Category Archives: Liturgy

SCLM Resolutions Posted

The resolutions put forth by the Standing Commission on Liturgy & Music (of which I am a member) have been posted on the official General Convention Blue Book site. In all fairness, what has been posted is as much a teaser as the full material. Our resolutions have been posted; the appendices have not—and we have a lot of appendicies and the core of the material resides in those!

So—the actionable items are now out in the public sphere, much of the content to be considered is not yet out there. Some of it has appeared at various points around the web. For instance, much of the material that appears in “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” has been posted here in draft form as it was being developed and also, in a more formal state, on the SCLM’s own blog.

Although I did discuss the collect revision process in this post and included my revision for the feast of St. Bede, there are an additional 80 or so collect revisions not yet published.

In addition to the material around the Calendar, the other material that will no doubt draw much comment is the material around same-sex blessings. Again—the resolutions are posted, the material is not. It will be—but you’ll have to be patient until they do appear…

Ash Wednesday 2015

I love the way the liturgy functions…

As many readers know, I’ve got two books in the pipeline right now, one on early medieval monastic Gospel interpretation at the final page proof stage, the other on the spirituality of the prayer book in the editing stage. Both of them deal with the liturgy and how it works; I was reminded of elements from both today.

One of the strengths of the interlocking liturgical cycles is the opportunity for “pregnant juxtaposition.” That is, through the regular operation of liturgical mechanics, items and elements are put into relationship with one another. The ones praying have an opportunity to see connenctions between them and, in this process of discovery, to gain new insights into the character of the faith and the identity of the Triune Deity behind it all.

The regular monthly psalm cycle gave us Pss 90, 91, and 92 this morning. As I mentioned in my previous post, Ps 90 is and will continue to be a focal point for my reflections on intentionality and simplification this Lent; its appearance this morning was completely seredipitous. Likewise, Ps 91 is deeply connected with Lent for me. In the medieval cycle, the Minor Propers for Lent I were taken from Ps 91 given its appearance in the Gospel appointed for that feast, Matthew’s narrative of Jesus being tempted by Satan. Medieval monastic interpreters—Aelfric among them—argued that Satan was misinterpreting the psalm in applying it to Jesus. Rather, it applies to those of us struggling towards righteousness. God will allow us to be tempted and tried, but also lends us protection and strength throughout the process. Lines from this psalm will recur throughout the monastic Office for the entirety of Lent, reminding those paticipating in the liturgical cycles of God’s faithfulness in trial and testing.

To close out, I’ll leave with a section I just finished up in the prayer book spirituality manuscript with regard to Ash Wednesday and its liturgy:

——–

The season of Lent engages the affection of penitence. During Lent we consider ourselves from two vantage points. The first concerns the human tendency to sin—individually and corporately. Sin is a reality of human existence. The other unavoidable reality of human existence providing the second vantage point is death. Lent opens with Ash Wednesday’s stark acknowledgement of the reality of death. Lent isn’t about being morbid, or punitive, or tearing ourselves down, or whipping ourselves into a lather of self-condemnation. It is, rather, about that word I’ve used twice now: reality. It’s about taking honest stock of who and what we are in the face of eternity and in the face of God. We are limited; we are fallible. In a short life of uncertainty we make choices that lead us deeper into separation and chaos—cutting ourselves off from those who love us and whom we would love. Lent is a deliberate exercise in owning up.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy has four particular components that serve to focus our attentions at the start of the season. The first is the exhortation to a holy Lent. It sets forth briefly the idea of Lent, noting its dual role as a season for baptismal preparation and also a season for corporate repentance. After the history lesson, it points us to the particular disciplines of the season and identifies elements of a holy Lent: “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 265). Thus, we confront the reality of our inner lives, we do those things that help us love God and neighbor, and re-center ourselves on the vision that God has for the world and our place within it.[i]

The second component of the Ash Wednesday service that focuses us is the imposition of the ashes themselves. This is a liturgical moment of great power—and should be allowed to speak for itself without piling up a bunch of words around it. Some of my most poignant and important memories of Lent are memories from this point in this service. I remember my first Ash Wednesday as a parent when I carried my infant daughter to the rail and saw the priest put the ashes on her forehead. The contrast, the paradox, between her youth and the mark of mortality affected me deeply. Some may think this inappropriate—but I recall how many churchyards through which I have wandered, looking at gravestones, and seeing markers for children (and often their mothers) younger than her. The reality of mortality offends our sensibilities—but to deny plays into our fantasies.

Alternatively, I remember one year when I assisted in the chancel, imposing ashes. As I moved around the rail, I found myself at three figures—in the center was an elder of the congregation, his eyes closed, face to the sky, arms outstretched, gripping the hands of his wife on one side, his best friend on the other. For the previous nine months I had been visiting him weekly as he wrestled with an aggressive cancer that had turned terminal. We all knew this Ash Wednesday would be his last. For him, this moment was a solemn embrace of sister Death within the company of the church, the whole Body of Christ gathered around him.

Here, though, lies one of the brutal truths of Ash Wednesday: he was not closer to death than anyone else in the room. All of us are but a breath, a heartbeat, a moment away from death. The difference between him and us was his awareness of his situation. He knew and chose to face the truth of his mortality, a truth about which most of us would prefer to remain blissfully unaware.

From this point in the service we move to the third component, Psalm 51, the greatest of the penitential psalms. In these words, we are given the example of what full disclosure before God looks like. The psalmist is under no illusions about his interior state; there is an honesty here that we may find uncomfortable, but which speaks directly to the presence, reality, and power of sin in our lives. To my mind, the prayer book gives us this psalm at the beginning of the season. We receive it as a model of penitent prayer. We may not feel every bit of what the psalmist says, but it gives us direction and guidance for our own deep self-examination to which we are called. And, as we pray it and gaze within ourselves, we may indeed find ourselves drawing closer to his perspective than we might have first thought!

The fourth component is the Litany of Penitence which also spurs us to self-reflection. Its beginning mirrors Jesus’ Summary of the Law that classically began Anglican Eucharists and that still heads up the Penitential Order that is especially appropriate in this season (the Rite I version is p. 319; Rite II, p. 351). Jesus encapsulates God’s Law in Mark’s gospel in this way:

Jesus said, ‘The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’ Mark 12-19-31 (BCP, p. 351).

