June 19, 2018 Show with Thomas Garrett Isham on “A Born Again Episcopalian: The Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McIlvaine”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of June 2018.

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I am delighted to have as my returning guest today, Thomas Garrett Isham, who is a published author, a former newspaper editor, a career journalist, and licensed lay preacher in the

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Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Western Michigan, who will address his book,

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A Born Again Episcopalian, the Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McIlvaine.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Tom Garrett, Tom Isham, I'm sorry.

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Well, that's part of it. Yeah. Thank you, Chris. I'm glad to be back. And we are supposed to be having join us as a special co -host today,

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Ken Samples. I don't know if he's joined us yet online, on the phone line. Ken, are you there? I guess he's not.

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But hopefully, Ken will be calling in shortly. And some of you may recognize this theme and be mistaken in your belief that this is a rerun.

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It is not a rerun. That is, it's not a rerun if you're listening on June 19th, 2018. Eventually, it'll be a rerun.

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But I have interviewed someone else on this very same topic before, the

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Reverend Jacob Smith, who is the rector at the parish of Calvary St. George's in Manhattan, a very biblically faithful congregation, at least today, and it was originally in its founding.

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It is the congregation of the great Stephen H. Ting, who was a low church

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Episcopalian and thoroughgoing Calvinist in the 19th century, who was the pastor there.

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And Jacob Smith, by the blessings of our Lord and by the grace of our

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God, has redirected the church back to its biblical roots, as was,

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I think, his predecessor as well. But he addressed this same topic because it was a very powerful influence.

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That book, the biography of Charles Pettit McElveen, by our guest today, was a very powerful influence upon his life.

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And since the author of that biography is still with us here on the planet Earth, I figured that we might as well interview

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Thomas Garrett Isham himself on his own biography. And Ken Samples is still not with us.

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I'm hoping he joins us, but our original co -host was going to be

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Reverend Jacob Smith. I've known Reverend Jacob Smith for quite a long time, going back to 2005,

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I believe, but he could not make it because he had an important diocese.

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I always mispronounce that. I'm a former Roman Catholic, and I should know how to pronounce that. Dioceses, or how do you pronounce that?

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Well, let's see, it'd be a diocesan meeting. Diocesan meeting. Yeah, there you go.

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I guess I've been a Reformed Baptist so long that I've lost all the vocabulary of the

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Catholic Church. But we at least give our greetings to Reverend Jacob over the airwaves and hope that he is listening to this at least later on in a rerun or in a pre -recorded format.

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Before we go into the discussion at hand, why don't you give our listeners a bit of your background as an

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Episcopalian. I know that you gave this background the last time, but I think it's important that we revisit some of these things because many evangelicals, for sure, when they hear the word

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Episcopalian, they can't believe that you're possibly talking about anyone who is born again, and in fact, hence the title of your book,

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Born Again Episcopalian. People either automatically go to one wing or another of the

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Episcopal Church or even the Anglican Church. They automatically may think of either very

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Romish Oxford movement, Tractarian, Puseyite Episcopalians and Anglicans who are extremely high church, who believe in many of the doctrines of Roman Catholicism that the

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Reformers rejected. And my grandmother is a priest while she was living in my parents' home when

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I was a little boy all the way through my late teens, actually. Very nice man,

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Episcopal priest, but he was very Romish and in fact is on the precipice of converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and bringing the entire congregation with him because he's not a liberal.

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And then you have on the other end of the spectrum, you have the apostasy of the left where you have those that not only may be in favor of homosexuality as a completely legitimate behavior for a

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Christian, and they may even have as their own ministers or priests, either male or female homosexuals actively involved in that behavior, or it might be even theological apostasy where they don't even believe in the deity of Christ, the

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Trinity, or the bodily resurrection. So you have those, and I don't think

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I'm overstating the case, am I Tom? Not about that. That's a good summary of our situation in the

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Episcopal Church. But you do have a minority of very sound, faithful men, even

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Calvinists, who are 39 Articles men, and if you could tell us something about your own background and then what eventually led you to write the biography of Charles Pettit McIlvain, a born -again

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Episcopalian. Yes, well, yeah, what did I say before? Let me just sum up my background here.

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I was raised as a Presbyterian, as the sociologists would say. I was churched very much in my childhood and youth.

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I was in church every Sunday, so I grew up in the church. I was, like most young people, theologically unsophisticated, but we did get good sermons that had an impact on me.

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So I do appreciate that for my Presbyterian background. Now, after I left home and went to university at the age of 18, oh,

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I drifted. That was typical, or I suppose is typical of many young people. They get away from home and they try new things in life.

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They're exposed to new influences. So I did drift around for a time. I eventually stumbled upon C .S.

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Lewis and read some of his apologetic books, probably starting in my...

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Actually, I was partway through my senior year, so I guess I'd been drifting quite a while. So that was my first real exposure to a theologically astute writer and apologist.

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And so that changed my life. I didn't automatically become a devout

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Christian again, but there were certain things he said that I could not discount. So it certainly changed my more naturalistic view, which

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I had absorbed in college and, I suppose, in high school. I went to public schools. And even in those days, there was not...

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Religion was certainly kept out of the school. So one got a scientific education, if you will, certainly a secular education.

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So anyways, Lewis, who really turned me around. Then over the next decade or so, well, a few years later,

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I became an Episcopalian in my age of 26.

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My wife is a cradle Episcopalian. And we had our... When our oldest son was born, we thought we should get him baptized.

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That may seem like rather a lame excuse to start going to church, but it wasn't as if I was...

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We were coming at it from totally out of the blue. I had certainly... I'd read a lot up to that point, and so I didn't feel uncomfortable or hypocritical.

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So we did join the church, and our son was duly baptized. And I have been an

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Episcopalian ever since for a number of decades now. So, and I have seen living in Southern Michigan, well, as you pointed out, the

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Diocese of Western Michigan is one of the most liberal Episcopal dioceses in the country.

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Believe it or not, one would think of California or Massachusetts, and I suppose it's maybe tied with them, but it's very, very liberal.

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But it's... Maybe in my early 30s, I came across my first real exposure to Evangelical slash

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Reformed theology, which Lewis had... Well, he was not really of that churchmanship.

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I mean, he was very conservative in his teaching and an excellent apologist, and I owe him a lot.

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But he... His Mere Christianity, for instance, just introduces people to just that. It was a phrase of Richard Baxter's from 300 or 400 years ago,

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Mere Christianity, just the basics of a traditional view of the Christian faith.

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And so I needed something a little more fine -tuned than that, and finally came across it by reading mostly

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J .I. Packer, who is an Anglican, British, moved to Canada in the late 70s, and still lives in...

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On the West Coast, can't think of the city, which is Vancouver, and so he was a big influence.

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John Stott, another Anglican Episcopalian, or Anglican Evangelical, was an influence.

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So anyway, they put me in the direction of a more Reformed type of view. You also asked about McIlvain, how

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I came across him. His dates just are to orient people. He was born in 1799, which was the year that George Washington died.

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I always think of that coincidence. And he lived until 1873, died at 74.

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So he had a fairly long life, especially for those days. So he's very much a 19th century figure.

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I actually came across his name in a book called Guarding the Holy Fire by Roger Steer.

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Who is... I think he's English. But at any rate, that book was about Evangelicals in the

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Anglican and Episcopal churches. And he had maybe four or five pages on this interesting -sounding man, this

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Charles Pettit McIlvain. And so I just looked further into his life, and I was immediately drawn to him, both as a theologian, a pastor, a revivalist.

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He had all the talents that a clergyman could possibly have, and of course became

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Bishop of Ohio in its frontier days, and remained

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Bishop for 41 years, so that by the time he died in 1873, Ohio had been much more civilized than when he came there in 1832.

