The NXR Podcast - American Glory - Why I’m a Reformed Catholic (And What That Actually Means)

00:00:00.000 Today on American Glory, I'm going to share why I'm a Reformed Catholic,

00:00:04.440 what that means, and why you should be too. In my weekly audit, I'll be sharing two videos,

00:00:08.840 one explaining what it means to be a Reformed Catholic, and another

00:00:11.320 explaining the use of one of my favorite Christian books. All that and more coming up right now.

00:00:30.000 Welcome to American Glory. This is season two on American Christianity. I'm your host, 0.63

00:00:35.240 Dale Partridge. This is episode eight of season two titled, Why I'm a Reformed Catholic. Now,

00:00:41.060 this episode is part two from last week's episode on why I'm not Roman Catholic or

00:00:47.200 Eastern Orthodox. So if the last episode featured what I deny, this episode will feature what I

00:00:54.000 affirm. Now, this is also the last episode of this season. So season three, which begins in two

00:01:00.920 weeks, is on the American family. And I'm going to be covering the history of the American family,

00:01:05.780 as well as other important topics like feminism and patriarchy and interracial marriage and

00:01:10.660 birth rates and birth control. All of these things are very important issues facing the

00:01:16.560 American family today. Now, if you didn't know, American Glory is both a podcast and a video show.

00:01:22.500 And if you want to listen, you can listen on the NXR podcast feed or from my personal

00:01:26.400 podcast feed.

00:01:27.080 Just search for the American Glory podcast, and you're going to find us on Spotify or

00:01:31.260 Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to those podcasts.

00:01:34.320 Now, if you want to watch the video, which comes with helpful slides and graphics and

00:01:37.580 video clips, you can watch it on my YouTube channel at Dale Partridge TV.

00:01:42.240 If you're here now, I'd love to have you subscribe.

00:01:44.720 Now, as I mentioned in the previous episode, I believe that we're living in a time that

00:01:49.740 calls for creedal Christianity more than confessional Christianity. And by that, I mean

00:01:55.120 any Christian tradition right now that sincerely confesses the historic ecumenical creeds,

00:02:01.020 the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasius Creed, should be regarded as an

00:02:07.280 ally in our present moment. The West is being overtaken by Islam and Hinduism and Jewish 1.00

00:02:13.760 supremacy and secular ideologies and moral chaos, okay? Infighting in the church is a luxury of a 0.99

00:02:22.320 victorious Christian civilization, and we do not have that luxury right now. And so, yes, our

00:02:29.220 confessions, our traditions, they still divide us on very important matters, and Christians should

00:02:33.320 worship according to conviction and of conscience, but this is not the time to spend all of our

00:02:39.740 energy, anathematizing each other, constantly shouting heretic, fighting over every secondary

00:02:45.980 issue. We have far greater threats that are preparing to consume our families and our

00:02:51.200 churches and our communities. That said, my hope today is to explain why I'm a Reformed Catholic,

00:02:58.260 what that means, why I believe it offers the best of Protestantism, the best of Orthodoxy,

00:03:05.500 and the best of Roman Catholicism within one tradition. So it's going to be a great episode.

00:03:11.220 Let's begin. There's a growing tension in today's church, and many serious Christians in America

00:03:19.540 are beginning to feel it. On one side, you have modern Protestantism, and Protestantism has given

00:03:25.500 us extraordinary things. It's recovered the supreme authority of scripture. It's recovered

00:03:30.260 justification by faith. It recovered the centrality of expository preaching. It recovered

00:03:35.000 gospel-centric Christianity, and it placed the Bible back into the hands of ordinary Christians. 0.88

00:03:40.980 Now, I am a Protestant, and I have no intention of ceasing to be one. But we also need to 0.79

00:03:46.680 acknowledge what Protestantism, particularly modern American evangelicalism, has become.

00:03:51.540 There are too many denominations. There are independent churches everywhere. Every pastor

00:03:56.900 writes his own confession. Every congregation reinvents worship on Sunday morning according

00:04:02.540 to the desires of their modern congregation. Churches divide constantly over personalities

00:04:08.460 and worship styles and secondary doctrines, and more often than not, just for being offended.

00:04:14.560 Now, you can walk into one evangelical church and you have a rock concert. You walk into another

00:04:20.400 and you have a man preaching in shorts. Walk into another and you have something resembling a

00:04:25.280 political rally for Israel. And then you walk into another one and you might find historic

00:04:29.820 Christianity, but you have no idea until you get there. And this leads to the painful and gross 1.00

00:04:35.740 process of church shopping. Now, there is often very little sense of ecclesiastical continuity

00:04:43.780 among evangelicals, very little sense that Christianity existed before, say, Billy Graham,

00:04:51.000 very little connection to the historic church, very little liturgical depth, very little pastoral

00:04:56.820 authority and very little beauty. Now, for an American Christian who begins reading church

00:05:03.700 history, this can become essentially unsettling, right? They start reading Ignatius and Irenaeus 0.99

00:05:10.500 and Athanasius and Augustine and Chrysostom, and they read about the councils and they encounter

00:05:15.440 the creeds and they discover this ancient liturgy and they grasp scripture's model of covenant

00:05:21.500 renewal worship, and they discover the rhythms of the church calendar, and they begin reading

00:05:26.680 the reformers themselves. And eventually, they realize something. Christianity is much bigger

00:05:33.060 than the evangelical world they inherited. And that realization sends many serious Protestants 0.82

00:05:39.180 looking for something older. And unfortunately, the pendulum swing, right? They encounter Rome

00:05:45.800 or Eastern Orthodoxy, and suddenly they find many of those things that Protestantism has

00:05:51.940 seemed to have lost. They find authority and order and continuity and beauty and architecture

00:05:57.880 and liturgy and high sacraments and church history. And they walk into a church building

00:06:02.780 that looks as though Christians actually believe that God is worthy of glory. And they encounter 0.76

00:06:09.880 a worship service that is not invented last week by somebody who is disconnected from theological

00:06:17.300 training or was never ordained or doesn't understand the historic church. And they

00:06:22.780 discover prayers and hymns and canticles that Christians have read and sung for centuries.

