March 13, 2018 Show with Jacob Smith on “A Born Again Episcopalian”

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

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

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

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

Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 13th day of March 2018.

I'm so delighted to have a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio that has not been on the program for quite some time.

In fact, the last time he was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio he was on the old program, the original

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio that was broadcasting out of WNYG and WGBB Radio in Babylon, Long Island, New York.

This is his first appearance on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio as far as the all -new version of it broadcasting out of Carlisle, Pennsylvania and being live streamed globally via First Love Radio in Dublin, California.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, the Reverend Jacob Smith, rector of the historic

Episcopal Parish of Calvary St. George's in New York City. It's great to have you back.

It's a real pleasure to be on and back with you, Chris, and Babylon was a great place, but I'm glad to see you've been delivered from it.

I do have fond memories of you taking the train out to Long Island, and we'd usually have lunch before you came to the studio, and those were some fond memories and some great interviews not only with you as my guest, but you were also my co -host when we interviewed

Dr. Ashley Null, and I believe I had you on with your colleague at Mockingbird Ministries.

Yep, David Zoll. That's right, and so we had we had some excellent interviews back then, and I'm very confident today will be one of them on the all -new

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Yeah. Well, before we go into the theme of Born Again Episcopalian, which is actually being motivated or inspired by the biography of Charles Pettit Mickelveen that was written by Thomas Garrett Isham, and before we get into that theme itself, which will be much broader than just the biography of Mickelveen, but the whole concept and the phenomena and the historic reality of Born Again Episcopalians, because people today see that as an oxymoronic term very often, perhaps even within the

Episcopalian Communion, but we will get to that in a moment, but I do want, since this is your first time on the new

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and we have a lot of new listeners that we didn't have before, I'd like you to give something of your testimony of your religious upbringing when you realized that you truly did love the

Lord Jesus Christ, and in fact realized at some point that you were given a call by God to become a rector yourself, but tell us about that whole story.

Yeah, well, I was basically born on the Navajo Reservation up in the

Four Corners in Monument Valley, and my parents weren't missionaries, as a lot of people ask, they were hippies, and had gone out there to try and change the world, and however, when

I reached about nine, kind of the adventure ended, and we moved to the southwest corner of Arizona, a town called

Yuma, and there my family got involved in an evangelical

Episcopal Church called St. Paul's Episcopal Church. At the time, it's gone through a split, but it still retains much of its evangelical nature today, but growing up, you know,

I didn't know any other Episcopal Church but the evangelical kind of strain of Anglicanism. J .I.

Packer was our rector's professor when he was in seminary, and there was this great relationship, and Packer would come through and teach at our church, and just, it was a really gospel -focused church.

However, kind of one of those things, you don't really know what you have in the midst of it, and I went to, when

I graduated from high school, I spent a year in Finland, where my host family's father, the father of my host father, was a state

Lutheran minister in the Church of Finland. And basically, while I was there, we had a couple of theological conversations, and my theology being 18, and, you know,

I would have said I was a Christian, but was held together with nothing more than bubblegum and chicken wire, and it slowly kind of got knocked down by rationalism.

When I came back, I really didn't know what I believed or why I believed it, wasn't interested in going to church, and when

I was in college, I had reconnected with some old friends who had gotten involved in the campus ministry, and I went with them to a revival meeting, and at this revival meeting at the

University of Arizona, I came forward and accepted

Christ, and I was crying, and I was so moved by the preaching of the gospel, and joined a fellowship group.

However, in this kind of group, this was basically the last time I ever heard the gospel in that group.

From then on, it was about, are you experiencing and are you feeling Jesus? And it was all about feelings, and I remember calling the rector of my church back in Yuma, Arizona, and saying, you know,

I just don't really feel this. And he said something to me, his name's Tom Phillips, and he said something to me that changed the way

I thought about Christianity completely, and he said, Jacob, it doesn't matter if you're feeling it right now.

What matters is that it's true, and that blew my mind, and that became, if you will, by the power of the

Holy Spirit, the enabling word to rest my life, not on how I was feeling at the moment, but on the unchangeable truth of the historic gospel.

The fact that Jesus actually broke into history, made the claim to be God, died for my sins, and on the third day rose for my justification, and now in the midst of my feelings and ups and downs of life, is at the right hand of the

Father interceding for me. And so this became everything to me, and it was in college that I heard the call to ministry.

I eventually left that group and got involved in inter -varsity, a Christian fellowship, and got involved in a church.

And then when I graduated from the University of Arizona, I went on to be a youth minister at my home church in Yume, Arizona, for three years, where I was then sponsored by the

Bishop of San Diego at the time, Gethin Hughes, who was an Orthodox believer, to go to seminary, and they sent me to Trinity School for Ministry, which is in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, which is the

Evangelical Anglican Episcopal Seminary in the United States. And it was there that I really started studying for myself for the first time the 39

Articles, and the English Reformers, and Martin Luther, and really got into biblical theology, and that, you know, the

Bible isn't a yearbook where you look for yourself first. You hear that so often.

I mean, people are looking for themselves in the Bible. Where are you, David? You know, I guarantee you there'll be sermons this year on, you know, what do you need to do to get out of the tomb of your life?

And that's not what the Bible is about. It's not about a yearbook and you looking for yourself. It's about Christ.

As Luther said, it is the manger wherein Christ is laid. And that began to shape everything in my life, and I began to realize that the gospel was even for Christians, not just for non -Christians, to lure them in, but for Christians as well as a sustaining part of their life.

After I graduated from seminary, I was called to New York City, where I served, and this was back in 2006, as the curate here at Calvary St.

George's. And Calvary St. George's is here in New York, right in the Union Square, Gramercy Park area.

It's actually two churches that were merged in the 70s. It's Calvary, which is on Park and 21st, which is known in a lot of places as one of the founding places of Alcoholics Anonymous, with Sam Shoemaker.

And then there's St. George's, the great historic evangelical church of the Episcopal Church in the 1800s.

However, it had gone through a real, let's just say it had landed in a real ditch theologically for a long time.

And the rector in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, the one who called me, had really worked to bring about a renewal in the church and bring it back to its gospel roots.

And they had begun to see a real transformation there. And he retired, and we had

Greg Brewer serve as our rector, who's now the Bishop of Central Florida, for a couple of years.

And then after he was called to be the bishop, I was, if you will, the last man standing.

And so the bishop then of New York said, well listen Jake, you're welcome to stay for three years, but after that you've got to go.

And my wife and I, you know, we received it and we said, well, this gives us the freedom to take some real risks.

And so we just went wholehearted, preached the unapologetic gospel, and by God's grace and through the power of the

Spirit and the means by which he's given the church, the parish began to grow. And in 2012 we had about a hundred and eighty at our

Easter Sunday service, and last year we had over 800 at our

Easter Sunday service. And now it's not to say that I don't want to see the gospel as a means to an end, but it is just a

God's faithfulness to us. And with those results and us willing to take on another

Episcopal Church that's struggling, St. Anne's for the Deaf, we're providing them oversight. The bishop said,

I'll make you rector. And our hope is that it won't just stop with St. Anne's, but we'll begin to move on and help out other churches as well and basically replant them with the great classic doctrines of the

Anglican Reformation. Well, praise God. I am so happy to hear what is developing there because, as you may remember, you and I have an interesting story as to how we met, and it involves

Stephen Ting, the 19th century low church Calvinist pastor of St.

George's Episcopal Church in New York City, and my dear friend who is also my very first pastor after my rebirth,

Mike Gadosh of Solid Grand Christian Books, he brought back into print Stephen Ting's book,

The Christian Pastor, The Office and Duty of the Gospel Minister. And so when

I heard that Ting, after reading this book, I fell in love with this book and fell in love with Ting himself, and I began to find out, well, what is this church in New York City like today?

