Finding a Fuller Table in Anglicanism
“A meal tastes best when you’re hungry.” It’s such an obvious truth and one that my parish priest has been fond of repeating during the season of Lent. It explains why Anglicans traditionally fast in the days leading up to Easter. And it also, I think, captures a lot about my recent journey into Anglican Christianity.
My journey was driven by a spiritual appetite that had been slowly growing for many years. It was a hunger for rootedness, a desire to be part of a denomination not built on modern, nitpicky doctrinal statements but on the ancient consensus of the creeds, and a craving for what I now know to be the beauty of sacramental theology.
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That hunger grew to a fever pitch in 2020, a year that brought many unsettled questions in my life into the spotlight and in which I could no longer ignore the alluring aroma wafting from the table of the historic church.
Raised at a Half-Empty Table
Like many people in the American South, I grew up in a Christian home and was always in church. We participated in charismatic, evangelical congregations. In was this kind where weekly Bible studies often focused on drawing “deeper meanings” out of biblical prophecies, where Sunday worship drew from the CCM hits of the 80s and 90s, and where summer youth camp was the most significant item on our version of the liturgical calendar.
Much of my church experience centered on private reading/study of Scripture and emotive expressions of intimacy with Jesus. “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship” was almost a creedal statement in these circles. Ceremony and tradition were often perceived as detrimental to a “real relationship with Jesus.”
Mere Symbols?
And yet, for all that, at least one ceremony involved some measure of reverence: taking the Lord’s Supper. Even as a little kid, I remember having impressed upon me the importance of “examining yourself” before partaking. If you didn’t treat it seriously, God would judge you.
But despite the threat of this potentially negative supernatural experience, our leaders always assured us that the crackers and juice were merely symbols. Spiritual grace was present to judge but not to nourish, apparently. The Lord’s table was half-empty.
Still, I’m grateful for the many good things that my charismatic upbringing instilled in me—things like an emphasis on genuine, personal faith in the Lord, a willingness to participate physically in worship, and a sense, if underdeveloped, of the holiness of the Lord’s Supper.
Unfortunately, in some cases, a willingness to truly examine our beliefs and doctrines in light of Scripture, history, and tradition was lacking or even frowned upon. It may have been a lively faith, but I could sense it was not the fullness of the faith.
So off I went to Bible college, eager to learn and ambitious to teach my fellow churchgoers how to love the Lord with all our minds and not just all our emotions.
Breadcrumbs on the Canterbury Trail
My first taste of liturgical worship came as an undergraduate at John Brown University in Arkansas.
Our chapel services there included a beautiful sampling of different Christian traditions. We sang the Doxology, practiced lectio divina, and took Communion from a common loaf and cup at the altar instead of passing around individual wafers and juice cups.
I appreciated the symbolism and reverence of walking up as a group to take the Lord’s Supper together—my reservations about partaking in a school chapel rather than a church service notwithstanding! It was overwhelming to sense that despite seeing students coming from all sorts of more traditional backgrounds—Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Reformed Baptist, and others—we all shared a deep, common bond as members of the Body of Christ, equals by grace, as we approached the Lord’s table.
I also delighted in learning about church history, relishing the stories of past saints like Augustine of Hippo, John Chrysostom, and the Cappadocian Fathers. During my senior year, I even participated in a semester-long intensive on the Apostolic Fathers.
Though I didn’t fully realize it at the time (I was too busy trying to graduate and dating my now-wife to consider all the implications of the Fathers’ theology), I was receiving my first little appetizers of the ancient catholic tradition—appetizers that would one day cause me to crave the full course.
Reaching My Tipping Point
After finishing college and seminary, I prayerfully examined where I would best fit in terms of a denomination in which to pursue ordination.
I had never been entirely comfortable with any denominations I grew up in. There seemed to be at least one or two things in the doctrinal statements I couldn’t assent to.
Whether it was that everyone should speak in tongues, that one’s initial salvation could never be lost, or specific stances on end-times prophecies, I always found something far from essential to the faith yet part of the identity of that given denomination.
Where were the ancient creeds of the historic church that I appreciated reading about in college? Shouldn’t those be the core identity markers of a Christian congregation?