00:06:29.560 And understandably, something inside them says, this feels like it matches the seriousness of

00:06:36.740 the Bible. But then comes the problem. To become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, you would have

00:06:43.680 to confess positions that are not taught in the Bible. You have to accept the universal authority

00:06:50.680 of the Pope. You have to accept the Marian dogmas. You have to accept the invocation and the 0.72

00:06:57.000 intercession of saints. You have to accept doctrines surrounding purgatory and indulgences

00:07:02.880 in the treasury of merit. And most of all, you have to believe that anyone who is not Roman 1.00

00:07:08.600 Catholic or Orthodox is outside of the quote true church and destined for hell. And you can't do

00:07:16.420 that because you cannot find those doctrines in scripture. So you find yourself caught between

00:07:21.560 these two ecclesiastical worlds, the low church and unseriousness of modern evangelicalism and

00:07:28.140 the high church extra biblicalism of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. Now this was

00:07:34.080 my story and it may be your story too. I began asking questions. Do I have to choose between

00:07:40.300 historic Christianity and biblical Christianity? Do I have to choose between Catholicity and 0.55

00:07:46.580 Reformation? Do I have to choose between high liturgy and the gospel or between rich sacramentology

00:07:53.560 and justification by faith. I wanted all of it. And the more I studied scripture,

00:07:59.400 the more reformed I became. And the more I studied church history, the more Catholic I became.

00:08:04.980 And by that, I really mean something very specific. By reformed, I mean the supreme

00:08:10.240 authority of scripture, justification by faith alone, the sovereignty of God and salvation,

00:08:15.860 covenant theology, and really just kind of this confessionally codified doctrine.

00:08:21.260 But what do I mean when I say Catholic?

00:08:24.480 Bishop Lancelot Andrews, writing in the late 1500s, summarized the Catholic inheritance

00:08:30.320 this way.

00:08:30.860 He said, one canon, two testaments, three creeds, four councils, and five centuries of

00:08:37.560 the fathers, end quote.

00:08:38.620 And that is essentially what I mean by the term Reformed Catholic.

00:08:43.820 Reformed in doctrine, Catholic in inheritance, governed by scripture, but deeply rooted in the

00:08:51.640 historical church. And the more important thing to understand is that I didn't invent this term,

00:08:58.380 the, you know, Reformed Catholic. William Perkins, one of the great Anglican theologians,

00:09:02.840 published a book in 1597 with the title, A Reformed Catholic. And even the subtitle tells

00:09:09.300 you exactly what Perkins was attempting to do. He wanted to explain how far Reformed Christians

00:09:15.200 could agree with the Church of Rome and where they were required to depart from it. He opens

00:09:20.800 up the book by showing just how much substantial agreement existed between the Anglican Church of

00:09:26.060 the Reformation and Rome. And so they both believed in the Holy Scriptures as the inspired

00:09:32.780 Word of God. They both confessed the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. They both confessed

00:09:37.480 the hypostatic union of Christ. They both affirmed the doctrine of original sin. They both believed

00:09:42.700 in justification and it's found in Christ. They both affirmed the necessity of sanctification.

00:09:49.460 They affirmed the moral obligation of good works. They both recognized the sacraments of baptism

00:09:56.820 and the Lord's Supper. And they both believed in the resurrection of the body and the final

00:10:01.140 judgment of the world by Jesus Christ. Now, for that reason, the reformers did not believe that

00:10:06.620 everything within the Roman Catholic Church was false, nor that no true Christians could be found

00:10:12.760 within it. But substantial agreement does not mean insignificant disagreement. So the Reformers

00:10:19.420 still believed Rome had departed from Scripture in serious and consequential ways. And for those 0.97

00:10:25.300 differences, you can watch my video from last week. But the Reformers weren't trying to create

00:10:31.060 a new church, but to reform the existing historic Catholic Church according to the Word of God.

00:10:36.620 In other words, the magisterial reformers, right, Luther and Cranmer and Calvin and Knox,

00:10:41.420 they understood something that many modern Protestants have forgotten.

00:10:45.160 The Reformation was not supposed to be some ecclesiastical demolition project.

00:10:49.860 It was a restoration project.

00:10:51.960 There's something sacred about bedtime.

00:10:54.540 See, long after childhood has passed on by,

00:10:57.100 your children will probably forget all the toys that they had or the clothes that they wore,

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00:12:16.160 John Jewell, one of the great defenders of the English Reformation,

00:12:19.620 argued that the Church of England was not creating a new religion.

00:12:23.080 he said that the Anglican Church had returned to the ancient fathers and apostles, to the

00:12:28.580 foundations from which Rome itself had departed. That is the Anglican claim. Not we invented a new

00:12:35.400 church, but we are reforming the old church. And that distinction is enormous. Now, out of the

00:12:42.240 three great branches of the Reformation, the Lutheran Church, the Anglican Church, and the

00:12:46.380 Presbyterian Church, I believe the Anglican tradition has preserved this reformed Catholic

00:12:51.840 identity most effectively. And they did this because they didn't just ask, what did Calvin

00:12:57.700 say? Or what did Luther say? They asked, what does scripture say? And how did the ancient church

00:13:03.460 understand it? See, scripture was supreme, but scripture was not treated as though nobody had

00:13:09.860 ever read it for 1500 years. The Anglican church sought to unite the historic faith and practice

00:13:16.000 of the Western and Eastern church with the doctrinal clarity recovered in the Reformation

00:13:20.680 because they believed scripture and history belong together. And they saw the doctrines

00:13:26.300 of grace and justification in Augustine and Chrysostom. They saw the supreme authority

00:13:31.900 of scripture in men like Athanasius and Cyril. They saw a rich sacramentology in the early

00:13:38.000 fathers. And they saw Episcopal church order and historic ecclesiology in men like Ignatius or

00:13:44.280 Irenaeus or Cyprian. So for them, the Reformation was not a rejection of the ancient church.

00:13:50.280 It was a recovery of it, a return to scripture read in continuity with the best of the historic

00:13:57.580 Catholic universal traditions. So to call yourself Anglican really means to be reformed,

00:14:05.320 and that can actually, in some ways, be too narrow. To call the term, you know, Catholic,

00:14:12.220 that would be also too broad. And so the best term is really reformed Catholic. Now, if you

00:14:20.160 followed me for long, you might know that my story is that for many years, Presbyterianism

00:14:26.780 gave me much of what I was looking for. And I still have tremendous affection for the

00:14:33.100 Presbyterian and the broader Reformed tradition. In fact, our church still uses the label Reformed

00:14:38.620 Church. But historically, Presbyterianism arose from the reforming movements within the Church

00:14:45.420 of England. So you can almost like think of Presbyterianism as like a subset of the Anglican

00:14:50.840 church. And for years, I have found myself standing between these two great classical

00:14:57.040 Protestant traditions between Presbyterianism and Anglicanism. You can even look to my last video

00:15:02.440 where I mentioned that I would often call myself Anglitarian. So theologically, I was deeply

00:15:07.560 reformed. Ecclesiastically and liturgically, I was deeply Catholic. I love the seriousness of

00:15:14.260 Presbyterian theology. I love its covenant theology, its doctrine of God, its commitment to

00:15:19.160 exposition, its understanding of the sovereignty of God. I like the intellectual rigor that comes

00:15:24.840 with it. Now, the word Catholic means universal or according to the whole. And so the Catholic

00:15:32.400 faith is the faith confessed by the whole church across time and place. But for this video, when I

