Anglo Catholic Tradition

The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion can be confusing institutions. In the case of most Christian denominations, one can know simply by their name what one might expect to encounter in their worship or their preaching. But in the Episcopal Church this is not the case. Within the Episcopal Church, one can find churches which might be mistaken for contemporary evangelical congregations and churches which might be mistaken for traditionalist Roman Catholic congregations. Most Episcopal churches, of course, fall somewhere in between these two edges, but all of these churches can be authentically Episcopalian and participate in the Anglican Communion.

 

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church proudly identifies as an Anglo-Catholic parish. The term “Anglo-Catholicism” describes a range of theological views and traditions within Anglicanism which emphasize the continuity of Anglicanism with the teaching and practices of ancient Christianity that are rooted in Scripture and the witness of the early Church. Anglo-Catholic or “High Church” Episcopalians value the sacramental life of the faith, trusting in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and celebrating the apostolic ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons. A significant stress on liturgy and worship – offered reverently and “in the beauty of holiness” – makes worship in an Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church an experience which is intended to appeal to the whole person – to heart as well as head, to senses as well as to intellect.

 

The city of Oxford in England has a special significance for Anglo-Catholicism because it was there, in the 1830s, that a group of academic churchmen – Richard Froude, John Keble, John Henry Newman, and Edward Bouverie Pusey – sought to denounce the spiritual lethargy of the Church of England and to recall the Church to her heritage of apostolic faith. Their writings gave rise to a reform energy within the Church of England now known as the Oxford Movement. This movement was the beginning of Anglo-Catholicism, and the heart of its spiritual vision lay the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. God, in Christ, lived among us as a physical reality. Therefore, all people, especially the poor and marginalized, must be brought the ministry of Jesus Christ in all its sacramental and embodied richness. Beauty and holiness were to go into the midst of squalor and depression, as a witness to the Incarnate Son of God, present and active in his world.

 

The overwhelming success of the early Anglo-Catholics is evident in parishes, like St. Luke’s, which rejoice in proclaiming their part in such a glorious tradition. But it is also evident in the rest of the Episcopal Church as well. The rediscovered emphasis on the catholicity of the church and the priesthood, on sacraments, on ancient liturgy, on prayer, on holiness and the beauty of worship, are the gifts of Anglo-Catholics to the whole Christian world. A glance round the contemporary Episcopal Church, still vastly divergent but nevertheless teeming with colorful vestments, revised liturgies, ancient hymns, and thousands of processions, aumbries, altars, oratories and retreat houses, reminds us just how dramatically the life of the Episcopal Church was and is renewed by the movement which began in Oxford and spread, through the Anglican Communion, across the entire world.