It’s always interesting to me to hear how other people became Anglican, and what side of Anglicanism they fell on as a result. My trek to Anglicanism took a lot of interesting turns. Grew up Baptist. Somewhere along the way became utterly fascinated with Judaism. Had a lot of questions and frustrations that the evangelicalism I grew up with could not answer satisfactorily about the relationship between old and New Testament. So, I continued as a Christian, but a strange one who studied Torah through classical Jewish sources, started using a Jewish prayerbook to order my prayer life somewhat, and occasionally attended synagogue. That life was how I learned about liturgy, prayerbooks, lectionary, a sacred calendar, and ultimately sacraments. Then, as a consequence of studying a lot of medieval literature in my college classes, I began reading church fathers, Dante, Tolkien, N T Wright, Chesterton, Endo, everything Lewis ever wrote, etc. They connected the Old and New Testaments in a way that nobody ever had for me before. Went back and forth about Catholicism and Anglicanism. Chose Anglicanism because, in my usual phrasing, it had all the connection to historic Christianity and all the disciplines/gifts of the church, while still leaving you room to work out your own salvation in fear and trembling. I don’t know how I ever had a spiritual life before the Book of Common Prayer, either.
I maintain that Cranmer was the second greatest writer of English in the history of the world. The greatest, Shakespeare, grew up on The Book of Common Prayer. My sense of what worship should be, what true worship is, was formed by my three year long Episcopal boyhood from ages four to seven, after which my mother's atavistic Svedish Lutheranism asserted itself.
When I was seven, I somehow survived a mass murder so violent that my surviving it comes close to bad taste. Five people, two of them my best friends, were killed, a sixth, also a child, somewhat older, has almost certainly had her life abbreviated by her terrible injuries. The harvest of PTSD was bountiful. Sixty five years after the fact, I know that others continue to suffer from it. I suspect a close friend had it so badly it prompted him to smoke and drink himself to death at forty one. But almost certainly its greatest PTSD casualty was a boy, ten at the time, whose stability was so upended by the event that in early adult years, he became a drug addict so relentless he was saved from an overdose only by finding a church in California which cleaned him up and sent him to medical school. Tragically, the church was People's Temple, and the boy become Dr Laurence Schacht was instrumental in determining exactly how much cyanide in how much Flavor Aid would be necessary to kill nine hundred people.
Evil has a hellish half life, hasn't it?
Six months after I was injured, I was considered close to being well enough to return to school but for one thing: an eardrum which refused to heal. The doctors knew how to rescue it, but my parents could tell from what they did not say why they were hesitant to put me through more surgery: they thought the stress would kill me.
Our Episcopal church had an every Monday morning at nine prayer service. My mother took me. The priest anointed me with oil and prayed for my general healing. At the next appointment with the otolaryngologist the eardrum was discovered to have healed.
I have never fully recovered from my other injuries. The consensus of two of my doctors is that somehow I defied odds as intimidating as twenty to one that I should have been in a nursing home by age twelve at the latest. God may not have given me the healing I wanted, but through that priest's prayers and the oil, I got the healing God wanted me to have.
I will always be grateful for that church, though its deterioration in the years that followed vindicated my mother's instinct that we should go elsewhere. But a believing Anglicanism is in my view the closest thing there is to what the Church is supposed to be.
Another reason we should celebrate being Anglican, not Baptist, is the music ( but in this the Lutherans do get to run us neck and neck, and so, I have to confess, do the Catholics ): Byrd, Handel, Bach, Hadyn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, the agnostic Ralph Vaughan Williams, many others.
Well. That’s certainly a story! It’s almost commonplace for me to hear people tell me of their kidnappings, survived knife or gun attacks, etc, but this one stands out even among the others. I’m glad that God gave you healing, even if it wasn’t the full physical restoration one would naturally crave. On the subject of writers, have you ever read C S Lewis’s English Literature in the Sixteenth Century? He spends a lengthy portion talking about Cranmer and the BCP. You may find that interesting. Regarding the musical tradition, you’re correct. Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic music is some of the greatest ever written. In defense of baptists, though, I do appreciate the simple piety of classic Baptist hymns. No matter how much great choral music I hear, “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” will always have a special place in my soul.