00:15:38.340 say the term Catholic, I'm speaking about the first 500 years of the church. So the Trinity

00:15:43.320 is Catholic. The incarnation is Catholic. The deity of Christ is Catholic. The resurrection 0.92

00:15:48.160 is Catholic. The apostles' creed is Catholic. The Nicene Creed is Catholic. So the reformers

00:15:55.060 weren't arguing Rome is too Catholic, but rather Rome isn't Catholic enough because Catholicity

00:16:03.640 requires historic continuity, not merely with the medieval developments, but with scripture,

00:16:09.100 the apostles, the ancient fathers, and the early councils. And they saw that Rome had strayed from

00:16:16.240 the historic Catholic faith. Now, before I walk through kind of these three dimensions

00:16:22.360 of the Anglican tradition that give me great peace and joy, I want to explain why Anglicanism

00:16:29.260 has such a unique claim to what I would call Catholic Christianity. So let me just share a

00:16:34.880 little bit about the history of the English church, because this is where I think one of

00:16:39.840 the most common Roman or Orthodox objections to Anglicanism begins to fall apart. So most people

00:16:47.240 have heard some version of this story, right? England was Roman Catholic. Henry VIII wanted

00:16:54.380 to divorce Catherine of Aragon. The Pope refused, so Henry invented the Church of England, right?

00:17:00.720 It makes for a memorable story, but it confuses the Reformation of the English Church with the

00:17:05.800 origin of the English Church. So the English Reformation happened in the 16th century,

00:17:10.940 but the English Church did not begin in the 16th century. Christianity had existed in Britain

00:17:16.800 for at least 1,300 years before Henry VIII was born. So William Bright, the 19th century Oxford

00:17:23.660 priest and historian, he makes this clear in a book that he wrote called Chapters of Early

00:17:28.980 English church history. Now, Bright is careful not to build the case on these common legends.

00:17:34.840 There are traditions that Joseph of Arimathea or Peter or Paul or another apostolic figure

00:17:40.340 personally evangelized Britain, but those are difficult to prove, so I don't think that we

00:17:45.740 actually need them. By AD 314, Britain already had an organized Episcopal church. British bishops

00:17:53.300 attended the Council of Arles alongside bishops from the wider Western church. So by the early

00:17:59.680 300s, there were already Christians, clergy, monasteries, bishops, customs, and an established

00:18:06.500 Catholic church in Britain, which was not under Roman jurisdiction. Now, most scholars believe

00:18:12.700 that Christianity made it to Britain between the years of 150 to 200 AD. So then nearly 300 years

00:18:20.120 later, in AD 597, Pope Gregory the Great sent a monk named Augustine, not Augustine of Hippo,

00:18:28.040 different Augustine, to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons who had settled much of what we now call

00:18:34.180 England. And he arrived and was like, wow, there's already a strong and existing church here. Now,

00:18:42.140 even Beattie, the 8th century British monk of Northumbria, who deeply admired Gregory and

00:18:48.200 Augustine, and wrote from a strongly Roman perspective, by the way, preserved this history.

00:18:53.820 And this is where the relationship between Britain and Rome becomes very important. So the ancient

00:18:59.420 British church was not anti-Roman. These Christians were part of the wider Catholic church.

00:19:06.060 They attended several councils from 150 all the way to 500. And they shared the faith of the

00:19:16.020 Western church and respected Rome as an ancient and highly honored apostolic diocese. But communion

00:19:24.020 with Rome is not the same thing as being under Rome's jurisdiction. It's especially, it didn't

00:19:29.800 mean that the British church was under the universal papal jurisdiction of Rome because

00:19:34.460 that claim didn't even fully exist until about the 10th century. Now, church government in this

00:19:40.560 period was still strongly regional. Okay, so bishops had jurisdictions. Metropolitans had

00:19:46.220 jurisdictions. Ancient dioceses had particular spheres of authority. In fact, when Augustine

00:19:51.800 asked Gregory how he should relate to the bishops of Gaul and to Britain, Gregory told him that he

00:19:59.580 had no jurisdiction over the bishops of Gaul because their existing ecclesiastical authority

00:20:05.060 had to be respected. Now, Gregory did attempt to place the British bishops under Augustine's

00:20:11.140 oversight. And when Augustine tried to exercise that authority, something fascinating happened.

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00:20:57.300 So Augustine met with representatives of the British church and attempted to bring them

00:21:02.120 into conformity with Roman practices. Bede even records this over this kind of calculation of the

00:21:08.680 date of Easter, certain baptismal customs that they were discussing, and cooperation in evangelizing

00:21:14.920 the broader Anglo-Saxons. Now, at the second meeting in 603 AD, seven British bishops came

00:21:22.160 with representatives from the great monastery of Bangor in Wales. Augustine presented his demands,

00:21:28.180 and the British bishops refused them again, okay? They did not reason with, you know, this idea that

00:21:36.140 you were sent by the Bishop of Rome, therefore the matter is settled and you must submit. No,

00:21:40.120 that's not what happened. Now, we need to be careful when we think about this historically.

00:21:44.660 So the British Christians were not some sort of like proto-Protestants. They were thoroughly

00:21:49.520 Catholic. They were Episcopal. They were sacramental Christians. And that's actually

00:21:54.760 part of my point. Okay, they show that there was an ancient Catholic Christianity in Britain

00:22:01.020 that did not originate with Augustine's Roman mission and did not yet operate according to

00:22:07.760 the later medieval model of the universal papal jurisdiction. Now, the argument is not that Britain

00:22:14.100 had nothing to do with Rome. The argument is that Rome and Catholicity were not synonymous. Okay,

00:22:20.200 the British church was an ancient apostolic church independent of Rome. So Britain was in 0.94

00:22:26.620 communion with Rome and participated in the same wider Catholic church without the Bishop of Rome

00:22:33.580 processing or possessing this unquestionable jurisdiction over every bishop in the British

00:22:39.900 Christendom. Okay, that's a very important point. See, then came what was called the Synod of Whitby,

00:22:46.600 And this is in 664 AD. And so we've fast-forwarded like 60 years here. Now, some people claim that

00:22:54.700 this is where the English church finally submitted to Rome. But again, I think that's too simplistic.

00:23:00.320 Okay, the central issue of Whitby, again, was this calculation of Easter, along with the related

00:23:05.960 customs, such as the kind of monastic tonsure, which is essentially the clergy haircuts. But

00:23:11.100 King Oswee, who is the king of Northumbria, ultimately chose the Roman Easter calculation

00:23:16.720 over the Celtic practice, which brought the English church into greater conformity with

00:23:23.300 the continental Western Christianity, which included obviously Rome. But that was still

00:23:28.340 not the same thing as England formally submitting to Rome's papal jurisdiction.

