The British are Coming! (Bow Tie Dialogue Ep.02 - The Anglican Show!!!)

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August 22, 2023

Chatting with Anglicans! On this second episode of Bow Tie Dialogues (Conversations with a Calvinist), Keith welcomes six Anglican ministers (ACNA) to talk about some of the distinctions in their theology. Do they really believe they have "superior theology"? We will find out in this episode! #cwac #superiortheology Be sure to like and subscribe and leave a comment! Twitter @YourCalvinist Email questions to [email protected]. CalvinistPodcast.com Support us at Buymeacoffee.com/yourcalvinist

00:00: Welcome back to the Bowtie Dialogues here on Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:05: My name is Keith Foskey, and of course, I am your Calvinist.
00:09: Today, I'm joined by a group of Anglican ministers who are going to dialogue with me on the subject of their understanding of the church, church history, theology.
00:20: Where do we agree? Where do we disagree? And what Bible passages would we run to to make our points? And what do we really think about each other? What do Baptists think about Anglicans? And what I'm more interested in, what do Anglicans think about Baptists? And we're gonna have a good time while doing it.
00:36: So I want to introduce my very distinguished crowd today who are here giving their time to this Bowtie Dialogue.
00:44: I have Nick Lannan, I have Drew Collins, I have J.D.
00:49: Koch, I have Matt Kennedy and Charlie Kohlberg.
00:52: And I think I'm saying their names correctly, but if I am wrong, they can correct me in just a moment.
00:56: And in doing so, I want to also say that all of these men were brought together by Drew.
01:02: So thank you, Drew, for pulling this together and giving us a wonderful Bowtie Dialogue today.
01:06: As we all know, the Anglican church and the church that I represent, which is not Presbyterianism, even though a lot of people think I'm a Presbyterian, I represent the Reformed Baptist Church, does have some differences.
01:18: And what I find often is we tend to get in our own groups.
01:22: We tend to get in our own denominations, our own fellowships, and we know a lot about what we believe, but we don't often know about why other people believe the way that they do.
01:31: Sometimes we end up creating some straw men.
01:33: We have wrong ideas and we build up straw men just to burn them down on things that we disagree about.
01:40: And so what I've done with Bowtie Dialogues is I've created this series as a way to get to know other denominations straight from the mouths of men who preach in these denominations.
01:53: And so, as I said today, and jokingly on the YouTube thumbnail, it says the British are coming because this is our Anglican Bowtie Dialogue.
02:03: And I'm really looking forward to asking questions, talking about Anglicanism, its history, its teachings, the theology of it.
02:12: But before I do that, I'm gonna have every man introduce himself.
02:16: We're gonna start going around the guys.
02:19: We're gonna ask them to introduce themselves.
02:21: And if you would tell me, did you become an Anglican first? Were you saved in the Anglican church? Maybe you were born into it.
02:32: Maybe you were saved through an Anglican minister.
02:34: Or did you get saved through another denomination and be, as it were, converted to Anglicanism? And if so, what was it that appealed to you and drew you into Anglicanism? So I'm gonna begin with Nick and ask him to answer that question for us.
02:50: Thanks, I'm Nick Lannan.
02:51: I'm the rector of Grace Anglican Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
02:56: Our word rector just means senior pastor.
03:00: I grew up in an Episcopal church, which as I'm sure we'll talk plenty about on this conversation, was for a long time the major expression of Anglicanism in America.
03:11: My mom had grown up in an Episcopal church before leaving the church.
03:17: She was a hippie at Woodstock.
03:19: My arrival on the scene in the late 70s brought her back to the church.
03:24: And I think just coincidentally, the local Episcopal church was the one that was closest to our house.
03:29: But it was a wonderful church.
03:31: And that was the church in which I heard the gospel and became a Christian.
03:36: And the rest is history.
03:38: I'm now in the ACNA, the Anglican church in North America, no longer the Episcopal church.
03:44: Like I said, that's a story that I'm sure we'll talk plenty about, but that's my short version of how I came to be Anglican.
03:51: Awesome.
03:51: And I did, I posted a Twitter question.
03:54: I said, what would you ask if you could ask a group of Anglican and one was about the ACNA? So I do want to get back to that eventually and say, how did that come about? And maybe you could give us a short history on that.
04:06: Nick.
04:07: All right, Drew, tell us your story.
04:09: Well, and we are all three or all four in our five.
04:17: Five.
04:18: Well, I'm a history major with the math.
04:21: We're all in the Anglican church in North America.
04:24: My name is Drew Collins.
04:26: I'm rector of St.
04:26: Andrew's Anglican church in Savannah, Georgia.
04:29: We are a parish of the diocese of the Southeast of the Reformed Episcopal church, which is a part of the ACNA.
04:37: I was raised actually in the PCUS, which no longer exists, but it was the old Southern Presbyterian church that was absorbed into the PCUSA in 1983.
04:51: And it was there that I heard the gospel in a actually fairly liberal church, but God moves in mysterious ways.
05:02: And in my early twenties, started thinking about going to seminary, decided that I couldn't do that in good conscience in the PCUSA.
05:13: So I went to the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, which you've never parodied them, but they are kind of like, they're a NAPARC denomination, very similar to the PCA and had a great time there, still have many dear friends there.
05:35: Went to their seminary, I'm back at their seminary now as a student, but the prayer book drew me in.
05:43: And so I don't like to use the term convert to Anglicanism, because I don't see a Baptist or a Presbyterian becoming an Anglican as a conversion.
05:57: I see it as moving, changing.
06:00: You're moving from one room to another in the house of God, household of God.
06:04: You're not changing religions.
06:07: Sure, and let me clarify with that.
06:10: When I say converting, I certainly agree with you that we are all followers of the same Christ and the same universal church.
06:18: Some people who didn't, that's why.
06:21: But I have been an Anglican through the Reformed Episcopal church since 2004, spent four years in the canonically resident, the Diocese of South Carolina where JD ministers, but came back to the Diocese of the Southeast when I took the call to this parish.
06:43: Love it here, have a great group of people.
06:47: Wonderful, thank you, Drew.
06:48: And thank you for sharing that history with us.
06:50: All right, JD, I'm gonna switch to you now and wanna make sure, is it like saying JD? Is that how you prefer it or JD? Like lady with a J.
06:59: Lady with a J, gotcha.
07:01: That's it, I don't know why.
07:02: That's a whole longer story, but yeah.
07:06: Thanks for having me on, I'm JD Koch.
07:08: I'm the rector of St.
07:09: Luke's Anglican on Hilton Head Island.
07:11: And I guess I saw, well, my mother grew up in the Episcopal church in Baton Rouge, St.
07:16: James, Baton Rouge, and by her own attestation, if she's watching, love you mom, got saved at a Billy Graham crusade in college at LSU in the 1970s, early 1970s.
07:28: And as a result of that conversion, we never stepped foot in an Episcopal church ever again, as far as I knew, at least growing up.
07:36: And so I actually grew up in kind of the, I guess the best way you could call it kind of like the Jesus movement church.
07:44: It eventually became a vineyard primarily through the music.
07:48: And that was a wonderful way to grow up.
07:50: Lots of flip-flops actually kind of come full circle.
07:53: Lots of flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts and things like this.
07:57: But it wasn't until college, I entered college intending to be a politician.
08:01: And then through the Lord's intervention ended up by the time I was a senior considering the ministry and having grown up in the free church, I essentially had all of the options available to me and not a lot of direction, except for the fact that I had as a good sort of child of the late nineties in college become what I now understand to be part of possibly some of the young restless and reformed crowd.
08:28: And so ended up reading a lot of John Piper in particular and sort of kind of good reformed theology at the time.
08:35: And so I was headed off to Gordon Conwell, I thought, cause I was just where one would go, or at least among others.
08:43: And I was introduced to my now wife as a senior who came from a long line of what we now would call sort of evangelical Anglicans, many of whom were sort of founding members of the Anglican church in North America.