Because of the fact that Stephen Ting was long gone, obviously, being a 19th century hero of the faith, and I found out that you were there.

In fact, the secretary, I think, specifically connected me to you, even though you were not the rector at the time, because of your love for Stephen Ting, your mutual love for Stephen Ting.

Yeah. And as I remember it, that's the reason why you even accepted an invitation to serve on the ministerial team there at St.

George's, was because of the connection historically with Stephen Ting. Absolutely, yeah. He was a great evangelical preacher in the

Episcopal Church and a great leader of the abolitionist movement here in New York, and also of the

American Bible Society, and putting the word first. And he followed another great evangelical named

James Milner, who I hope more people will learn about. But yeah, Stephen Ting is why

I came, and actually I make all of my staff now read that book at least once a year.

Oh, praise God. Yeah. And by the way, just to let our listeners know, if you'd like to get that book, you can go to solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com, and if you type T -Y -N -G in the search engine, just like the old orange drink

Tang, but replace an A with a Y, you will get a list of several books, more than several books actually, that Ting either wrote himself or that Ting contributed to.

And that's solid -ground -books .com. And what a blessing he is to read, and many people outside of the

Episcopal Church may be surprised at how Ting wrote in a fashion that he writes simply as a gospel minister.

You would not necessarily recognize the fact that he was Episcopalian or Presbyterian or Baptist.

He writes as a gospel minister. Right, absolutely. And I think that's one of the defining characteristics of a lot of the 19th century evangelical

Episcopalians, is that, you know, their writing is broad.

It's not necessarily denominationally focused, because in the sense that they weren't even liked by their denomination even then, and so, and they had a real heart and passion for the whole church.

And I also thank you so much, I don't know if you remember it, but you gave me a guided tour of the church, and to me it was just such a blessed time because of my love for Ting, and very remarkable because most people,

I'm assuming, unless perhaps they are Episcopalians themselves, but those outside of Episcopalianism might wrongly conclude that all

Episcopal churches are very ornate, very much like Roman Catholic churches, and of course there are many that that do resemble

Roman Catholic churches and are very ornate with statuary and icons and all kinds of things.

But Ting, who from what I remember you telling me, he actually designed

St. George's, if I'm right, and in a very purposefully simple manner that nothing would distract from the pulpit, where the sermon, where the gospel was being proclaimed.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. He specifically designed it not in the

Gothic tradition, which is even what McElveen's church is designed in.

He designed it in the Romanesque tradition, and it's actually based on the

Ludwigkirche in Munich, but the idea was that amidst the trials and tribulations of the world, here is your safety.

And when you go in, it's shaped almost like a barn, and the acoustics are incredible. And that's right, he specifically said,

I do not want any columns in this church that would in any way impede the preaching of the gospel.

It's actually interesting, too, a lot of people don't know this, but the same person who designed St. George's Church, Leopold Edits, designed the state capital building here in New York State, in Albany.

And so, but it is a stunning piece of architecture, filled with a lot of symbolism that points to, in its plainness, points to the importance of the preached word.

So in other words, Ting guided the architect, he wasn't the architect himself.

Yeah, he guided the architect. I mean, essentially, yeah, I mean, the architect provided the math, but he provided the theology.

And the other thing that was interesting is that the Lord's Table is a very simple table.

It is not an ornate table that you would find in many, not only

Roman Catholic churches, but Lutheran churches and high Episcopal churches, and even in some

Baptist churches, if they are of a wealthier stripe of Baptists in the neighborhoods where they are.

But it's a very simple table, and there is no cross on the wall behind the the pulpit, as many

Episcopal churches and other churches have, and even Baptist churches, not even a barren cross.

And I remember you telling me that Ting only had the Ten Commandments and the

Apostles' Creed on banners on the wall behind him, and you also told me the horrifying story of how one of the liberal rectors there, years ago before you arrived, tore those down and threw them in the garbage.

Yeah, that was Carl Ryland, and he removed the two tablets of the

Law and the Apostles' Creed from behind the wall, and he removed them and said,

I have officially removed all superstition from St. George's Church.

And so he was very much a man of rationalism, but I'm pleased to say that that no longer is the dominant, or exists at St.

George's anymore. Praise God. Well, yeah, I am so happy that you are there. It's also so pleasing to me that you share

Ting's Calvinism, and you share Ting's adherence and love for the 39

Articles of Religion, if you could comment on that. Yeah, I think there's a real trend in, well, not only in the

Episcopal Church, but I hear it in a lot of my friends in Anglican circles as well, the notion that somehow

Anglicanism is not a confessional church. And nothing could be further from the truth.

Our confession is the 39 Articles, and it is clearly a Reformed confession, and what it does is that it is generous in its confession, in that it places the borders,

I think, on Christian freedom and liberty, denying the heirs of the radical Anabaptists on the far left at the time, and the heirs of Rome on the far right on the other.

And so it is clearly a Reformed confession, and one that I think should be the standard of every

Anglican in this world. If you're not into the 39 Articles, you know, maybe you should find another church.

And tell us about you becoming the rector there, because as I said, when

I first met you, and the several times that I had you on as a guest on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio when we were broadcasting out of Long Island, you were not yet the rector.

You had some ministerial position there. Perhaps you could tell us what that was, but tell us about the journey that you had from arriving there to the point of becoming rector.

Yeah, well, so like I said, I arrived in 2006, and I was called to be what's called the curate, and that's just a fancy old word for the curer of souls, or the low man on the totem pole.

And so when I was the assistant, and I was essentially in charge of Sunday school and, you know,

Christian education. And what happened was, with these two churches, because there's two churches, the pulpit needed to be filled.

And so I filled the pulpit for a little bit at St. George's, but then was moved over to Calvary, where we started preaching regularly.

And things really seemed to take off. And we had a great clergy team at the time, under the leadership of Tom Pike.

And then he retired in 2008. And then in 2009, the parish then called

Greg Brewer, who came from Philadelphia. And, you know, the church continued to move forward in a traditional

Orthodox direction. I would say at the time it was probably a little more charismatic than I am, but it continued to move in a in a creedal direction, and one that was a prayer book and focused on Christ.

And then in 2012, the rector then was called to be the Bishop of Central Florida.

And so he went, and I was, if you will, the last person standing.

Now there had been some, like, market crashes during the 2008 -2009 time, and the church just couldn't go right into a search right away.

And so I was asked to kind of stay and settle the boat. And after that first year,

I was told, well, as the tradition goes, you only get three years here, Jake, and then you have to go.

There's a tradition kind of in the Episcopal Church not to promote from within. You know, there's goods and bads to it.

You know, the good side is that it prevents the curate from leading a coup. The bad is that sometimes, you know, you have real stability in that, and to break that up can cause uncertainty in the church and lead to decline in all sorts of areas.

So, but I was told I had only three years, and that was actually probably a really good thing, because it just kind of gave me the freedom to, because I was going, so anyway, so it gave me the real freedom to hammer home the doctrines of grace, and to teach the 39

Articles, and to be on a bashedly low church, and not worry about it.

And come to find out, really, I mean, a lot of people, especially families, find that appealing.

You know, a reverent service without a lot of trappings. And so, and especially at St.

George's, we're seeing a real growth in that, in our family ministry, with people from Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, which are the housing complexes just north of the

East Village. And so, but in 2016, and I have a great relationship with the

Bishop of New York. We're friendly, but he sat down and talked with me, and said, you know, Jake, there's another church called

St. Anne's for the Deaf, and they meet in our basement. They're the oldest deaf congregation in New York City, and one of the oldest deaf churches in the country.