By putting this section of Scripture at the beginning of our Eucharists, the architects of the early prayer books were giving this passage a special place in our understanding of what God requires of us and what righteousness looks like: loving God, loving neighbor. This is us as God wants us to be.

The Litany of Penitence starts out with a frank acknowledgement of us as we are in clear and deliberate contrast:

We have not loved you[, God,] with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.

Have mercy on us Lord (BCP, p. 267).

A lot of us are uncomfortable talking about sin, sometimes due to coming from traditions that seem to over-emphasize it, but here the prayer book is laying out clearly its definition of sin. Sin is the failure to love. Where we have failed to love—in thought, word, and deed—we have departed from God’s intention for us and for his whole creation. The rest of the litany goes on to identify and help us recognize concrete ways that we have done this. Having set out the main thesis up front, we are offered further examples of failures to love in which we may find ourselves. Again, the purpose here is not self-flagellation, but honesty about who and what we are. The litany confronts us with the reality that we fail to be the people God created us to be and gently recalls us to that high vocation, reminding us of that second call of the Baptismal Covenant: “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” (BCP, p. 304).

In these ways, Ash Wednesday sets the proper tone for the rest of the season. It’s not a period of punishment, but a sober, honest opportunity to look at ourselves as we are: frail, fallible, and mortal. We need God’s grace. We need God’s love. And we need to live that grace and love for the rest of the world to see. Lent is our time to look into ourselves, our communities and to pray for the strength, the courage and the assistance to live our Baptism like we mean it. In a work such as this, I would certainly be remiss if I did not offer the reminder that Lent is a perfect time to recommit ourselves to the regular practices of the faith—including the praying of the Office and attendance at Eucharist. These are not great ascetic works—they’re actually fairly easy—but are more useful in the long run than attempts at greater feats of penitence. As we move more towards the habitual recollection of God, we are also recollecting ourselves—who we are in the face of the God who created us and loves us (no matter what!).

[i] You may wonder where “love of neighbor” shows up in this list: it’s tucked into the call to “prayer, fasting, and self-denial” (BCP, p. 265). Fasting is not just about going without for as some sort of holy diet. The intention is that you reduce the amount of food that you eat so that these resources can be given to those who do not have it; we abstain from food so that we can take the food or money we would have spent of food and offer it to charity. Furthermore, in the time that we save from not eating, we engage in prayer for ourselves and for the world, loving our neighbors in the passive act of intercession as well as in the active act of giving alms.

On the Current BCP, A Response

A very interesting article showed up in my Twitter feed this morning: How radical a revision? by Fr. Matthew Olver. You should definitely take the time to read it. He’s wrestling with a question that I think should be coming to the fore in the next decade or so—a critical reassessment of the ’79 Book of Common Prayer particularly in terms of its connection with what has come before it. Just as Roman Catholic liturgical scholarship is exploring the issue of continuity or rupture around the changes wrought by Vatican II, we are starting to see the same discussions surface in the Episcopal Church as well.

Olver’s piece focuses on a phrase by Urban T. Holmes, suggesting that the ’79 BCP should be and is a shift “away from Cranmer and the Tudor deity.” Olver goes on to question how this shift could have occurred:

What makes the Holmes/Shepherd declaration (“we must move away from Cranmer and the Tudor deity”) so provocative is that many trumpet the 1979 BCP as the “triumph of the Anglo-Catholic movement,” and this movement was most certainly committed to the “classical theology” that Holmes and Shepherd, among others, deemed no longer “viable.”

Olver then goes on to list certain apparent Anglo-Catholic victories. He will later argue that these don’t ultimately save the book from this “move away”, but I want to make a comment on his list before getting there.

While he mentions things like the expansion of the Calendar and the appearance of Noon Prayer, he did not list what I regard as the single greatest shift in Episcopal liturgical understanding. Remember, even at the foundation of the first American prayer book, the pattern of weekly worship was that implied by the earlier English books:

[In colonial America] On Sundays the usual forms of worship were, in the morning, the sequence of Morning Prayer, Litany, and Ante-Communion, with sermon and prayers, followed later in the day by Evening Prayer, again with a sermon. Holy Communion was celebrated four times each year, although there was a monthly Communion service in some places. (Hatchett, “The Colonies and States of America” in The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer)

This Sunday morning sequence didn’t change until the late nineteenth century. Again, Hatchett: “That sequence had always been the usual Anglican practice, but in the 1892 Prayer Book it was no longer required; Morning Prayer, Litany, and Ante-Communion could be used separately.” (I had actually thought that Convention had allowed this earlier in the nineteenth century, but Hatchett doesn’t mention it here.) As is well known, the pattern of quarterly or monthly Communion was common up through the years of the ’28 BCP and into present memory. Where the ’79 BCP alters this significantly is in the first substantive sentence of the book:

The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in the Church. (p. 13)

This proclamation of the Eucharist as the principal act of worship on Sundays and Feasts is a major shift and the single biggest change to Episcopal worship practice since the separation of the three-service block. This change cannot be overlooked as a major alteration and an apparent win for the Anglo-Catholic side over and against Evangelicals and others.

You can’t have a catalog of changes and apparent wins without including this one.

That having been said, I do actually agree with Olver that the ’79 BCP often appears to be more of an Anglo-Catholic victory than it really is. I wrote about this a while ago and said it this way:

Of the classical church “parties” two were happiest with the ’79 BCP: the catholic wing and the broad church wing, particularly among the elites for whom the LRM [Liturgical Renewal Movement] represented an ecumenical consensus open to a liberality of spirit in contrast to liturgical and ecclesial conservatism; the “Spirit of Vatican II” and the “Spirit of ’79” made common cause with one another.

The Catholic wing thought they had made major strides because many of their longstanding issues with the Cranmerian reform had finally been undone. The liturgy had moved back towards a classic Western (Roman) model. The Calendar was once again filling with the heroes of the Great Church and of Western Catholicism in addition to a variety of Anglican worthies. Antiphons and propers were licit again. The Eucharist was the primary service on Sundays.

