From the Editor’s Desk
Michaelmas greetings, dear readers. This ninth issue of The Anglican Way, aims (as ever) to encourage and equip you in the ongoing fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, which is to say, opposition to all that tends towards delusion, destructiveness, and death.
Your humble correspondent’s contribution to this issue, ‘Beat Down Satan Under Our Feet’, explores that ongoing warfare as depicted in the Litany. I show that the Litany, a form of prayer long associated with processionals, contains within it three processionals: of our sin and its consequences, of Chrit’s victory over evil, and of our victory in Christ, crushing the serpent’s head.
We are grateful to hear from Benjamin Crosby once again, confronting the canard that the Articles of Religion were never recognized as a doctrinal standard in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. While many clergy now regard them as an embarrassing artifact of our past, the idea that Episcopalians of prior centuries thought so is a modern delusion.
This issue also brings to you our first contribution (we hope, of many) from Neil Robertson, on how the theology of the Prayer Book informed Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a tragic duel with the spectre of delusion. While the play ends in death, the praywrite obliquely points towards life-giving doctrine.
Another first-time contributor, Gary Thorne, adds to our occasional series of Great Anglican Profiles, describing one of the greatest teachers and scholars of the Anglican way, the late Robert Crouse. Crouse believed the faithful use of the Prayer Book – which epitomizes ‘the faith once for all delivered unto the saints’ – renews our minds, turning them from destruction.
In our Arts & Music series, Dr Jonathan Murphy describes Herbert Howells’ soaring Collegium Regale. Finally, we include the next installment of Gavin Dunbar’s I Am His, an exposition of the manual for Christian soldiers, the Prayer Book Catechism. May these reflections be as angels descending from heaven to help and defend us.