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So he saw great changes there and great growth in the Episcopal Church under his leadership.

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Now what... What was the Episcopal Church like when he was a minister and then eventually a bishop?

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Obviously, you didn't have the more grotesque forms of Episcopalianism in existence back then.

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People would have been imprisoned probably back then if they had that real leftist mutation of Episcopalianism.

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Right. What else was he dealing with? Obviously, he was most likely dealing with some of the

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Romish influence, although I've heard that that really started to return heavily in the 19th century, but tell us about what he faced as an

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Episcopalian. Yeah. Well, it was in 1811, of course he would have only been 12 then, that the

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Episcopal Church, which had fallen on rather hard times because many of its members were Tories during the

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Revolution, and so it was not the most popular church in the early decades after the

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American Revolution, but it did start to grow again, and in 1811 a theological division emerged between a low -church and high -church approach, and low -church being the evangelical wing and high -church being the more

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Catholic wing. So by 1811 there was a real self -definition.

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Them and us, I don't mean these people were hostile with each other, I mean they were Christians, but they had definite opinions which did divide on certain issues, but certainly from the standpoint of today's liberalism or revisionism, no, that wasn't even a gleam in their eye,

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I mean they couldn't imagine what's going on today. But McElvain was, well yes, what did he have to contend with?

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Well, with the high church, because he did make some enemies in the high church who simply were not at all sympathetic with the evangelical wing.

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So there was that conflict. Which was dominant. What's that? Which was dominant at his time.

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Yeah, by his time, by the 1840s, the high church and low church were almost equal in the house of bishops, and I assume the lay populations were roughly similar, too.

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So that was really the high point of evangelical Episcopalianism in the 1840s, and I suppose into the 1850s.

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And he was the acknowledged leader of the evangelical

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Episcopalians. Not only was he the Bishop of Ohio and president of a seminary there, that was part of the job,

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Kenyon College, and the seminaries moved away from there, they still had the college there.

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So yeah, he had to contend with the high church folks, but then as you mentioned, the

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Tractarian movement began in Britain in the 1830s, and it seeped over into the

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United States. And so he ended up, he always had his finger on the pulse of things, he ended up authoring the definitive rebuttal of the

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Tractarian movement, which of course, high churchmen, not all, but a lot of them were quite sympathetic to adopting certain ideas that were crossing the

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Atlantic. Right, and in fact there are even today some high church

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Anglicans who are thoroughgoing Calvinists, although they would probably be in the minority. They would definitely be in the minority, right.

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But yeah, in 1841, he published his, well it's really his magnum opus, it's a 500 page book, and as I say, it was really the last word on the evangelical rebuttal of the

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Tractarian movement and its growing influence in the United States as well.

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So he was of course tackling the work of John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey, I think you mentioned him,

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John Keble and a number of other notable churchmen. Yeah, and John Henry Newman is a very crucial figure in this whole discussion because he was an

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Episcopalian or Anglican who converted to Roman Catholicism. Right, right, and that had been one of the arguments.

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Actually, McElveen didn't mention it, but a number of evangelicals said, well this is just a foot in the door for Rome, this whole movement, and lo and behold,

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John Henry Newman, who was probably the most distinguished of the Tractarians, did eventually convert to Rome and became a cardinal, although that was a cardinal,

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I don't think he was a governing cardinal, but he was, that's the Romans, I believe, they honor certain scholarly people by giving them the title cardinal.

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And the thing that disturbs me most about John Henry Newman, and I know that I've said this before on this program, but I think it bears repeating because his quote is so often repeated by Roman Catholic apologists and it infuriates me because it's,

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I think, a lie. John Henry Newman said that to be steeped in history is to cease to be

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Protestant, and I have found the exact opposite to be true in my whole life.

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Yeah, you mentioned that, I believe, in the last program where we talked, and I remember that. Yeah, of course

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I agree with you totally. But this book, it's a wonderful read. I mean, if you have a theological aptitude or interest,

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I'll read you the title, which in those days there were some long titles. It was named

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Oxford Divinity, of course referring to the Tractarians who were centered at Oxford University.

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Oxford Divinity, compared with that of the Romish and Anglican churches, with a special view of the doctrine of justification by faith, which of course was an emphasis that McElveen made.

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But that was the long title, and as I say, it became the last word in it. It was used as a text in Episcopal seminaries for many, many decades because it was so well done.

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He was such a talented writer. Nothing dry in his writing. So yeah, it was a fine book.

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If you want to jump ahead a little bit, you said, what else did he contend with?

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The grandfather, if you will, of today's liberalism entered the

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Anglican church in 1860. Oh, I suppose it had been in there to some extent before, but it became more publicly involved in Anglicanism in a book put out by seven

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British scholars, six of them clergy and one was a bishop. And it was a book called

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Essays and Reviews, which became notorious because it really laid out the liberal view of Christianity, which in basics has not changed.

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I mean, of course, the homosexual issues and other things that are more involved in our times came along later, but the basic views on biblical criticism, the higher criticism which they got from the

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German academies and all the basic foundation of liberalism was there, and that came out in 1860, and McIlvaine wrote a rejoinder.

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Now, this was nothing like the 500 -page Oxford Divinity Book. This was actually in the form of a letter, but it was a long letter.

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I mean, it was, I don't know, 60, 70 pages, and he wrote in rebuttal of what

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McIlvaine did, called Rationalism as Exhibited in the Writings of Certain Clergymen of the

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Church of England, subtitled A Letter to the Clergy and Candidates for Holy Orders of the

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Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, and it addresses those basic foundational views of the early liberals.

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And one thing that, well, among many things that annoyed McIlvaine is that he said most of what they say is really just warmed -over deism, which had gone out of style.

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That was more a late 17th and 18th century form of what he would call infidelity.

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But he said, really, it's basically warmed -over deism. The only difference is that this is right within the

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Church. Six of these people are clergy, six of the seven who wrote these essays. One is a bishop, and they're all on the payroll, they all have distinguished posts in the universities, and here they're undermining the very

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Church that supports them. I mean, he was such a straightforward, honest man that he just did not budge an inch on giving them any credit.

22:54

Hey, Chris, can you hear me? Now we have Ken Samples joining us. Ken Samples is co -hosting the program today.

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There was a mix -up, I understand, with the Pacific time versus the Eastern time. Ken is in California.

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He is former Senior Research Consultant and Correspondence Editor at the Christian Research Institute, also known as CRI, and he's the former co -host of the

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Bible Answer Man radio broadcast. He is currently Senior Research Scholar at Reasons to Believe, and a member of a conservative, biblically -faithful

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Anglican Church. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio, this time, for the very first time as a co -host,

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Ken Samples. Hey, thank you. I'm sorry I'm budding in here late, but I've been listening to your interview, and it's really good to be with both of you.

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I've found the conversation very interesting, so thank you for including me. Thank you.

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Well, why don't we start at this point, Ken, as far as your involvement is concerned, is how you were drawn.

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I know that you have been involved in Presbyterian churches and United Reformed Church of North America congregations, the

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Dutch Reformed wing of the Protestant faith, and now you find yourself in an

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Anglican church. What drew you to want to even consider joining an

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Anglican church? And tell us something about the specific congregation where you are attending. Yeah, that's a really good question.

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I, of course, grew up kind of in a nominal Catholic family. You know, my parents converted to Catholicism in the early 60s, and I wasn't terribly well -catechized, but when

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I was an early college student, various events in my life kind of led me to become interested in Christianity, and I was kind of part of a

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Catholic charismatic community. There were, interestingly, Catholics reading the

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Bible and talking about Jesus in very evangelically -sounding terms, it seemed to me.