While these things were accomplished, it had more to do with their consonance with the aims of LRM than a tide of catholicity sweeping through the Episcopal Church.

Due to the influence of the LRM and its influence in the upper reaches of liturgical thought in the Episcopal Church, the ’79 BCP ended up having a more catholic appearance due to 1) the recovery of historical ideals that also guided the reform of the Roman liturgy post Vatican-II and 2) ecumenical rapprochement with Roman Catholics. Furthermore the performance of the liturgy likewise took on a more catholic appearance with a proliferation of chasubles in places where they would have been anathema as ‘too popish’ just a generation before.

. . .

We are at the point where we must come to terms with the fact that we have inherited a prayer book with a greater catholic appearance but without catholic substance behind it. To put a finer point on it, we have a catholic-looking calendar of “saints” yet no shared theology of sainthood or sanctity. While a general consensus reigned that the appearance was sufficient, the lack of a coherent shared theology was not an issue. When we press upon it too hard—as occurred and is occurring in the transition from Lesser Feasts & Fasts into Holy Women, Holy Men into whatever will come next—we reap the fruits of a sort of potemkin ecumenism that collapses without common shared theology behind it.

I think the coming discussion needs to wrestle with whether the prayer book shapes or reflects Episcopal theology. My own sense is that the ’79 book sought to do both. For my part, the changes the subcommittee I co-chair will be recommending to General Convention regarding the Calendar seek to do the second: reflect. More on this later…

To pick up the thread of Olver’s article again, he ultimately locates the challenge to the “classical theology” and “Cranmer and the Tudor deity” in the notion of baptismal ecclesiology. This is a fairly standard position for the book’s critics. And, not surprisingly, he draws on Colin Podmore’s critique of baptismal ecclesiology.

I have a couple of issues here.

First, both Olver’s article and Podmore’s paper present the evidence in such a way to suggest that the notion of baptism as the entrance to ministry is a very modern notion and one done chiefly for the sake of social activism—particularly with an eye to the ordination of women and active homosexuals. This is an untenable move. You cannot have a full and proper discussion of baptismal ecclesiology and the ministry without at least a reference to Martin Luther’s Letter to the German Nobility.  In this piece, Luther is arguing against the notion that the pope and his clergy can over-ride the authority of the secular princes; one of the chief ways he does it is through an appeal to baptism:

It is pure invention that pope, bishops, priests and monks are to be called the “spiritual estate”; princes, lords, artisans, and farmers the “temporal estate.” That is indeed a fine bit of lying and hypocrisy. Yet no one should be frightened by it; and for this reason — viz., that all Christians are truly of the “spiritual estate,” and there is among them no difference at all but that of office, as Paul says in I Corinthians 12:12, We are all one body, yet every member has its own work, where by it serves every other, all because we have one baptism, one Gospel, one faith, and are all alike Christians; for baptism, Gospel and faith alone make us “spiritual” and a Christian people.

But that a pope or a bishop anoints, confers tonsures; ordains, consecrates, or prescribes dress unlike that of the laity, this may make hypocrites and graven images, but it never makes a Christian or “spiritual” man. Through baptism all of us are consecrated to the priesthood, as St. Peter says in I Peter 2:9, “Ye are a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom,” and the book of Revelation says, Rev. 5:10 “Thou hast made us by Thy blood to be priests and kings.” For if we had no higher consecration than pope or bishop gives, the consecration by pope or bishop would never make a priest, nor might anyone either say mass or preach a sermon or give absolution. Therefore when the bishop consecrates it is the same thing as if he, in the place and stead of the whole congregation, all of whom have like power, were to take one out of their number and charge him to use this power for the others; just as though ten brothers, all king’s sons and equal heirs, were to choose one of themselves to rule the inheritance for them all, — they would all be kings and equal in power, though one of them would be charged with the duty of ruling.

To make it still clearer. If a little group of pious Christian laymen were taken captive and set down in a wilderness , and had among them no priest consecrated by a bishop, and if there in the wilderness they were to agree in choosing one of themselves, married or unmarried, and were to charge him with the office of baptizing, saying mass, absolving and preaching, such a man would be as truly a priest as though all bishops and popes had consecrated him. That is why in cases of necessity any one can baptize and give absolution, which would be impossible unless we were all priests. This great grace and power of baptism and of the Christian Estate they have well-nigh destroyed and caused us to forget through The canon law. It was in the manner aforesaid that Christians in olden days chose from their number bishops and priests, who were afterwards confirmed by other bishops, without all the show which now obtains. It was Thus that Sts. Augustine, Ambrose and Cyprian became bishops.

Since, then, the temporal authorities are baptized with the same baptism and have the same faith and Gospel as we, we must grant that they are priests and bishops, and count their office one which has a proper and a useful place in the Christian community. For whoever comes out the water of baptism can boast that he is already consecrated priest, bishop and pope, though it is not seemly that every one should exercise the office. Nay, just because we are all in like manner priests, no one must put himself forward and undertake, without our consent and election, to do what is in the power of all of us. For what is common to all, no one dare take upon himself without the will and the command of the community; and should it happen that one chosen for such an office were deposed for malfeasance, he would then be just what he was before he held office. Therefore a priest in Christendom is nothing else than an office-holder. While he is in office, he has precedence; when deposed, he is a peasant or a townsman like the rest. Beyond all doubt, then, a priest is no longer a priest when he is deposed. But now they have invented characters indelebilis, and prate that a deposed priest is nevertheless something different from a mere layman. They even dream that a priest can never become a layman, or be anything else than a priest. All this is mere talk and man-made law. (http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-03.html, emphasis added)

Luther does have a lower view of the priesthood than many Anglicans throughout history, and his formulation here takes issue with certain aspects of the Apostolic Succession (but not with others!). However, to suggest that the idea that [baptism = ministry] is a recent invention of social activists is factually incorrect. Indeed, I see it as part of the “classic theology” that we seek to retain—an expression of it, rather than an overturning of it.

On the contrary, the problem that I have with the phrase “baptismal ecclesiology” is that I believe it is not being thought through enough and that all of its implications have not been fully considered or applied. In its semi-official use “baptismal ecclesiology” is intended as a rejection of clericalism and exclusion. Where it does not tread is into broader questions of its implications for ecclessiology particularly around the dead—which was the impetus for my first major article against Holy Women, Holy Men.