00:23:33.280 Now, the relationship developed gradually over time. So the British church existed centuries

00:23:41.020 before Augustine's mission in 597. And even after Whitby in 664, the English church retained

00:23:48.920 substantial local and royal independence. It was only after the Norman conquest in 1066,

00:23:56.900 and then really through the papal reforms of the 11th and 12th centuries because of the great

00:24:00.960 schism between the East and the West, that Rome's jurisdiction became more and more deeply embedded

00:24:06.220 through papal power and canon law. And there were greater appeals to actually England being under

00:24:12.400 the Roman Pope. So the English church's communion with Rome was ancient, but its jurisdiction

00:24:19.740 was a much later development. So when we finally arrive at the 16th century in the 1500s,

00:24:27.280 the Anglican claim was never, we are creating a new church. It was, we are reforming our ancient

00:24:34.800 British church according to the word of God. And that is vital for this discussion. The English

00:24:40.940 reformers believed Christianity in Britain was ancient, Catholic, Episcopal, sacramental, long

00:24:46.780 before the papacy developed the full jurisdiction claims that they were now rejecting. So when

00:24:53.680 England rejected papal supremacy in 1534, the reformers did not believe, again, they were

00:24:59.820 abandoning the Catholic church. They believed they were recovering the ancient identity of their own

00:25:06.000 Anglo tradition of the Catholic church. And this is why they retained the ancient collects, the

00:25:11.980 liturgical forms, the fathers, the early councils, the historic rhythms of Christian worship.

00:25:17.460 what they rejected was the idea that submission to the bishop of Rome is what makes a church

00:25:24.580 Catholic. And this is the point that I really want people to understand. Rome unquestionably

00:25:30.180 has ancient roots, but Rome does not have a monopoly on antiquity or Catholicity. You have

00:25:37.680 the Eastern church that spoke Greek. You had the Roman church that spoke Latin. And then you had

00:25:44.800 the ancient English church that spoke Britonic. And this, you know, the language eventually morphed

00:25:50.660 to Germanic and then to actual Old English and then to English. So the British church is ancient

00:25:56.960 too, okay? The papacy is rejected by both the Orthodox and the Reformed church. So Henry VIII

00:26:06.120 and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, did not invent the Anglican church in England,

00:26:12.960 They reformed an ancient English church that had existed on British soil for more than a

00:26:19.800 millennium. Now, before I go further, I just want to make two important distinctions. The Church

00:26:27.660 of England is not the same thing as Anglicanism. They're very related, but not exactly the same

00:26:34.780 thing. And historic Anglicanism is not the same thing as Anglo-Catholicism. So the Church of

00:26:41.200 England is one particular national church within the broader Anglican tradition. Now, Anglicanism

00:26:46.780 is much larger than the Church of England by itself, right? And the Archbishop of Canterbury

00:26:52.460 is not some sort of Anglican pope. It's more like the East, the Anglican communion kind of consists

00:26:58.760 of autonomous provinces or national churches. There isn't like some single bishop with universal

00:27:05.880 jurisdiction over every Anglican church in the world. The Archbishop of Canterbury has no

00:27:11.900 ecclesiastical jurisdiction over, say, the Anglican church in the United States.

00:27:16.620 So second, when I call myself Anglican or Reformed Catholic, I do not mean Anglo-Catholic.

00:27:24.120 Anglo-Catholics, that movement arose much later and often reintroduced doctrines and practices

00:27:31.000 that the Anglican confessions and formularies rejected. Things like prayers to the saints,

00:27:36.560 or the Marian devotions, or the Eucharistic sacrifice of the mass, other distinctly Roman

00:27:41.760 practices. I'm talking about classical Anglicanism, the Anglicanism that is expressed in the 39

00:27:48.720 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, the Historic Creeds, and the homilies

00:27:54.280 that we see, again, in the English Reformation. And I say that because every group has their

00:28:00.620 kind of related subgroups. Now, even Rome has its different rights, and Orthodox has its

00:28:07.400 national churches. And for our church personally, our actual local church, we are what I would call

00:28:13.280 confessionally Anglican, and are friends with other Anglican churches in our state that are

00:28:20.620 parts of greater communions, whether it's the ACNA or the REC. And because the 39 articles were

00:28:29.120 written in the 16th century, they obviously, we know, don't address every single controversy

00:28:37.160 confronting the church that is today. So, you know, when I say confessionally Anglican,

00:28:42.880 we're actually developing kind of another document that kind of sits around this document

00:28:47.120 that we're calling the Reformed Catholic Confession. And it's not to replace the 39

00:28:51.660 articles with the Book of Common Prayer, but just to accompany them. And it allows us to speak

00:28:56.720 directly to the doctrines and the cultural questions that were either not contested in

00:29:01.880 the 16th century or were not addressed with precision, you know, in the way that our moment

00:29:07.700 requires them to be. So questions surrounding, you know, women and clergy and church offices

00:29:13.820 or nationalism or Israel or other modern controversies. So as I mentioned before,

00:29:20.120 there are three dimensions of Anglicanism that I believe makes it unique and the most,

00:29:25.840 what I would say biblically and historically accurate tradition of Christianity. And so I'm

00:29:30.120 going to give you those three. So the first thing is what I would call prima scriptura. Now in

00:29:35.700 substance, this is really still sola scriptura. So I'm not denying sola scriptura, but I think

00:29:39.840 prima scriptura captures the Anglican emphasis a little bit better. So Rome effectively operates

00:29:46.140 with kind of what they call like a three-legged stool, right? Scripture, sacred tradition, and

00:29:50.220 the magisterium with the church kind of claiming an authoritative role and determining and defining

00:29:55.480 the meaning of both scripture and tradition. Now, Anglicanism also values three things,

00:30:01.340 scripture, tradition, and reason. But they are not three equal authorities, okay? Scripture

00:30:07.540 is supreme. Article 6 of the 39 articles says that holy scripture contains, quote,

00:30:13.720 all things necessary to salvation. And article 20 says the church may not, quote,

00:30:19.380 ordain anything that is contrary to God's written word, end quote. So tradition and reason

00:30:25.460 essentially serve scripture, not the other way around. And that distinction is what makes

00:30:32.260 the Anglican position so compelling to me. We're not saying me and my Bible alone, you know,

00:30:39.140 and 2,000 years of Christians can be ignored. That's not what we're saying. The fathers matter,

00:30:44.640 right? The creeds matter. The councils matter. The historic interpretation of the church 0.67

00:30:47.800 matters. Reason matters. Those are very real authorities. But none of them can bind the

00:30:54.520 conscience where Scripture does not bind it. And none of them can overturn what Scripture clearly

00:31:01.020 teaches. Scripture is essentially the final court of appeal. And this is beautifully seen in

00:31:08.340 Reformed Catholicism. It avoids Rome's errors of giving later ecclesiastical tradition and

00:31:14.940 authority capable of binding the conscience beyond scripture, but it also avoids the low

00:31:20.700 Protestant error of acting as if every Christian starts with this kind of blank slate, self-interpreted

00:31:26.640 Bible and no inherited wisdom. So scripture is supreme, tradition is authoritative,

00:31:33.300 the reason is employed, and the historic church is received as a witness, not a master,

00:31:38.220 but a witness to the Word of God. My second reason I believe Anglicanism is the greatest

00:31:47.320 expression of Reformed Catholicity or being a Reformed Catholic is the Book of Common Prayer.