I'd like to read it, but Lewis' formidability as a scholar intimidates me. I have begun to consider a possibility, even a probability, I hadn't wanted to consider, which is that I will likely die with a lot of reading I didn't get to do. This should have been obvious to me of all people all along, but I have the instinctive relentlessness of a dachshund, and it has fooled me into supposing that, well, of course! Of course, I'm going to read ( whoever ), I just need to feel a little better, get a little more energy going for me! Then, you'll see!
( Deep sigh. )
I know the nature of what happened to me imposed a certain not unuseful separation from reality upon my psyche. It has enabled me to survive, but it's also undermined my sense of what I am likely to be able to do. Therefore, I have an excellent library, most of which I will never get to read. The people in my church get first dibs on it, after which the remainder goes to a major library which is fully a participant in the interlibrary loan program.
You have impelled me to look over the Lewis book again, to see if I dare to think I can gird my loins for it.
Oh, the sheer depth of his scholarship is way beyond me. I know English lit; I read anywhere from 60-100 books a year. I didn’t know 80% of the literature he talks about in that book. It was his scholarly magnum opus.
But, Lewis is also quick in his other work to point out that you don’t have to read an entire book. You can read the parts that have relevance to you. So, maybe you can split the difference, and read the parts that cover work you care about, and ignore the compendium of things you don’t know about. I would think if you wanted to cover Reformation era literature in England, including the BCP, you would want to read Part 2: Chapter 1 of the book, “Drag Age Prose: Religious Controversy and Translation.”
Traditional, faithful 'prayer book' Anglicanism is beautiful and magnificent. Catholic yet Reformed, it is Christianity at its best in my view. Sadly, though, much of modern Anglicanism has fallen prey to theological revisionism, moral relativism and spiritual lethargy. It sounds a little oxymoronic, but I'm a high-church evangelical Anglican myself (I suppose like John Wesley). Such churches are hard to come by in Australia though, were the evangelical ones tend to be decidedly very low-church while the high-church ones are typically non-evangelical. Are you familiar with any such churches in Melbourne or beyond?
Thank you, Fr. Bird, for sharing your journey within the Church. I wholeheartedly agree with your observation that the Anglican Communion globally is indeed fragile and often marked by internal divisions. I also share your concern that the rise of the Garfçon movement presents a significant challenge to the integrity of the Anglican Church.
My own spiritual journey began with a deep attraction to Catholicism early in life, especially drawn to the Franciscan way of life. I found Franciscan spirituality profoundly enriching and its call to simplicity, humility, and service resonated deeply with me. Yet, at times, it felt overly strict, solemn, and somewhat confining.
While navigating that path, I also began to embrace Anglicanism. I was young, spiritually curious, and searching for a tradition that would draw me closer to God. Whether it was the beauty of the Nicene Creed, the richness of Anglican liturgy, or the soul stirring hymns sung in community, I found something profoundly moving and spiritually alive in the Anglican expression of faith. Over time, these experiences shaped my understanding of God’s grace, and they continue to inform my spiritual life today.
I was brought up in the US CofE franchise currently known as The [one and only] Episcopal Church. As you know, brand control has escaped both TEC and the CofE, so I now have three flavors of Anglicanism within a few miles of my house: TEC, REC, and ACNA. It’s like trying to choose among Kentucky Fried Chicken, Church's, and Popeye's (all US purveyors of fried chicken.) Who’s got the original recipe?
After trying the Goldilocks method and finding it unsatisfactory (nothing was just right) I made the decision to completely alter my spiritual diet. After sampling the sparse fare of Evangelical Presbyterianism, (great for keeping lean and mean) I’m now a Missouri Synod Lutheran. It’s starchy and old fashioned, but so was the 1928 BCP era Episcopal church of my youth in many ways. Admittedly, sometimes a little hard to digest for someone not reared on such heavy provender, but it’s honest plain spiritual sustenance and I know they’ll serve me what’s on the menu, unlike TEC which promises a feast and delivers wax fruit.