08:57: And I was introduced at that point to a picture of reformational theology that was biblically sound.
09:05: It was committed to the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
09:09: And it was also utilized the historical tools of the 2000 year Christian tradition to educate, equip and form people.
09:19: And so I saw for the first time a picture of what some would call kind of reformed Catholicity that was just quite inspiring.
09:28: Cause I had no, I wanted a church that was thoroughgoingly biblical, as I said, committed to reformation principles and also sort of open to the tradition in an open-handed way.
09:41: And well, here we are, that was 23 something years ago and so far so good.
09:46: So there we go.
09:47: Amen.
09:48: Thank you for that very much.
09:50: All right, we're gonna go over to Mr.
09:52: Matt Kennedy and share with us your story, brother.
09:57: Yeah, thank you.
09:58: I was baptized at three years old in an Episcopal church.
10:02: And that's because my mother had just been converted.
10:05: She, a woman next door to us, walked in, knocked on her door and came in with a big black Bible and shared the gospel with my mom.
10:12: And that day she became a Christian and I happened to be going to an Episcopalian day school that was attached to a church.
10:19: So that's where we went to church.
10:21: And so I was raised in the Episcopal church.
10:24: I didn't, we went every Sunday, but I didn't, I don't think I ever heard the gospel there.
10:30: I'm not saying I didn't preach it, but I didn't ever hear it.
10:34: So it wasn't until I left for college and I went through a stage of, I thought I was an atheist for a while.
10:44: I thought I was an agnostic for a while.
10:45: I thought I was all through the stages of disbelief.
10:49: And then at 24, I heard a sermon by R.C.
10:54: Sproul on the radio and ultimately that's my turning my life over to Christ.
11:01: And I said, I decided to go back to the Episcopal church because I didn't know anything else.
11:08: So that's where I went.
11:09: I happened to walk into the one, one of the few Episcopalian churches in Houston, Texas, that was solid Orthodox church.
11:17: And the rest is kind of history.
11:20: I went to seminary from there and now I'm the rector of Good Shepherd Anglican church in Binghamton, New York.
11:27: Excellent.
11:28: Thank you.
11:28: Thank you, Matt, very much.
11:30: All right, we're gonna finish out this with Charlie.
11:32: Let him share his part.
11:34: And I want you to add one thing to yours, Charlie, because you were the first one on that had the collar.
11:40: Well, I don't know, Drew may have been first, but you have the collar.
11:43: I want you to tell us why you guys wear that collar because that may be something that Baptists aren't used to and it's not a bow tie.
11:51: So I'm definitely not used to it.
11:53: Well, the thing that a lot of Baptist non-liturgical churches don't realize is if you take the collar off on the inside, it says kills fleas and ticks up to three months.
12:05: It helps us down here in the South.
12:08: No, so the collar is a throwback or an image of the bond slave.
12:19: And so we are servants of Christ.
12:24: The black that you see priests wearing is because we're not lawmakers.
12:30: We are those who are to interpret and teach and uphold what God's word says.
12:37: And so you'll see the judges wear black too because they're not lawmakers.
12:43: They're to uphold, interpret and explain the law.
12:47: So that's kind of our garb.
12:49: Sometimes we wear this with pants, other times with Bermuda shorts and whatnot.
12:54: Anyway, so I grew up Presbyterian.
12:59: I went to a Presbyterian seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary.
13:04: And I was originally ordained in the ARP, Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
13:11: And so, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and the REC have these familial bounds.
13:22: So there's a theological closeness there.
13:26: So for me to transfer from the Presbyterian to the Reformed Episcopal was like basically the same paperwork of going from one presbytery to another presbytery in that denomination.
13:41: So it's very close bond.
13:44: The reason was is because as you're studying and as you're a student of the Reformation and of theology, what I began to realize is that if John Calvin or John Knox or Augustine walked into my little Presbyterian church, they would have no idea what we were doing.
14:08: And they'd probably be mildly offended that it wasn't a Reformed expression or consistent Reformed expression of worship.
14:20: And so going back and looking at the way the church worshiped, that what I found was that when Anglicanism is done correctly, when we are theologically, liturgically and biblically self-conscious, when we understand that our service is drawn from scripture and it's driving us back to scripture, when you get to a place like that, that it is the most comprehensive expression of the Reformed faith.
14:55: It is a faith that believes, that preaches and that worships consistently with the biblical principles that we hold dear.
15:04: So that's how I got here.
15:07: Amen, amen.
15:08: Well, thank you again, all gentlemen, for sharing that.
15:12: And what we're gonna do now is I did produce a list of questions that I wanted to ask.
15:17: And unfortunately, while I would love to hear all of you give answers, unfortunately, if we all tried to answer every question, we wouldn't be able to do that.
15:25: So I know that there was a little bit of pregame discussion about some of you being prepared to answer some of the questions.
15:32: So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start out with the first one on the list.
15:36: And I wanna say this for my audience sake.
15:38: Some of these questions, I know the answers to, but I'm asking it for the sake of my listeners and also to make sure I'm right.
15:45: Because if I say I know the answer, but not being Anglican, I may have a wrong understanding.
15:50: And as I said earlier, I hate straw men.
15:52: I hate when people straw men me, I hate when people straw men my position.
15:56: So I don't wanna do that to other people either.
15:57: So my goal is to hear exactly how you guys, and I figure having five men who are studied and pastors and teachers and rectors of the church, you guys should be able to give me a pretty good answer to these questions.
16:12: So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna throw these questions out.
16:14: If you're prepared to answer and you just wanna jump right in, you can.
16:17: If someone says something and you wanna add to that, you're welcome to.
16:21: The only thing I would say is, let's not do a lot of repeating.
16:23: If somebody says it really well, we can move on to the next, if you guys are all satisfied with that.
16:28: But I do hope to hear from everyone as we go.
16:32: So the first question I have on my list is, can you describe what makes Anglicanism unique among the other denominations? What is really unique about Anglicanism? I'd say- I think J.D.
16:45: said it a little.
16:46: I think it's in Catholicity.
16:48: Yeah.
16:49: That's the one thing is that, when I'm asked, are you Protestant or Catholic? I say, yes, because- but I'm not Roman Catholic, but it is a way of being within the stream of Catholicity while still being also Protestant and Reformed.
17:16: So that's kind of my elevator pitch for that.
17:21: Well, let me ask this.
17:22: And again, anyone is free to answer.
17:25: None of you would affirm the authority of the Pope.
17:28: I'm correct.
17:29: Am I correct in saying that? There is no jurisdiction in the realm.
17:32: That's right.
17:33: That's right.
17:36: A good way of understanding Anglicanism as a practice, and as we leave it here, is that we have a Reformed liturgy, our principal Reformer, Thomas Cranmer, took the liturgy at his day and ran it through the grid of scripture and changed some of the prayers.
17:57: We kept a lot.
17:58: So the form of our worship looks as much, looks very ancient because it is, but it also has a Reformed flavor to it.
18:08: So sometimes people walking into our churches do think, oh, this is a Catholic church, a Roman Catholic church.
18:13: It's not.
18:14: It looks like it, but it's not.
18:16: Some look more Roman Catholic than others.
18:19: But our theology, if you look at our formularies, which are our confessional documents, if you read the prayer book from 1662, the 39 articles, the homilies, you'll see that our tradition is thoroughly Reformed in a way that I'm sure you would recognize.
18:35: Maybe a little bit broader around the edges.
18:38: We don't define as many things as you guys do, but it is thoroughly within the Reformed stream, theologically speaking.
18:44: That's right.
18:45: Yeah, we had Reformation in England, obviously, but it stopped short of sort of the iconoclasm in other places.
18:54: So we destroyed a lot of the, Henry VIII began, took a lot of the monasteries.
18:58: We destroyed a lot of the artwork, but not all of them, and most notably the cathedrals.
