BISHOP GEOFFREY ROWELL Requiem aeternam dona eis.... It is with the deepest sadness that the Society has learned of the passing of Bishop Geoffrey who was, only months ago, to have given a paper at the Society's recent conference Anglicanism Catholic and Reformed. This would have been on the theme of the distinctive Anglican understandings of holiness and it was only with great reluctance that he withdraw, on account of the then early, but already acute, stages of the illness … [Read more...]
Ascension I
Ascension-tide is the briefest liturgical season in the Church Year. It lasts only ten days. We believe that on the fortieth day after Easter Christ ascended to the Father. Ten days later the Holy Spirit was sent into the womb of the nascent Church on the feast of the Pentecost or Whitsunday. So, we have but a few days to examine the significance and meaning of the Ascension for us. The Ascension is Jesus Christ’s return to the eternal state that He shares, as Son, with the Father and the … [Read more...]
Ascension
It seems rather odd that no sooner have the Apostles been warned against gazing into the starry heaven in pursuit of Jesus’ Ascended nature than their Elizabethan successors have taken to exhorting us to do precisely that. The Angels of the Lord –two men standing by the Apostles in white apparel rebuke the Apostles. Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. (Acts … [Read more...]
The Society’s 2017 Conference (16-18 February)
The Prayer Book's 2017 conference was held on the theme: Anglicanism: Catholic and Reformed - Revisiting the Reformation Legacy 1517-2017. It took place at St John's Church, Savannah, Georgia, from midday on Thursday 16th to midday Saturday 18th, February 2017. In the anniversary year of Luther's ninety-five theses which started the Reformation, this conference explored how Anglicanism emerged with an identity that is both truly reformed and enduringly catholic. And we are pleased to … [Read more...]
“To foreign lands no sound of her is come” – Reflecting on the expansion of the Anglican Communion then and now….
At a time when the future of the Anglican Communion as a true Communion, rather than mere Community is under some travail, it is interesting to see how different the perspective was in the middle of the last century when the Revd. Walter Stowe (1895-1989) enthused most optimistically in his article ahead of the 2nd Anglican Congress held in Minneapolis in 1954, entitled, “The Expansion of the Anglican Communion” in the Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, (Vol. … [Read more...]