Yes, but the REC parishes I've visited are more old fashioned and liturgical while the ACNA is all over the map. REC also still has its own hierarchy intact. It's a really different feel from the ACNA.
I was raised Methodist, flittered with Presbyterianism as a young teen for a couple of years before I discovered patristics in my mid to late teens and became a strange hybrid of Methodist and Anglo-Catholic (with sympathetic leanings to Eastern Orthodoxy as well) due to attendance at an Anglican high school. 10 years later I then had a crisis of faith and realised I really couldn’t be a Protestant of any sort at all (after a trek through Confessional Lutheranism alongside my growing Anglo-Catholic leanings). The influence of one of my heroes, Cardinal Newman, was coming home to roost such that I ended up becoming Catholic via the Anglican Ordinariate after about a 8 year journey in the Protestant wilderness. And I still have my Eastern Catholic/Orthodox leanings as well after all these years. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
As a Baptist of sorts with Orthodox leanings I hear you on the deficiencies, but the sort of Anglicanism you’re espousing really isn’t an option here in Sydney. Not unless you’re prepared to travel long distance to the few that aren’t GAFCON style.
Fascinating article I started as an Anglican but I never found Jesus there it was through Pentecostal s that I met the zLord There is much that I like about Anglicans and I have attended many Anglican services but I find it too formal even the Contempary services and at times a little arrogant Pentecostal can be too One Anglican described being an Anglican alls lBlack CapNz cricket player AllBlack and Silver Fern. NZ netball player all rolled into one
Perhaps my biggest struggle is with Anglican way of doing Communion
I so appreciate that Communion is consistently available shame on the Pentecostal and Evangelicals
Dr Bird, what do suggest as guideposts to finding a church appropriate to doctrine and creed, and also to personal needs? I don’t want to become at home in a stuffy, exclusivist church environment.
Renee, that's a hard one. Look for a church that affirms things like the Nicene Creed, has biblical preaching, interest in missions and social concern, a pastoral care program, and isn't too partisan.
This was helpful, thanks for sharing your journey. Do you feel that being "reformed" necessitates a 5-point Calvinist notion or as you moved away from Presbyterianism did you also move towards a less "pointed" stance on soteriology?
Blake, it depends on how you define "Reformed." That can mean anything from "Not Catholic" to "Westminster Confession." I don't think 5 point Calvinism is the best index of Reformed. I'd argue that Arminius was Reformed in a sense.
Makes sense, that answers my first question and leads to the essence of the second. I've read/listened to some of your content recently and did not pick up a strong sense of 5 point calvinism, but in this substack post your "journey to anglicanism" mentioned that at step 2 with presbyterianism it as a natural fit due to your (at that time) love for 5 point Calvinism...so really I was just curious if you still "love all 5 points" of that or if you have also journeyed away from that a bit. I'm not heretic hunting lol, just genuinely curious if your journey has always taken you away from a strong 5 point stance as well. Thanks!
I can appreciate a lot of what you are saying, but I could not be at home in any of our Episcopalian churches in America. They are much too liberal for my way of thinking and not at all evangelistic. I also am not at all Reformed in my doctrine, believing that God designed us to have Free Will.
I am really glad that you have found what works for you. Between my love for old hymns, egalitarianism and unborn babies, there seems to be no place for me. I hate dishonesty in the church, and there is too much of that for me. We have sadly come to the conclusion that church is just plain over for us. We do not like it, but find that attending a church is just too stressful. Between gay marriage, the deaths of the unborn, the lack of belief in Scripture, the stuck-up-ness of members, and in general, the alignment of most churches here with liberal causes, it just doesn't work anymore. I think it is horribly sad that most churches have the attitude that I should just sit down and shut up.
Don't worry, I don't think Dr. Bird would get mad at you for this reasons. I know he understands the different context that the Anglican Church is living.
PS.: Reformed doctrine doesn't deny the Free Will of man.
This just came to me. What a journey. I love Anglicanism—warts and all.
https://davidroseberry.substack.com/
Because you haven't discovered the Orthodox Church yet?
