A Living Text.

  • What Does Baptism Do?

    What does baptism do? It saves: 1 Peter 3:21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, It forgives sins: Acts 2:37-38 Now when they heard this they were cut…

  • Why Believe in Jesus?

    The existence of the Church is predicated on the historical event of Jesus of Nazareth returning to life from being dead. The Anglican tradition puts it this way: Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he…

  • Wright on Worldview

    N.T. Wright uses worldview as a basic category through which he reflects on Scripture and the modern world. In The New Testament and the People of God, Wright said: Worldviews have to do with the presuppositional, pre-cognitive stage of a culture or society. Wherever we find the ultimate concerns of human beings, we find worldviews…’Worldview’,…

  • Ethnic tension in Rwanda

    The Revd David Bagnall writes in the Church Times about Rwanda: What is more, despite Rwanda’s commitment to creating a “post-ethnic” society in the wake of the genocide, field data suggest that ethnic tensions remain high in the country, not least where access to land and power are concerned. Furthermore, the tension that bubbles away…

  • Could an ACNA diocese go bankrupt?

    In Alec Smith’s January 14, 2022 letter to Archbishop Beach regarding Bishop Stewart Ruch and the Diocese of the Upper Midwest, he wrote: Your Grace, it is imperative for you to know that if the PLT’s plans regarding the continuation of the Rivera investigation and the abuse of power investigation are carried […]

  • The Location of the Qur’anic Revelation

    Patricia Crone notes: In addition, the Qur’an twice describes its opponents as living in the site of a vanished nation, that is to say a town destroyed by God for its sins. There were many such ruined sites in northwest Arabia. The prophet frequently tells his opponents to consider their significance and on one occasion…

  • Nicholas of Cusa on Errors in the Qur’an

    Nicholas of Cusa writes: the Koran says that the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the sister of Aaron and the daughter of Amram. Now, it is most certain that the one who reported these [details] to Muhammad erred and was ignorant of the Gospel’s true narrative. For Mary the daughter of Amram and…

  • Reviewing

    Ronald S. Berman writes in The Sewanee Review: My method was to pick a book with some determinable public interest–for example the autobiography of Max Eastman or Hannah Arendt’s great work on Eichmann–and simply to read everything available on the subject. I would talk to whoever might know about it, then sit down and try…

  • Laurent Mbanda and Paul Kagame

    From Paul Kagame’s Facebook page on October 22, 2021: This afternoon, President Kagame received Drayton Nabers, the Founder of Nabers Charitable Foundation and Archbishop Laurent Mbanda at Urugwiro Village for a discussion on the work of the Anglican Church in Rwanda.

  • Anglican Eucharistic Practices

    Sir Robert Phillimore writes about Anglican Eucharistic practices and says: The elevation of the Blessed Sacrament was not incorporated formally into the law of the Western Church before the beginning of the thirteenth century. [Cardinal Bona] cites a variety of authorities in support of this position, and mentions the introduction of the custom of ringing…