19:02: So we had this Reformed theology, sort of the engine of our church that was housed within a lot of what was still visibly kind of a high medieval sort of sacramental, at least looking system, like these great cathedrals, like Ely and Westminster and these places.
19:21: And so you had this at the onset, kind of a blending of, in many cases, the best of what the kind of high medieval church had to offer aesthetically, but with an entirely new sort of biblically grounded theology undergirding it.
19:37: And that took a couple of decades, if not centuries, to really work itself out.
19:41: And there was some disagreement along the way.
19:44: Nevertheless, if you embrace that sort of origin story, for lack of a better word, of the English Reformation church, well, then you can proudly call yourself a Reformed Catholic without, and understand what you mean.
19:57: So that's kind of what I was, one of the distinctives.
20:00: If we have time, let me jump in, because I'm gonna kind of dovetail in on a couple of things that kind of like what JD was saying.
20:08: One of the uniquenesses of Anglicanism, as you kind of experience it and walk in and worship, is that it is very much holistic.
20:21: In other words, that we believe that God created, we believe that God redeemed.
20:27: When Christ came, he assumes the fullness of our human nature.
20:32: And so that every point, whether it's through our cognitive listening to a sermon, whether it's through our posture of kneeling or standing, whether it's through the visual devotional prompts that you see all around you, whatever it is, that the gospel is being proclaimed to you through what you see, through actions, through your stances, through all of this.
20:56: And so in that sense, it's very much engaging.
21:00: It's very much holistic, rather than what I would say, having been a Presbyterian minister is sometimes a reductionism to just the cognitive.
21:08: We've come to a TED Talk on the Bible and that's fine.
21:13: And that's important, but it leaves a whole lot out.
21:17: The other thing kind of dovetailing on what Drew said about historic Catholicity, what a lot of people don't realize when, so I've got you up there, you're our Calvinist.
21:29: And if I ask most people, what do we mean by Calvinism? They would rattle off something like TULIP, irresistible grace, blah, blah, blah.
21:38: And so, but that's not, Calvin didn't add anything to that, that's Augustinian.
21:43: And Calvin's major contribution to really theology was the primacy of the person, meaning that Calvin realized that God, not exclusively, but very seldom reveals himself just in terms of his brute nature.
22:00: That most of the time when God reveals his nature is mediated through the persons of the Trinity.
22:06: Our God is a personal God.
22:08: So the reason I bring that up is because, like we've all heard of St.
22:13: Nicholas, St.
22:14: Francis, St.
22:16: Bernard, you know, all these saints.
22:19: What we don't realize is that prior to the Counter-Reformation, you were only called a saint if you were an Augustinian.
22:30: And so, if you weren't, so like, if we take, just like Billy Graham, a godly man, did great work for the church, God used him, but probably not what we would say a Calvinist today.
22:44: Well, I don't know that.
22:45: I would say he's a Calvinist today.
22:47: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
22:49: And an Anglican as well.
22:50: And an Anglican, that's right.
22:52: Everyone is an Anglican, yeah.
22:54: Welcome to the big house.
22:55: So, no, but they would have called him, Blessed Billy Graham.
23:01: And so, he's great, he did a lot, but there's just something theologically off that means he's not fully to be imitated.
23:10: And so, when you look back on what Cranmer was doing, it wasn't inventing something.
23:16: We didn't go into the Sistine Chapel and paint over Michelangelo's painting or redo it.
23:24: We cleaned it.
23:25: We got all the years of grime and all the years of pollution that had come in there.
23:29: And so, what I would like to say is that when you enter an Anglican church that's doing it right, and there's some knuckleheads everywhere you go, but when you walk into an Anglican church that's doing it right, you're worshiping in the same way that the church is worshiped at its health down through the ages.
23:49: And so, when the church has been healthy and when the church has been theologically and liturgically consistent, that this is this vein that has come through.
23:58: And so, we are a traditional church for a modern world.
24:07: All right.
24:08: That's interesting aside, Billy Graham, of course, was raised Presbyterian, became a Baptist, ministered as, or was ordained a Baptist, but toward the end of his life was asked, if you had it to do over again, what do you think you'd do? And he said he thought he would find a very comfortable home in evangelical Anglicanism.
24:29: So, there's that.
24:31: And now he does.
24:33: Now he does.
24:36: Well, we've had a couple of names that have been thrown around in this conversation.
24:41: One, Matt mentioned Thomas Cranmer, and I believe J.D.
24:46: or J.D.
24:46: did, and someone else mentioned King Henry VIII.
24:49: And I did have a question on here, and I'm jumping down a little bit, but the question of the beginnings of the Anglican church.
24:58: I know one of the often accused, and I would say probably a straw man that is used to defame or discount the Anglican church is that it was started as a way to provide the King of England a divorce.
25:20: And again, I'm not saying this is what I believe or what I would teach, but I know that this is out there.
25:25: I know that you guys have probably heard this.
25:27: I'm not the first person who said this to you.
25:30: So, I'm asking, what are your thoughts on that as when someone tries to discount the history and the historicity of the Anglican church as it only started to satisfy a lustful desire of the King? How do you deal with that? Or do you even consider that worthy of an answer? Well, it's certainly worthy of an answer, I think, because of how prevalent the question is.
25:52: But there were winds of Protestantism, if you will, blowing in England as early, probably even earlier than John Wycliffe in the 14th century.
26:03: So this is well before Henry VIII.
26:06: People are starting to see the need for reform in the church.
26:11: And even during the time of Henry VIII, Henry certainly became less, I don't even know what the word would be, theologically laudable at the end of his life, but perhaps was more a committed Christian at the beginning.
26:27: And he really thought when he had trouble producing a male heir that he was being judged by God because he had married his brother's wife.
26:42: And he wanted to be faithful and so tried to commission people to figure out what the truth of the situation was.
26:55: And those winds of Protestantism that had been blowing for hundreds of years now had certainly infected, in a good way, if you can say infection in a good way, Thomas Cranmer and his ilk.
27:09: I mean, Cranmer went to Germany and came back married to the niece of the reformer Andreas Osiander.
27:20: So there's definitely some Protestantism happening there, right? This is a Catholic priest who is now married.
27:28: And so the need for Henry to get his marriage annulled was simply the opening that Cranmer and the other theologians saw to start this Protestant church that they'd been dreaming of and really trying to start all along.
27:44: That's right.
27:45: Yeah, and I don't wanna apologize for Henry VIII too much, but I think it's anachronistic not to appreciate the historical situation he found himself in having come through the War of the Roses, having been sort of the conciliar king that was going to do the one thing the king needed to do, which was to prohibit, to stop civil war from happening again.
28:06: And the only thing he could do to do that was to have a viable male heir.
28:10: And so he can be faulted as everyone can for many things, but I think it's a simplistic reduction to just say that he was this kind of giant philanderer because that wasn't the problem.
28:23: Like no king even up until today is really held accountable to his extramarital dalliances.
28:30: That wasn't the problem.
28:31: He needed to have a legitimate male heir.
28:35: And when that was failing to be produced, well, then what we saw was, at least on a grand scale, one of the first kind of exegetical disputations, maybe in the, certainly in the English speaking world that had ever taken place.
28:48: You had actual academics who, with the critical Greek and Hebrew texts in front of them, sitting down and having these scholarly disputations.
28:57: Henry Marshall, the entire scholastic apparatus, all of the various colleges came together and to seek an answer for this.
29:05: And fundamentally the argument was, is the Pope more powerful than the Bible? Because the Pope was willing to grant all sorts of ways to kind of wiggle out of the marriage and sort of save face as the supreme ruler and give Henry what he ultimately wanted.
29:23: But that wasn't sufficient because the real question was, is the Bible true? Can I have a legitimate divorce according to the scriptures or is the Pope the authority? And I think when that began to be asked, well, then you see the rest of the dominoes fall, which led to, well, which led to Elizabeth and the formation ultimately of the Church of England.