There’s a lot more to say on that last point but in the interest of time, I’ll save it for later.

Devotional Apps

So—apropos of nothing…

What do you look for in a devotional app?

When I say devotional app, I’m thinking of something like, say, the Forward Movement app for the iDevice prominently featured in my sidebar. It contains the Forward Day by Day devotional and it has the Episcopal Daily Office on it as well as some other stuff. I know Church Publishing has got an app out there as does the Church of England.

What’s your sense of these things? Have you used them? Do you like them? What do you like most? What really annoys you about them? What’s that one thing that would make it even better? More features or less features?

Original Pronunciation and the Prayer Book

On Sunday at church we sang “Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” As is often the case, I was struck by the couplets of the fourth verse:

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

The first two, “come/home” look good on paper but don’t rhyme in American mouths. Even worse is the second pair: “high/misery.” We have to conclude one of three things.

First, the twentieth century approach to classical hymnody being what it is, maybe somebody has fiddled with the words. Second, John Mason Neale didn’t know what he was doing and flubbed the rhyme. Third, there’s an entirely different way of pronouncing English from what your average Baltimore congregation sings, and this hymn assumes those sounds rather than what I was hearing.

In regard to the first, no—not this time. In regard to the second,  John Mason Neale won medals for his poetry at Cambridge and is one of the best translators of hymns of his day; incompetence is likely not the answer. That leaves us with the third and to the video presentation of the day… I ran across this a little bit ago and was greatly intrigued by it. It’s a short video on the Original Pronunciation of Shakespeare’s English. Clearly, this wasn’t the  tongue that Neale was writing in (as he was a couple of centuries later), but the mention of rhyme as a means for getting a feel of the language jumped to mind when we hit the fourth stanza yesterday.

What this does move me to consider is the pronunciation of the texts from the first English prayer books. What sort of rhymes and other forms of assonance do we miss because we read through it in our English rather than theirs? The same, of course, is true of the King James Bible of which we are told that Blessed Lancelot Andrewes and others read their work out loud to test the sound of it before making final decisions?

No point to make, just a shift in perception…

On Rite-Thinking

I had a good question a while back regarding “Anglo-Catholicism” and the choice of rites in the Book of Common Prayer: “What makes the language of Rite I inherently more Anglo-Catholic than the language of Rite II? Is it our equivalent of Latin, or something?”

The reason why this is such a good question is because it forces us to consider what that loaded term “Anglo-Catholic” means, and how it applies to our decision-making processes.

Let me parse it out this way… There are two (of probably many) common ways of understand the “catholic” in Anglo-Catholic. One sees “Catholic” as pertaining to the Roman Catholic Church as presently constituted. This could be labeled the Ecumenical Approach and understands Anglo-Catholicism as the point of closest contact to the Roman Catholic Church. The hope in this approach is either to 1) advocate for corporate reunion with the Roman  Catholic Church or 2) to remain as close as possible to modern Roman Catholicism despite the structural divisions between us. These two plays out in a couple of different ways. Many in the first group (corporate reunion) have now gone the way of the Ordinariate and are now no longer Anglican Anglo-Catholics but are now Roman Catholic Anglo-Catholics. Indeed, virtually all of the Episcopalians I have known in the first group are now in full communion with Rome.

As a result, the second group of this Ecumenical type is now more common within the Episcopal Church. Some of the folks I know who fall into this category started out in the Roman Catholic Church but departed; others started out in some form of low protestant Evangelicalism and in their way up the candle stopped in the high section of the Episcopal Church. One priest I know started out in an Assemblies of God type tradition and began moving in a Rome-ward direction.  However, now divorced and in a same-sex relationship, there is no way that he could be a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. As a result, he remains Episcopal, but assimilates as closely as possible to Roman theology and practice. I know several who were ordained Roman Catholic clergy who switched and are now married whether to different or same-sex partners. A number of formerly Roman Catholic women and divorced people also appear in this group.

So, this is Anglo-Catholicism as the point of closest approach: it’s the closest that  people in a variety of groups—usually related to gender, orientation, or marital status—can come to being Roman Catholic (or Orthodox) and still be ordained. Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—they have no real desire to be Anglican or Episcopalian; it’s just the next best thing to what they truly desire.

Now, for this perspective, Rite II makes perfect sense. Despite the tinkering with the 3rd edition of the Roman Missal, modern Roman Catholic practice is definitely contemporary language. For someone wanting to align with this tradition, it’s a no-brainer.

The other common means of understanding the “catholic” in “Anglo-Catholic” I will characterize, for want of a better term, as the Historical Approach. The Historical Approach rejects a narrow sense of Anglican identity and the notion that Christianity began at the Reformation. The Historical Approach see Anglicanism as a purification of the catholic tradition and, in particular, is interested in the practices, theologies, and spirituality that informed the English church prior to the Reformation. This Approach is interested in reconnecting with broader Christianity but tends to look “back” rather than “across” as in the Ecumenical Approach.

I’m most definitely in this camp. Coming from this perspective, there are three main reasons why I prefer the Rite I liturgies.

1. A sense of historical continuity. For me, to be Anglo-Catholic and to hold an Historical Approach isn’t just about the pre-Reformation period. I dislike pretense, and there are those who would like to pretend that the Reformation never happened, and that we can or should go back to celebrating pre-Reformation liturgies the way it was done then—just with comprehensible English. However much this might thrill my inner Sarum geek, it simply doesn’t and won’t work as a way of being church now. A key notion of the Historical Approach is that the tradition is an inheritance; the things handed on to us have worked for centuries. Yes, things are different; yes, the culture is different; but humanity is still fundamentally the same.

The Rite I liturgies put me in touch with a larger church. Knowing that I am praying in the same words that spiritual ancestors used one hundred, two hundred, four hundred years ago is valuable. This helps me get a concrete notion of baptismal ecclesiology—I pray in consonance with those baptized centuries before I ever came into being. When praying the Daily Office or participating in the older form of the Rite I Eucharist, I am conscious that I am being formed as an Anglican through the experience of sharing in those words and rites.

