depart the Episcopal Church have already done so, and conservatives in other traditions are already happily entrenched in their own conservative churches. Where can the growth come from?” This seemed to view growth as a zero-sum affair, when in contrast I see a significant number of people flocking to Anglicanism from almost every direction.