And he said, they really need pastoral oversight, and some pastoral leadership, and would you be willing to give it?

And I said, of course. And he said, then we need to make you the rector, so you can have the authority to begin to bring the whole parish on board, and make changes there as well.

And so, he graciously made me the rector, and I was instituted as the rector in 2017 of January.

So, I've been the rector now, officially, for just over, just over a year. And things continue to go well.

It's not an easy position. You're no longer kind of the cool brother, older brother, who, you know, you can say, hey, you know, you're no longer the cool older brother who doesn't have to make the decisions as the curate.

Also, you know, there's a permanence here now, and so I have to be wise in a lot of my decision -making.

However, that doesn't cause me to shy away at all from the preaching of the gospel. But, you know, just there's a wisdom that needs to come now, with the permanence of this, as we continue to steer this ship and witness to Christ and Him crucified.

And so that permanence is, you know, as a guy who kind of, you know,

I find it exciting, but at the same time, the ideas of moving on are now done.

And so we see ourselves here until we basically die, unless God has other plans. Well, I look forward to having fellowship with you, hopefully, the next time

I visit New York, because I always enjoy your fellowship, and hopefully that will be in the providence of God very soon.

I think I forgot to give our email address for questions for our listeners earlier. I apologize for that.

But our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Perhaps you have a pastoral question of Reverend Jacob Smith, or perhaps you are in an

Episcopalian church and you are very uncomfortable there because it has no resemblance to what our guest

Jacob Smith has described, or whatever the case may be. Perhaps you're an Episcopal rector yourself, and you're a lot more biblically minded than the denomination worldwide, or whatever the case is that would lend you to want to remain anonymous, we will grant your wishes in that regard.

But other than it being a personal and private matter, please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence, at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We are going to our first break now, but we'll be back shortly with the

Reverend Jacob Smith and our theme, A Born -Again Episcopalian. Tired of box -store

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Well, we are back to our discussion with the Reverend Jacob Smith, my old friend from the old

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program. He is rector of the parish of Calvary St.

George's in New York City, and we are discussing A Born -Again Episcopalian, not only the specific biography that was written by Thomas Garrett Isham of Charles Pettit Meckleveen, but also the general theme of being a born -again

Episcopalian. If you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and we have some of you waiting to ask a question, but before I go to them,

I just wanted to get a little bit more background as far as our theme is concerned from you,

Pastor Jacob. What so captured your attention about Bishop Charles Pettit Meckleveen, and I hope

I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. I think you might have said Mecklevein before. Is that the correct way?

I think we're both correct. Well, of course he's not around to correct either one of us, but before I even have you answer that,

I'll just read something about Meckleveen or Vine from the author of the biography,

Thomas Garrett Isham. He says, Charles Pettit Meckleveen, who lived from 1799 to 1873, embodied the evangelical creed of the 19th century, a clear -thinking, intellectually rigorous

Episcopalian. He exemplified the deep emotional currents of revival and rebirth, of the conviction of sin, of the need to be born again into new life.

An aristocrat by birth and bearing a bishop by consecration of the Episcopal Church, he knew himself to be a common sinner in God's sight, as much in need of rescue as the folk to whom he ministered.

And that's from the preface written by Thomas Garrett Isham of this biography called

A Born -Again Episcopalian. But how did you first hear about Bishop Meckleveen, and what captured your attention and your fascination about this man?

Well, I think I first heard about Meckleveen in a seminary as well, around the same time as I had heard about Stephen Ting.

They were colleagues and very good friends. They had a couple of divisions on a few critical issues, but so I heard about him during that time, and that was basically about it.

I put him on the back burner. However, just in this last year, and I actually picked up the book from Solid Ground Christian Books, I picked up the book and I actually began reading the history of 19th century evangelicalism,

Standing Against the Whirlwind, and Meckleveen features heavily in that book.

I wanted to learn more about this man, because I think much of American Christianity looks very similar to 19th century

American Christianity as well. You have a revivalism, once again kind of sweeping a lot of American Christianity with churches like Hillsong and some of these big charismatic churches, and so your revivalism sweeping the land on one level.

You have a lot of evangelicals now no longer on the Canterbury Trail, as they used to say, but on the

Roman Trail, or joining the Eastern Orthodox Church, and then rationalism is kind of sweeping across Christianity again, and taking hold of a lot of prominent evangelical mainline churches, where 20 years ago nobody would have ever thought that would have been the case.

And so just wanting to be a student of history and looking into it, I thought that there could be definitely lessons learned there from a man who, indeed, as the book preface articulates, he walked in the presence of kings and aristocrats, but most importantly saw himself as a sinner in need of saving, and saw that as his message from the beginning of his ministry when he was converted at Princeton to the very end of it when he died.

And so I felt like that he has something to say to the Church once again, I think across the board.

Yeah, well we praise God that Solid Ground Christian Books has published this biography.

Now, I understand that there was a revival occurring in Princeton when

Mickelvein believed he was truly born again. Am I correct on that?

Yeah, that's absolutely right. However, it wasn't a revival like that was happening out in Kentucky and in rural parts of New England and New York.

It was much different. I mean, it was in Princeton.

Now, there were moments of some of the young converts wanting to become more emotional and enthusiastic, and there were a few riots.

People took their church seriously there. But for the most part, it was a revival and a renewal that came out of doctrine, as opposed to out of emotionalism and enthusiasm.

And in 1815, Mickelvein, who was a student there, was converted.

And he was converted alongside men like Charles Hodge and John John, who later became an

Episcopal bishop in Virginia. But it was rooted under a lot of the, you know, it wasn't the

New Divinity revivals that were coming out of Yale and the heirs of George Whitefield.

It was much different, and it was rooted in Calvinistic theology and in the importance of the

Scriptures as the defining tool, and rational thought.

There was a lot of real apologetic involved, as opposed to anxious seats. Yes, but we cannot let our audience think that George Whitefield was not a truly committed

Calvinist. What I'm talking about is that the people that followed him later on in the

New Divinity men understood the New Divinity men who wanted to really emphasize emotionalism, and that later followed.

And so this was a little bit different than what was going on up in New England later on. Right, and why was

Mickelvein in or at Princeton to begin with?

Was he studying to be a minister before he was even born again? Or what was the circumstances behind that?

No, Mickelvein came from a very important and prominent New Jersey family, and so this was just the place where young men went to university.

It was the closest university. Mickelvein actually grew up in a very, as he describes it, not even a really converted family at all.

You know, they might have attended on Christmas and Easter, St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Burlington, New Jersey, but for the most part he grew up in a very a -religious family, and he was actually trying to follow the footsteps of his father, and so he was initially at Princeton studying law.

And you've been mentioning a couple of words that our listeners might not be familiar with.

I know that there are polar opposite theological trends within Episcopalianism and Anglicanism.

You have the Tractarians on one end that would also be known as, if I'm not mistaken, the

Oxford movement of Episcopalianism or Anglicanism that is very Romish, and then you have

Rationalism. If you could explain those two phrases. Yeah, so, well, the word, the idea of high church has taken on various terms and definitions through, since its first use.

Originally in England, it was kind of associated with folks who had a high view of the divine rights of kings and kind of followed

James II over William of Orange, and a lot of them moved over to Scotland and became known as non -jewers, but that's beside the point.