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But through meeting Walter Martin, who was the original Bible Answer Man, I embraced a

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Protestant evangelical faith, and sometime later, of course,

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I began to engage a Reformed theology, and I was very attracted to that.

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I was attracted to the intellectual rigor in the Reformed tradition. I was attracted to a view of God that I thought really acknowledged the sovereignty of the

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Lord, and yet I always liked liturgy.

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I always appreciated liturgy, I like a very strong Trinitarian element in the service, and I was always impressed with the

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Thirty -Nine Articles, which are not only Protestant, but distinctly Reformed, and so I liked that kind of element,

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I appreciated that kind of element, and so I was attracted to some of the aesthetic sides of the

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Anglican Church. The church that I attend is part of the

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Anglican Church of North America. It's a small group, as your guest and you,

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Chris, know many of the churches that have resisted the more liberal theological influence of, you know, have had to move into much smaller congregations.

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But I really like the, I love the Thirty -Nine Articles, I am also a student of C .S.

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Lewis, I was just recently in the kilns where he lived, and so I like that aspect very much.

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So that's kind of the background, the tradition. It is interesting, you have Anglicans that are very much

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Reformed, you have others that hold more of a Wesleyan, Arminian -afforded type of faith, but I appreciate the history,

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I appreciate the theology, and I mourned. I was in I was in Australia a couple years ago, and a very conservative

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Anglican theologian said, stay away from the American Episcopal Church. They were very, very concerned about the state of the

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Episcopal Church in America. Now, were they from Sydney in Australia? Yes, they were.

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Because even in Australia they have a lot of liberalism, but the Sydney folks seem to be the most conservative that I've heard of in Australia.

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I'm going to take a question from a listener before we go to the break, and perhaps you can answer it,

28:11

Tom, when we return. And of course, Ken, if you have anything to add. And Ken, since I cannot see you,

28:18

I'm asking you to butt into the conversation whenever you have a question, because I can't see any kind of facial expressions or waving hands or anything.

28:28

Very good. But we have a listener, Susan, who is actually bi -residential.

28:35

She is from Setauket, Long Island, New York, in Scottsville, Kentucky, and she has a question that is very relevant to what we are discussing right now.

28:46

She says, or asks, how influential was the Oxford movement to the demise of evangelicalism in the

28:53

Episcopal Church? And we're going to have both Tom and if Ken has anything to say also answer that when we return from our first break.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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but with all of our advertisers when you patronize them. We are now back with Thomas Garrett Isham, who is the author of A Born Again Episcopalian, the

35:04

Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McElveen. And we also have co -hosting the program Kenneth R.

35:10

Samples, who is also an author and he's the senior research scholar at Reason to Believe and a conservative

35:17

Anglican. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

35:23

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. And Sue from both Setauket, Long Island, and Scottsville, Kentucky asked before the break, how influential was the

35:33

Oxford movement to the demise of evangelicalism in the

35:38

Episcopal Church? Tom? Yeah. Well, the short answer is it is definitely a factor, was definitely a factor.

35:51

What happened in the 1860s and into the early 1870s, there was quite a bit of debate about revising the prayer book.

36:02

We have those debates every few years or every few decades in the Episcopal Church. And that did further divide the evangelicals and the high church on some important issues.

36:17

And the high church had, over the recent decades, become more

36:22

Catholic in certain elements, and that was due to the Tractarian movement.

36:30

And following the Civil War, which would be that ended in 1865, there was a lot of wealth created in this country, of course.

36:40

We became more or less an industrial giant, much of it due from the war industries and were converted to commercial use.

36:50

A lot of this, the high church became increasingly what they called

36:55

Anglo -Catholic, and so you can see the Catholicizing influence on the last decades of the 19th century.

37:03

In fact, I know and have communicated with a number of Anglo -Catholics who refused to identify themselves as Protestant in any way.

37:14

Well, that's par for the course, yeah. Yes, and so the term

37:21

Anglo -Catholic became more and more used among people with high church inclinations.

37:27

Another term used was Ritualism, which kind of speaks for itself. And with all that new money in this society, a lot of ornate, beautiful churches were built by the

37:39

Anglo -Catholic, people in the Anglo -Catholic wing, and it just became more established within the

37:48

Episcopal Church. As I said before, the evangelicals were maybe close to half of the Church and close to half of the

37:54

House of Bishops in the 1840s. Well, after the Civil War that changed, and the

38:00

Anglo -Catholics did become more powerful, plus the liberal influences started to grow in the 1870s and 1880s, and that had to do with a lot of new wealth, too.

38:11

People were looking more to this world for their happiness, I mean even church people, because there was so much to take advantage of, better health, better sanitation, better homes.

38:24

And then the low church in the early 1870s had a split, the group that split off became the

38:34

Reformed Episcopal Church, and that stemmed from various battles over the revising the prayer book.

38:42

So you had a weakened low church presence, and it continued to weaken throughout the last decades of the 19th century.

38:51

The two directions were this Anglo -Catholic -slash -ritualism group, the old high church people, becoming ever more

38:59

Catholic and ever more ornate and fussy in their liturgy and their church buildings.

39:07

And then you had this growing liberal thinking, which I touched on that, and it had come in in Britain a few decades earlier, a couple decades.

39:18

So from Britain and the German academies, the liberal, pretty much by the turn of the 20th century, the

39:28

Episcopal Church was composed of the Anglo -Catholics on one side and the liberals on the other, and the evangelicals were just a few remnants here and there, which is quite an amazing decline.

39:41

And this is what year, I'm sorry, that this reached this point? Well, I said by the turn of the 20th century, the evangelical low church was reduced to various remnants here and there, but it had no real power and very little influence.

40:00

Part of that problem had actually begun years earlier, it had not really shown up for decades, but just briefly in the 1830s, the low church represented,

40:12

McElveen had a hand in this, unfortunately, he didn't have a crystal ball or a prophetic enough nature to see the consequences, but he and the high church folks sat down in the 1830s and decided which group was going to run the foreign missions and which group was going to run the domestic missions.

40:34

Well, the high church got the domestic missions, which meant they were going to be planting their churches all over this country.

40:41

And the low church was going to be sending a lot of missionaries overseas, which was great for Africa or Asia or wherever these people were sent, and still has an influence to this day.

40:53

But that did favor, over the decades, favored the high church folk, which later morphed into the more

41:00

Anglo -Catholic and ritualistic wing of the church. So anyway, by 1900, the low church in the

41:08

Episcopal church was reduced to, as I say, just remnants. And then it was reborn in the late 50s, early 1960s, and has a very vocal presence at this point, although it's a very small part of the church.

41:25

We have another listener. We have, let's see, Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says,

41:34

I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that the great low church Anglican bishop, who was also a

41:42

Calvinist, J .C. Ryle, in England, was a contemporary of McIlvaine.

41:48

And if I am correct on that, do you know of any correspondence or friendship between the two of them?

41:55

We have another Susan here. I am unaware of any contact between them.

42:02

They are roughly contemporaries. McIlvaine was born in 1799, and I believe

42:08

Ryle was born in 1816. McIlvaine died in 1873, and I believe

42:14

Ryle died in 1900. Interesting, right? The turn of the century. Certainly, theologically, although they had no personal contact, they certainly would have been in agreement.

42:31

Now, Ryle, of course, became bishop of Liverpool, and that became a real evangelical diocese under his influence.

42:39

In fact, I think it was a new diocese, and he was its first bishop, and that would have been in 1880,

42:45

I think. And McIlvaine had been dead by seven years by then.

42:51

So yeah, they're relatively close in historic terms, but there is like a half a generation difference.