2. A superior expression of transcendence. As I’ve argued before, here and here, I believe that the Anglo-Catholic path is one that foregrounds transcendence as a means of connecting with God and God-stuff. To shamelessly plagiarize myself, here are some paragraphs from the second link that cut to the main point for our purposes here:

When we come at the question of environment and the vestments by way of a worldview, and worldview as a way of proclaiming and enculturating the kingdom of God, we can see what we do and what the other choices are, in a new light. So for the sake of argument, let’s consider two options next one another. On one hand we have a stereotypical Anglo-Catholic setting and service; on the other hand we have a stereotypical evangelical mega-church setting and service. (My goal here isn’t to put down either one of them—it’s to draw some very big-brush comparisons…)

Our overall impression of the Anglo-Catholic service is that we are encountering things that are initially unfamiliar. In comparison with other buildings, the Gothic church has an odd shape and layout. The ministers are wearing strange clothes. The place is outfitted with crucifixes and candles and thuribles and a bunch of other things you normally only find in a goth shop. The music is played on old instruments. The language and terminology may be unfamiliar; the internal logic of the rite isn’t similar to other meetings we’re used to experiencing. By way of contrast, the evangelical mega-church does everything it can to feel familiar. The room looks like it may well be a regular auditorium with stadium style seating and potted plants. The ministers are dressed in street clothes and tattoos. They’ve got guitars and a drum kit. Both the language and internal logic of the rite are what you might find in a typical pop concert.

Now – what do these two environments communicate about the worldview that they are expressing? About the proclamation of the gospel in relation to the modern secular culture? The way I read it, the Anglo-Catholic service is foregrounding a theology of the transcendent. The environment is fundamentally and intentionally discontinuous from contemporary culture. The message is that the values and world of the gospel are likewise discontinuous from our everyday secular world. A transformation is required in order to cleave to the mind of Christ. To me, it’s a visual reminder of Isaiah’s words: my ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts. Some people will tell us that we’re not being accessible. That’s not how I’d frame it. I’d rather say that we’re bearing witness to a mystery, and inviting people to come and learn about that mystery with us.

The way I read the evangelical mega-church environment, it foregrounds a theology of immanence. This environment is fundamentally continuous with contemporary culture – but with a twist. The message is that the values and world of the gospel can be seen from here, we just may not be there yet. A tweak is what’s needed. To me, it’s a reminder that God is in our very midst. This is accessible, it’s a kissing cousin with modern culture—but my concern is, where and how is the line being drawn? Where is the Gospel demand to something new, something radical?

Now, this is not to say that either one of them have a lock on transcendence or immanence. It’s a matter of emphasis, but also a legitimate difference of theology. We have chosen a different way.

The use of “traditional” language is a clear sign that we are operating with a different frame of reference from the everyday world. It is understandable—but noticeably different.

3. Greater beauty. As a lover of language, I find the Rite I liturgies to be more beautiful. I think that they have a superior flow of language, better use of assonance and alliteration,  better attention to balancing clauses than what we find in the Rite II liturgies. To a degree, the syntax of traditional language helps this happen. That is, the verb endings help with assonance and rhyme; certain stock phrases contribute an inherently better balance to sentence structure. In a culture that still (rightly) sees and reads Shakespeare as one of the best poets of all time in any language and where the King James Bible is a deep part of our vernacular, traditional language reads as elevated language which reads as poetic language. Following Dearmer and others, I see beauty as a necessary part of our worship of and witness to God. Therefore, the more beautiful option is the better option to my way of thinking.

So, coming from the Historical Approach, I do see the use of Rite I as having a natural contention to Anglo-Catholic thought and theology.

Now, the necessary caveats and disclaimers!

First, let me be the very first to say that these two Approaches are rather crude caricatures! I know that they are. There is a great deal of fluidity, cross-over, and additional inputs around Anglo-Catholic identity than simply these two. I still think they’re valid distinctions, though, despite that.

Second, I do love the Rite II liturgies as well, especially prayers A and B. I find Prayer C a little too modernist for my taste; the constant dialogue interruptions prevent me from praying it with the priest as fluently as I do A and B. Prayer D is a perfectly fine prayer, but there’s a certain amount of ad-fontes baggage around it. (And please, please, do not try to sing the Mozarabic tone if you have not extensively practiced it and know that you can do it well! Badly-sung prayers are painful, not festal!)

Third, I am not saying that Anglo-Catholic parishes or people shouldn’t or can’t do Rite II liturgies. I think that’s fallacious. We can and should. Rather, I’m explaining why I prefer Rite I particularly in my own devotions and, hence, why my directions for an Anglo-Catholic style Office use Rite I.

Fourth, in reading over this again having finished it, I do detect a slight hint of animus in my sketching of the Ecumenical Approach. That’s from personal pain. My experience of this position is that it has been used as a way to continue the disenfranchisement of women priests in the Anglo-Catholic movement. From one side, it’s used as an excuse to suppress women priests because they’ll be a barrier to reunion; on the other, their presence gives the lie to the “point of closest approach” and they are sometimes barred in order to maintain the pretense of being Roman Catholic without the discipline. There are at least a couple of posts still needing to be written here: one on the necessary characteristics of a viable Anglo-Catholic movement in the Episcopal Church going forward, one on various forms of pretense rampant in the Anglo-Catholic movement and why they are unhealthy.

Here endeth the rant; let the bomb-throwing begin…

Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary Back Online

As I wrote previously, I am going to be hosting the files/content for David White’s Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary. For more information on this resource, check out that initial post.

I have an index page up from which the current and corrected files can be downloaded. For the time being, it’s functional rather than pretty—pretty will come later. That page is located here.

Particularly pertinent for the present time, the propers for Corpus Christi are located in the sections labeled “Temporal Cycle–>Moveable Feasts after Pentecost”.

Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary

Some projects are planned and thought out; others just drop in your lap…

It was brought to my attention a short while ago that the Anglican Gradual & Sacramentary had disappeared from its former online home. For those not familiar with it, the AG&S is a independent work created by David Allen White that offers Minor Propers and other material for use alongside the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. It’s a very handy resource for Anglo-Catholic Episcopal clergy who would like to use the Minor Propers and contains contemporary Rite II material paralleling the current Roman use, traditional Rite I material paralleling classic Roman use, and Spanish-language material as well.

