Jordan Hylden

For some time now, First Things has sought to bring Catholics and evangelicals together. Richard John Neuhaus, Charles Colson, and their fellow travelers have engaged in an fruitful ecumenism of the trenches, discovering as they went along that they had more in common than they knew, particularly with respect to Christian ethics and the church’s public witness. And much though not all of First Things’ work has been in the service of a religiously informed “public philosophy,” seeking to find a common language for perennial truths about marriage, life, freedom, and other issues in the public square. Continue Reading »

What happens in Curaçao doesn’t stay in Curaçao, at least if one is Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. Last month, Katharine Jefferts Schori preached a routine Sunday sermon on the idyllic Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela that was so roundly criticized that it made it all the way into the pages of the New York Times, as the subject of a Beliefs column by reporter Mark Oppenheimer… . Continue Reading »

From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism by D. G. Hart ?Eerdmans, 252 pages, $25 The title of historian D. G. Hart’s new book, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism , is somewhat misleading. Hart . . . . Continue Reading »

It is hard to remember now, but it is true: for the better part of the last hundred years, Anglicans were at the forefront of the ecumenical movement for Christian unity, with the Episcopalians in the lead… . Continue Reading »

Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, has issued his much-awaited response to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church: “Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future.” Although it’s not as lengthy as Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical, it’s sure to be parsed almost as carefully and debated nearly with the same intensity by Anglicans throughout the world. The letter is worthy of such scrutiny: As he has done so often in the past, Archbishop Williams has given us both a substantively theological read of the present moment and a sound and hopeful way forward for the Anglican Communion… . Continue Reading »

The seventy-sixth General Convention of the Episcopal Church made headlines last week for moving forward on same-sex blessings and officially opening its doors for partnered homosexuals to serve as priests and bishops. Stacy Sauls, the Episcopal bishop of Lexington and a close associate of the presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, argued that it was long past time to do it: Over thirty years ago, he said, the church had placed pastoral compassion over Scripture, tradition, and the teachings of Jesus to permit remarriage after divorce, and it would be nothing less than hypocritical for the church not to do likewise for gay and lesbian people… . Continue Reading »

The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church is well underway now in Anaheim, California, and has been for about a week. Some observers have seen fit to note that Anaheim is also the home of Disneyland, and of EPCOT center, Walt Disney’s own personal “Experimental Prototype . . . . Continue Reading »

“Are we a global church, or are we a federation of local bodies?” At the close of last week’s meeting of the Anglican primates in Egypt, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams thus set forth the great looming question that Anglicanism has been asking itself for the last . . . . Continue Reading »

Rowan Williams is without doubt one of the most significant and learned theologians in the English-speaking world. Unfortunately, during his tenure at Canterbury, it has at times seemed that he has managed to get nearly everyone in that world angry at him, liberals and conservatives alike. As Rupert . . . . Continue Reading »

“Are you Anglican, or Episcopalian?” As an Episcopalian interloper studying at a Methodist seminary, I get the question a lot from my puzzled friends. Each time I’m asked, part of me wants to launch into a mini-primer on Anglican ecclesiology¯to wit, that Episcopalians are . . . . Continue Reading »