00:31:54.120 Now, before this, the English church worshiped primarily through a collection of Latin service

00:32:00.240 books, especially the Sir Amuse. The first edition of the prayer book was produced, I think,

00:32:07.360 in 1549. Then we had another development of that. It was produced by the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

00:32:15.080 And then you had another version in 1552, then 1559, 1604. And then the final edition,

00:32:21.180 it was in 1662. Now that 1662 edition became the classical and authoritative expression of

00:32:28.960 Anglican worship. And together with the 39 Articles of Religion, the Ordinal and the Homilies,

00:32:34.820 it forms what we now know as the historic doctrinal liturgical foundation of Anglicanism.

00:32:40.700 And what I love about the Book of Common Prayer, or the BCP, as other people call it,

00:32:46.340 is that it gives Anglican Christianity a common rhythm. Rome has its missal, and I think it's

00:32:55.620 breviary. Eastern Orthodox has its own kind of received liturgical offices, but Anglicanism has

00:33:03.880 the Book of Common Prayer, and it's all in one place. And the name tells you what Cranmer was

00:33:10.900 really trying to accomplish, Common Prayer. It's the Book of Common Prayer. And the idea

00:33:16.680 is that the priest, the family, the businessman, the farmer, the child are all being formed by

00:33:23.600 the same prayers, the same Psalms, the same scriptures, the same Christian calendar. It

00:33:29.640 creates this kind of shared devotional life across the entire Anglican tradition. And at the center

00:33:36.560 of the prayer book is what is called the daily office. And so you have morning and evening

00:33:42.440 prayer. It's basically a morning and evening devotional. In fact, the prayer book has often

00:33:47.380 been called, quote, the Bible ordered for prayer, end quote. Now, Cranmer did not invent this out

00:33:55.160 of thin air. Like he took the ancient cycle of daily Christian prayer, especially the kind of

00:34:01.320 medieval English offices, the Matins, the Lods, the Vespers, the Compline, and condensed them

00:34:07.320 into two accessible services that ordinary Christians could actually use. And they are

00:34:14.540 saturated with scripture. The Psalter is actually built into the prayer book. So you have all 150

00:34:20.760 Psalms in there, along with a lectionary that systematically carries Christians through the

00:34:25.940 Bible. You get through almost the whole Bible in an entire year. So rather than waking up every

00:34:31.380 morning wondering, you know, what should I read or what should I pray? The Anglican church gives

00:34:35.560 you this kind of well-worn path. You know, you confess your sins, you hear God's word, you pray

00:34:40.840 the ancient collects alongside Christians. And by the way, the word collect is just another 0.51

00:34:45.980 word for prayer, the ancient prayers. And you start praying these things and you start finding

00:34:51.520 yourself in line with the same words and the same prayers and the same liturgy of the ancient church

00:34:58.560 and the medieval church and the church even today. And so the BCP is much more than a devotional

00:35:06.260 book. It's essentially the pastoral and liturgical handbook of Anglican Christianity. It gives the

00:35:13.360 church forms on baptism, on holy communion, marriage, burial, ordination, visitation of the

00:35:20.420 sick, other major moments of the Christian life. In fact, there's a section that is in there on

00:35:26.320 bringing communion to the sick. In fact, I just used it last week. I brought communion to one of

00:35:31.740 members of our church that was sick, and I was able to follow this process that was really a

00:35:37.700 beautiful, small, miniature liturgy that I was able to distribute communion to this member.

00:35:44.020 And so some of the most recognizable phrases in the English-speaking world actually come from the

00:35:49.780 BCP. We all know the phrase, you know, quote, dearly beloved, we are gathered together here

00:35:56.380 today in the sight of God, right? That's the BCP in their marriage ceremony, right? The prayer

00:36:02.660 book ultimately takes you from, say, you know, baptism through weekly worship, through daily

00:36:08.920 prayer, into marriage, into sickness, into death, into burial. And so it's this liturgical life,

00:36:15.600 in other words, that it gives the Christian shape to your entire life. Now, I personally own and

00:36:23.080 appreciate the 1662. I have it right here. This is one example. This is the 1662. You can pick up

00:36:30.440 a copy online. And I like this version, but I actually find myself using this version instead.

00:36:39.560 And this is the 2019 from the ACNA. It is a English modernized version. So it uses the ESV

00:36:48.360 for its scripture, but it still keeps the ancient language where it is appropriate.

00:36:54.380 And so there's another version by the REC, which is the Reformed Episcopal Church.

00:36:58.960 And Episcopal is just another way of saying Anglican. It's like a synonym for the American

00:37:02.720 version of the Anglican Church. So Reformed Episcopal Church, they have another BCP that's

00:37:06.920 really built off the 1662. Now the 2019 is built off of the 1662. It's just a little bit easier to

00:37:14.440 read. It has a couple modifications that might make it a little bit easier to adopt into your

00:37:19.760 own life. And so I've enjoyed using these as well. And so I think the genius of Anglicanism becomes

00:37:29.180 obvious in this prayer book, right? The prayer book gives you this kind of continuity historically

00:37:36.620 and locally. So churches don't have to kind of improvise their own Christianity all the time,

00:37:42.860 It gives pastors a strong inherited structure without pretending that every local circumstance

00:37:48.780 must be identical. There is room for pastoral adjustments and variations. I've done recently

00:37:55.980 a wedding, and I didn't use the exact liturgy of the wedding ceremony. Same thing with the

00:38:03.420 bringing communion to the sick. I didn't use the exact structure because there's some variation

00:38:07.800 within it. There is room for pastoral adjustments, but there also is a center of gravity, right?

00:38:13.700 There is a structure that we should be following that is proven to be good and helpful and useful

00:38:19.340 and true for many, many centuries. And when an entire communion lives within this kind of same

00:38:26.100 rhythm, something powerful happens, right? Christians across different churches are praying

00:38:30.800 the same Psalms, hearing the same scriptures, confessing the same creeds, celebrating the same

00:38:36.300 great events in the life of Christ in the church calendar. They're being shaped by the same gospel

00:38:41.400 centered prayers. And that creates a level of unity and continuity and memory and formation

00:38:46.840 that I don't think you get as easily in other traditions. Now, to me, this is profoundly

00:38:53.840 reformed Catholic, right? It is Catholic because it receives and preserves the ancient patterns of

00:39:01.180 Christian worship. And it's reformed because Cranmer and the architects of the Book of Common

00:39:06.600 Prayer placed those patterns under scripture. They stripped away what the reformers believed

00:39:12.540 Rome had obscured of the gospel and filled the worship of the church with biblical language.