42:57

So as far as I know, there was no personal correspondence, but McIlvaine did visit

43:02

Britain no less than, I believe, six times in his life. He was a real

43:08

Anglophile and knew many notable people, both political and ecclesiastical in Britain.

43:14

I just don't know how, you know, as I say, he died in 1873, how well -known

43:21

Ryle was at that point. So they may have met, but I'm not aware of it.

43:28

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who asks, why is it that liberalism seems to have completely swallowed the

43:39

Episcopal Church, even though it has such a rich history of biblical faithfulness, including the 39 articles that were drafted by Thomas Cramner, also a very strong Calvinist?

43:57

Boy, that is a good question. How did it all happen? Well, do you think that a part of it has to do with when a church that is historically and traditionally confessional starts to view the confession as an antiquated document that does not need to be highly considered?

44:17

Well, that certainly was true of the liberals. And of course, in the case of the

44:24

Anglo -Catholics, now you had a lot of Anglo -Catholics who were very conservative theologically.

44:30

Although they began to, there was a certain liberalization even among the

44:36

Anglo -Catholics, and they were so concerned with liturgy that their instincts were not confessional in the way that evangelicals would be.

44:45

Yeah, they certainly wouldn't have been fond of the 39 articles because it identifies the

44:51

Roman masses as idolatrous and other things that are clearly not Roman Catholic. Right, they would have no truck with that, and obviously the liberals would have no interest with any confessional documents.

45:05

In fact, the last two prayer books for the Episcopal Church, the one was in 1929 and the next one was in,

45:12

I think it's 1979, which is the one I've used most of my Episcopal life.

45:19

I was exposed to the 29 prayer book when I was first an

45:24

Episcopalian for three, four years. But anyway, the point

45:29

I was going to make there is that the 39 articles are in the back of both of those books, even the 29 book.

45:39

And in the 79 book, they're in the historical documents, kind of like a dusty old museum that they put back near the

45:50

Athanasian Creed in the back of the book. I've been through five rectors or so at our current parish.

46:01

I've never heard any of them speak about the 39 articles unless they spoke of them dismissively.

46:08

But they've all been liberals too, so it proves the point. They have no interest in confessional -type teaching.

46:17

We have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, CJ, who says or asks, do you know much of anything about Bishop McIlvain's biblical ecumenism?

46:33

I am not speaking here of ecumenical relationships with the Church of Rome or with liberal apostates, but with other biblically faithful denominations, congregations, and fellowships.

46:45

It seems that sometimes churches like the Episcopal and Anglican Church and the

46:51

Lutheran Church, even though there may be many faithful men amongst them, they tend to isolate themselves too much and are not very much involved in participation with fellowship with Baptists and Presbyterians and others who love the

47:09

Scriptures and proclaim them. Excellent question, and yes,

47:15

McIlvain was ecumenical in that regard, although he was a stalwart

47:21

Episcopalian, never wavered in that. He did work with other and Evangelicals, Low Churchmen in general, worked with other denominations.

47:32

He was very active in Bible societies, distributing Bibles and tracts to foreign places, and throughout this nation, they cooperated on that, and he got along with them very well.

47:47

And he was actually educated at Princeton, which was the College of New Jersey in those days, and went to Princeton Seminary.

47:57

The reason he did that, the specific reason was the

48:02

Episcopal Church did not yet have a seminary of its own, and we're talking the mid -18s, well, 1816, 1817.

48:11

No, in 1820, the High Church established a general seminary in New York City, which is still around, and extremely liberal, but McIlvain was through with the seminary by then, so he had gotten a

48:27

Presbyterian seminary education, but that's fairly harmonious with Low Church teaching.

48:36

Presbyterians do not have the liturgy that Episcopalians have, but they have the same confessional instincts, at least the traditional

48:44

Presbyterians. So he was comfortable working with them. In fact, Charles Hodge was a lifelong friend of his.

48:52

Charles Hodge was a classmate, and he became the principal of Princeton Seminary, and a professor there for many, many decades, and was one of those stalwart old

49:05

Princeton theology figures from the 19th century, and he was a good friend of McIlvain's their entire lives.

49:13

So McIlvain was very relaxed at working with other churches to spread the

49:19

Word. They remained in their denominations, but they got along very well. And this is opposed to the

49:25

High Church and the Episcopal Church. High Churchmen were very finicky about who they would do things with.

49:31

In fact, I don't think they did anything with people outside their denomination.

49:39

McIlvain did, yes, and there were a number of societies, Bible societies, tract societies, and I wish

49:45

I could put my finger on that page. I've got the book here, but he was very active in that sort of thing with other church people, other denominations.

49:55

We have Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who says, has your guest encountered the redrafted liturgy by the late

50:05

Peter Thune and the Prayerbook Society? And if so, could he please comment on that liturgy?

50:19

No. In a word, no. Sorry to let you down. And no, I'm not familiar with that.

50:25

I did have quite a correspondence with Peter Thune, though, who unfortunately died a rather untimely death a few years ago, but in fact, he wrote a blurb for the back of my book.

50:37

Oh, really? Yeah, I'll read it. It's short. Well, you're looking for it.

50:44

Oh, yeah. Okay, go ahead. I've got it, but go ahead if you want. No, I was just going to repeat our email address.

50:49

If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

50:54

Go ahead. Yeah, well, this I attributed to the late

51:00

Reverend Dr. Peter Thune, author of The End of Liberal Theology and former president of the

51:08

Prayerbook Society of the USA. Yeah, he wrote, this valuable work, thank you,

51:13

Peter, this valuable work on the great Victorian evangelical bishop of Ohio brings to light the story of an eminent theologian, revivalist, and churchman.

51:24

McIlvaine ought to be better known in our day. It is a great omission among Episcopalians in North America that he is not, by his many works and contributions, he speaks today in his, as I did mention, his works are, one can get copies of them.

51:42

Sometimes it's hard to get them, and then you can read my book, which has a lot of information about his theology as well as his life and the more practical aspects of being a bishop.

51:59

Peter Thune was one of the people that I read that had a big influence on me in terms of the

52:08

Anglican School of Theology. Thune has a terrific book entitled

52:13

Our Triune God, a Biblical Portrayal of the Trinity. It's remarkably good work on the

52:19

Trinity, and before his death, which he had some immune disorder disease and died a few years ago, but he worked here in America on an

52:34

Anglican prayer book that is available, and all of Thune's books are available free on the web to be downloaded.

52:42

He gave all the rights up, but I've always appreciated Peter Thune very much.

52:49

Yeah, thank you for adding that. Yeah, I appreciated him too. Well, we're going to our midway break right now.

52:56

This is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, 90 .1

53:04

FM in Lake City, Florida, they require of us a 12 -minute break between our two major segments because they have their own commercials and public service announcements and other things that they air.

53:14

So please be patient during this elongated break. Use this time not only to write questions for my guest

53:20

Thomas Isham, and if you have a question for Ken Samples as well, my co -host today, you can feel free to send us a question for Ken, and also please write down the information provided by our advertisers so that you can patronize them.

53:33

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com is our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

53:41

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01:06:07

A Born -Again Episcopalian, the Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettitt McElveen, we just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

01:06:16

First of all, the Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York is having as a guest speaker my dear friend

01:06:25

Dr. Tony Costa on Sunday, July 1st. And if you'd like to attend that meeting, go to hopereformedli .net

01:06:34

for more details. And you can also call

01:06:40

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Medford, Long Island at 631 -696 -5711.

01:06:51

And that following Friday, Dr. Costa will be speaking at an event that I am orchestrating, or have orchestrated, along with my friend

01:07:00

Pastor Andy Woodard of the New Covenant Church in New York City. We are having Dr.

01:07:05

Tony Costa in the heart of Manhattan provide a free seminar.

