Interested in learning more about the Episcopal Church or the foundations of the Christian faith? Join The Revs Laurel and Colin Mathewson on a 12-week exploration of Anglican Christian tradition on Wednesday nights starting January 15 at 6-8 pm in the Guild Room. The course is free, a light supper will be served ($5 donation), and child care is available upon request. ALL ARE WELCOME! Register online at stpaulcathedral.org/whatis. Questions? Contact Colin at mathewsonc@stpaulcathedral.org, or 619-977-8173.
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A Brief Introduction to Anglican Spirituality
If you are a spiritual seeker in today’s world, you already have been exposed to a wide variety of possibilities for spiritual experience and growth, from those offered by the various Christian denominations, Judaism, and Islam, to East Asian practices, like yoga, meditation, or tai chi. And there are too many others to mention.
So now, welcome to the Anglican Communion where you can discover even more opportunities to grow in your knowledge and love of God! Additionally, you will be entering a spirit-filled enrichment process, which is brought about precisely because you are surrounded by people who differ from you. Although there is abundant comfort in this Communion, everyone needs to figure out, not only how to live with the challenge of otherness, but how to flourish within its dynamic energy.
Many and diverse theological beliefs and spiritual practices have characterized Anglican tradition, from its beginnings in the 16th and 17th centuries, to this day. From time to time, some people, holding tightly to their own positions, have wished that groups who subscribe to different ones, would leave the church. This has been the case recently among Episcopalians, where some individuals and parishes have left to form new churches when disagreements were seen as non-negotiable. However, miracle of miracles, more typically, Anglicans have stayed together. This tradition has included, and continues to include, Conservative Evangelicals, Low Church, Broad Church, and High Church people, and Anglo-Catholics—and these persuasions represent only the commonly acknowledged dimensions of Anglican diversity. There are more: church statistics report that today’s most representative Anglican person is a young African woman. How does she relate to the world-wide Anglican Communion, and how do its members relate to her?
Only a deep spirituality attuned to the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ can answer that question and, spiritually speaking, it is a healthful and Christ-like trait to allow one’s own being to be enhanced by the existence and contributions of others. To live with balance and in harmony among people who differ from ourselves requires a transformed perception, and this is both an inside and an outside job. Anglicans in political turmoil sometimes seem to be holding on to The Book of Common Prayer as though it were a lifeboat adrift on a tempestuous sea. Indeed, for multitudes of people, this Book offers the ongoing hope and possibility that Anglicans will stay together because they worship together. Significantly, spiritual seekers everywhere recognize that worship has both internal and external dimensions.
In the Middle Ages, it was believed that each individual Christian was a minor ecclesia, a “small church,” that is, the church in microcosm. Theologians taught that the transforming activity of the Holy Spirit within persons was the basic energy which formed the church and built it up. Although the word “spirituality” is notoriously difficult to define, we could say that spirituality concerns the cultivation of this creative and dynamic interior dimension. I would insist that it also has to do with much more than that—adoration of God, for instance, and service to others, in sum, the whole fabric of a person’s life, considered specifically in its loving and self-transcending dimensions. Nevertheless, a large part of what we mean by spirituality concerns intentionally making ourselves available to God in our innermost depths.
Anglican Spirituality offers abundant teaching about the beauty of holiness and how the church’s practices--for example, the Daily Office, the Eucharist, the prayerful reading of scripture called lectio divina, antiphonal chanting of the psalms, music of all kinds, spiritual discernment, keeping the monastic hours, spiritual direction and intercessory prayer, fasting and penances, the writing and recitation of poetry, and intentional service to others--contribute to spiritual formation and, ultimately, a sharing in the very life of God. The poet T. S. Eliot admired Anglicans for the way they strive to hold together deep spirituality and profound thought in a love-infused unity. This Inquirers’ Class will give you a taste, not only of our brilliant and saintly ancestors’ experiences and thoughts, prayers, poems, and practices ((e.g., those of Cranmer, Hooker, Herbert, Andrewes, Donne, Traherne, Wilberforce, Simeon, Maurice, Underhill, Temple, and Ramsey, et al.), but also experiences and thoughts, prayers, poems, and practices of some of the gifted spiritual teachers who surround and support us in the Anglican Communion today.