00:39:18.840 So the Book of Common Prayer does not merely tell Anglicans what they need to believe.

00:39:24.880 that's part of it, but it teaches Anglicans how to live and pray and worship and marry and suffer

00:39:31.820 and die and hope together as one church under the word of God. And so I appreciate that. I think that

00:39:39.860 in a world where it can kind of feel chaotic and lacking unity, this book seems to offer as a tool

00:39:47.840 to create a sense of continuity, again, not just with the history, but also with your local church.

00:39:54.140 Now, my final reason that I believe Anglicanism captures the kind of Reformed Catholic moniker

00:40:01.640 so well is its approach to worship. And what is generally called what I, you know, you might have

00:40:09.380 heard this term, the normative principle of worship. Now, historically, Protestants have

00:40:13.900 tended to follow one of two principles, the regulative principle of worship and the normative

00:40:19.000 principle of worship. Now, the regulative principle says the church should include in worship only

00:40:25.080 those elements which God has explicitly commanded in Scripture, and the Presbyterians often fall

00:40:32.200 into that camp roughly. The normative principle, which is held by the Lutherans and the Anglicans,

00:40:37.680 says the church may use practices Scripture does not explicitly command, so as long as

00:40:45.640 scripture does not forbid them, and they are consistent with biblical truth and good order

00:40:52.040 and Christian edification. Now, I have a lot of respect for the regulative principle because

00:40:58.160 its instincts are right, right? God determines how he is to be worshiped, right? Not us.

00:41:03.440 And so Jesus says in John 4, 24, quote, God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship

00:41:09.860 in spirit and truth, end quote. But even churches committed to the regulative principle have to

00:41:16.040 distinguish between elements of worship and the circumstances around them. So scripture commands

00:41:20.520 preaching, we know that, but not whether the sermon is 30 minutes or 45 minutes. You know,

00:41:26.060 scripture commands singing, but not whether we can use a hymnal or a projector or an organ or

00:41:32.100 an instrument. Scripture commands, you know, the church to gather, but doesn't talk about pews and

00:41:38.480 pulpits and microphones and service times and a particular order of service besides kind of the

00:41:44.000 broad template of liturgy. And so every church exercises judgment somewhere. And I think

00:41:49.960 scripture itself gives us room for that. And what convinced me of the legitimacy of the normative

00:41:55.720 principle was that God never commanded Israel in the law of Moses to build synagogues and gather

00:42:02.280 in them every Sabbath for prayer or scripture reading or teaching, right? Yet by the time of

00:42:08.640 Christ, synagogue worship was well-established, and Jesus participated in that life, right? Luke

00:42:15.080 says that he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, quote, as was his custom, end quote. And likewise,

00:42:22.260 the Feast of Dedication, right? It was not one of the feasts that was instituted by Moses, yet

00:42:27.800 John 10 records Jesus in Jerusalem during that feast without condemning it. And so scripture

00:42:34.800 seems to recognize that God's people can develop useful religious customs that are not individually

00:42:42.720 commanded, provided that they don't contradict what God has commanded. And that this is, you know,

00:42:48.420 and that it's again, edifying and good order and in principle aligned with scripture. And I think

00:42:54.120 this is where the kind of historic Anglican church gets it right. You know, the normative

00:43:01.080 principle gives the church the freedom to receive practices that are ancient and reverent and useful

00:43:07.340 and consistent with scripture without pretending that every detail must, you know, be explicitly

00:43:13.480 commanded in the New Testament. So the Anglican pastor can, you know, wear vestments or have the

00:43:20.040 congregation kneel for prayer, or make the sign of the cross, or follow the Christian calendar.

00:43:25.840 Use written prayers or the ancient collects. Worship in beautiful buildings, right? None of

00:43:31.780 those things save us. We know that. None of those things bind our conscience as though God commanded

00:43:36.880 them. And none of them contradict scripture. And so that last part matters, right? Because

00:43:44.580 the weakness of the normative principle is that freedom can become license. And, you know,

00:43:51.740 once a church says, you know, hey, if scripture doesn't forbid it, we can do it, right? Once you

00:43:56.740 do that, it can kind of feel like you've cut the rope from the anchor and you're just kind of can

00:44:01.560 drift off into doing so many things that are, you know, interpreted to be okay, when in reality

00:44:09.400 they probably aren't. Now ceremonies, you know, they can have ceremonies that could become

00:44:14.500 essentially superstitious or helpful traditions can slowly take on kind of this force of divine

00:44:19.840 command, like you must do this. Like Rome, you know, says that you must pray to saints,

00:44:25.080 or you cannot at least reject that reality of praying to saints. And so when I say embrace

00:44:31.900 the normative principle, I mean a restrained, historically reformed use of it, right? Not

00:44:38.420 kind of this later Anglo-Catholic tendency to import medieval Roman practices simply because

00:44:43.860 they are ancient or beautiful. So the anchor is still scripture, right? There are guardrails too,

00:44:50.960 right? We have the 39 Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ancient Creeds, and the practice of

00:44:56.100 the early Catholic Church. The sign of the cross is actually a good example, right? The classical

00:45:03.260 prayer book retained the sign of the cross only in baptism, right? So I recently baptized a child

00:45:11.860 last week, and when I baptized them, I put the sign of the cross on their forehead. And, you know,

00:45:19.520 again, not because it has some sort of magical power, we don't believe that, but because it's

00:45:24.540 an outward Christian sign that's been around since the very early part of the church pointing

00:45:29.360 to an inward reality. This person belongs to the crucified Christ, right? That's essentially what's

00:45:34.800 being communicated there. And the same is true of, say, like the clerical collar, right? You may

00:45:39.600 have seen some of my sermons. I wear a clerical collar. And scripture does not command a minister

00:45:45.080 to wear one, but it also doesn't command him to wear khakis and a button-up shirt. So the question

00:45:51.400 becomes, what fittingly communicates the dignity and order of Christian worship or pastoral

00:45:59.140 authority? And that requires historical understanding, Christian wisdom, doctrinal

00:46:05.820 understanding. And again, that's why I find this so compelling about the Anglican tradition.

00:46:12.500 I don't want Rome, where traditions can eventually bind the conscience beyond Scripture.