01:07:12

It will be held at the First Baptist Church of New York City, a very historic church dating back to the 1700s.

01:07:19

One of the earlier pastors of that church was actually the personal chaplain of George Washington.

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It's located on 79th and Broadway in Manhattan's Upper West Side. Dr. Costa will be speaking on defending the faith in a postmodern society.

01:07:35

He'll also be speaking on the dangers of cultural Marxism's impact on society and the church.

01:07:41

And he's also going to have a Q &A session with the audience. If you would like to attend this event, and I'm begging you, please spread the word like wildfire about this event, because I want to see as many

01:07:53

Iron Sherpins Iron radio listeners as possible at this event. Call the

01:07:58

New Covenant Church in New York City at 646 -770 -2282.

01:08:05

646 -770 -2282. You can also email Pastor Andy Woodard at the

01:08:11

New Covenant Church in New York City at nccnycinfo at gmail .com.

01:08:19

That's N -C -C standing for New Covenant Church. N -Y -C for New York City, info at gmail .com.

01:08:27

Or you can email me, chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com and put

01:08:33

Tony Costa event in New York City in the subject line. We hope to see you

01:08:38

Friday, July 6th, 630 p .m. to 10 p .m. at the First Baptist Church of New York City on 79th and Broadway in Manhattan.

01:08:48

Then coming up in November, actually let me back up there for a minute.

01:08:56

Before that event in November, there is another very important event that you need to know about in August. That's the

01:09:03

Fellowship Conference New England. My dear friend Pastor Mack Tomlinson, who is the pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, organizes this annual event.

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01:09:27

And the Fellowship Conference New England is being held August 2nd through the 4th at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine.

01:09:36

And there is no one theme at this conference. As a tradition, they let each speaker speak on what is most pressing upon their heart and mind during the time of the conference.

01:09:48

The speakers include Pastor Tim Conway of Grace Community Church in San Antonio, Texas, Pastor Mack Tomlinson, who

01:09:54

I just mentioned, of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas. He's also an author and a book editor and publisher.

01:10:02

Pastor Jesse Barrington of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, the sister church of Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, whose radio station airs

01:10:11

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every day. Pastor Nate Pickowitz, who is an author and pastor at Harvest Bible Church in Gilmont and Ironworks, New Hampshire.

01:10:22

And if you'd like to attend that conference, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com.

01:10:30

And then, as I said before, I was starting to say, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals in November, the 9th through the 10th, is having their

01:10:39

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology, not to be confused with the

01:10:45

Reform Town Conference on Quaker Theology. It's the Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology at the

01:10:52

Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania. That's November 9th and 10th, featuring

01:10:58

David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Winn.

01:11:05

The theme is the glory of the cross. If you'd like to attend this conference, and I will be there,

01:11:11

God willing, with an Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

01:11:17

click on events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology. Please tell them that you heard about the conference from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:11:27

And as you have been hearing me say every day, I am so excited about the next

01:11:32

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, January 17th through the 19th at the

01:11:40

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, which is a suburb of Atlanta.

01:11:47

This will be my third G3 conference. The G3 stands for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. The theme this year is the mission of God, or should

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I say the theme in January, is the mission of God, a biblical understanding of missions. And the very long roster includes such speakers as Paul Washer, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

01:12:12

Bayway, who I believe is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet Earth, the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and chancellor of the

01:12:20

African Christian University. Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, grace to you.

01:12:27

Josh Bice, the director of the G3 conference. My friend Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and more.

01:12:38

If you'd like to register for the G3 conference, either as an attender or as a vendor booth operator, just like I will be there manning an exhibitor's booth for the

01:12:51

Iron Trip and Iron Radio program, if you'd like to register for your own booth, whether it's for your business or your church or your ministry or whatever it is that you want to publicize there, they're expecting over 4 ,000 people at the

01:13:03

G3 conference. So if you'd like to register for the booth or just to attend, go to g3conference .com,

01:13:09

g3conference .com. And as always, please always tell all of our advertisers that if you're patronizing them, that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:13:22

And now, very briefly, I just want to let you know that we are, as always, in need of your contributions here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:13:34

I just thank God that my friends at batterydepot .com and Linbrook Baptist Church on Long Island and the publishers of the

01:13:45

New American Standard Bible have renewed their advertising contracts with me. I am praising

01:13:50

God about that and so grateful to God for them. And also for you in the audience who have been donating to us after a dry spell where we weren't receiving any donations.

01:14:01

Oh, thank you so much, all of you, and you know who you are who have been donating to help us remain on the air.

01:14:07

If you don't want us to hit another one of those really scary dry spells, please donate to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:14:13

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01:14:21

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01:14:27

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01:14:37

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01:14:43

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01:14:49

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01:15:15

If you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisorenson at gmail .com. chrisorenson at gmail .com

01:15:21

and put advertising in the subject line. And if you just want to donate, go to ironsharpensironradio .com, click support, then click click to donate now.

01:15:29

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01:15:41

where you can send that check made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. By the way, if you'd like to join us on the air now, the question for our guest

01:15:47

Thomas Isham and our co -host Ken Samples, our email address is chrisorenson at gmail .com.

01:15:54

chrisorenson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:16:04

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

01:16:13

We do have a listener who actually has a question for Ken, Ken Samples, and I will allow it because of the fact that it involves some of what we are discussing today.

01:16:25

Let's see here. We have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:16:34

I know that there are conservative and more Anglo -Catholic Episcopalians converting to Eastern Orthodoxy in droves, and I also know that a former colleague of your co -host

01:16:48

Ken Samples, Hank Hanegraaff, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. Can Ken cite what he believes the reasons for this is, not only in Hank Hanegraaff's personal experience, but in general, because from what

01:17:02

I know about Eastern Orthodoxy, their gospel is just as foreign to the biblical gospel as is the

01:17:08

Church of Rome's set forth in the Council of Trent. Do you have anything to say about that, Ken?

01:17:14

Yeah, thanks Christopher for that very good and challenging question.

01:17:24

I not only did Hank Hanegraaff, who is the current

01:17:29

Bible Answer Man, I worked at CRI both with Walter Martin and then for a brief period of time with Hank Hanegraaff.

01:17:38

That's how I first discovered you. I first discovered you when you were co -hosting with Hank on the Bible Answer Man.

01:17:44

That's how I came to know who you were, and I invited you out to Long Island to preach at the church where I was a member.

01:17:51

That's right, we go back a long way. We're brothers. I think that's a really good question.

01:17:58

I noticed a couple years ago that Richard Swinburne, who is a leading

01:18:04

Christian philosopher, a professor for a very long period of time at Oxford University, and he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:18:18

Michael Ward, who is a specialist on C .S. Lewis, converted to Catholicism, and I'm going to offer my own perspective.

01:18:29

I'd be interested as well in what Tom thinks about this, and Chris, I'd like to ask

01:18:36

Tom another question about C .S. Lewis if we have time, but let me respond to that particular question.

01:18:47

Here's my response. I think that in some cases, I think evangelicalism is perceived on the part of some individuals as being 30 ,000 miles wide and two inches deep, and that of course is an exaggeration.

01:19:11

Evangelicalism includes many different Christian traditions, and some are very, very deep indeed, but I think some people are attracted to both

01:19:24

Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy because their perception is that their evangelicalism doesn't go very deep.

01:19:33

I agree with Chris's concern and criticism that not going deep into history takes you apart from Protestantism.

01:19:44

I don't think that that's accurate, but I do think a good bit of the evangelical world is a bit light on history.

01:19:53

I remember Yoroslav Pelikan, started out Lutheran, wrote what

01:19:59

I think is probably the best criticism. The Riddle of Rome, right? The Riddle of Romanism? The Riddle of Roman Catholicism, in 1960.