Here are the editorial principles from which it works:

This book is a revision of the Anglican Missal for use with the 1979 Prayer Book. Unlike the earlier work, the text of the Eucharist is not printed so as to be used for the celebration, but only as a guideline. . . .

In selecting the proper anthems, this book uses a general pattern as follows: Introits and Communions generally agree with Missale Romanum cum Lectionibus, 1977, when that use was compatible with Anglican use; otherwise they generally agree with Martens, Traditional Anthems of the Eucharist, 1975. Offertories nearly always agree with Martens, because modern Roman use does not appoint an offertory. Graduals, alleluias, and tracts usually agree with Martens in Rite I, but in Rite II they agree with Gradual Psalms and Alleluia Verses, 1980-1990, published by the Church Hymnal Corporation. Where this latter source suggested only “ad lib.” alleluias, or fails to suggest any at all, Missale Romanum cum Lectionibus was normally used as the source, since an “ad lib.” option is not in keeping with the format of this book. For propers which do not appear in these sources, anthems have been selected from other sources, including some unfamiliar anthems found in missals from Ireland, England, and Spain which include supplements for local communities. This was done to avoid repetition of the same anthems for various propers. Finally, it should be emphasized that this is a general guideline, and there are a number of variations from it. . . .

Rite I English anthems use the 1928 Prayer Book as the form for psalms and canticles, and any text derived from them. For texts from other parts of the Bible, the King James version was used. For texts from non-scriptural sources, the Anglican Missal was preferred, but other sources have also been used.

Rite II English anthems use the 1979 Prayer Book for psalms and canticles, and The Common Bible for texts from other parts of the Bible. For texts from non-scriptural sources, the Roman Sacramentary was often the source.

Spanish anthems use Libro de Oración Común, 1989 for material from the Prayer Book, and the Nácar-Colunga translation of the Bible for other Scriptural texts. For non-Scriptural material, Misal de la Comunidad, 1976, was the preferred source. The Spanish-language material is the equivalent of English Rite II, and anthems which appear only in Rite I texts do not have a Spanish form.

Thus, it is solidly rooted in current traditions of use. My only real beef with it is the format in which it travels…

It has circulated in three different formats: WordPerfect files, MS Word Documents, and PDFs. In each case, each occasion or week is its own discrete file. As a result, the collection is massive; an extant printed version runs over twenty volumes! The paradigm under which they were created was fundamentally that of print—which makes sense as the original preface is dated 1991. As an internet resource in an age of digital media, it is crying out for a new format.

The original source documents are the WordPerfect files. The Word docs and PDFs were created by Glenn Hammett, the former online host of the resource, in 2000. As I delved into the question of where the files were, I learned that Fr. Hammett had passed away as had his service provider: that’s why the web site has gone down. However, the former custodian of the site gave me contact information for David Allen White.

In the interest of getting the material circulating again, he has given me permission to host the AG&S files. He adds these three caveats:

  1. First of all, it predates the Revised Common Lectionary and Holy Women, Holy Men, therefore you will not find these uses here. It remains for someone else to adapt it to those sources.
  2. Second, in order for these pages to display properly you will need the following fonts installed in your computer: Garamond, Antique, Cataneo, and Ceremony. Ceremony was designed by Fr. Tobias Stanislas Haller. Most people who would be interested in this book know who he is and how to contact him. [The Ceremony font is available for free download here.]
  3. These files are being converted from WordPerfect, the program in which they were created, to Rich Text Format. This makes them better than any previous files you might have seen that were in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat (which I did not create), the reason being that over the years I have made corrections here and there, but only in the WordPerfect files, because WordPerfect remains my choice for word processing software.

The files are still in the process of conversion to the .rtf  format from WordPerfect. However, the Temporal Cycle and the Saints’ Days & Holy Days are done, and I will begin uploading them shortly. Once this is done, I will link to them. Too, I am working on an interface to make the collection more readily accessible.

Ideally, I’d like to do further conversions on the files. I’d like to 1) convert them into html for even broader circulation, and 2) database them for enhanced versatility. As noted above in point 3, there is a formatting issue in the current files; the collects and other items begin with a drop-cap. However, these are laid out by means of tables in the current set-up, and Word won’t let you use a drop-cap within a table. This is easily fixed with modern html/css, but it takes time to convert all of the files and is likely not something that will be accomplished soon.

So—what exactly are we talking about in terms of time? When will these files be available again? Very shortly, I hope. I expect the finished files to be available by the end of next week with the main hold-up being an effective interface. Of course, that’s not the only thing on the docket… Here’s a glance at my current workload:

  • An edition of the St. Bede’s Breviary for the Companions of St. Luke (OSB): This is at the top of the list and is almost done. This edition uses a four-week psalm cycle, seasonal antiphons for all of the psalms and canticles, and an expanded array of canticles for the slot after the first reading at Morning Prayer. I’m in the final data-entry/testing stages here.
  • Transcription of the Anglican Breviary: This has begun, but has not yet been unveiled. That’ll happen very, very soon. At that point, I’ll also solicit help from the various people who have volunteered to assist with it.
  • Collect revision for “A Great Cloud of Witnesses” (formerly HWHM): This is also underway and needs to be in decent shape by the end of the month…
  • Dissertation revision: The dissertation is being transformed into a book for regular people to be published by Liturgical Press. There’s an early Fall deadline on this one, so expect a lot more posts in the near future on early medieval monastic formation, liturgy, and biblical interpretation!

Then there’s the day job, the girls’ activities, the staying married, and all—needless to say, it’s a busy summer. Donations to help defray hosting costs and to help underwrite some of this work are gladly accepted from those able to do so!

Feasting Bede: An Exercise in Collect Revision

The feast of Saint Bede fell over Memorial Day weekend this year. I didn’t post on it this year on its proper date but shall do so now.

In praying his collect this year, I was struck by its limitations. Here’s the text:

Heavenly Father, you called your servant Bede, while still
a child, to devote his life to your service in the disciplines
of religion and scholarship: Grant that as he labored in the
Spirit to bring the riches of your truth to his generation,
so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make you
known in all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

It’s not so bad as far as current sanctoral collects go. It’s singable. It points towards his virtues and isn’t overburdened with detail. And yet, it could be better.