00:46:16.520 I also don't want an evangelicalism so suspicious of tradition that every generation has to reinvent

00:46:22.640 Christian worship from scratch. And so I want ordered freedom. I want scripture to establish

00:46:30.300 the boundaries, the gospel to remain at the center, and the historic church to help inform

00:46:35.300 how we worship within those boundaries. And if your church has a particular set boundaries,

00:46:42.540 you can produce those as we talked about, like an accompanying document to the confession or

00:46:49.180 the prayer book. And you can mark where that normative principle does have its limits. And

00:46:53.600 I think that's actually helpful. So in the end, I appreciate the Anglican tradition because it

00:47:02.140 rejected the supremacy of the Pope without rejecting Episcopal government. So you still

00:47:08.280 have bishops involved. It rejected the sacrifice of the mass without rejecting, you know, the

00:47:15.480 Eucharist or Holy Communion. It rejected transubstantiation without reducing communion

00:47:20.500 to kind of this empty memorial. It rejected the invocation of the saints without rejecting the

00:47:26.780 commemoration of the saints, right? We commemorate the saints in a variety of ways. It rejected

00:47:32.620 the ecclesiastical traditions that contradicted scripture without rejecting tradition itself.

00:47:38.880 And most of all, it rejected Rome's doctrine of justification while preserving the imputed

00:47:45.760 righteousness of Christ and infant baptism and real presence communion and deep liturgy. And

00:47:50.640 as I said, you know, bishops and priests and deacons and ancient prayers and creeds and

00:47:54.100 the historic rhythms of Catholic Christianity, that first 500 years of the church.

00:47:59.840 and that's fascinating to me. That's stable to me and it means there is another rich road, right?

00:48:08.520 You have the East and they have their positions and you have Rome and you have their positions

00:48:14.380 and then you have the Anglican tradition, the Reformed Catholic tradition and you don't have

00:48:22.040 to choose between kind of historical amnesia and Eastern Orthodoxy, right? You could be Reformed

00:48:29.220 Catholic. Again, not Roman Catholic, not Anglo-Catholic, not an evangelical who's embarrassed

00:48:36.080 by the Reformation, but again, a Reformed Catholic. So if you're Protestant and you're

00:48:42.660 exhausted by kind of the denominational chaos, become a Reformed Catholic or look into it,

00:48:48.500 right? If you're a Roman Catholic or an Orthodox Christian who loves the beauty and reverence and

00:48:55.020 history and order and sacraments and catholicity of your tradition, but increasingly find yourself

00:49:00.480 unable to reconcile some of their doctrines with scripture, become a reformed Catholic.

00:49:08.600 And so I think the Anglican tradition does offer that beautiful third option, which you get both,

00:49:16.820 again, the early Catholic church, the first 500 years of the church, and the reformed doctrine,

00:49:23.020 and that combination together. So it really is quite beautiful. So on that note, let's move on.

00:49:29.300 Let's move into the weekly audit. Now, this first video is a short video,

00:49:40.300 and it's from an Anglican priest explaining basically what I just said, but in different

00:49:44.180 words, and I thought it was worth watching. Let's take a look. If Anglicanism is just a little bit

00:49:48.740 Protestant and a little bit Catholic. What we're really saying is that Anglicanism is just a 0.60

00:49:53.460 watered down version. And if you want the real thing, the full strength version, you're going

00:49:59.140 to go elsewhere. But there's two problems with this concept of the middle way. The first one

00:50:04.340 is historically, there's no evidence for it. The classical Anglicans did not understand themselves

00:50:10.660 as being somewhere in between the Protestants and the Catholics. And I think one could sum it up this

00:50:17.660 way, that they understood the Reformation of Catholic tradition to mean that they were fully

00:50:24.740 Reformed and fully Catholic at the same time. That's a paradox, but it's also an extraordinarily

00:50:32.820 rich one, because it allows us, if we accept it, to make the whole of the Reformed and Catholic

00:50:41.380 traditions our own without falling into a kind of muddled mess in the middle.

00:50:48.960 Yeah, I appreciated that clarification on just being, again, it's fully Reformed and

00:50:54.940 fully Catholic.

00:50:56.360 I think he gets that right.

00:50:57.420 Now, this next video is of a young, looks like a former evangelical who seems to have

00:51:04.840 just maybe found the Book of Common Prayer or the Anglican tradition or the Reformed

00:51:09.620 world and has seemingly, you know, the BCP has been very helpful for him. And I like it because

00:51:16.900 he speaks kind of to the average evangelical in a very testimonial-like fashion. And it's a few

00:51:24.120 minutes long. It's like four something minutes long, maybe five minutes long. But I think it's

00:51:28.400 worth a watch. Let's take a quick look. This Protestant prayer book is the most Catholic

00:51:32.300 thing I've ever read, and it's completely changed my faith. I was first introduced to it as a youth 1.00

00:51:37.080 pastor. And while being a youth pastor can sound awesome to some people, for me, I was at an all-time

00:51:42.560 spiritual low. I was feeling discouraged for a lot of different reasons. But a big area of my life

00:51:47.380 that was really weak was my prayer life. I would regularly sit down, try to read the Bible, and

00:51:52.380 after I was done, pray. And no words would come to mind. I didn't know what to say. It felt like I had

00:51:56.920 a million things to pray about and nothing to pray about all at once. It's intimidating sometimes to

00:52:02.140 pray, and I think it's okay to say that. As I was reading different books and exploring ancient

00:52:06.420 Christianity, I discovered something called the Liturgy of the Hours. Historically, Christians

00:52:10.300 have always had marked hours in their day to pray. The Didache, one of the earliest Christian

00:52:14.560 manuscripts we have, instructs Christians to pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day. Typically,

00:52:19.120 this was in the morning, then the afternoon, and then the evening. Later on, monastic Christians 0.99

00:52:22.980 developed even more practices and hours for prayer. And I was fascinated by this idea. In the

00:52:27.980 tradition I was a part of, prayer was spontaneous and emotional. We were often warned not to pray

00:52:32.440 because we had to, we had to make sure we were praying because we wanted to, which is kind of

00:52:36.940 a head trip the longer you're in that kind of mindset. How did I know I really wanted to pray?

00:52:41.560 Prayer is good. Should I make myself do something good even if I don't feel like it right away?