The high church definition initially in the early Episcopal Church in the 17th and early 1800s was basically an idea that put in, they had embraced a lot of the ideas of what was called a group called the

Caroline Divines, and it put a real emphasis on what some would call today

Incarnational Theology. Now, that's a controversial term for a lot of us

Reformed and Calvinistic Christians, but Incarnational Theology, and so it put really, basically was that, hey,

God was really nice to everyone, and that the high church theology of the 17th and 18th century was shaped by these

Caroline Divines, put a high view on kind of creation and natural theology, but the idea was that the

Episcopal Church was the real church in America. It was the real expression of Christianity and the safe and sane version of Christianity in America, and so therefore it had a very exclusive leaning to it, and a lot of the teaching was counter to the early

Reformed doctrines of the Anglican Church. The Thirty -Nine Articles were hardly mentioned in the training of an

Episcopal minister in the early days, the late 1700s, early 1800s. A lot of those who really cared about the scriptures had moved on into the

Methodist movement. Not all, but a lot of them, and so McElveen, he's converted there in 1815 in Princeton, and he goes and he begins to study for the ministry at St.

Mary's in Burlington. However, this is okay. He then applies and moves to Princeton Seminary, where he studies under guys like Archibald Alexander, and he's trained in the

Reformed confessions, not only in England, but on the continent. He's trained in apologetics, he's trained in Scottish rationalism, so he's trained in this.

So the high church movement initially was a movement that put an emphasis on the Episcopal Church.

It later shifts to Tractarianism and the

Oxford movement, which came about in the 1800s out of guys like John Henry Newman, Edward Bouver -Pucey, and John Keeble.

Actually, William Wilberforce's son, Robert Wilberforce, became a big Tractarian.

But these were men who were theological dons in Oxford at the time, and initially their protest was against the

English government merging diocese in Ireland without the church's permission.

And they said, you know, the church has really got to start taking a stand above and over and above the government.

And so there was some good to this. I'm a huge proponent of the separation of church and state, but there was some real good to this going on.

However, what they began to do is that they began to really introduce a lot of the ritualism, and they began to teach that Anglicanism was the third branch of the

Catholic Church, and that there was very little difference between, actually, they began to twist and mutate, if you will, the teachings of the

English reformers by saying that they were actually not really protesting Rome itself, but just a few of the heirs.

But they denied justification by grace alone. They emphasized the traditions of the church over and above sola scriptura, and this began to make its way into the

United States in the 1830s. Roughly 1839,

Newman's Essay on Justification came to the United States, which got McIlvain's, made him reach for his holster, if you will, and because it was an attack on the

Reformed doctrines that a person is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Ultimately, the

Tractarians also caused a split in the high church movement, because a lot of the high churchmen, while they did believe that the

Episcopal Church was the church in America, and the church for America, they were decidedly,

I mean, you know, subconsciously convicted Protestants as well.

And so there was a lot of debate, even amongst the high church party at the time. Even today, there is debate.

Yeah, absolutely, on high church versus Anglo -Catholic. Yes, in fact, I had a guest recently, as you know, who is a high church

Anglican, but clearly Protestant, and very committed to historic Reformational Christianity.

Yeah, a lot of them would probably lean more towards Lutheranism than Calvinism, but they are committed to the doctrines of grace.

And so, yeah, and so, but Tractarianism and wasn't. Tractarianism, as a matter of fact, there were a lot of people, and McElveen actually wrote an essay in what was at the time called the

Episcopal Reporter, which was an evangelical journal for the

Episcopal Church in the United States in the 1800s, but he wrote under the pseudonym of Kremner, and he talked about Tractarianism coming in.

And now what you have to remember, too, was that the Roman Catholic population was skyrocketing in the

United States at the time, and people were like, what is going on? You know, for the most part, in antebellum

America, to be anti -Catholic was like par for the course, but what happened was is that the church began to skyrocket with immigrants coming from Ireland and Germany and Italy, and so people were like, what is going on?

And so a lot of people saw the Tractarian movement as kind of almost, I mean, the talk was that it was a

Jesuit conspiracy. Now, I don't know if we can go that far, but McElveen, because they attacked the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, and because they attacked the inerrancy of Scripture, McElveen described it as the poison that has infected

England, now seeks to thrust itself on the Episcopal Church, and he and his colleagues worked tirelessly to fight that, fight that cause.

It's very interesting, in his last days, he did go on a trip to Europe, and he went to Rome, and he writes about going to the

Vatican and actually going into the catacombs, and seeing over the burial of the martyrs, a cross, and essentially in Latin, rest in peace.

And he was like, right here from the earliest days, it is only the cross that brings peace, nothing else.

And he left, actually, Rome vindicated in his Protestant understanding and his

Protestant doctrines. Well, now let us get a summary of what rationalism is all about.

Rationalism essentially developed in the 18th century as well, in parts of England and in Germany.

One of the big contributions to rationalism was all sorts of new scientific discoveries, and you know,

Darwin's theory of evolution, and all of just major scientific discoveries which were causing people to second -think the book of Genesis, and the stories of Genesis 1 and 2.

Plus, you had German scholars in Germany at the time, beginning to question the whole move as well, and so basically it was a call into question of the entire

Bible. You know, they were like, we've never found Hittites, so they must not have really existed. Actually, if you go to the

Met now, and to the Met here in New York City, you will see, actually, the pottery of the

Hittites. They found the Hittite burials, and you can see them at the Met today. But, you know, but basically, archaeology wasn't that advanced, and there was a lot of assumptions.

There was this idea that began to take hold, the distinction between actual history and supra -history.

And so, you know, healings were actually medical, you know, Hume argued this, that healings were actually medically verifiable, and could have been explained medically.

We just, we just, they didn't understand it at the time, and so they, you know, or, you know, leprosy.

Well, maybe, or not leprosy, but demonic possession. Maybe that was just schizophrenia. They just didn't understand, you know, science like we do today.

And so, it was a riding away of God's Word, using rationale, as opposed to simply trusting in it.

And actually, you know, I love what J .I. Packer says in his reputation of rationality.

He says, you know, where you find that you have a problem with the Word of God, the problem isn't with the Word of God, it's with you, and that we're to place ourselves underneath that.

And so, but the rationalism was essentially a riding away of the Scriptures, and a riding away of the miracles, and essentially reducing and making a distinction between the

Jesus of history and the Jesus of Scripture. And those were the two battlefields that McElveen had to wage war, if you will, within the

Episcopal Church. And we're going to be hearing more about that, and how that has even further developed into our modern day, after we go to our midway break.

This is our longer than normal break, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a 12 -minute break between our two main segments.

So please be patient with us. Take this time not only to write down information that our advertisers give, but also to write questions for Jacob Smith.

And our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. We know that you have, that we have several of you waiting to have your questions asked and answered, but we'll get to you as soon as possible.

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Before we return to our discussion with the Reverend Jacob Smith on our theme, A Born -Again

Episcopalian, I just have a couple of announcements. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is once again hosting the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, and that is affectionately named

Philadelphia Conference, even though it's now no longer held in Philadelphia. It's been being done in tribute to the late

Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, a modern -day hero of mine, and I remember going to those conferences for a number of years at the 10th

Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where they originally began, but they are carrying on, but in other locations.

If you would like to attend April 13th through the 15th, the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology is being held at the

First Christian Reform Church of Byron Center, Michigan, and a lot closer to Philadelphia, April 27th through the 29th, the conference will be held at the

Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In fact, I happen to be right now in a historic parsonage, a 19th century historic parsonage, where the studios of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio are located, and the daughter of Reverend George Norcross, the daughter is plural

I should say, of Reverend George Norcross who lived here, went to the

Bryn Mawr College there, which is quite a respectable and renowned Institute for Higher Learning.

But if you'd like to go to either of these locations, either the the

Byron Center, Michigan, or the Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania location, and I don't know if I mentioned the dates for that one, it's 27th through the 29th of April for the

Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania location. Go to AllianceNet .org, AllianceNet .org,

click on events, and then click on the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology. This year's theme is the spirit of the age and the age of the spirit.