It’s always interesting to me to hear how other people became Anglican, and what side of Anglicanism they fell on as a result. My trek to Anglicanism took a lot of interesting turns. Grew up Baptist. Somewhere along the way became utterly fascinated with Judaism. Had a lot of questions and frustrations that the evangelicalism I grew up with could not answer satisfactorily about the relationship between old and New Testament. So, I continued as a Christian, but a strange one who studied Torah through classical Jewish sources, started using a Jewish prayerbook to order my prayer life somewhat, and occasionally attended synagogue. That life was how I learned about liturgy, prayerbooks, lectionary, a sacred calendar, and ultimately sacraments. Then, as a consequence of studying a lot of medieval literature in my college classes, I began reading church fathers, Dante, Tolkien, N T Wright, Chesterton, Endo, everything Lewis ever wrote, etc. They connected the Old and New Testaments in a way that nobody ever had for me before. Went back and forth about Catholicism and Anglicanism. Chose Anglicanism because, in my usual phrasing, it had all the connection to historic Christianity and all the disciplines/gifts of the church, while still leaving you room to work out your own salvation in fear and trembling. I don’t know how I ever had a spiritual life before the Book of Common Prayer, either.
I maintain that Cranmer was the second greatest writer of English in the history of the world. The greatest, Shakespeare, grew up on The Book of Common Prayer. My sense of what worship should be, what true worship is, was formed by my three year long Episcopal boyhood from ages four to seven, after which my mother's atavistic Svedish Lutheranism asserted itself.
When I was seven, I somehow survived a mass murder so violent that my surviving it comes close to bad taste. Five people, two of them my best friends, were killed, a sixth, also a child, somewhat older, has almost certainly had her life abbreviated by her terrible injuries. The harvest of PTSD was bountiful. Sixty five years after the fact, I know that others continue to suffer from it. I suspect a close friend had it so badly it prompted him to smoke and drink himself to death at forty one. But almost certainly its greatest PTSD casualty was a boy, ten at the time, whose stability was so upended by the event that in early adult years, he became a drug addict so relentless he was saved from an overdose only by finding a church in California which cleaned him up and sent him to medical school. Tragically, the church was People's Temple, and the boy become Dr Laurence Schacht was instrumental in determining exactly how much cyanide in how much Flavor Aid would be necessary to kill nine hundred people.
Evil has a hellish half life, hasn't it?
Six months after I was injured, I was considered close to being well enough to return to school but for one thing: an eardrum which refused to heal. The doctors knew how to rescue it, but my parents could tell from what they did not say why they were hesitant to put me through more surgery: they thought the stress would kill me.
Our Episcopal church had an every Monday morning at nine prayer service. My mother took me. The priest anointed me with oil and prayed for my general healing. At the next appointment with the otolaryngologist the eardrum was discovered to have healed.
I have never fully recovered from my other injuries. The consensus of two of my doctors is that somehow I defied odds as intimidating as twenty to one that I should have been in a nursing home by age twelve at the latest. God may not have given me the healing I wanted, but through that priest's prayers and the oil, I got the healing God wanted me to have.
I will always be grateful for that church, though its deterioration in the years that followed vindicated my mother's instinct that we should go elsewhere. But a believing Anglicanism is in my view the closest thing there is to what the Church is supposed to be.
Another reason we should celebrate being Anglican, not Baptist, is the music ( but in this the Lutherans do get to run us neck and neck, and so, I have to confess, do the Catholics ): Byrd, Handel, Bach, Hadyn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, the agnostic Ralph Vaughan Williams, many others.
No Baptist will ever write a great Mass.
Well. That’s certainly a story! It’s almost commonplace for me to hear people tell me of their kidnappings, survived knife or gun attacks, etc, but this one stands out even among the others. I’m glad that God gave you healing, even if it wasn’t the full physical restoration one would naturally crave. On the subject of writers, have you ever read C S Lewis’s English Literature in the Sixteenth Century? He spends a lengthy portion talking about Cranmer and the BCP. You may find that interesting. Regarding the musical tradition, you’re correct. Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic music is some of the greatest ever written. In defense of baptists, though, I do appreciate the simple piety of classic Baptist hymns. No matter how much great choral music I hear, “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” will always have a special place in my soul.