29:45: Excellent, well, thank you, gentlemen.
29:46: That was a wonderful answer.
29:48: And I wanna also jump on something else that was said earlier.
29:51: And this was Drew who made the point of a reformed Catholicity.
29:57: And I know some of the rest of you have mentioned this as well.
30:01: When I've used in my videos, I've used the term via media, which I heard, and I think I understand what it means, but I wanna ask you if I am correct.
30:13: And I'm gonna ask you guys, because where I used it, like when I was doing my shooting video, I had the nine millimeter rifle.
30:21: This is the best of both worlds, right? I got a rifle accuracy with a pistol cartridge.
30:28: So I said, that was it.
30:29: And then, so, but is it that, cause I've heard this, I've heard two different arguments.
30:35: I've heard that the via media, meaning that the middle way is the middle way between Catholics and Protestants, but I've also heard that it is the middle way between Lutherans and reformed.
30:48: So which is right or both wrongs? That's my question.
30:54: I think that the second is correct.
30:55: Well, when I speak of what you just spoke of is, yeah, well, when I speak of, and it's a little, I don't know, quirk of mine, I have many.
31:04: When I speak of who you just referred to as the Catholics, and I mean, no disrespect to my Roman Catholic brethren, but I always qualify it with Roman because I'm not willing to surrender the term Catholic, but as Matt was gonna say, it's the latter of the two, historically was what was meant.
31:25: Richard Hooker was in, he's a theologian, Anglican theologian in the 17th century, and he was working through the debate going on between Puritans and those who are more close to the established church.
31:39: And so people have recognized that Anglicanism coming out of those kinds of disputes has embraced elements of maybe more Lutheran thought and in Calvinistic thought as a result, and blended them together.
31:55: And you can see it, if you read our articles of religion, you can see both of those influences coming through pretty clearly.
32:04: Okay, well, and that's very helpful.
32:07: And I like what you said, Drew, that you're arguing for a genuine Catholicity rather than a Roman Catholicity.
32:16: And interestingly enough, I'm gonna be interviewing a young man.
32:19: Have any of you have ever heard of the Redeemed Zoomer? Yes.
32:25: He has like one of the largest pages on YouTube, and he's just a young man, and he's just talking about church and playing video games, but he's a very interesting young man.
32:36: But we're gonna talk, I'm having him on, I've had him on before, we're gonna be talking a little bit about what makes the genuine Catholic.
32:46: And by that, I mean the true church, the universal church.
32:50: Because there was a graphic that was put out where it had a circle and it said, this is the true church.
32:56: And then they had all the, how much of each circle was in the circles.
33:00: I don't know if you guys saw that online.
33:01: We're gonna be breaking that down and talking about it.
33:05: But when we say Catholic, and this is good for my listeners to hear, we're saying it with the sense of Christ's body, Christ's universal body.
33:15: Yeah, and I think this was the real.
33:19: Sorry.
33:19: I was at a Roman Catholic church one evening for a pro-life function.
33:26: And the priest who was the pastor of the church asked, is anyone in here not a Catholic? And I was in a collar, I was in a black suit, but this lady knew that I was not a Roman Catholic.
33:41: And she said, well, you ought to raise your hand.
33:42: And I said, madam, I'm a Catholic, I'm just not a Roman.
33:46: And that's my standard answer for that kind of thing.
33:51: J.D., you had some thoughts? Well, I was gonna say, this is probably maybe another question here, but this is one of the areas of where we are less perhaps precise than the Calvinists and the Lutherans would be on certain questions, most notably like, you know, Eucharistic sort of real presence, for lack of a better word, or baptismal, what happens at baptism, you know, ecclesiology, soteriology, these things, where we fall, I've given this, I've said this in front of LCMS or Missouri Synod Lutheran professors, as well as Reformed, and I haven't gotten much pushback.
34:27: And I say, you know, either one of you with your positions could find a home within Anglicanism, at least historically and theologically, it's just we wouldn't be able to, you wouldn't be able to enforce your understanding on sort of the entirety of the church.
34:42: Although we do have bounds as to what you couldn't believe, which falls broadly in line with what we would say a general Protestant sort of confession of, you know, justification by faith alone, sola fide, the Pope does not have, you know, jurisdiction in this realm, and so on and so forth.
35:00: So the solos of the Reformation we can wholeheartedly affirm, and yet we would hold them in slightly different ways amongst individual clergy, but broadly speaking, we would be in agreement.
35:12: And so that's where, you know, for instance, in our Eucharistic theology, there's been a perpetual fight about exactly where and how the quote unquote real presence takes place, you know, and so the answer is yes.
35:26: The answer is somewhere between the sort of the consecration reception, the presence of Christ is received in a real way, and yet we are somewhat squirrelly, I wouldn't say squirrelly, we're less articulate on precisely how that happens in a way that would make the Lutherans, you know, the Lutherans calling the Presbyterians Nestorians, for instance, you know, that have such a clear vision on what exactly takes place, and vice versa.
35:57: We would say, well, we're just not as comfortable going that, getting that specific.
36:02: And so that's a cause of frustration to sort of my Lutheran friends and my Presbyterian friends.
36:09: And yet we sort of, I don't know if it's temperamental, theological, but we have agreed to allow for a certain leeway in understanding and theology that is too broad for some, and although increasingly too narrow for many.
36:27: So maybe that's the media right there.
36:30: And that raises a very interesting question, J.D., and I wanna break etiquette here if I can for just a moment, because I'm, I'm gonna jump, when I say break etiquette, I'm gonna jump to a different question and come back, because what you just brought up about the table brings up the question number nine, which is if I were to come into an Anglican church as a Baptist, now I wanna say on this particular issue, I would probably be even further away from my Reformed Baptist brothers.
37:06: Most of my Reformed Baptist brothers would hold to a Calvinistic spiritual presence view of Christ in the table, where I would hold more to a Zwinglian memorial perspective.
37:17: And I see your face, J.D., you just got real surprised, and maybe a little, a little, a little surprised.
37:22: I'm just wondering how long till you change that bow tie into a collar.
37:25: That's what I'm wondering about.
37:26: Well, well, the point I'm making, well, if I held to the view that I hold, which is the Zwinglian perspective, and that Christ is certainly with us always, but in the table is memorialized until he returns.
37:42: If I held that view, and I came into an Anglican church, if I visited any one of your churches, and the Lord's Supper was served during the service that I was present at, would I be welcome, or would I be asked to refrain? I mean, in general, if you are baptized in the name of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, and you're a believer in Jesus, and you're not under discipline in your church, you're welcome to take me.
38:07: And I don't know of any Anglican church that doesn't say the same.
38:10: So basically we have an open table.
38:15: Now, Charlie and my parish, we both use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, but the Reformed Episcopal Church has its own Book of Common Prayer.
38:24: And it's actually in the liturgy that our fellow Christians of, well, you can modify it, and I do because I say, baptized in other branches of Christ's church, who love our divine Lord and Savior in sincerity, and are sincerely invited to the Lord's table.
38:39: So you would be, I mean, it's actually codified in the liturgy, and you would be most welcome to receive.
38:47: You can be as wrong as you are about communion.
38:49: Not only in the church, but in all of us.
38:52: Beg your pardon? He said, I could be as wrong as I wanna be.
38:58: About communion.
38:59: It's okay, take communion, it's good.
39:01: What's interesting is you mentioned the Book of Common Prayer.
39:04: So much of the language of Christianity, particularly wedding ceremonies, things like that, are drawn from Anglican sources we don't even realize.
39:16: And in what you just said about your position on the table, that's our position.
39:20: If someone comes in and is a believer, so long as they're not under discipline, so long as they are not out of fellowship with their church as a result of some gross sin or perpetual state of habitual sin, they would be welcome to come and share with us too as well.
39:38: Yeah, Keith, I worked for a number of years as a hospice chaplain, and I can't tell you how many times I was at a death and would read the litany for the dying for the Book of Common Prayer and have a Baptist minister.