The featured speakers are Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, Conrad M. Bayway, my favorite preacher,

I think the most powerful preacher alive today on the planet Earth. He is the pastor of Coboata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.

Richard Phillips, another friend of mine from Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Jonathan Master, David Murray, and Scott Oliphant.

If you'd like to register, once again go to AllianceNet .org, AllianceNet .org, click on events, and then click on Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

Please, please remember to tell the folks at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about these events from Chris Arnzen at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And now I have to perform my least favorite of all tasks, a very uncomfortable thing that I do every day, and that's with tin cup in hand to beg you for money.

I resisted for years doing this, but my advertisers who are paying hard -earned money or spending hard -earned money to have their advertisements on this program and to keep this program on the air have pled with me for a long time to make public appeals for donations, so I finally caved into the pressure and I'm doing that now.

And if you love this program, if you listen to it every day, if you share the mp3s with others, if you learn much from the guests and topics that we address, please consider donating to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio by going to our website, ironsharpensironradio .com,

click support, and then mail us a check made out to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to the address you will see after clicking support.

And as I try to remember to tell you every day, this caveat, never ever siphon money out of your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church, and never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Those two things are commands of God, providing for your family and providing for your church. Providing for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is obviously not a command of God, but if you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, please consider supporting financially

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And if you want to advertise with us, go just send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line, whether it's your church, your parachurch ministry, your business, your professional practice, or a special event you're having.

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So send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com with advertising in the subject line. That's also the email address to send in a question to our guest the

Reverend Jacob Smith who is rector at the Episcopal Parish of Calvary St.

George's in New York City. We are discussing a born -again Episcopalian and our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And before I ask any more questions of my own,

I am going to go to one of our listener questions. We have Melinda in Peekskill, New York, and she says,

Hi Chris, here is my question for Reverend Jacob Smith today. The Episcopal Church is known for its enthusiastic acceptance of homosexual clergy, bishops, and laity.

As a whole, the Episcopal Church of the USA rejects the idea of homosexuality as a sin.

What does your guest think of this? And that's again Melinda from Peekskill, New York. Well, I think that the first thing to remember is that the

Book of Common Prayer, and we can talk about that later, McIlvain had a lot of thoughts on the Book of Common Prayer and some of its teaching, but the

Book of Common Prayer, which is our principal central part of our use of worship, recognizes that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

I think that, and I agree with that 100%. And within the

Diocese of New York, we have been given permission to continue on that tradition here at Calvary St.

George's, and we plan on holding on to it because it is God's truth, and to witness to it.

There are a lot of folks who have said, I can't stand this anymore, and I need to get out.

However, as I've described, we have a church that has been around since 1747, and has gone through, not only been faithful in its evangelical confession, but has actually reached the,

I think, the bottom of, you know, in the 50s, denying the gospel and the faith by removing the

Apostles' Creed and Ten Commandments out of the church. So maybe I'm a wishful thinker, but I have a great hope that something can be turned around, and St.

George's was turned around, and we continue to have a generous witness.

But I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. It's been established by God in creation, so this isn't just something we can tamper with and change at the whims.

The Scripture upholds it as something not to be messed with, and it reflects all sorts of things.

The union of man and wife, if you think it's just you and your spouse getting married, you are completely wrong.

It involves God as well, and so in that, you have man made in the image of God and woman made in the image of God being brought together by God, together as one flesh, so in that you have a reflection of God's love, not only for the church, but a reflection of the

Trinity, and in a very profound way, a marriage between a man and a woman is the true celebration of diversity.

And so that is our position, and it is the position of the Episcopal Church, and the position of the

Episcopal Church for centuries, and it is the position of the Anglican Communion, and that's where we stand, and it's the position of Calvary St.

George's. And of course, that would imply what you just said, since sexual activity is confined only within the realm of marriage between a man and a woman, that would involve a prohibition that all other sexual activity, whether it is heterosexual or homosexual, is condemned as damnable activity.

Absolutely. You know, and I do want to say that we have a number of gay and lesbians in our congregation who are trying to live and walk a chaste life, and trying to be fit, and you know, and are by God's grace living faithfully according to the

Scripture. My big problem isn't necessarily my homosexual congregants, it's my heterosexual congregants, and I think the statistics show that many

Christians are atheists when it comes to this, when it comes to sexual relationships outside of the context of marriage.

But that is the only place that it is permitted, is within the context of marriage under God, a man and a woman.

Well thank you so much, Melinda, from Peekskill, New York. Please keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and spreading the word about the program in Peekskill and beyond.

And basically, I wanted to read that question so I didn't steal any of Melinda's thunder, because what

I was going to ask you when we returned was, did the rationalism that Mickelveen, Bishop Charles Pettit Mickelveen, was battling against, was that the tragically and horrific fertile ground for what is known today as liberalism, leftism, and even apostasy that we have, not only in the

Episcopal Church, but in many denominations across the spectrum? Yeah, absolutely, and it usually begins with the denial of the resurrection of the dead.

That's where it all stems from. And you know, it'll approach it through different ways, like questioning creation, it'll approach it through different ways, like questioning the exodus, it'll approach it, but it all kind of hinges around ultimately, did this man rise from the dead?

And you know, and that is one of the great truths of Mickelveen.

He was a great apologist and wrote a number of essays on apologetics, and his emphasis was on this idea of the resurrection of the dead, and the testimony of the witnesses that we have from the

Apostles, but that if Jesus actually rose from the dead, then everything else he says must be valid.

For example, no sign shall be given but the sign of Jonah. No, you know, he speaks of Adam and Eve in creation, and when he speaks about marriage, and so this rationalism usually ultimately all hinges and comes back to this denial of the resurrection of the dead.

And if you're denying the resurrection of the dead, then you have to deny the doctrines of grace, you have to deny the doctrine of justification, you have to deny all of these other doctrines.

And this was Mickelveen's great tie -in between rationalism and a lot of the

Tractarianism. He wrote a great book called The Oxford Divinity, compared with that of the

Romish and Anglican churches. Yes, I just got that, by the way. Yeah, I ordered it, too, and it's powerful.

I've read it online, but it's 500 pages of laid -out Reformed doctrine.

But he talks about this, and he says, you know, all of this is interconnected. When you begin to deny justification, well, then you can deny the resurrection of the dead.

When you can begin to deny grace alone, then what point, why do I need Jesus in the first place?

You know, and so all of this kind of comes together, and then Mickelveen's mind was ultimately one and the same.

And we have another listener with a question. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks, why was the wing of Anglicanism that was more reflective of Roman Catholicism called

Tractarianism? Now, that's a great question. Tractarianism was what it was called, basically these men, and it primarily was, as I said,

John Henry Newman, Edward Verpuzzi, and John Keeble. There were a few others, but they basically wrote a series of tracts, and these were basically essays that basically tried to connect the

Anglican Church and downplay the Reformation, but basically connect the

Anglican Church with basically Serum Catholicism. This was the medieval Catholicism of England at the time, and so it was an attempt to try and connect that.

And so they were called, it was called Tractarianism, based on the tracts that they wrote in defense of their position.

Ultimately, though, if you read tract 90, and this is one of the reasons why I ultimately respect

John Henry Newman, is because he realized that the 39 articles do not connect to Serum medieval

Catholicism, but rather they are a Reformed confession, and he later joined the

Roman Church and became actually a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church. And I actually cringe with disgust and anger every time

I hear the quote, to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant, which is one of his most famous quotes, which is,

I have found in my own experience, the 180 degree opposite to be true, and I'm sure that you would agree with that.