I'd like to read it, but Lewis' formidability as a scholar intimidates me. I have begun to consider a possibility, even a probability, I hadn't wanted to consider, which is that I will likely die with a lot of reading I didn't get to do. This should have been obvious to me of all people all along, but I have the instinctive relentlessness of a dachshund, and it has fooled me into supposing that, well, of course! Of course, I'm going to read ( whoever ), I just need to feel a little better, get a little more energy going for me! Then, you'll see!
( Deep sigh. )
I know the nature of what happened to me imposed a certain not unuseful separation from reality upon my psyche. It has enabled me to survive, but it's also undermined my sense of what I am likely to be able to do. Therefore, I have an excellent library, most of which I will never get to read. The people in my church get first dibs on it, after which the remainder goes to a major library which is fully a participant in the interlibrary loan program.
You have impelled me to look over the Lewis book again, to see if I dare to think I can gird my loins for it.
Oh, the sheer depth of his scholarship is way beyond me. I know English lit; I read anywhere from 60-100 books a year. I didn’t know 80% of the literature he talks about in that book. It was his scholarly magnum opus.
But, Lewis is also quick in his other work to point out that you don’t have to read an entire book. You can read the parts that have relevance to you. So, maybe you can split the difference, and read the parts that cover work you care about, and ignore the compendium of things you don’t know about. I would think if you wanted to cover Reformation era literature in England, including the BCP, you would want to read Part 2: Chapter 1 of the book, “Drag Age Prose: Religious Controversy and Translation.”
Thank you, Noah!
Traditional, faithful 'prayer book' Anglicanism is beautiful and magnificent. Catholic yet Reformed, it is Christianity at its best in my view. Sadly, though, much of modern Anglicanism has fallen prey to theological revisionism, moral relativism and spiritual lethargy. It sounds a little oxymoronic, but I'm a high-church evangelical Anglican myself (I suppose like John Wesley). Such churches are hard to come by in Australia though, were the evangelical ones tend to be decidedly very low-church while the high-church ones are typically non-evangelical. Are you familiar with any such churches in Melbourne or beyond?
Someone asked me this question yesterday. If only my answer was as decent as yours...
This summarises my own thoughts well on why I ended up back in the Anglican church :)
Thank you, Fr. Bird, for sharing your journey within the Church. I wholeheartedly agree with your observation that the Anglican Communion globally is indeed fragile and often marked by internal divisions. I also share your concern that the rise of the Garfçon movement presents a significant challenge to the integrity of the Anglican Church.
My own spiritual journey began with a deep attraction to Catholicism early in life, especially drawn to the Franciscan way of life. I found Franciscan spirituality profoundly enriching and its call to simplicity, humility, and service resonated deeply with me. Yet, at times, it felt overly strict, solemn, and somewhat confining.
While navigating that path, I also began to embrace Anglicanism. I was young, spiritually curious, and searching for a tradition that would draw me closer to God. Whether it was the beauty of the Nicene Creed, the richness of Anglican liturgy, or the soul stirring hymns sung in community, I found something profoundly moving and spiritually alive in the Anglican expression of faith. Over time, these experiences shaped my understanding of God’s grace, and they continue to inform my spiritual life today.
No celebrities! Well except for Nicky Gumbel, but that's a whole separate thing.
Beware of GAFCON - emerging from the Sydney diocese!
I was brought up in the US CofE franchise currently known as The [one and only] Episcopal Church. As you know, brand control has escaped both TEC and the CofE, so I now have three flavors of Anglicanism within a few miles of my house: TEC, REC, and ACNA. It’s like trying to choose among Kentucky Fried Chicken, Church's, and Popeye's (all US purveyors of fried chicken.) Who’s got the original recipe?
After trying the Goldilocks method and finding it unsatisfactory (nothing was just right) I made the decision to completely alter my spiritual diet. After sampling the sparse fare of Evangelical Presbyterianism, (great for keeping lean and mean) I’m now a Missouri Synod Lutheran. It’s starchy and old fashioned, but so was the 1928 BCP era Episcopal church of my youth in many ways. Admittedly, sometimes a little hard to digest for someone not reared on such heavy provender, but it’s honest plain spiritual sustenance and I know they’ll serve me what’s on the menu, unlike TEC which promises a feast and delivers wax fruit.