The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Koenig
If you are a spiritual seeker in today’s world, you already have been exposed to a wide variety of possibilities for spiritual experience and growth, from those offered by the various Christian denominations, Judaism, and Islam, to East Asian practices, like yoga, meditation, or tai chi. And there are too many others to mention.
So now, welcome to the Anglican Communion where you can discover even more opportunities to grow in your knowledge and love of God! Additionally, you will be entering a spirit-filled enrichment process, which is brought about precisely because you are surrounded by people who differ from you. Although there is abundant comfort in this Communion, everyone needs to figure out, not only how to live with the challenge of otherness, but how to flourish within its dynamic energy.
Many and diverse theological beliefs and spiritual practices have characterized Anglican tradition, from its beginnings in the 16th and 17th centuries, to this day. From time to time, some people, holding tightly to their own positions, have wished that groups who subscribe to different ones, would leave the church. This has been the case recently among Episcopalians, where some individuals and parishes have left to form new churches when disagreements were seen as non-negotiable. However, miracle of miracles, more typically, Anglicans have stayed together. This tradition has included, and continues to include, Conservative Evangelicals, Low Church, Broad Church, and High Church people, and Anglo-Catholics—and these persuasions represent only the commonly acknowledged dimensions of Anglican diversity. There are more: church statistics report that today’s most representative Anglican person is a young African woman. How does she relate to the world-wide Anglican Communion, and how do its members relate to her?
Only a deep spirituality attuned to the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ can answer that question and, spiritually speaking, it is a healthful and Christ-like trait to allow one’s own being to be enhanced by the existence and contributions of others. To live with balance and in harmony among people who differ from ourselves requires a transformed perception, and this is both an inside and an outside job. Anglicans in political turmoil sometimes seem to be holding on to The Book of Common Prayer as though it were a lifeboat adrift on a tempestuous sea. Indeed, for multitudes of people, this Book offers the ongoing hope and possibility that Anglicans will stay together because they worship together. Significantly, spiritual seekers everywhere recognize that worship has both internal and external dimensions.
In the Middle Ages, it was believed that each individual Christian was a minor ecclesia, a “small church,” that is, the church in microcosm. Theologians taught that the transforming activity of the Holy Spirit within persons was the basic energy which formed the church and built it up. Although the word “spirituality” is notoriously difficult to define, we could say that spirituality concerns the cultivation of this creative and dynamic interior dimension. I would insist that it also has to do with much more than that—adoration of God, for instance, and service to others, in sum, the whole fabric of a person’s life, considered specifically in its loving and self-transcending dimensions. Nevertheless, a large part of what we mean by spirituality concerns intentionally making ourselves available to God in our innermost depths.
Anglican Spirituality offers abundant teaching about the beauty of holiness and how the church’s practices--for example, the Daily Office, the Eucharist, the prayerful reading of scripture called lectio divina, antiphonal chanting of the psalms, music of all kinds, spiritual discernment, keeping the monastic hours, spiritual direction and intercessory prayer, fasting and penances, the writing and recitation of poetry, and intentional service to others--contribute to spiritual formation and, ultimately, a sharing in the very life of God. The poet T. S. Eliot admired Anglicans for the way they strive to hold together deep spirituality and profound thought in a love-infused unity. This Inquirers’ Class will give you a taste, not only of our brilliant and saintly ancestors’ experiences and thoughts, prayers, poems, and practices ((e.g., those of Cranmer, Hooker, Herbert, Andrewes, Donne, Traherne, Wilberforce, Simeon, Maurice, Underhill, Temple, and Ramsey, et al.), but also experiences and thoughts, prayers, poems, and practices of some of the gifted spiritual teachers who surround and support us in the Anglican Communion today.
The Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Koenig