39:53: So that's pretty good.
39:55: Where'd you get that? You know, so they would want to.
40:00: That's good stuff.
40:01: Popular in all kinds of places.
40:06: Well, that's funny.
40:08: And well, I'm gonna go back up a little bit on the questions here.
40:12: I'm gonna ask this question.
40:13: I often am, I am often confused for Presbyterian because the Presbyterian in my videos often gets to be the hero.
40:24: And people ask me why that is.
40:26: And it's not because I'm trying to gain favor with my Presbyterian brothers.
40:30: I'm not trying to win any points with them.
40:32: In fact, the phrase superior theology was actually a joke against them because it was during my Thanksgiving episode where all of the denominations were saying what they give thanks for.
40:44: And the Presbyterian says, we give thanks that we have superiority.
40:47: That was where that phrase started.
40:49: And so it was really sort of a, it was sort of a poke because all my Presbyterian friends tend to have a very high view of their theological pedigree.
40:58: And so my question with that, since I'm not a Presbyterian, I'm actually a Reformed Baptist, where do you think would be the biggest differences between us as you understand it? And do you think that we're heretics? That's not, I would hope not, but I'll ask it.
41:17: I'll let whoever would like to answer.
41:19: What do you think are the biggest differences between Anglicans and Reformed Baptists and are we outside of the kingdom? I think I know the answer, but go ahead.
41:28: I mean, the obvious one is that we baptize babies and you don't, that we consider them to be members of Christ's covenant family and you don't.
41:38: But certainly I think I speak for all of us when we would say that you're not outside of Christ's family yourself for believing that.
41:46: And we can have a long conversation and many have over many years about why we do and why you don't.
41:53: That's the sort of presenting obvious one that we consider our very young children part of Christ's covenant family, not those we need to evangelize into it, but those who are being raised up in it.
42:09: I think also, I totally agree with that, Nick.
42:11: I think also in general, in addition to the sacramental theology in general is also, I'm not sure, but I believe most Reformed Baptists take the regulative principle of worship.
42:24: Is that correct? In general, I hold to the regulative principle, but I'm not as strict as some of my brethren.
42:32: I would say it's a principle, it's not a law.
42:36: So yeah.
42:36: Okay, okay.
42:37: So most Anglicans don't, we're more normative.
42:40: And so that tends to be one of the major differences and challenges that people have when they come into Anglicanism from more evangelical or Reformed backgrounds, is that we do all these things and they can't find any precedent for it directly in the scriptures and they're having a hard time getting their minds around it.
42:57: But aside from that, I think just so theologically, I think we would probably be right along the same lines with you.
43:06: It's interesting, because what Charlie said earlier about the postures and the things like that, I think it was Charlie who said that, right? Was about the different actions that you guys see those as representing the gospel and picturing the gospel in those things.
43:19: And so that's an example of what you just said there.
43:21: That would be more of the normative principle of taking these elements that aren't necessarily prescribed in scripture, but using them because they point back to a scriptural truth.
43:31: Yeah, right.
43:32: So coming from- So go ahead, Charlie.
43:35: You got it.
43:35: Coming from a Presbyterian background and being well-versed and indoctrinated in the regulative principle, I think it's oftentimes caricatured and oversimplified that the regulative principle is fundamentally a hermeneutical principle.
43:53: So we can say, hey, look, here are the Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
43:59: And we can point to that in scripture, right? Because the whole book of Psalms.
44:03: But what you can't point to is the music, to the tune of the lilies.
44:08: Well, does anybody know what that is? And so you have to take the prescriptions of scripture and you have to faithfully apply them so that they convey that in its time.
44:24: And so regulative principle in the PCA is amazing that the Holy Spirit has ordained really Southern 18th century Presbyterian, 19th century Presbyterian worship.
44:37: And that's where we stop, okay? So everything got finished with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the few, you know, Thornwell and a few guys like that.
44:45: But anyway, and so I think it's an oversimplification.
44:49: I think it's a caricature because what we're doing, whether we're preaching or whether we're doing worship or whatever, is we're taking the principles of scripture and we're faithfully applying them to our time.
45:03: And so in the language of our people and whether you're illustrating or whatnot.
45:09: So the movements and the visuals and the holism that we see is something that I can point to 50,000 cases, whether it's the architecture of the Old Testament temple or whether it's Jesus standing out in the field and going, hey, look at those lilies over there that are growing.
45:28: And, or to the sacrament itself, Jesus says this and he points to something and you're looking at it.
45:36: Then he points to something else and says, this is my blood and he points to it.
45:40: And he says, do this.
45:43: And so there's both the theology, there's both the action, there's both the symbol that's representing it.
45:50: So I think that maybe we end up with a caricature in that.
45:54: I would add to what we've already said, the baptism thing's true and the holism and the worship I think is true.
46:02: I also think that an important thing is in our ecclesiology that, and you could go off and say, we have bishops and whatnot from the Reformed Episcopal Church, the bishops were for the wellbeing of the church or not the being of the church.
46:19: And we could certainly argue about historical precedence and et cetera.
46:22: But the main thing, I think, is that the Anglican Church is an overtly, conspicuously, self-consciously and intentionally connected church.
46:35: Whereas the Baptist Church is an independent church and you may have a loose confederation, but it's an independent church.
46:44: And so I think that that's where we would say, hey, look, if we're taking seriously our Reformed doctrine on the unity of the body of Christ, here, and we say it in the Apostles' Creed and et cetera, then here we're giving an expression to it and a faithful expression to it.
47:04: Whereas being independent and off on your own maybe isn't the most faithful expression of what we mean by being in the body of Christ.
47:14: We've spiritualized it.
47:16: We've gnosticized it.
47:18: Rather than understanding it holistically, we're connected, we're connected right now.
47:24: We're connected in the things that we do and our support for one another, whether it's giving food to, or helping rebuild a church that's been hit by a disaster or whether it's theological and practice accountability.
47:40: Yeah, I think that's really well said, Charlie.
47:42: I would add one thing to all that and maybe pull back a little further.
47:46: Your question about the Presbyterian kind of self-understanding of the theology.
47:52: And I think there, what I would say differentiates at least in my understanding of Anglican theology from that would be a certain sort of, well, let me put it the other way.
48:04: I think the Presbyterians suffer in part from an underestimation of what the theologians would call the noetic effects of the fall, meaning that our mind has been corrupted.
48:17: Our thinking has been corrupted just as much as our bodies and as part of our, and so as a result of that, it doesn't mean that we can't worship God with our mind, soul, and strength, but that there is a, I don't wanna say hubris.
48:30: I don't wanna be, I have so many wonderful friends.
48:32: I love the PCA and I love the Presbyterians, but I think there's, I don't wanna say a punt to mystery with Anglicanism, so I don't like that word, but there's an epistemic humility that stops us up short from going as dogmatic in certain areas as the Presbyterians.
48:55: And I think this goes back to Luther and Calvin themselves.
48:58: I mean, I did my doctorate work in Berlin and was sort of baptized into Lutheran.
49:03: So I'm an Anglo-Lutheran sort of what has come out, but a wonderful German theologian still living named Oswald Bayer points this out in a book that he wrote.
49:13: I think it was in Prometheo, but it's not important.
49:15: But he says, both Calvin and Luther had at the heart of theology, the question of man and the question of God.
49:22: This was the heart of theology, like the consideration of what it means to be a human and who is God.
49:27: And he says the difference between Calvin's version and Luther's on the other hand was that Luther said that the study of theology was the sinful human contemplating the justifying God.
49:37: And Bayer makes a lot of that sort of these adjectives.
49:41: He says in those adjectives for man and God, you have the entire sort of difference between two ways of doing theology.
49:47: Because if your theology as rigorous as it is still confesses fundamentally that you are a sinner in need of justifying, well, then you're gonna come up short in some of your sort of proclamations, given the fact that there's a part of you that says, well, I'm still self-serving, and I'm still possibly blinded.