00:52:45.820 There were so many questions that the Liturgy of the Hours seemed to answer. And so I was looking

00:52:50.240 for ways that this could be applicable to my life. How could I do this as a regular Christian? And

00:52:55.400 then I was introduced to the Book of Common Prayer. The Book of Common Prayer comes from

00:52:59.060 the Anglican tradition, and it's a collection of prayers, liturgies, and it had a section for the

00:53:03.560 Liturgy of the Hours called the Daily Office. These are prayers for the morning, the afternoon,

00:53:08.060 the evening, and before bed. Now, I was hesitant to try and use something like this at first,

00:53:13.020 because I was taught that if prayers were written or wrote, it didn't mean anything. The curious

00:53:18.200 part of me was more persistent, and honestly, I was willing to try anything to revitalize my prayer

00:53:23.500 life, and so I started praying the Daily Office. My very first impression of cracking this thing

00:53:27.960 open was that you begin the daily office with a confession of sin. The very first thing the daily

00:53:32.660 office has you say to God is almighty and most merciful father we have erred and strayed from

00:53:38.340 your ways like a lost sheep. Every single morning I'd begun to confess my sins to God and that was

00:53:43.480 not something I was used to doing. Confession was like a break glass in case of emergency

00:53:48.220 practice for me. I only did it if I had like sinned really really really bad and I was feeling

00:53:52.800 really really really guilty about it and then I'd go to God and say God I messed up I'm sorry.

00:53:57.420 Starting every day with confession and repentance

00:53:59.960 was like starting every day with a cold shower.

00:54:02.120 It's uncomfortable at first,

00:54:03.640 but the more I did,

00:54:04.340 the more I started noticing the benefits.

00:54:06.040 It's the perfect way to get into the right mindset

00:54:08.200 of prayer and spending time with God.

00:54:10.840 My other favorite thing about the Book of Common Prayer

00:54:12.740 is it has lectionaries in the back,

00:54:13.980 but it also has a lectionary

00:54:15.060 for your own personal time in scripture.

00:54:17.100 And this I really, really loved

00:54:18.940 because I don't know about you,

00:54:19.800 but sometimes it's really hard to know what to read

00:54:22.320 when you go through the Bible.

00:54:23.460 The lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer

00:54:24.900 is a consistent guide.

00:54:25.980 It has me reading scriptures that I wouldn't necessarily choose for myself.

00:54:29.320 And it also has me read scriptures that fit into the church calendar.

00:54:32.300 For instance, in the month of February, you mostly go through Genesis and Exodus for your Old Testament reading.

00:54:36.840 But on the Feast of St. Matthias, instead of an Old Testament reading, the lectionary has you read Acts 1, 15 through 26.

00:54:43.260 It's the perfect balance of going through a reading plan while also not ignoring the broader church calendar as a whole.

00:54:48.640 But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

00:54:50.300 I gotta be honest, written prayers were very uncomfortable for me at first.

00:54:54.040 It felt very unnatural saying what somebody else had written for me to pray

00:54:58.160 instead of just giving to God what was on my heart.

00:55:00.260 But two things have helped me get over this.

00:55:02.020 And the first is that honestly, the prayers written in here

00:55:03.980 summarize things way better than I ever could.

00:55:06.680 You ever go to God when you're really anxious or upset

00:55:08.660 and you just don't know what to say and so you just start rambling,

00:55:11.560 just like word vomiting everything to him?

00:55:13.820 Now, I don't believe he doesn't love that,

00:55:15.540 but I'd just like to offer up this prayer for trustfulness

00:55:18.100 in times of worry and anxiety that the Book of Common Prayer has.

00:55:21.280 Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things,

00:55:24.660 to dread nothing but the loss of you,

00:55:26.720 and to cast all our care on the one who cares for us.

00:55:29.360 Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties,

00:55:32.160 and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal.

00:55:36.960 Like, that just put it perfectly, right?

00:55:39.300 That summarized hours of anxious thinking into a paragraph that I could then give to God.

00:55:43.760 And that's the point of the collects and prayers in the Book of Common Prayer.

00:55:46.840 It's supposed to collect and gather the prayers of the people,

00:55:49.940 the prayers that you might have into a succinct summarized form.

00:55:53.160 But that doesn't mean there isn't a time and place to get vulnerable and authentic with your own thoughts.

00:55:57.440 And that's the second thing that helped me get over the written aspect of the prayer book.

00:56:01.500 After you go through the liturgical aspect of prayer and before you close,

00:56:05.020 there's a section that you can make as long or short as you want,

00:56:07.740 where you pray to God just on your own, unscripted.

00:56:11.120 And I try to make sure to never skip that moment of the daily office.

00:56:14.640 Not only that, but I found that using the prayer book has strengthened my spontaneous personal prayers that I give to God throughout the day.

00:56:21.480 Whether I'm in the car, whether I'm on a walk, I have found my own personal prayer life being strengthened by the vocabulary and the habits that I've formed by using the prayer book.

00:56:32.040 So, yeah, this has been a great tool for, you know, millions of Christians for many, many centuries.

00:56:40.140 Now, again, if you want to pick up one of these BCPs, you can grab the one that he had in that

00:56:46.780 video is actually the exact same one that I'm holding right here. This is just the one with

00:56:51.060 the leather cover. You can pick it up from Anglican House Publishers. I don't make any

00:56:55.380 money from that. They have a hardback. This is the pocket edition. And so you can pick up the

00:57:01.720 pocket edition. I like it because it's just easy to carry, but they have a full size as well.

00:57:06.040 and they have a hard cover, which I think is like, I don't know, maybe 35 bucks or something.

00:57:10.980 And then you can get the premium cover. The only thing I do like about this is you will find that

00:57:16.880 you need a lot of bookmarkers. Both of them have four bookmarkers, but I like that this version

00:57:23.500 has different color bookmarkers because once you start to understand it, you'll probably have to

00:57:28.300 watch a handful of videos on how to use the BCP. And there's lots of videos out there that can help

00:57:33.020 you do that. But again, you can pick that up at Anglican House Publishers. So hopefully this was

00:57:38.960 a helpful episode on what it means to be a Reformed Catholic. Again, you know, Reformed,

00:57:44.640 you have kind of that five solas of the Reformation, and then you have kind of that

00:57:48.980 quote about the five parts you have. You get, what is it? One canon, two testaments, three creeds,

00:57:57.300 four councils in the first 500 years of the church, right? So you kind of got that five solas in that

00:58:01.880 first 500 years of the church, that creates this beautiful reformed Catholic structure. So hopefully

00:58:07.680 that was helpful. That's a wrap for this episode of American Glory and for this season of American

00:58:12.180 Glory. Now, if you don't already, you can follow me on X or Instagram or YouTube. I'm posting new

00:58:18.180 content, honestly, almost every day. My featured book for this episode is, of course, my book

00:58:24.080 Reformed vs. Rome, which is available at the relearn.org. You can get it on Amazon. You can

00:58:30.840 listen to the audio. If you download the ReLearn app, you can get that in the App Store or in the

00:58:35.540 Google Play Store. Next week, again, I'm going to release a short season three trailer, and then

00:58:41.180 we're going to dive in the following week on The American Family. So my name is Dale Partridge.

00:58:46.460 Thank you for watching or listening to American Glory. I'll see you next week.

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The NXR Podcast - August 25, 2026

American Glory - Why I’m a Reformed Catholic (And What That Actually Means)

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