REC is part of the ACNA and has been for about a decade.
Yes, but the REC parishes I've visited are more old fashioned and liturgical while the ACNA is all over the map. REC also still has its own hierarchy intact. It's a really different feel from the ACNA.
I was raised Methodist, flittered with Presbyterianism as a young teen for a couple of years before I discovered patristics in my mid to late teens and became a strange hybrid of Methodist and Anglo-Catholic (with sympathetic leanings to Eastern Orthodoxy as well) due to attendance at an Anglican high school. 10 years later I then had a crisis of faith and realised I really couldn’t be a Protestant of any sort at all (after a trek through Confessional Lutheranism alongside my growing Anglo-Catholic leanings). The influence of one of my heroes, Cardinal Newman, was coming home to roost such that I ended up becoming Catholic via the Anglican Ordinariate after about a 8 year journey in the Protestant wilderness. And I still have my Eastern Catholic/Orthodox leanings as well after all these years. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
As a Baptist of sorts with Orthodox leanings I hear you on the deficiencies, but the sort of Anglicanism you’re espousing really isn’t an option here in Sydney. Not unless you’re prepared to travel long distance to the few that aren’t GAFCON style.
Fascinating article I started as an Anglican but I never found Jesus there it was through Pentecostal s that I met the zLord There is much that I like about Anglicans and I have attended many Anglican services but I find it too formal even the Contempary services and at times a little arrogant Pentecostal can be too One Anglican described being an Anglican alls lBlack CapNz cricket player AllBlack and Silver Fern. NZ netball player all rolled into one
Perhaps my biggest struggle is with Anglican way of doing Communion
I so appreciate that Communion is consistently available shame on the Pentecostal and Evangelicals
Dr Bird, what do suggest as guideposts to finding a church appropriate to doctrine and creed, and also to personal needs? I don’t want to become at home in a stuffy, exclusivist church environment.
Renee, that's a hard one. Look for a church that affirms things like the Nicene Creed, has biblical preaching, interest in missions and social concern, a pastoral care program, and isn't too partisan.
This was helpful, thanks for sharing your journey. Do you feel that being "reformed" necessitates a 5-point Calvinist notion or as you moved away from Presbyterianism did you also move towards a less "pointed" stance on soteriology?
Blake, it depends on how you define "Reformed." That can mean anything from "Not Catholic" to "Westminster Confession." I don't think 5 point Calvinism is the best index of Reformed. I'd argue that Arminius was Reformed in a sense.
Makes sense, that answers my first question and leads to the essence of the second. I've read/listened to some of your content recently and did not pick up a strong sense of 5 point calvinism, but in this substack post your "journey to anglicanism" mentioned that at step 2 with presbyterianism it as a natural fit due to your (at that time) love for 5 point Calvinism...so really I was just curious if you still "love all 5 points" of that or if you have also journeyed away from that a bit. I'm not heretic hunting lol, just genuinely curious if your journey has always taken you away from a strong 5 point stance as well. Thanks!
I can appreciate a lot of what you are saying, but I could not be at home in any of our Episcopalian churches in America. They are much too liberal for my way of thinking and not at all evangelistic. I also am not at all Reformed in my doctrine, believing that God designed us to have Free Will.
I am really glad that you have found what works for you. Between my love for old hymns, egalitarianism and unborn babies, there seems to be no place for me. I hate dishonesty in the church, and there is too much of that for me. We have sadly come to the conclusion that church is just plain over for us. We do not like it, but find that attending a church is just too stressful. Between gay marriage, the deaths of the unborn, the lack of belief in Scripture, the stuck-up-ness of members, and in general, the alignment of most churches here with liberal causes, it just doesn't work anymore. I think it is horribly sad that most churches have the attitude that I should just sit down and shut up.
I think you might find what you’re looking for in at least some parishes in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
Don't worry, I don't think Dr. Bird would get mad at you for this reasons. I know he understands the different context that the Anglican Church is living.
PS.: Reformed doctrine doesn't deny the Free Will of man.