50:09: And I think that for me, when that sort of insight was laid over Cranmer and the prayer book and sort of given, I was given full reign to preach and teach along those lines with respect to what it means to be an Anglican, there was a great freedom for me not to stop studying theology, but to appreciate that the sermon was one part of it.
50:31: A doctrine is one part of it.
50:33: Worship is one part of it.
50:34: Confession is the main part of it.
50:36: And as taken as a whole, it was a vehicle that seemed to compensate in a wonderful way for all of the various strengths and weaknesses of a fallen and yet redeemed man.
50:49: Amen.
50:50: Now, some of you brothers may have noticed I did mute microphones.
50:53: And the reason why I'm doing that is I was getting a little bit of sound.
50:55: Sometimes when you're not speaking, I'm hearing some extant sound.
50:58: So if I don't unmute you, feel free to unmute yourself.
51:02: If you wanna say something, I'm just letting you know why that happened.
51:04: I sort of went around and did that while Jenny was talking.
51:08: So Nick wants to say something.
51:10: Go ahead, Nick.
51:11: Well, I just wanted to say, I have a little recording error message here.
51:15: I just wanna make sure that you saw that.
51:18: Yeah, what that is is each one of you is recording an individual recording on your computer.
51:23: This is what StreamYard does.
51:25: It does a local recording.
51:27: So I'm recording on my side, but so are all of you.
51:29: And that just provides a backup for us.
51:31: So if for some reason I were to lose out, you'd still have the recording, but if yours is not working, mine's working.
51:38: So this is a really neat setup.
51:40: And by the way, if any of you are ever interested in doing a podcast, and they're not a sponsor, but I would definitely recommend StreamYard.
51:47: They do a really fantastic job for people like this.
51:49: Charlie, you wanted to say something, so.
51:57: I'm gonna jump ahead just anticipating because I wanna dovetail in on something that JD said, or kind of his conversation.
52:04: There was a question about the difference between Presbyterian and Anglican theology in itself.
52:11: And having been Presbyterian, having been taught Presbyterian, now being Anglican, one of the main things, and I think this gets at some of the things that we've been talking about, is that if you compare the 39 articles and you compare the Westminster Confession.
52:26: Now, if everything went south and there was no more Anglican church, and Drew and I have talked about this, we could go back to the Presbyterian church with sad hearts, we're Anglicans, but we could go back and subscribe to the tenants there and without much of a hitch.
52:48: So the theology in the 39 articles and the Westminster Confession are really identical, virtually, really Reformed theology.
52:57: The difference is that the hermeneutic, the scaffolding in which the 39 articles rest is Reformational.
53:09: Then we go years later, after the, I think it was the Senate of Dort, Council of Dort, and then you get the Westminster, which is that same theology, but now it's overlaid on a hermeneutic or infrastructure of the Enlightenment.
53:26: And so you get a much more, you get much more minutiae in the Westminster and you get, I think, more pastoral in the 39.
53:41: And so I remember even being in seminary, the shorter catechism and longer catechism, which we all had to memorize and recite, but people would often turn to the, like the Heidelberg because it was much more, it was much more pastoral.
54:00: And so I think in the end, what you end up with is you end up with, if there was one critique of a Presbyterian theology that I'll make, it tends to be much more abstract.
54:13: It tends to be much more analytic.
54:16: And so like our baptism question, if you went and asked a Dutch Reformed Presbyterian, well, that's when you're gonna get into regenerational baptism.
54:28: And so you wonder why the Dutch aren't riding around with holy water squirt guns and just do a drive-by convergence, if that's what it is.
54:36: The Scottish Presbyterian, which you're probably gonna be more tending to run into in the Southern parts of the state and whatnot, are gonna be, if you ask them about baptism, they're gonna tell you that God isn't bound by time or place and that, you know, He operates outside, which is all fine and good.
54:55: But my finding is, is that if your theological explanation has to begin with an extreme, like, so you're the only person left alive on the planet, you know, then, or you have to get in a spaceship and leave time and place.
55:08: If you can't begin your theological discussion in the same time, on the same earth, that the incarnate Lord walked and manifested that, then your theology is already off on the wrong foot.
55:24: And so I think that my experience as a Presbyterian, my experience with Presbyterians is, they tend to be much more analytical and abstract, whereas the Anglican is gonna be more of a child, really a reformational child.
55:39: And therefore, we realize there's, I think JD mentioned the humility that we come because sometimes we don't know all the answers.
55:50: We do our best to be faithful, to give the answers that we have, but we understand that the issues are not always as simplistic as we would like them to be.
56:01: Yeah, I think this might be a nice point to point out that, you know, for your listeners who have interacted with Anglicans in general, any discussion of theology has probably been, has been sort of woefully inadequate to anything biblical or historic or kind of reformational in any way.
56:24: And that's in part what we're in the business or in the church of sort of repristinating and rebuilding just through the ACNA, because, you know, if your only experience with Anglicanism has been either watching the headlines coming out of the Church of England or, you know, your local Episcopal priest, well, then everything we're talking about here must sound laughable as if we, or at least it would to me.
56:50: And so I think, you know, it's probably worth noting at this point that, you know, we're all involved in a replanting, really a rebooting of an understanding of historic Anglicanism that is rooted firmly in the Protestant Reformation and the 39 Articles and all the various formularies, but we have our work cut out for us because the past centuries of Anglican sort of theology, for lack of a better word, you know, for, I mean, quote unquote, theology has gotten us into a place where many of us wouldn't be able to recognize it as a Bible church anymore.
57:28: And so I just think, you know, cause I'm hearing myself speak and I say, you know, if you had any experience with, you know, particularly Episcopal clergy people or read any sort of popular theology from them, then you would do well to, you know, back away slowly.
57:44: But we're in the business of, we're currently repenting of a lot of those sort of, you know, action or of indifference or having not, you know, spoken when we should have, but also in the process of rebuilding a evangelical Orthodox vision for North American Anglicanism here through the ACNA.
58:07: Well, that raises a question.
58:10: Go ahead, Drew.
58:11: I was just gonna say, I don't know Nick as well, but knowing JD and Matt and Charlie and myself and I know JD and Matt and Nick served together.
58:24: So I assume it's the case as well.
58:27: We're, the Anglicans you have here today are more on the reformed and confessional side of things.
58:37: Some conservative Anglicans are not, but we're kind of in that same stream.
58:44: And as far as the Westminster Confession, I've used an example before of the Westminster standards are great.
58:52: They were written by Anglicans, as a matter of fact, but they're kind of like one lane of a highway and the 39 articles are the same road, but maybe with a couple of other lanes added, you're not quite as constricted, but there are still boundaries.
59:12: And I've heard some Episcopalians say, I like being an Episcopalian cause I can believe whatever I wanna believe.
59:19: And I'm like, no, you're a Unitarian, functionally.
59:25: I mean, I don't know what your affiliation is, but that's truly what you think.
59:29: You're in the wrong church.
59:32: And as I heard someone say one time, having been a Presbyterian, Presbyterians always have scruples or practically every Presbyterian I know of takes exceptions to the standards.
59:44: And as a friend of mine pointed out, if you took enough exceptions to the Westminster standards, you would end up affirming the 39 articles.
59:54: So there you go.
59:57: Well, what's interesting about what you guys are saying, and I've heard it several times throughout today's conversation, several of you have mentioned the Episcopal church and some people do not know that the Episcopal church and the Anglican church are associated, affiliated.
01:00:13: From what I understand, the Episcopal church was at one time the Anglican church of North America.
01:00:18: That was what people would assume was the Anglican arm of, or the arm of Anglicanism in America was the Episcopal church.
01:00:26: So when did that go south? Yeah, I like that.
01:00:32: When did that go wonky? Was that when all the other mainline denominations in the early 20th century kind of thing? Yeah, it kind of depends on who you ask.