The regnant model currently is that of the “biographical collect.” This is a proper prayer that incorporates elements of a person’s life and biography. In the Episcopal Church, the biographical collect was attempted and rejected as a strategy in the original deliberations leading up to the first batch of sanctoral collects published in 1958’s Prayer Book Studies XII.  The main reason for the rejection was because “Too many of these Collects gave the effect of being overly contrived and erudite” compounded by the appearance of “subtle allusions” not edifying to the whole worshiping community (PBS XII, 9). However, in 1980, in contrast to these earlier findings, a great majority of the sanctoral collects were rewritten to be biographical. In recent years, particularly in Holy Women Holy Men, the biographical collect has achieved a position of dominance as the genre of choice for sanctoral collects.

I have a fundamental theological problem with the biographical collect. I’m a medievalist: everyone knows this. As a medievalist, my perspective on the saints—who they and and who they are for us—has been heavily influenced by medieval models and perspectives while still retaining a Reformation perspective. Saints are neither demi-gods nor cool people who were also Christian. Rather, the saints are remarkable individuals who have been singled out by their own communities and those after them because they represented the ideal of Christian maturity. If, as Irenaeus has said, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists of beholding God,” then these individuals are example of those who, in the act of beholding God, entered most fully into their own God-imaged humanity. Yes, many of them lived remarkable lives, did remarkable things, and have interesting biographies. But what we celebrate in them is our ability to see in their lives the universal virtues of Christ that they put on by virtue of their Baptism. It’s easy to get lost in biography. What we need to celebrate are the virtues and the charisms which they shared with Christ, which they grew into by virtue of Baptism, and which are available to us also by way of our own Baptisms. Thus, the biographical collect tends to err on the side of accenting their particularity rather than connecting to their universality and the Christ from whom it flows.

The second main issue I have with the biographical collect is its tendency to stop being a collect and to begin being a mini-sermon or secondary biography. A collect is a prayer; it is first and foremost speech to God. Only secondarily is it speech to the gathered assembly. The biographical collect tends to get this reversed, and attempts to edify more than it prays and praises. Consider again the genre of the collect. I’ve written about it here with a two-pronged simile: a collect is simultaneously like a sonnet and like a haiku. And I continue to come back to the words of Percy Dearmer:

Unity is the essential characteristic of the collect. To be good, it must have colour, rhythm, finality, a certain conciseness as well as vigour of thought; but it must be a unified petition, or it becomes something else than a collect. We might indeed say that it must be one complete sentence, an epigram softened by feeling; it must be compact, expressing one thought, and enriching that thought so delicately that a word misplaced may destroy its whole beauty.

Holding these things in mind, let’s review again the appointed collect for Bede…

Heavenly Father, you called your servant Bede, while still
a child, to devote his life to your service in the disciplines
of religion and scholarship: Grant that as he labored in the
Spirit to bring the riches of your truth to his generation,
so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make you
known in all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.

First off, this is a two-sentence prayer, not a collect. Standing in for an actual Invocation+Relative Clause describing God we have an Invocation+biographical note. This is one complete thought: “Heavenly Father, you called your servant Bede, while still a child, to devote his life to your service in the disciplines of religion and scholarship.” While it begins with God (verbally, at least), it says very little about who God is and says far more about who Bede was.  But it does so to talk about his job. (Again, the professionalization of sanctity, something I’ve railed about before and which I’ll spare you at the present…) Now—how does this first sentence relate thematically and conceptually to the second sentence? The second sentence (“Grant that as he labored in the Spirit to bring the riches of your truth to his generation, so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make you known in all the world”) identifies the effect of Bede’s service as bringing out the riches of God’s truth, and then requests—on the strength of that—that we be good evangelists.

I guess I can follow the logic—but is it good logic? Is it strong logic? Is this the best we can say about Bede and what we see in him and what we see of Christ through him? I certainly hope not…

Well, what are some other options, then? Here’s the version in the People’s Anglican Missal and the Anglican Breviary that substantially translates the Latin of the pre-1962 Roman Missal:

O God who hast enlightened thy Church with the wondrous learning of blessed Bede thy Confessor and Doctor: mercifully grant to us thy servants; that we, being in all things enlightened by his wisdom, may at all times feel the effectual succor of his righteousness. Through…

We do, in fact, have a collect here! We have a true Invocation+Relative Clause that says something about who God is—he is the enlightener of the Church and Bede is an example of vehicles he has used for this purpose. We at least see something of why we are revering Bede: his wisdom. And yet, this collect, too makes me feel a little edgy. I see Bede—I don’t see Christ…  This falls too close (and perhaps even over) the “saint as demi-god” line. Whose is the “effectual succor of righteousness”: Bede or Christ?

Now, here’s a collect for Bede that appears in PBS XII when he was first introduced into the Episcopal Calendar:

Almighty God, who hast enriched thy Church with the singular learning and holiness of thy servant Bede: Grant us to hold fast the true doctrine of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, and to fashion our lives according to the same, to the glory of thy great Name and the benefit of thy holy Church; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

So—a true collect that starts out in a very similar fashion to the Roman version, thanking God for enlightening the Church by virtue of Bede his instrument. Too, we see Jesus and ask to pattern our lives off his and to both glorify his name and benefit the Church. The collect doesn’t explicitly say that this is what Bede did, but we should certainly imply it.

I like this collect. It does what it’s supposed to do and it falls quite neatly between our two boundary lines. It is a bit general, though. This is actually a common collect for teachers and theologians; in PBS XII, Bede shares this same collect with Thomas Aquinas, John of Damascus, Ephrem, Jeremy Taylor, and Samuel I. J. Schereschewsky! You can see how it will work admirably for all of them. Can we get more particular and still hold to our principles?