I mean, the more I read of church history, the more I see that the

Reformers were by far more in alignment with the

Holy God -breathed Scriptures than the Roman Catholic Church. Oh absolutely, and you know, and what they were trying to do was be the

Catholic little -c church in the local community. So you know, and this is what they were trying to do, and so, and to bring faithfully the word and the means, you know, the word and the sacraments to the people, primarily the two domicile sacraments, baptism and Holy Communion, no others.

And so, but this was what they were, the Reformation was trying to bring to the world.

Yes, and even the more I have read of the Church Fathers, the more

I see them in alignment on crucial areas with the

Reformers than I do, that there is a myth that the Church Fathers, the

Patristics, speak with one voice in favor of what we see in the

Council of Trent and even Roman Catholicism today, and I think it's absolutely absurd. Yeah, well actually, that was, you know, when you think about the

Reformers, I mean, they were, many of them were like, were humanist, and when

I say humanist, I mean the medieval humanists, like the atheists today, but you know, they were trying to go back to the original sources, and that was the appeal to their defense, the

Patristics, and actually this phrase via media, which is oftentimes kicked around in the

Episcopal Church today, as we're like the middle way between, you know, Protestant and Catholic, or we're the middle way between Christianity and the world, is like not the case.

What the via media meant was that we were the middle way between the Reformation of Geneva and Wittenberg and the

Patristics. That was what we were trying to, like, that's, the Anglican Reformation was about trying to find the balance therein, and but that is, yeah,

I mean, that the Reformers made their appeal oftentimes to the Patristics, not the other way around.

The Patristics and the Scriptures. Amen. Well, you actually educated me on something. I did not know that that's what was meant by via media, because I had always heard the way that you said it was being misused, that this was a comfortable place between Rome and Geneva, the via media, that sought to unite both.

I had not heard what you just said about it being really between Geneva and Wittenberg. Well, and this is the great, this is the other, there's another profound lie that's told, and this is interesting, because in that Oxford Divinity compared with that of the

Romish and Anglican churches, McElveen makes an appeal. He not only makes appeals to Reformers like Luther and Calvin, but he makes an appeal to Richard Hooker, and and today

Richard Hooker is often taught that he taught a three -legged stool kind of thing of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, as if somehow all three of these are equal, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Actually, Richard Hooker's understanding of this was the latter, with Scripture as the foundation for the whole thing, and then

Tradition we appeal to, because we're not just making this up on the fly, and then finally Reason, enlightened by the

Word of God, moves us forward. But it was never a three -legged stool, because ultimately, as we see in the modern church, something will win the day.

And so, but this is the thing. So the via media was never an appeal to the middle way between Rome and some sort of mushy

Protestantism. We have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, and CJ says,

I have heard the Roman Catholic wing of Episcopalianism and Anglicanism referred to as Puseyism.

Can you explain that? Well, I mean,

I think Puseyism is part of, you know, it's a word, and I might be incorrect on this, so,

I mean, if there's the Anglo -Catholic expert out there can correct me. But Puseyism is basically following the teachings, like the ideas and the doctrine of Richard, of Edward Pusey, and so it's kind of similar to being called

Tractarian, and being called a Tractarian. It was like I was in line with the teachings of Edward Pusey, who contributed to the

Tractarian movement. But I'm not quite sure on the Roman Catholic, the

Anglican wing of the Roman Catholic Church. I do know that a couple of years ago, Benedict allowed a number of them to come in, and they have started what's called the

Ordinariate here, but it's not called Puseyism, it's called the Ordinariate of the Chair of St.

Peter, and it was for many of these people who ultimately kind of came around to where John Henry Newman was, and said that Anglicanism ultimately isn't compatible with with Roman Catholicism, and so we might as well all just link up.

We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, I have a friend who told me that he believes with certainty that many of the

Anglican bishops who are Anglo -Catholic, he believes that the reason that they don't convert to Roman Catholicism and bring their churches with them, is that they will lose their positions as bishops, because only

Anglican priests will remain within their office after conversion to Rome, but the bishops will lose their seats.

Is this true? Well, I haven't talked to anybody personally about this, but I do know for a fact that a bishop in the

Roman Catholic Church, I believe, is to be celibate, except for in some of these, but no, no, not even in them, but a bishop is celibate, yes, so there's no chance for anybody who comes in from the

Anglican world to become a bishop. Now, they, and a former evangelical

Episcopalian who made his way over, he was the Bishop of the Rio Grande, and I knew him, his name's

Jeffrey Steenson, is now, well, for a while was essentially like a Monsignor and functioned as kind of the

Bishop of that ordinary group of Anglicans who became Roman Catholic, but he wasn't given the title of Bishop, he was given the title of Monsignor, so that's probably right.

I mean, I don't know if that's the reason why they don't all go. I know that, you know, in Anglicanism, I mean, there is a freedom and there is a liberality to the whole thing, which can be, as we've seen, really terrible, but on the other hand can be very good, and when you go into the

Roman structure, I know that there are rules and regulations on how everybody behaves and how everybody, you know, there's not the freedom, kind of, that they would have,

I think, and so that might be a holding thing, but I don't know personally. Well, we're going to our final break right now.

If anybody else wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, do so now or forever hold your peace, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away,

God willing, we'll be right back after these messages with more of Reverend Jacob Smith of the

Episcopal Parish of Calvary, St. George's in New York City. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the

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Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Welcome back.

We are now returning to our discussion with the Reverend Jacob Smith, Rector of the Historic Episcopal Parish of Calvary St.

George's in New York City. We are discussing a born -again Episcopalian. If you'd like to join us, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Before we move on to some of the substance of the life and teachings of Bishop Charles Pettit -Mickelveen, we have a couple of more listeners that I'd like to address here.

We have, let's see, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, you mentioned earlier about the

Book of Common Prayer teaching that marriage is only to be the husband of, that marriage is only between a husband and one wife.

I was hoping that you would perhaps view the scriptures as a more primary source of teaching that prohibits not only homosexuality, but sex outside of marriage.

Can you comment? Well, absolutely. I agree with you. I think the scripture is the foundation, and that would be the ultimate appeal.

I was just addressing specifically the question in regards to the Episcopal Church and my thoughts on that.

And so, but absolutely, as I said, and I said and I appealed to it in my answer, you know, we begin in Genesis with the creation of man and woman, both created in the image of God, man and woman, and then brought together as one flesh throughout the scriptures.

Israel is referred to as the bride, and God is referred to as the bridegroom, which becomes the foundation.

And Christ then takes this, and the church took this, the apostles took this to refer to the description of marriage between a man and a woman as a reflection of Christ and his love for the church, and as it says in our prayer book,

Holy Scripture commends it to be honored by all people. So, I mean, I ultimately would appeal to the scriptures, and I do appeal to the scriptures, it just was in the context of that particular question.

Right, and because, therefore, Episcopalians and Anglicans today who endorse and celebrate homosexuality are not only violating the scriptures, which is primarily the sin involved in accepting that, but they are also even violating historic

Episcopalianism and Anglicanism. Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you,

Arnie, and keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and spreading the word in Perry County, Pennsylvania and beyond.

Let's see, I'll take one more for now before we move on. John in Bangor, Maine says, can you describe what is the difference between Episcopalianism and Anglicanism, if any?

Well, it's a use of words. So, Anglicanism basically,

I mean, the short answer is that Anglicanism basically describes

Christianity that came out of, kind of, England. You know, it's like, that's the short of it.

However, and as the church spread, you know, the

English church spread, so did Anglicanism. However, I think it's important to make the distinction that Anglicanism today doesn't necessarily mean

English. The majority of Anglicans actually live on the continent of Africa, are under the age of 28, and are women.

It's an extremely, now, diverse communion, and the English actually make up a small minority in it.