01:00:42: Some people would say it went south in 1973, I think, when the Episcopal church started ordaining women and a number of Episcopal- Or 32 when they started legalizing no fault divorce and- Right, right.
01:00:55: Yes, we can go further, we can go all the way back.
01:00:57: But people would either point to the ordination of women back in the 70s, but I think most in the ACNA would say, all right, we held our nose through that.
01:01:07: But in 2003, when Gene Robinson was, who was a partnered gay man, was consecrated as a bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire, that was the real turning point.
01:01:20: For Anglicanism, if a bishop is a bishop not just for his own local area, but for the entire church.
01:01:27: So when the Diocese of New Hampshire elected him and he was confirmed, that was essentially the Episcopal church saying, this is now our new theology.
01:01:34: We affirm two men living together in a relationship that's condemned by the scriptures.
01:01:40: And so at that point, there was a good, from that point on until about 2009, when the ACNA was formed, there was departure after departure after departure.
01:01:53: Most of our churches left during that time.
01:01:57: And the ACNA was finally formed out of those churches that left from the Episcopal church because of that.
01:02:02: Yeah, and if you wanna read a founding document in 2009, the Jerusalem declaration was adopted, which is sort of our charter declaration for the Anglican church in North America.
01:02:14: And it's contained in our ACNA prayer book.
01:02:18: And it really summarizes not only the history, but also the doctrinal distinctives of the ACNA, not the least of which are a uniqueness of Christ.
01:02:28: So all of a sudden, all of the, we were actively worried and praying for and attempting to evangelize our unbelieving family and friends.
01:02:37: It was the authority of scripture, both old and new testaments.
01:02:41: This was what we affirmed.
01:02:42: And then finally, the presenting issue, the great question of the day about anthropology was God's design and purpose for men and women, sex and marriage, and all of its ramifications.
01:02:54: And that document, I would say, is increasingly counter-cultural, we would say, and constitutes, in my opinion, the best distillation of why and what the ACNA is.
01:03:08: And if any of your listeners are interested in seeing what it's very least we are kind of holding, well, then that's a good place to start.
01:03:19: Excellent.
01:03:20: And that, as far as, I mean, there are different times where people would say it went south.
01:03:27: I think a watershed moment really was in the mid-20th century, the Bishop of California was a fellow named James Pike, who was a very colorful figure.
01:03:42: And he, and you may hear my dog behind me.
01:03:47: I don't think it picks up on this microphone, but Matt had that earlier in a podcast, so it's my turn now.
01:03:56: But James Pike taught all sorts of things and his son committed suicide.
01:04:03: He had, he actually went on national TV and held a seance to try to contact his son beyond the grave.
01:04:11: Several Episcopal bishops tried to bring charges against James Pike.
01:04:16: And the answer from the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops was, we don't do heresy trials.
01:04:24: And while I don't think anybody wants a constant, I don't think anybody on here's idea of a fun time is a heresy trial.
01:04:34: When you say, we just don't do that, that doesn't bode real well when the answer is, it's embarrassing, it's bad press, so we're not gonna do it.
01:04:46: And that was a big watershed moment.
01:04:48: It was in the 50s, brilliant guy, but unfortunately he was also crazy and died in the desert alone.
01:04:59: It was tragic.
01:05:02: Charlie? Yeah, so as reformed Episcopalians, we would say that the tread started coming off the tire much earlier, back in the 1800s with the deism that was creeping in to the church.
01:05:19: And that kind of dovetails in on what JD was talking about.
01:05:23: This didn't happen with one decision.
01:05:26: It didn't happen, the decline of the Episcopal Church, it didn't happen overnight.
01:05:31: It didn't happen with a few knuckleheads.
01:05:34: It was a long process of capitulation, of watering down, of having other interests, of being proud of being a country club with a steeple, all those things.
01:05:50: And so now you're right, we are rebuilding.
01:05:53: And so one day some folks in the Episcopal Church looked around and the youth minister was gay and having an ongoing relationship with the organist.
01:06:05: And somebody somewhere named Dennis came up with a cannon and they signed their property all the way.
01:06:11: And all of a sudden it caused some of the Episcopal Church to wake up and go, wait a minute, this isn't what we like at all.
01:06:21: This isn't what we believe.
01:06:22: And it really, like heresies in the early church forced the believers in the Episcopal Church that were genuine believers to have to look at scripture, to have to go back, to have to evaluate, to have to form biblical and theological reasons for why this was upsetting.
01:06:48: And so we're in a process in the Anglican Church in North America kind of reflects this of people coming out in different stages of triage and where we are in that and having to work through and build back the center, the theological biblical center of our faith and of our worship.
01:07:11: And it's worth noting also that this is a global phenomenon.
01:07:15: Like we, Matt, Nick and I, among others just returned from what's called GAFCON conference, which is Global Anglican Futures Conference that this year was in Kigali, Rwanda, which was the fourth since the original one where the Jerusalem Declaration was adopted.
01:07:32: And there's a global movement of Orthodox Anglicans who are looking at the excesses and the, well, basically the heresies of much of the Western churches purporting to be, or the Anglican churches, Canada and the UK and North America most notably and saying enough and are making provision to break fellowship officially with these various provinces.
01:08:01: And so there's work to be done there.
01:08:03: There's people involved in processes and history and things but the conviction is there.
01:08:08: And if we hadn't been there and seen it firsthand, I would have questioned it because it's quite a dramatic change.
01:08:15: And yet we saw these impassioned speeches by the archbishops of Southeast Asian provinces and African provinces and other South American provinces who are looking at what's going on in the Western world and particularly the churches that have laid down their charge to preach and teach the gospel forthrightly and saying, we're not going in, we're not walking with you in this way anymore.
01:08:41: And so the ACNA is a constituent member of that group of Anglicans, albeit smaller at the moment but the trajectories we're on by God's grace are gonna, one's in decline and one's a dissension.
01:08:55: And so we're slowly and steadily watching people sort of have their eyes open to the beauty of historic Anglicanism and being touched by when it's proffered through its biblical foundations, then at the very least appreciating it as a fellow sort of faithful church even if one remains outside in their own denomination.
01:09:20: Nevertheless, we can pull the same direction.
01:09:23: The ACNA is smaller than the Episcopal church but the Orthodox Anglican movement worldwide is much larger than the revisionist heretical one.
01:09:34: That's right.
01:09:36: Well, that's what I was gonna point out.
01:09:39: We're not the, I use the term franchise.
01:09:43: And some people I know in the Episcopal church will say, well, you're not recognized by Canterbury.
01:09:50: And it's true, we're not.
01:09:52: Okay.
01:09:54: Thankfully, I don't rise and fall on whether the Archbishop of Canterbury recognizes me as an Anglican or not.
01:10:03: But the majority of the world's Anglicans, about 80% recognize the Anglican church in North America as the authentic Anglican expression.
01:10:15: So it's messy, but it's God is working his purposes out.
01:10:22: And often it's complicated when he's doing that.
01:10:28: Well, I'm very interested and I know we could go further into this.
01:10:33: As short as an answer can be, would I be right to say that what is happening now in the Methodist church with the global Methodist movement seeking to break away from the false teachings that are in regard to social liberalism, homosexuality, things like that, the global Methodist church is breaking away to try to hold firm on some of those issues.
01:10:56: You guys also represent that in the older version, because you've been around since 09 from what I'm understanding what you said, but you represent sort of the same thing.
01:11:07: Someone said earlier a starting, a fresh start or something.
01:11:12: I forget the word that was used.
01:11:13: Am I off or am I getting? Yeah, I think so.
01:11:17: And I think if you look at the bigger picture, the thing that should be incredibly encouraging, as messy as all of this is for everybody is that we see this.
01:11:29: So I keep telling my dad, I mean, what did y'all do? We handed you a nation that was strong, that socially knew who they were in churches, every denomination in your lifetime, but what'd y'all do? But with the PCA and the OPC, that was the same thing.