01:20:06

I've quoted it many times. Late in life, he became Eastern Orthodox, and he interviewed with the editor, one of the editors of Christianity Today, and he said, you evangelicals, you talk too much about Jesus, but you don't think enough about the

01:20:24

Trinity. I do think that some people join the Orthodox tradition and the

01:20:29

Catholic tradition because they perceive evangelicalism to be light, historically and theologically.

01:20:38

I think that's true of some in evangelical, but not all. In terms of some of the other people, like Richard Swinburne, he obviously has a deep awareness of the place of the

01:20:55

Church of England in terms of history. I suspect that maybe his was for other reasons.

01:21:03

Maybe aesthetics, maybe you know, other kinds of elements, but I think that obviously, in the

01:21:17

Eastern Orthodox tradition and the Roman Catholic tradition, you have these deep theological questions, but I think there are people who find the evangelical tradition to be, in their minds, somewhat shallow.

01:21:37

And many of us evangelicals agree with that. Many of us. And I'm an evangelical who would agree with that, you know, to some degree, but I also don't want to overstate it, but I wonder what

01:21:48

Tom thinks about this question. Well, I concur with what you have already said.

01:21:56

I think in the question, there was something about a high Church or Anglo -Catholic

01:22:02

Anglican converting to Orthodoxy, and if that was part of the question,

01:22:10

I can certainly see the attraction, especially with the liberal trends within the

01:22:15

Episcopal and Anglican churches, that somebody who has a very conservative temperament and wants to be anchored in a tradition that certainly considers itself to be anchored in the ancient creeds and a very stable form of churchmanship.

01:22:37

I speak of the various orthodoxies with a capital O. I can see where that would appeal, and it's another liturgical church, so an

01:22:47

Anglo -Catholic would feel comfortable with that kind of worship, even though it's somewhat different than Anglican high

01:22:57

Church worship, but it's still the liturgical type of church. And Ken said something about the aesthetics, too.

01:23:05

I think that would kind of go along with the ritual, and that aspect of worship would attract high

01:23:17

Church Anglo -Catholic types of people. As far as evangelicals converting to it,

01:23:23

I guess some of the same reasons, actually. And Ken has pretty much touched on all of those.

01:23:30

One of the things that does disturb me in the testimonies of converts that I have heard, from evangelicalism to Eastern Orthodoxy and to Rome, although I agree, as I just mentioned and as Ken agreed, that much of evangelicalism today is really shallow and even heretical, and there are so many problems within evangelicalism, even among those that are most well known, the most prolific writers and so forth.

01:24:06

But at the same time, when I hear people abandoning ship and becoming

01:24:12

Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, very often the reasons are shallow.

01:24:19

As my friend Reverend Jacob Smith over at the parish of Calvary St.

01:24:25

George's Episcopal Church in New York City has called it, the phenomenon amongst

01:24:32

Episcopalians called climbing the candlestick, where people are becoming more and more

01:24:37

Rome just because they are enamored with the whole mystique, and some would find it beautiful, others would find it repugnant, but the whole imagery, the smells and bells, people become

01:24:53

Romish or they become Eastern Orthodox or even Anglo -Catholic because of that alone, and I find that disturbing, and I was wondering if you find that equally disturbing,

01:25:05

Tom. Well, I would certainly disagree with it.

01:25:13

I think it bypasses the substance of the faith, and certainly as among us three here, we're evangelicals of a reformed bent, which would be the more, generally speaking, the more sophisticated,

01:25:33

I guess, deep form of evangelicalism. So frankly,

01:25:40

I just would not, you know, it would be a superficial attraction, again, to bring up that word that Ken used, aesthetics, and that certainly appeals to a lot of people, and I wouldn't say it doesn't appeal to me at all, but I would simply go back to the

01:25:58

Reformational arguments and our own 39 articles, for that matter, even though they're roundly ignored these days by most

01:26:06

Episcopalians, just make the case on substance of what is the most true to the biblical, the scriptural teaching.

01:26:15

And by the way, there are people in highly liturgical churches like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox who become evangelicals for the wrong reason, very much a similar reason but a different expression of the aesthetics and so on.

01:26:33

You have Catholics joining evangelical churches just because they love the happy, clappy atmosphere that some churches have today, and they love the fact that people give them a big hug after the worship service, and they love the fact that they have potluck suppers every week or month and that kind of thing, and so therefore you have these lost people, these goats in the midst of the congregation who are not really born again, they just like the way the people sing and the way they feel when they're going to these evangelical churches.

01:27:08

Let me, if I might comment on that question,

01:27:14

Chris. I know one thing that attracted me to the Anglican tradition was the depth of the

01:27:23

Trinitarian elements reflected in the Anglican liturgy. The prayer book also attracted me.

01:27:30

I just felt that it just enhanced my time of prayer, it challenged me both theologically as well as devotionally.

01:27:40

Now, let me go touch that issue that you've raised, and I agree with your concern.

01:27:46

I think when you decide whether you're going to be Orthodox or Roman Catholic or Protestant, I think you have to engage the question of authority, the relation of scripture and tradition, and obviously you have to look very carefully at the question of salvation in terms of the relationship of grace, faith, and human works.

01:28:11

I will tell you, however, that I was in a

01:28:17

Anglican church in England just a few weeks ago. It was a church that had been since the

01:28:26

Middle Ages, and so it was a Catholic church that then became an Anglican church. When I walked into the church and saw the way, the aesthetic elements of the church,

01:28:38

I wanted to worship God. And when I walk into a lot of evangelical churches,

01:28:43

I don't feel that way. So, no, I don't think the bells and the smells and the aesthetic elements ought to be the first issue, but it's important to me, and there are even other evangelical traditions that I think that have more substance, but still, that the

01:29:05

Trinity and the liturgy has made a big difference, and as a person who has struggled to develop what

01:29:14

I think is an adequate prayer life, the Book of Common Prayer has just been such a shot in the arm to me.

01:29:20

So, those are some of the responses, but obviously, if you're going to become

01:29:26

Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, you need to engage the serious questions that were raised at the time of the

01:29:35

Reformation. Amen. And by the way, one of my favorite ads that my sponsor is

01:29:42

Wading River Baptist Church on Long Island is involving aesthetics that do play an important role.

01:29:49

I'm not saying that there is no role at all, but the ad has, as many of my listeners know full well, since I air it every day, are you tired of worshiping in a place that is more like a rock concert.

01:30:05

And obviously, that involves aesthetics and things like that that are disturbing because they're smothering the gospel message, they're removing reverence and awe, and so forth.

01:30:19

So, I'm not saying that aesthetics mean nothing, I'm just saying that they shouldn't be the primary reason that you're joining one church and leaving another.

01:30:27

And Ken, why don't you ask Tom your question about C .S. Lewis, and then we'll go to the break, and we'll have

01:30:34

Tom answer the question when we return. Very good, Tom. C .S.

01:30:40

Lewis, of course, was born in Belfast, Ireland. This idea of mere

01:30:45

Christianity, I know that he saw it in Baxter. I wonder, in your mind, and I've wondered this myself, if the friction between Catholics and Protestants, however that's to be understood, whether religious or more political in nature, if that didn't have a big influence on Lewis talking about mere

01:31:11

Christianity. And I guess I wonder what you think of that idea of mere Christianity. Some are quite critical of it, obviously.

01:31:19

Lewis does not explicitly emphasize justification by faith, he doesn't go after the question of authority as robustly as he does other things, but of course, you know, we have what you might call mere

01:31:34

Protestantism. I mean, we have Christians who differ rigorously about the ideal person to be baptized, or differ eschatologically, but I mean,

01:31:47

Chris has quite a diverse Protestant emphasis on the people who support his show.