Unwilling to pay lip service to doctrines I thought were, at worst, unbiblical and, at best, didn’t belong on the short list of essential beliefs, I began to feel somewhat homeless. During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, a paradigm shift finally moved me to change lanes from my low-church, evangelical environment into the liturgical tradition of Anglicanism.
Three significant factors combined that finally pushed me past my tipping point.
#1: Watching my old church communities try to handle Holy Communion during the Covid lockdowns.
One congregation tried to perform “virtual Communion.” Leaders encouraged members watching services online to use any foods handy as elements—whether crackers and juice or cookies and soda. I couldn’t help but wince at the possible ramifications of representing the body and blood of our Lord with Oreos and a Coke!
Thankfully, the congregation I was part of then decided to forego virtual Communion. Instead, they decided to leave individual packets of matzah and juice at the back of the auditorium for individuals to partake of if they wished. It was left up to you if and how you wanted to participate. Communion ceased to be communal, which deeply frustrated me.
My hunger for a church that held Communion in high reverence, with a sense of Christ’s real presence and grace in the meal, reached a fever pitch.
#2: Revisiting the early Church Fathers.
I had long wanted to revisit the Apostolic Fathers to ponder afresh the things I had surely missed while in school. Amid stay-at-home orders in the lockdown, I had a bit of extra time for reading. So, I dusted off my copy of Michael Holmes’ critical edition and devoured it.
The timing was providential. In the earliest documents of the church after the New Testament, there was an affirmation of the sacredness of the Eucharist as a real partaking of the body and blood of Christ (Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 6:2), as well as an insistence on episcopal leadership as the way in which apostolic oversight and orthodox doctrine would continue in Christ’s body (1 Clement 40-44; Ignatius, Trallians 2-3).
All of this suddenly clicked in a new way for me, and it caused me to revisit Scripture with fresh eyes.
I paid more attention to things such as St. Paul’s insistence that partaking of Holy Communion really is, in whatever way we should understand the mechanics of it, a “participation in the blood” and “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:16 ESV). I discovered that the early church unanimously associated the “washing of regeneration” in Titus 3:5 with the sacrament of baptism.
On an even more fundamental level, I realized the implications of accepting that we have the canon of Scripture that we do because of the decisions of the early catholic church and its councils. At that point, I knew I needed to be part of a historic branch of the church that valued this catholic heritage.
#3: Discovering the ACNBefore
Prior to October 2020, I had no idea that something like the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) even existed. I assumed that the Episcopal Church was the only embodiment of Anglicanism in America, and I was aware that my own convictions were more conservative than what is now common in Episcopalian circles.
My search for a place in the historic church initially led me to explore Eastern Orthodoxy, as I still have too many doctrinal differences with the modern Roman Catholic Church. Yet I felt that even within Orthodoxy, some traditions seemed to me to contradict biblical teaching, and my wife and I both prayerfully decided that it was not the right path for us.
I nearly despaired of finding a church I could call home. That is until I did a web search for historic churches in my area and found a little ACNA parish called St. Benedict’s.
The website greeted me with the words “Biblical, Traditional, Historic.” A glimmer of hope flickered in my heart! After more research into the beliefs of the ACNA, I decided to try it.
When we visited that next Sunday morning, a warm and vibrant parish community greeted us. Far from being stuffy or feeling like a closed club, the people of St. Benedict’s seemed genuinely excited to be there and to welcome us, and we quickly made a connection.
Nearly six months later, my wife and I are looking at confirmation and have already had our two little boys baptized at St. Benedict’s.
Finding My Place at the Table
Looking back on the path my faith journey has taken, I realize there have been a lot of little breadcrumbs sprinkled along the way that were cultivating in me a taste for Anglicanism—a taste for a Christianity that was richer and fuller—bread and wine rather than crackers and juice, one might say.
I’m delighted to have finally found a church home that balances the richness of our history and traditions with a commitment to holding Scripture as the prime authority. A church that holds up the creeds and sacraments as the core expressions of our faith and practice. And a church that expresses Christlike love and joy in its community.
It’s not a perfect church (there isn’t one on this side of heaven), but it has so much more of the fullness of the faith. If you are hungry for a church like that, why not look for an Anglican parish near you?
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