“Morning Has Broken” is both an international pop classic and a hymn of uncommon theological depth. It begins the day with praise to God for both the beauty of his creation and the sustaining power of his Word. The story of the hymn begins with Anglican priest Percy Dearmer, who wanted a text set to... The post Hymn Guide: Morning Has Broken appeared first on Anglican Compass ..read more

The world God made is a world of rhythm and rhyme. Seasons change and come again before leaving us once more. There is a predictable stability in the constant diversity that God has made, something C.S. Lewis once brought out in his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters. As his fictional demon once put it, God has... The post Let Us Keep the Feast: A Commentary on the Pascha Nostrum appeared first on Anglican Compass ..read more

It’s very easy to wake up in the morning, get dressed, have a cup of coffee while we check the latest news, and immediately jump into our day. We often check our emails before we check in with our souls. What would happen if, instead, we started our day in praise and thanksgiving to God?... The post Morning Prayer: A Rookie Anglican Guide appeared first on Anglican Compass ..read more

We come to Proper 12B, and, following Mark’s Gospel, we come to the narrative immediately following last week’s account of Jesus feeding the five thousand. Mark 6:45-52 contains that Gospel’s briefer (compared with Matthew) but detail-rich account of our Lord’s walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee. My commentary below seeks to demonstrate the kindness of God lying behind what appears to be sternness in the narration. The OT reading assigned this week from 2 Kings 2:1-15 is the well-known story of Elijah departing the world in a chariot of fire and Elisha taking on the role of lead prophe ..read more

Recently, theologian and frequent Anglican Compass contributor The Rev. Dr. Gerald McDermott released Deep Anglicanism: A Brief Guide, his accessible but not lightweight introduction to the Anglican tradition. We were excited to get our hands on this new volume, released by Nashotah House Press, written by one of modern Anglicanism’s most prolific writers. Such was the case that both our editor, Jacob Davis, and our ministry president, Peter Johnston, were both eager to review it. In addition, we received an outside review submitted by Calvin Robinson, who, as an English priest ordained in the ..read more

Few scholars could even attempt to write a book like A New History of Redemption, Gerald McDermott’s recent work of near-comprehensive theological history. McDermott borrows the title and structure from an unfinished project of Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century Puritan, who outlined the project but did not live to complete it. And no wonder: Edwards’ idea was to tell the story of redemption in the most expansive sense of the word, from immediately after the Fall all the way to the ending of the world. The ambition is to tell nothing less than the whole of history, including the history that h ..read more

How should Christians react to a rise in political violence? Anger is justified, but sin is not. Rather, we look to our crucified Lord: whose conviction was political violence, whose crucifixion was political violence, who himself grieved political violence, but whose resurrection triumphed over political violence. As Christians, we proclaim the superior hope of repentance and forgiveness by the prince of peace. Anger and Political Violence There’s a rising tide of political violence in America, illustrated by recent attempts to injure or kill members of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Pr ..read more

A few weeks ago, my church took a field trip—one that went over the road and almost 200 years into the past. A small group of us met in one of our village’s oldest buildings, a tiny stone chapel constructed in 1853 to serve the tiny population of English settlers who’d brought their faith with them to the New World.  Long since abandoned by its growing congregation, Christ Church now serves as a museum and event space except for the four Sundays in the summer when it sheds its modern guise and reverts to form, becoming a place of worship once again with an early Holy Communion service led ..read more

This Sunday, in Proper 11B, we continue our liturgical walk with Jesus in Mark’s account of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. This is one of the few pre-Crucifixion incidents in Jesus’ ministry that appears in all four Gospels, and in Year B of the lectionary, it is scheduled so that we hear it twice (here and in John’s version at Lent 4B). Mark 6:30-44 gives the most detail of all the Gospel accounts, including the well-known line that Jesus saw the great throng of people gathered like sheep without a shepherd (34).      Almost the entire section of Isaiah 40-66, with ..read more

“Lift High the Cross” is a hymn of missionary encouragement and spiritual victory. A favorite for church processions, it sets forth the paradox of the cross: that an instrument of torture and death has become a symbol of triumph and life. Written for a missions festival by Anglican priest George W. Kitchin, it was later revised by Michael R. Newbolt (also an Anglican priest) and published as a processional hymn in 1916. Sir Sidney Nicholson composed the tune, CRUCIFER, pairing a preparatory march in the verses with a grand and soaring chorus. The hymn is fitting for World Missions Sunday, the ..read more