01:31:53

So I'm wondering what you think of that, and how you work through Lewis's mere

01:31:59

Christianity idea. C .S. And then we'll have Tom respond to that when we return from our final break, which is a brief break, and of course you could repeat in summary form what you asked when we return,

01:32:10

Ken. This is your last opportunity, folks, if you want to join us on the air with a question of your own, and we do have several of you waiting patiently,

01:32:18

I hope. But our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:32:24

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Don't go away, we'll be right back with Tom Isham and Ken Samples right after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:39:11

We are now back to our final 20 minutes or so of the program, and before the break,

01:39:18

Ken Samples asked a question to our guest Tom Isham about C .S.

01:39:24

Lewis. If you want to restate your question, but in more summary form, Ken. Yeah, happy to do it.

01:39:32

C .S. Lewis, of course, was from Belfast, Ireland, where there has been a long history of tension between Catholics and Protestants.

01:39:41

I wonder what Tom thinks about whether that shaped Lewis's idea of mere

01:39:46

Christianity. Then maybe on top of that, mere Christianity, of course, represents more of a

01:39:53

Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed emphasis, not touching upon questions of authority or justification.

01:40:01

Lewis, of course, said you can't live as a mere Christian. You have to decide on a church. You have to adopt a broader theological view.

01:40:09

But I wondered what Tom thought and how, as an Anglican, how he thinks about that issue.

01:40:17

Yeah, well, fair, excellent question. I'd never really given much thought to those, the religious tensions in Northern Ireland being a factor in the mere

01:40:27

Christian approach, but that is something to be considered. And yeah, you just touched on something else about Lewis saying the mere

01:40:36

Christianity idea was to get a person into the hallway, and then there are a number of doors that one can enter, you know, the

01:40:44

Presbyterian door, the Anglican door, I suppose the Roman Catholic door, although he didn't specifically go that way.

01:40:53

I think there may be something in that, him growing up in Belfast and being aware of the tensions in those days, just as they've continued down through the decades until, you know,

01:41:06

I think they're fairly peaceful at the moment. But yeah, I think that could be part of it.

01:41:13

I think he seemed to be somebody who he felt certainly an obligation to propagate the faith after his adult conversion, and he took that very seriously with the question to himself, where can

01:41:31

I be most useful? You know, if I went out and proselytized for the Anglican Church, would I be the most useful?

01:41:37

So he thought this broader approach would be his best approach to reaching people,

01:41:47

I think, rather than getting into the narrower confessional views of the different denominations.

01:41:54

And I know he says, I believe it's in the Introduction to Mere Christianity that he says, well, I'm neither, I am a layman in the

01:42:03

Anglican Church, but I'm neither particularly high nor particularly low, which would also contribute to his comfort with at least introducing

01:42:17

Christianity as Mere Christianity. I know that his good friend

01:42:23

J .R .R. Tolkien was very disappointed in Lewis because he felt, rightly so, he was involved in Lewis's adult reconversion, if you will, to the

01:42:36

Christian faith, and he sort of felt that Lewis should have gone the Roman Catholic route, like Tolkien, of course, was an ardent

01:42:44

Roman Catholic, and I think he was always a little unhappy with that, and he made comments to the effect, well, there's still a lot of Ulster and Lewis, you know, the

01:42:56

Protestant and anti -Catholic views. So those are just some of my thoughts on it.

01:43:03

Chris, can I speak in another question for Tom? Sure, go ahead. You know, there's a famous quote from Calvin that the human mind is an idolatry factory, and obviously

01:43:16

Catholics have the statues, the Orthodox have the icons. You know, in many

01:43:21

Reform churches, there's very little art other than music, and you hear the preached word, you sing.

01:43:32

In the Anglican tradition, there is more aesthetic elements in that.

01:43:39

As an Anglican, Tom, how do you sort through that? Some Protestant churches, in my opinion, seem plain.

01:43:46

Obviously the Orthodox and the Catholic churches go too far. How do you see that topic?

01:43:54

Well, yeah, I think it speaks to the riches of the

01:44:02

Anglican and Episcopal traditions, that they, especially in its evangelical wing, such as it is today, and even more so in the past, that there is that rich,

01:44:15

Protestant, more confessional, word -oriented worship that is so important to evangelicals and Reformed Christians generally.

01:44:26

And yet, Kranmer, of course, did not jettison the beauties and even much of the liturgy of the

01:44:37

Roman church. I mean, the 39 articles, of course, draw distinctions, which are obvious.

01:44:43

It was a church that split from Rome. But Kranmer and Luther himself, in the

01:44:52

Lutheran tradition, kept a lot of the Roman riches, if you will, of liturgy.

01:45:00

In fact, I've, when rarely I'm in a Roman Catholic church, I hear the same basic, same words, especially in the communion service that I hear in the

01:45:10

Episcopal church here. And the Lutherans, which is very rare that I'm in a Lutheran church, but I hear, at least with the

01:45:18

Missouri Synod people, the last group I was with, very similar words.

01:45:24

So I just count it as a plus, and I'm happy that the Anglican tradition has kept that.

01:45:30

But as you say, it can be overdone. The really ornate Angle -Catholic worship, you can get lost in the worship.

01:45:41

It's so much the physical, whether it's incense, which is fine in proportion, you know, all the stained glass, the beautiful vestments.

01:45:53

You can go overboard, the genuflecting, and all sorts of things. But as long as it's within, it doesn't go overboard.

01:46:02

I think it's an enriching aspect. Thank you, Tom. And by the way,

01:46:08

I just want to throw in there, I want to promote a

01:46:15

CD that I have loved for years. I don't know if either of you have heard this

01:46:20

CD, but it is an acapella Anglican choir, and the

01:46:26

CD is called Brother Sun, Sister Moon, and the words that they are singing are very thoroughly biblical.

01:46:36

There's nothing that would be uniquely Romish about any of the lyrics in the hymns that are being sung, and it's just a breathtaking

01:46:45

CD. Brother Sun, Sister Moon. I'll look for it. I think that may be a quote from something

01:46:52

Saint Francis of Assisi wrote, which I'm not sure. I believe it is, yeah. I'm not crazy about that, but the words in the hymns,

01:47:01

I remember examining them specifically because some people might think it sounds very Romish, because it is a

01:47:07

Gregorian chant, actually. But the words are not idolatrous or heretical.

01:47:15

We have Eric in Peekskill, New York, who has a question.

01:47:22

I am a born -again Episcopalian and ordained minister in the

01:47:28

Episcopal Church. And by the way, I do refer to the articles of religion often in my sermons.

01:47:34

I am wondering if your guest believes there is a future for Reformed believers in the new

01:47:40

Anglican Church of North America, ACNA. They seem sometimes almost as hostile to the articles and the classic prayer book as the

01:47:50

Episcopal Church. And perhaps we could even have Ken chime in on that after you,

01:47:55

Tom, because I think Ken's church where he worships is in the Anglican Church of North America, if I'm not mistaken.

01:48:01

But Tom. Right, that's what I heard earlier. Tom, if you want to go first, and then we'll have Ken chime in there.

01:48:08

Yeah, well, I think, yeah, the ACNA is the largest group that split in recent years.

01:48:19

A lot of it stemming initially from the consecration of a suffragan bishop who was openly gay and partnered.

01:48:28

And so there was a lot of sorting out of things after that. And it wasn't,

01:48:34

I don't want to say so much that the ACNA folks left on their own.

01:48:41

They were somewhat kicked out, I think, at least some of the parishes were, because they were resisting certain developments in the

01:48:49

Episcopal Church. But anyway, the last I heard, they have something like 100 ,000 members, so it's quite a thriving organization.

