If one were to believe certain corners of the internet, the Apostolic Fathers exist primarily as Catholic bait. The claim is simple: read them honestly, and you will inevitably discover that Protestantism is a tragic misunderstanding foisted upon the Church sometime between Constantine and Luther. The Fathers, we are told, clearly believed in a sacerdotal…
James Hodges wears many hats for his local community. He is an assistant pastor at his congregation, where he leads the elementary-age children in worship every Sunday. He is a husband to his wife, Anna, and a daddy to their two children, Lilabet and Ambrose. He is a fifth-grade math teacher at his local elementary school, and a doctoral candidate at Liberty University. He writes regularly for Anglican Compass on devotional matters and on his Substack, Sacramental Thinking, where you can find his musings on life, creation, and even a book he is serially publishing. You can see more at https://sacramentalthinking.substack.com/.
Book Review: The White Horse King by Benjamin Merkle
Benjamin Merkle, The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great. Thomas Nelson, 2009. 272 pp. Contrary to what the spicier corners of Roman Catholic Twitter insist, the English Church did not begin in 1534, and Anglicanism did not spring fully formed from the head of Henry VIII like some Tudor Athena. Long before…
We Believe: He is Seated at the Right Hand of the Father
Each week, churches around the globe confess their ancient faith, faith once delivered, passed down through saints, martyrs, reformers, and weary sinners who clung to it in the dark. The Nicene Creed is both the most universally accepted statement of Christian doctrine and the most comprehensive summary of it. A key phrase, often uttered without…
Humble Thanks: A Reflection on the General Thanksgiving
Thankfulness is one of many virtues we find hard to cultivate. We are “curved inward” thanks to sin, and our desires are disordered. We find it easier to complain about life and how difficult our situation is. When someone points out how others have it worse, we bristle like an animal caught in a trap….
Like Lost Sheep: Reflections on the General Confession
We easily fall into two ditches during our times of confession: we think that we have to grovel long enough for God to accept our repentance, or we skim over our confession and ignore our sins. The General Confession at the opening of the Office provides us the boundaries we need.
I Will Lift Up My Eyes: Reflections on the Midday Psalms
The meat of the Midday Prayer rests in its psalms. Four options can be read, though some prefer to read all of them daily.
Illumine the World: Reflections on the Midday Collects
The ordering for Midday Prayer can serve as a great way to refocus on something other than our own problems and to work on bending ourselves back out instead of staying bent in.
Andrewes’ Principle for Anglicans High and Low
Andrewes’ principle of what determines the boundaries of Anglican Christianity can help us navigate divides within our tradition.
Three Creeds, Four Councils, Five Centuries (Andrewes’ Principle Pt. 2)
We continue with our second in a series on Lancelot Andrewes’ principle of Anglican belief (read the first installment here): One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period—the centuries, that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the…
Let Us Keep the Feast: Reflections on the Pascha Nostrum
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…
One Canon, Two Testaments (Andrewes’ Principle, Pt. 1)
Anglicans stand on “One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments…”
Vesper Light: Reflections on the Evening Canticles
Evening is when one of two things can happen to us as fallen children of Adam. We either thank God for the day’s victories or dread the onset of the night’s terror. We watch as the sun goes to its rest, mirroring us, or we fidget and search for ways to keep the lights on….