How about this:

Almighty God, who hast enriched thy Church with the learning and holiness of thy servant Bede: Grant us to find in Scripture and disciplined prayer the image of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and to fashion our lives according to the same, to the glory of thy great Name and the benefit of thy holy Church; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Learning and holiness capture well the virtues of Bede. I would characterize them as wisdom, knowledge, piety, and discipline myself. Holiness and piety are fairly synonymous, holiness lacking the whiff of sanctimoniousness that often accompanies the contemporary use of “piety.” I deleted “singular” as I don’t feel it adds. Rather, it detracts from our theology of sanctity! We don’t celebrate the saints because they are singular or unique; we celebrate them because they witness to our common gifts in Christ. Bede wrote his own epitaph in the closing chapters of the Ecclesiastical History thus: “I wholly applied myself to the study of Scripture, and amidst the observance of regular discipline, and the daily care of singing in the church, I always took delight in learning, teaching, and writing.” In making the common particular to him, then, I modified the petition relating to Christ. The original phrase “hold fast the true doctrine” is certainly correct as Bede was quite orthodox. However, bringing in the Scriptures and the singing of the Offices honors Bede’s own self-description better and enables us to capture his virtue of discipline.

Is this singable? I think so. It does have a number of clauses, but no more so than some of our other classic collects.

Now, I had made a suggestion earlier on in the process that we create collects that could sustain the optional phrase “[and in union with her prayers]” where grammatically appropriate in order to capture a true baptismal ecclesiology. This phrase would recognize the unity of our Baptismal community in Christ that physical death cannot sever, and acknowledge the presence of the saints within our present worshiping community. (And be entirely optional, noting that some have a more limited understanding of Baptism…) Looking at this new collect, though—there’s not a good way to fit the phrase in. I could see it going here: “and [in union with his prayers] to fashion our lives according to the same” except that we open a can of worms regarding antecedents. The natural antecedent of “his” would be Christ and if we substitute “Bede” for the pronoun it becomes clunky and interferes with “the same” at the end of the line. Thus, despite my desire for a recognition of our eschatological community with Bede and the rest of the saints, I think this collect is better off without the added phrase.

The Revised Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book

The Revised Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book has finally arrived. After several years of planning and working, I can at last hold it in my hands!

I know that there have been some questions about how the new revision relates to the previous version, the 1967 revised edition, so I’ll go ahead and address that.

Physically, the two books are roughly the same size in the hand. However, the bindings are different—while the ’67 is a hardback book, the ’14 is leather bound with sewn-in pages, two ribbons, and gilt-edged “Bible paper” pages. It feels like a prayer book that will stand up to repeated use. Because of the thinness of the Bible paper, there are roughly one hundred more pages in the new edition than in the previous edition.

SAPBs IMG_20140528_062831

Opening the book, the text is printed in both red and black.

A quick comparison of the two tables of contents underscores that this is a revision, not a new work. The same headings are present, but the new revision has a more detail, more subheadings, to help direct you to where you want to go.

The former revision was conducted as the Episcopal Church was in the midst of formulating its next prayer book. As a result, it remains a solid catholic supplement to the 1928 prayer book and is in dialogue with the Roman Catholic piety of its day in the very midst of the tumult of Vatican II. By contrast, this new revision was designed from the ground up as a solid catholic supplement to our current prayer book, reflecting the ecumenical and cultural situation of our day. Additionally, this revision intentionally draws from the wells of historic devotion incorporating more materials from Sarum primers and breviaries. In keeping with both aims—a closer connection with the current prayer book as well as recovering the riches of former ages—we have tried to give as many attributions as possible laying bare the historical span of the material. Just to be clear, though, old stuff isn’t in here because it’s old; it’s because in working and praying with these well-worn prayers, David and I were convinced that they had an important word to speak to the church of our present day.

There are prayers here in contemporary (Rite II) language; there are prayers here in traditional (Rite I) language. We have also incorporated some material—I’m thinking of Office canticles in particular—in direct address that provide gender-neutral praises to God. Above all, our goal was to use the whole register of liturgical language with the intention of not making language an issue. There was no quota of Rite I to Rite II to gender-neutral material. Instead, we went with what prayed well!

Some material was removed. David probably knows better than I which material exactly, but there’s a certain flavor of saccharine-sweet overly-pious immediately pre-concialiar sentimentality that is greatly toned down. To my Gen-X/Y ears, this material strays dangerously close to the line of self-parody. It’s one thing if your heart is genuinely overflowing with love and devotion; it’s another to insist that’s how you’re feeling and, if not, to whip yourself up to that level because the prayer says you should—that just doesn’t strike me as honest spirituality!

There’s also a good amount of explanatory material here. The previous edition had this too, but much of it has been updated. As David explains in his Foreword, he—like many clergy—discovered the Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book in seminary. That is, his first encounter with it and its spirituality was not necessarily in the context of a living church community. I know that my first encounter with it occurred that way—it was a text that I discovered apart from a living tradition. As a result, the explanations are offered as a way of introducing people to a fuller and deeper expression of the Anglican tradition that is completely consonant with prayer book spirituality whether they’re in a congregation familiar with such traditions or not.

It was a real honor to have the opportunity to work on this book. Both of us entered into it with a certain trepidation because of how deeply loved it is. None of our changes were made lightly; in each case we wanted to make sure that the material was consonant with our prayer book, with our Anglican tradition, and spoke Gospel words of life to modern Episcopalians.

As I have said—tongue in cheek—my chief role was to gild David’s lily: the lion’s share of the work was his. However, I had read through portions of it at David’s request and commented on them before I was officially invited onto the project by Scott Gunn and the good folks at Forward Movement. I see my true role in this work as representing the voice of the laity. It’s easy for devotional works of this sort to reflect what clergy want lay people to think, and do, and pray. I believe that’s a trap that we consciously avoided here. This work, flowing from the monastic well-spring of the Order of the Holy Cross, bolstering the work of the clergy, finds its true home in the hearts, minds, and actions of the whole church—not just the ordained portions. These are prayers that I use with my children, that I turn to between meetings, conference calls, and shuttling the girls to ballet lessons, that are made for our world, the sections both within and without the church’s walls. This is a spirituality for the whole church.

May it be received as it is offered: a treasury of Gospel nourishment for the road. Not a last word or a perfect work, but godly conversation as we push along the way!

Kindle versions are available at Amazon; for the present, physical copies can be ordered through Forward Movement. (They will also be available through Amazon at some point in the future.)