But Anglicanism came to the United States, and it settled in Virginia and in parts of New England, and however, after the

Revolutionary War, Anglicanism wasn't necessarily a title you wanted to have, especially because, at the time, the church and the state were so intertwined.

And so, you know, actually, and this was something that McElveen actually had to write a number of essays about in the defense of Episcopalianism.

So basically, let me just back up, but when, after the Revolutionary War, you know, the clergy were all called back to England, and there were a few who remained, and eventually they had to, the first Bishop Samuel Seabury had appealed to Scotland to become ordained, and Episcopal really is more of a definition of our form of church governance.

We have bishops and the threefold ministry of that, and so there's very little difference, if any, between Anglicanism and Episcopalianism.

However, in recent days, you know, there have been splits here in the United States over certain doctrinal issues, and so you'll hear folks trying to separate themselves from the

Episcopal Church by referring to themselves as Anglican today, and so, but in its core, and when you don't have sinners involved, they're one in the same.

And so, but this was one of the things that, actually, McElveen had to appeal to in some of his early essays when he was the

Bishop of Ohio, because he was taking on revivalism, and a lot of people accused

McElveen of Episcopalianism not being really an

American expression of any form of Christianity, and had no role in American Christianity, you know.

It was no bishop in this country, and McElveen had to make an appeal that this expression of Christianity is as American as anything else.

Well, what social issues was McElveen, in the 19th century, grappling with in regard to the deterioration of American Christianity?

I'm sure that even the rationalists of his day would be horrified by seeing the developments so far to the left today, that either border on or have leaped far over the demarcation point of apostasy.

What were the things that he was dealing with socially? The big thing that McElveen had to tackle was with slavery, and the issue of slavery in the

United States. He was Bishop of Ohio and held a lot of influence in the 1860s, right at the eve of the

Civil War. And what had happened was, so McElveen initially, he didn't come out in the open and talk about slavery.

He kind of focused on gospel preaching, and he was always against it. But what had happened was that, at a previous

General Convention, basically there was an agreement between the Evangelical Party and the

Episcopal Church and the High Church Party, that the Evangelicals would focus on global missions, and the

High Church Party would focus on missions domestically. Now, this was all fun and games until, all of a sudden, the

Evangelicals realized that we're funding, essentially, missions we don't 100 % agree with, and that actually we're losing the cause.

And all of a sudden they realized that the Evangelical presence in the Episcopal Church was on the small end.

Out of all of the new dioceses in the 1860s, there were several, but only really

Iowa and Nebraska remained Evangelical. All the

Minnesota and Michigan all went to High Churchmen. But this was a result because a lot of the

Evangelicals had focused on mission elsewhere in Brazil, Japan, and places like that.

The low church went there. So one of the things that happened was, so the issue of slavery, you had a number of Evangelicals in the

South, including one of McElveen's converts.

When he led a revival at West Point called Leonidas Polk, who later became the

Bishop of Louisiana. And so McElveen was a little hesitant to speak on the issue of slavery.

However, it wasn't until he was good friends with Stephen Ting. And so McElveen essentially supported, initially, repatriotism and sending slaves back to Africa and supporting

Liberia and places like that. And Stephen Ting actually was as well, but however

Dudley Ting, Dudley Ting, Stephen's son, said that there can be no compromise on this issue.

You know, we've already compromised a lot on the high church stuff and it's watered down the church. We cannot compromise on slavery at all.

And Dudley was later killed in a very tragic accident in Philadelphia, where he was maimed and bled to death.

And his dying words were, stand up, stand up for Jesus, which inspired that great hymn. But Stephen Ting at St.

George's, inspired by the passion of his son, became an ardent abolitionist. And that's where him and McElveen initially parted ways.

However, McElveen went on a trip to England right before the Civil War, where he met the abolitionists there, including

William Wilberforce. And some of the people in the Claperton sect was deeply influenced by this and came back and said, we can't compromise on this either.

And actually parted briefly ways with Bishop Polk of Louisiana, and was ultimately sent by the

United States to visit England in order to deter England from recognizing the

Confederate States of America. So he was sent by Abraham Lincoln as a delegation to deter

England from recognizing the Confederate States. And he really ultimately took that on and said that all men, and this included black and white, had been made free in Christ.

And he himself later became an ardent abolitionist and helped pave the way for many of the slaves to make their way up into Ohio and settle there.

Praise God. And what do you think,

I mean, people, I've met a lot of Christians, they only want to read contemporary authors.

And I'm not here to say that that is a total waste of time, because there are many contemporary authors that are brilliant, that are biblically faithful, that are speaking to relevant issues that we face in our day and age.

But many are overlooking gems, I mean treasures from history, including the writings of the likes of Bishop Charles Pettit McElveen.

What can you instill upon our listeners today of why you think they should pick up a book by or about Charles Pettit McElveen?

Well, I think three reasons.

I think Charles Pettit McElveen addressed the issue of revivalism, and if we had another hour

I would love to go into that. He went to Ohio, and a lot of people think he dropped his evangelicalism and for a brief moment reverted to high churchism while he was the

Bishop of Ohio, because he appealed to the steadiness of the

Episcopal Church in its prayer book and liturgy. However, he didn't abandon his evangelicalism, he was making an appeal to sound doctrine.

Because when he went out to Ohio, I mean the fruits of Spineism was just all over the place.

And you had the Campbellites, and you had these revivals where, you know, beginning with much earlier

Cainridge, but I mean they just became more and more like rock concerts. And the joke was is that actually more people were conceived at some of these revivals than were actually saved.

That's the first one for me. Well, it kind of reminds me of your parents on the hippie commune, or the

Native Reservation, Native American Reservation. Well, they were married, but I think that what we can learn is that I think we see a real trend in American Christianity, once again, to appeal to emotionalism and appeal to my feelings, and just me and my

Jesus, and you know, and my Jesus lets me kind of do whatever I want. And what we learn from McIlvaine is the, no, actually there is one

God, and he's revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and he speaks outside of you. And by speaking outside of you, he speaks to the deepest parts of you, and calls you to repent and believe his gospel.

So I think it's important to read older books and read people like McIlvaine, because they remind us that emotionalism is nothing new, but emotionalism ultimately leaves people empty and allows them to be their own

God. I think the other thing that reason why to read McIlvaine is because he appeals to the importance of the

Reformers, and the importance of the doctrine of justification by grace alone, and how that doctrine as, and he quotes in his great work, that Oxford Divinity compared with that of the

Romish and Anglican churches, he quotes that great quote by Luther by saying that the doctrine of justification is the doctrine by which the church stands and falls.

And so this is something that we as Christians need to cling to, and we cannot compromise on at all in our preaching and our teaching.

And then finally, I think why we should read is because rationalism is once again sweeping the church across the board.

Whether you're a Baptist, whether you're an Episcopalian, whether you're non -denominational, you cannot escape it today.

And what McIlvaine does is he appeals in his teachings to the historicity of the faith, that actually there was a man named

Jesus. He came into the world, made the claim that he was God, died, and on the third day rose again for our sins, and that this is real history, and it is fact, and that is what we appeal to.

And so I think that McIlvaine speaks to all the problems that continue to beset the church, all the heresies that continue to beset the church, and calls us back to focusing on our true north, and that is

Christ and him crucified for the sins of the world. Amen. We have an anonymous listener who says, who asks, what can you tell us about the

Reformed Episcopal denomination? I have met and conversed with some very theologically sound and Calvinistic members of not only the clergy, but also of congregations under that denomination, but I've also been dismayed by some pastors that I have interacted with that seem to have caved in to the

Romish wing of Episcopalianism, which from my understanding of history is the very reason the

Reformed Episcopal denomination began to fight against Tractarian and Romish tendencies within Episcopalianism.

