The Sept. 29 edition of The Living Church is available online to registered subscribers. The issue includes a brief editorial celebrating TLC’s 135th year.
Speaking to General Convention in 1874, the same body that declined consent to his election as Bishop of Wisconsin, the Rev. James De Koven said that to adore Christ in his sacrament “is the inalienable privilege of every Christian and Catholic heart. How we do it, the way we do it, the ceremonies with which we do it, are utterly, utterly indifferent. The thing itself is what we plead for.”
Father De Koven endured another rejection only one year later, after he was elected Bishop of Illinois. The Living Church came into being in 1878, before the Episcopal Church came to accept Anglo-Catholic piety, in a variety of forms, as a welcome and indeed essential voice in the choir.
Today, building on a longstanding commitment to inter-party healing and cooperation, TLC describes its focus as Catholic, Evangelical, and Ecumenical. We see these three aspects of Christian belief as necessarily complementary, and in fact as mutually constitutive. Catholicism is evangelical and ecumenical, because the Christian gospel is universal and ancient, encircling the globe, rooted in personal conversion and belief: Credo.
We are thankful to be part of a worldwide Anglican Communion that welcomes the spikiest Anglo-Catholics and the evangelical revivalists of Holy Trinity Brompton, home of the Alpha Course, and we recognize the place for many other voices as well. We seek a comprehensive generosity and faithfulness within the one Church, even across Christian divisions. At our best, Anglicans do not settle for mere toleration of one another but seek to press into a deeper formation in and by Christ that may yield holy obedience among the many nations and peoples — and temperaments, tastes, political commitments, and cultures — of the world.
TLC seeks to embody such a spirit of sacrificial love. In this still-new century, we are resolved to escort The Living Church to its sesquicentennial and, by God’s grace, to a 175th year in 2053.
News
Bylaws Wreak Havoc on UTO
Books
Christian de Chergé by Christian Salenson
Review by Ephraim Radner
Ecclesial Movements and Communities by Brendan Leahy
Focolare by Thomas Masters and Amy Uelmen
Review by Daniel Muth
Conciliarism by Paul Valliere
Review by Mark F.M. Clavier
Polarization and the Healthier Church by Ronald W. Richardson
Review by Leander Harding
Francis of Assisi by Augustine Thompson, OP
The Cambridge Companion to Francis of Assisi
edited by Michael J.P. Robson
Review by Peter Eaton
Three books in the series
Studies in Early Franciscan Sources
edited by Michael W. Blastic, OFM, Jay M. Hammond,
and J.A. Wayne Hellman, OFM Conv.
Review by Aaron Canty
Catholic Voices
Editorial: James DeKoven, Pray for Us
MRI’s Spiritual Diagnosis by David Cox
Thank You to Our Supporters
Other Departments
Sunday’s Readings