01:48:57

Ken would know more about it than I do. I sometimes wish, although I understand completely why they were unsympathetic to what was happening in the

01:49:08

Episcopal Church, we've chosen to stay for various reasons, but I certainly understand the opposite view.

01:49:22

So I wish them well, and I do want to mention, in case any of your listeners would be interested, as far as they attack the

01:49:30

Episcopal Church, that's the mainline church. That used to be, at one time, it was the

01:49:36

Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America. We keep taking words out of that, and now it's down to the

01:49:43

Episcopal Church. But there is a body of evangelical and Reformed believers still in the church.

01:49:51

Yeah, just like my friend, Reverend Jacob Smith, that I mentioned earlier. Exactly, and the man who just called, too.

01:49:57

And that there is an organization called EFAC USA. EFAC stands for Evangelical Fellowship of the

01:50:05

Anglican Communion. It's the USA branch, and somebody, if they're interested, they could

01:50:11

Google it. They have annual gatherings. In fact, I spoke at their first one.

01:50:18

They reorganized. They went out of business, so to speak, for a few years after the bishop's consecration that I mentioned that caused a lot of trouble.

01:50:32

But then they reorganized, and they're back in business. They're a very lively group.

01:50:38

If being a spirited group is going to help, they certainly have that. They've had conventions in Florida the last couple of years, which is quite a ways for us to travel, so we haven't been able to attend.

01:50:51

They've also met out in Pennsylvania at Trinity Seminary, and we did attend there.

01:50:58

But anyway, so EFAC USA, if there are any conservative Episcopalians who need some support, at least online support, if you can't get to the next convention, just know there are other people out there, and they're doing their best to keep the evangelical tradition alive in the

01:51:19

Episcopal Church. Well, perhaps I'll get some of the people in leadership there on the show at some point. But Ken, since you are,

01:51:26

I believe, in the Anglican Church of North America now, do you have anything to say yourself about our listeners' comment?

01:51:33

Yeah, I'm new to the ACNA. I have noticed some diversity in terms of people who tend more toward Reformed, others have more of maybe a

01:51:51

Methodist leaning or leaning toward Wesleyanism. But of course,

01:51:57

I think what's interesting, and I think that's where Reformed theology is different than, let's say,

01:52:04

Lutheranism. I mean, you can be a Calvinist and be in the Dutch Reformed, or the Presbyterian, or the

01:52:10

Baptist, or the Congregational, or the Anglican tradition. I think there's something unique, it's kind of an international element in Reformed theology, and I like the combination of the prayer book, the 39 articles, and some of the

01:52:30

Reformed distinctives. I mean, it's appealing to me, I like the liturgy. I'm new, after spending quite a bit of time in a

01:52:41

Dutch Reformed tradition, but I find it very appealing.

01:52:49

And I have to say, Tom, I am pleased as punch that somebody as evangelical and conservative as you are in an

01:53:00

Episcopalian tradition, and I wish you well, and I hope your number increases. Thank you.

01:53:07

Okay, we have Joey in Clifton, New Jersey. This question is for either

01:53:14

Tom or Ken, or both. We tend to use the term Anglican and Episcopal interchangeably, and yet we also see that these churches, even into modern times, do distinguish themselves.

01:53:27

I hope you can share some thoughts on how you view the distinctions in the Episcopal and Anglican churches, even if just in their modern expressions.

01:53:37

I know this would probably be a confusing and multi -faceted answer, but if you could give me some rough historical or present guidance, it would be appreciated.

01:53:47

Thank you. Joey in Clifton, New Jersey. Isn't the difference, at least in its origins, the Revolutionary War, that the

01:53:54

Anglicans in America changed the name of their churches to Episcopal? Exactly.

01:54:00

Really, the Episcopal Church is the American branch of the

01:54:05

Anglican Church. The Anglican Church, of course, is the established church in England, and it was, of course, in the colonies, the

01:54:17

Anglican Church during colonial days was present, along with other denominations.

01:54:27

After the war, as I say, the fortunes of what had formerly been the

01:54:34

Anglican Church were at a rather low ebb for a couple of decades, because a number of its members had been on the wrong side.

01:54:41

Of course, George Washington was an Episcopalian or an Anglican, so, I mean, there were people who supported or even led the

01:54:49

Revolution. So, in today's parlance, it'd be actually quite similar.

01:54:55

Anglican still just fundamentally means the established church, and it's a way of describing or mentioning the established church in England.

01:55:06

The Episcopal Church is very much, it's not, there's no governing aspect from the

01:55:12

English Church, but it's in that same tradition. Prayer books are very similar.

01:55:19

The Thirty -Nine Articles are almost the same, except there is an article about the king and the queen, which, obviously, the

01:55:26

American Prayer Book took out. It no longer had a king or queen after the

01:55:32

Revolution, but other than that, the Thirty -Nine Articles are about the same. Well, there are plenty of queens in the

01:55:41

Episcopal Church, but that's another story. I'm sorry. But, Ken, do you have anything to add to that?

01:55:54

I think that Tom's right on the money. I think that, you know, when you,

01:56:03

I noticed there is also a Reformed Episcopal denomination. My interaction, again, they tend to be coming out of, you know, the broader

01:56:16

American Episcopal Church, and many of these churches that I have talked with, you know, because of some of the liberal theology, have left and started their congregations.

01:56:29

They're smaller. But, you know, it is a huge,

01:56:35

I mean, the real difference, the fundamental difference between a liberal theology and anything that is, you know, historically

01:56:43

Christian. And so, again, I'm pleased that there are

01:56:49

Episcopalians who are Orthodox, who are Evangelical, and want to stand up for what that church has always believed.

01:56:59

And so, again, I'm pleased to get to meet

01:57:05

Tom, and I want to read his book. And we have— And I want to read yours. Okay.

01:57:11

Melinda, who is also from Peekskill, New York. Let's see.

01:57:17

Hi Chris, here's my question for your guests. The Episcopal Church today seems out of control sexually.

01:57:23

For instance, the late Bishop of New York, Paul Moore, had many partners while married, as attested to by his daughter in an article in the

01:57:31

New Yorker magazine a few years back. Is there any historical connection between the Episcopal Church and the free love movement of the 19th century?

01:57:42

And I'm pretty sure that maybe that was meant to say the 20th century. I might be wrong.

01:57:48

E. G. Shelley et al., and thank you, Melinda, in Peekskill, New York.

01:57:57

Yes, Bishop Moore was, of course, an ardent liberal, and this information his daughter has revealed was rather surprising.

01:58:13

He sort of embodied the liberal creed at its most extreme.

01:58:19

In his own family, I believe he had nine children, and then he was having multiple affairs, not only with women, but with men.

01:58:29

So this man was a one -man free love machine, I guess. Sounds like Jim Jones. Right.

01:58:37

Episcopal cult. But no, that was under the radar during his lifetime, although he supported every conceivable liberal cause and was liberal theologically, and loaned his diocesan cathedral out for some very weird goings -on, too, as I recall.

01:58:57

He's been gone a while. And we're running out of time rapidly, but is there any connection, as she asks, with the free love movement in the

01:59:03

Episcopal Church? The free love movement, if we're talking about, you know, the 20th century, the 60s, the hippies, that sort of thing, and whatever offshoots there are from that, no, that's not in the conversation.

01:59:19

Okay, and we are out of time, brother. We're out of time. If anybody wants to get a hold of Tom Isham's book, go to solid -ground -books .com,

01:59:28

solid -ground -books .com, and if you want to get in touch with Ken Samples, go to reasons .org,

01:59:34

reasons .org. I want to thank you both so much for being on the show today. I want to thank everybody, especially those who wrote in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater