My journey into Anglicanism has been nothing short of interesting so far. I think I have had as good a tour of my new church as anyone can in the first year... I have been confirmed, met the Bishop of Durham, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, gone to two theological conferences, spent a day with the Archbishop of Burundi, not to mention meeting three bishops of Texas, and securing employment as a lay minister at my local parish. Phew! What a year.So what has that got me? Well, for starters, I am as spiritually happy and healthy as I have ever been. The Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion have given me a good sense of both God's transcendence (greatness and majesty) and his immenence (nearness and closeness) which I found difficult, if not impossible, to hold together in my former protestantism. The Liturgy especially creates a wonderful sense of the mysterium tremendum right here in American-as-apple-pie Beaumont. Also, I feel a sense of connectedness with other Christians, both those around the world and those who have come before me, that I have never felt before. More and more, that "great cloud of witnesses" and our "oneness in Christ" are becomeing not simply abstractions, but living realities for me. This, in turn, has given rise in me to a burning desire to see the reunification of The Church of Jesus. May it be so, Lord.
With the structure provided by the Daily Office, I have found prayer both more accessible and richer that when I felt prayer had to always be an extemporanious list of petitions and praise. Not only that, it has made it much easier to pray together with my wife. I had often, as a protestant, heard said that liturgy and written prayer was constraining, but I have found it to be exactly the opposite. Oh, the freedom of consistency and commitment! And lastly, though I still call myself an evangelical, I am finding the "high church" and "anglo-catholicism" more and more appealing. Who knows where all this will lead next?
2 comments:
Why was it difficult or possibly impossible (heheh) to have a sense of God's transcendence and immenence in protestantism?
Well, I guess regarding transcendence, the whole "Jesus is my homeboy" movement or the absolutely terrible music and aesthetics in most protestant communities created an ethos of "nothing special here, Jesus is just like us."
Regarding immenence, most preaching and communal thought I encountered led one to believe that God was way off somewhere and not terribly interested in this world because he was just going to rapture us all anyway and destroy the whole thing.
Obviously I'm speaking from my limited experience, and there were a few exceptions (Bethlehem Baptist), but they were exceptions that proved the rule.
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