01:11:49: The Anglican church in North America, again, here with Anglicanism, the Methodist church, in that the sense that God is reviving these churches and bringing them back to sound historic biblical belief.
01:12:09: And we may differ in some things.
01:12:12: And I think these things are good so we can understand each other.
01:12:16: But at the end of the day, if I asked you or any other of my Baptist friends or whatnot, do you believe that God is triune? Do you believe that Jesus is the eternal son of God? Do you believe that he became flesh and dwelt among us, taking on the fullness of human nature, that he died for our sins and rose again on the third day, bodily rose again on the third day, that we were all sinners and that we're saved by grace through faith alone.
01:12:44: In these things that determine when they put you in the ground, which direction you go, these big things, there is such an amazing unity in the body of Christ.
01:12:57: And we see God pulling us back to that.
01:13:00: Enough nonsense, pulling us back to, pulling his people back to solid biblical faith.
01:13:11: So I see it all over the, I mean, you see it happening.
01:13:14: The ACNA began in 2009, but the global, I'm sorry.
01:13:24: I think they're telling you to go ahead, Matt.
01:13:26: Yeah.
01:13:26: Oh, okay.
01:13:27: The global resistance to heterodoxy in Anglicanism began long before 2009.
01:13:34: The global South has always been stalwart for the gospel of orthodoxy.
01:13:39: And that battle between the heterodox people within Anglicanism based in the United States and in England, when Gene Robinson was consecrated, as I mentioned earlier, that battle was joined by people who already said, the majority of Anglicans worldwide, millions upon millions upon millions of Anglicans who had received the gospel from Europeans 100 years ago, but who had not only embraced it, but have kept it, looked at their European, Western, former brethren, I guess now that England and America have apostatized and said, my goodness, you gave us the gospel.
01:14:25: What did you do with it? Why did you, why did you, why did you jettison it? Why did you apostatize? And so we are, the ACNA owes our existence to these global South brothers and sisters who stood firm for so many years before we were formed.
01:14:38: I was going to say, in the REC, we'd say it went South in 1873, because that's when we were formed, but that's when the REC left.
01:14:49: But more seriously, whales are fascinating because the stereotype used to be, we're going to send missionaries to reach the heathen over in deepest, darkest Africa.
01:15:03: And when the Western church, when British Anglicanism and Canadian Anglicanism and the United States Anglicanism primarily went off the rails, it was the Africans who held them accountable.
01:15:18: And I don't want to speak for the Methodist.
01:15:21: You'd need to have a global Methodist bow tie might be interesting to have, but the Methodist I know say, if it had only been the United States voting on same-sex marriages, the United Methodist Church would have approved it at their last big meeting, their general convention.
01:15:41: It was the fact that the United Methodist Church also includes the Africans who were saying, look, we're just teaching what you taught us when you came here and who moved.
01:15:55: And the parallels are fascinating.
01:15:59: Well, gentlemen, I have really come to learn a lot just listening to you all.
01:16:05: And given the time, I would love to talk with each one of you.
01:16:09: And if you're ever in Jacksonville, you have a standing offer for dinner.
01:16:13: And Drew, I know you're real close by.
01:16:15: So just let me know next time you're in town because you're only up in Savannah.
01:16:19: You can come down here and I'll buy you a steak and we can talk theology.
01:16:23: Likewise, if you're coming up in Savannah, yeah.
01:16:28: But Drew, I have one last thing I'd like to do.
01:16:31: I've never done this before.
01:16:32: And this is a trial run.
01:16:34: You guys are the trial run.
01:16:35: I'm gonna do a theological speed round.
01:16:38: And I don't know the best way to get your answers.
01:16:40: I don't know if I should do a thumbs up, thumbs down, or if you just want to say yay or nay, but I'm gonna throw out some theological ideas.
01:16:46: You tell me if the Anglicans are yay, nay, or maybe.
01:16:54: And these are just theological things.
01:16:58: All right.
01:16:59: Baptismal regeneration.
01:17:01: Define it, yay.
01:17:04: Okay, I have to define it, okay.
01:17:06: Qualified, yes.
01:17:08: Yes, but qualified.
01:17:09: Oh, we lost Matt.
01:17:11: Matt stepped out.
01:17:12: I don't know if he lost internet or what.
01:17:15: Maybe he'll come back in.
01:17:16: But he can come back in if he wants.
01:17:17: Okay, so we're down to the four.
01:17:20: All right, so we said baptismal regeneration is, okay.
01:17:24: All right, eternal security.
01:17:28: Yay.
01:17:29: Yay? Also define it.
01:17:32: I would say I would be more perseverance of the saints.
01:17:36: Well, that's how I would put it.
01:17:37: Well, yeah, okay, so perseverance of the saints.
01:17:40: Yeah, as a Calvinist, I should have known.
01:17:43: I should have known.
01:17:44: We have our famous Anglican, John Davenant, at the Council of Dort would affirm four of the five.
01:17:51: Ultimately, just not the limited atonement was the sticking point, at least as far as I understand.
01:17:56: So we're closer than you may think.
01:17:59: Well, good, good.
01:18:00: All right, how about gift of tongues? The church affirmed.
01:18:08: Yeah.
01:18:10: But is it practiced within? We have people who do, but I don't.
01:18:13: Is it typically practiced? I wouldn't say it's normative, but it is allowed within the Anglican theological world.
01:18:23: It depends.
01:18:24: Some do, some don't, yeah.
01:18:26: Okay, predestination.
01:18:29: It's one of our articles.
01:18:31: That's one of the articles, okay, good.
01:18:33: It's the longest article.
01:18:35: That's right.
01:18:36: All right.
01:18:39: And I know this sounds like a funny question, but we've talked about Catholics.
01:18:43: All of you guys are able to marry, right? Oh, yeah.
01:18:47: Yes, Anglican priests, you're pastors.
01:18:51: You're not celibate.
01:18:52: You're able to, okay.
01:18:55: He's got somebody willing.
01:18:57: That's also one of the articles, by the way.
01:18:59: Yeah, we're good, yeah.
01:19:02: Well, like I said, we could do this all day, and I'm so thankful.
01:19:04: I'm sorry that Matt dropped out and must've had an internet problem, but I'm sure he'll get a chance to listen to this.
01:19:11: He was afraid of getting pinned down on some of those, I'm sure.
01:19:13: Is that what it was? Yeah, I know.
01:19:15: Well, I am super duper grateful for him and for all of you for being a part of today and sharing with me your history and how you became Anglican and what it means to you being Anglican.
01:19:30: And I'm thankful to see brothers who have convictions, even though we may share some distinctions in our convictions, it sounds like many things we would stand together arm in arm.
01:19:40: And I pray that we'll all continue to charge the gates of hell together as brothers in Christ.
01:19:45: I want to thank you all for being a part, and Drew especially, for having put this together for our audience.
01:19:53: So thank you, brothers.
01:19:54: Okay, thanks so much.
01:19:55: It's a real pleasure.
01:19:56: Thank you.
01:19:56: Thank you all for answering the call when I asked.
01:20:00: And I want to thank you, audience, for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist today.
01:20:04: And I just want to remind you that if you have a question or a subject that you would like for me to address on a future episode, you can send me an email at calvinispodcast at gmail.com.
01:20:14: You can follow me on Twitter at your Calvinist, or you can find all of our videos, both our podcasts and our short, funny videos at calvinispodcast.com.
01:20:23: Again, I am encouraged and always thankful when you reach out to me.
01:20:26: So please continuing to do that through emails, through comments, and don't forget that I'm very grateful for all that you guys give in way of watching and participating in the show.
01:20:37: And I thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
01:20:39: My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
01:20:42: May God bless you.

The British are Coming! (***Bow Tie Dialogue Ep.02 - The Anglican Show!!!***)

The British are Coming! (Bow Tie Dialogue Ep.02 - The Anglican Show!!!)