Can you please comment? And that's actually an interesting question, because as you may remember,

I don't know if you remember this, Jacob, but I have a very big place in my heart for the

Episcopal Church, even though I'm a Reformed Baptist, because my father's side of the family came from Episcopalianism.

They originally were Baptists in Scandinavia in the 19th century and earlier, but through marriage became

Episcopalians, and I was very saddened when one of my uncles, one of my late uncles, who was an

Episcopalian, but he was very conservative. I don't know really how biblically knowledgeable he was, but he was a man who basically adhered to biblical morality for certain, and he was dismayed and disgusted by liberalism taking over the

Episcopal Church, and I was trying to find him, a biblically sound

Episcopal Church near him in Washington State, and I had a conversation with a

Reformed Episcopal minister trying to locate such a congregation, and this, by the way, that that minister that I was conversing with was not from Washington State, so I don't want people to start thinking that it was a certain minister in Washington State that I'm talking about.

This man, this Reformed Episcopal Church minister who called himself Father so -and -so, he recoiled in disgust from what

I was saying because I told him that I did not want my uncle to become a member of an

Anglo -Catholic Episcopal Church, and he called me a moron, and he said to me,

I have more in common with my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters than I have with you, which made it clear to me that this man didn't even believe the gospel, but so that just I that is just to give my own personal impact upon this discussion that the listener brought up, not only with the

Reformed Episcopal Church, but even if you want to broaden the question is, what do you do when you can't find a biblically faithful or even historically accurate

Episcopalian or Anglican Church near where you live? Gosh, well, you know,

I've met a few Reformed Episcopal clergy in my day around here, and I have found them to be very faithful men, and true to the 39

Articles, and true to their prayer book. That was one of the kind of the issues.

George David Cummins, who was the assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, who was the first basically

Reformed Episcopal bishop, he laughed over what he saw, especially as heirs in the prayer book.

There was a big conversation that was coming out of the Evangelical Episcopal Church wing of the church in the 1860s on prayer book revision, and that was specifically over baptismal regeneration.

I think that I've seen some biblically faithful men there, and so I don't want to say anything negative about them.

But what I do want to say is that if you can't find, you know, what you need to do is you need to find a church where the

Word of God is rightly preached, and the sacraments are rightly administered.

I think we need to get beyond this kind of denominationalism, and I'm an

Episcopalian, and you know, I love the Episcopal Church, I love Anglicanism, but ultimately what you need to do is get yourself in a gospel church where you hear the blood of Christ and the atoning sacrifice of Jesus for your sins day in and day out, and the sacraments are rightly administered according to that church's tradition.

And you won't go wrong, but to say like, oh I can only go to Episcopal Church where there's nothing left for me is crazy.

What you need to do is, what the United States and what the world needs is not more

Episcopalians, what it doesn't need is more Baptists, what it needs is more gospel -focused Christianity.

Amen. And so that's what I would say, and that's why I call you brother, Chris, is because we are in this for the gospel and the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, because that's what the world needs to hear, for without it, it dies and perishes.

Amen, I agree with you 100%. By the way, the only reason I was looking for a biblically faithful Episcopal Church was because I believed that my uncle would more likely visit such a church than one that left much more to mystery and apprehension and anxiety, if you follow me.

And was our listener correct to say though that the Reformed Episcopal Church began as a protest against Romish tendencies within the

Episcopal Church? Absolutely. I was against that and some of the ideas, especially in the prayer book, there was, in the prayer book at the time, and it's still there, but an implication that a child is regenerate when they are baptized.

And of course, the Evangelical Party, especially at their seminaries, such as Kenyon and Bexley Hall, which was what

McIlvaine founded, and VTS appealed to interpret that part of the prayer book through the lens of the

Thirty -Nine Articles, specifically appealing to Article 27, which talks about baptism. But yes, there was a move to say, we need to make this perfectly clear, the

Reformation in England didn't go far enough and we need to be the ones to finish it. And of course, there was a group that said, no, stop it, and so there were some folks that got frustrated and left.

And so yeah, it was over those tendencies. Yes, and by the way,

I can confirm with my own conversations, or from my own conversations, with Reformed Episcopal ministers who are biblically faithful, that there is a sad trend within that denomination where they are accepting more

Oxford movement types of men into the clergy. And the ones that are more clearly

Protestant are not very happy about that. So I'm just talking about from my own conversations and personal experiences with some

Re folks. Even my landlady was raised in the

Reformed Episcopal Church, and her father was a Reformed Episcopal minister, and she is not happy with a lot of what she sees.

And of course, folks, if you're listening from the Reformed Episcopal Church, I'm not broad -brushing or condemning your denomination at all.

I'm just saying that from my own experience, I know what is an element there, which obviously came to its worst expression when

I had one of the Re ministers called me a moron. Now a lot of other people have called me moron, but this was specifically because I was telling him that I did not want my uncle to attend a

Romish church. But if you could, Jacob, in about three and a half minutes, summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Well, as you say, you may be a great sinner, but Jesus is a greater

Savior. That is the heart of the gospel.

And this is one of the great teachings that come out of our prayer book.

It's called The Comfortable Words. It's a series of passages from Scripture which build upon each other, which inform why we can have peace with God and peace with our neighborhood.

It says, Hear the word of God to all who truly turn unto him. Come unto me, all you that are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son to the end, that all who believe in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

This is a true saying, and it's worthy of all people to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

And if any person sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And he's not only the perfect offering for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world.

It's upon those gospel promises that we have peace with God, and finally through that, peace with one another.

And so I pray that people would hear the gospel, and believe the gospel, and rest on the gospel, because it's true.

Amen, amen. And by the way, Reverend Jacob, I just got contacted by one of our listeners who

I have had as a guest on my program in the past. I don't know if you're familiar with David Old, who is a

Sydney, Australia Anglican. Oh yeah, I see him all the time on the internet, and watch him from time to time on Anglican TV.

Okay, yeah, well he has expressed interest in also returning to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio, so I just wanted to give a shout -out to David Old.

I look forward to having you back, brother, and I'd love for you two to meet face to face at some point.

Yeah. Well, I don't know when I'm going to Sydney, but if he's ever flying through New York...

Maybe he will be, you never know. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information before we run out of time.

I know that the website for the Parish of Calvary St. George's in New York City is calvarystgeorge .org,

calvarystgeorge .org, and St. is abbreviated St., calvarystgeorge .org.

Do you have any other contact information that you care to give? Yeah, if people want to learn more about us, they can also email us at info at calstg .org,

and we have worship services at St. George's at 830 and 10, and at Calvary at 11, and we have an

Evensong service at 5 p .m. every Sunday, and so if you're in the city of New York, we'd love to have you.

Now, is there a difference in the manner in which you worship at those two locations?

Is one more of a high church and one more of a low, or are you universally low church over at the parish?

No, Calvary is more of a high church. That's been its tradition, but the gospel is preached Sunday after Sunday, and so the message is the exact same, and the worship is biblical.

Amen. Well, also don't forget that you can order the book that we have been referring to,

A Born Again Episcopal Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McIlvaine.

This is written by Thomas Garrett Isham, and if Thomas is listening, we would love to have you also join us on Iron Trip and Zion Radio as a guest at some point, and you can get that book at solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com, where you can also get books by Stephen H. Ting, T as in Thomas, Y -N -G, who we mentioned earlier, who is the founding rector of St.

George's Episcopal Church, where my guest Jacob Smith is currently the rector.

Thank you so much, Jacob. I hope this is just the beginning of many more interviews with you, and I look forward to your return very soon to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Thank you very much, Chris. It was a pleasure being here with you, and God bless you and your ministry. And I hope that everyone listening always remembers for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater