What do sanctification, basketball, playing guitar, and plumbing have in common? And why does our special guest have “ora et labora” tattooed on his hands? On today’s episode of Canterbury Trails, C. Jay Engel and Jared Lovell talk to plumber, writer, and postulant in the Reformed Episcopal Church, Nathaniel Marshall, about trades, repetition, the mechanical arts, manual labor, and how they all relate to Christian sanctification. Glancing back to Episode 2 where we discussed Benedict and his Rule, our hosts and guest remind us that the Christian is apprenticed to a Carpenter. Many modern Christians separate the spiritual life from their day-to-day work life. But Nathaniel helps us to understand how manual labor trains us in virtue and helps us grow in faith and holiness.

Read Nathaniel’s article, “Anglicanism: Apprenticeship to the Carpenter-King” at North American Anglican here: https://northamanglican.com/anglicanism-apprenticeship-to-the-carpenter-king/

Image of Anglo-Saxon map by Hel-hama - Own work using:InkscapeSource: England and Wales at the time of the Treaty of Chippenham (AD 878). From the Atlas of European History, Earle W Dowe (d. 1946), G Bell and Sons, London, 1910 (see: File:England-878ad.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19885072

C. Jay is away this week, but Jared carries on with a fascinating conservation about Time. With returning guest Jesse Nigro of The North American Anglican, Jared talks about how the way we think about Time can serve catechetical purposes. One reason Christianity was able to survive through the Middle Ages is how they thought about Time, and the rituals in which they engaged throughout the day, week, seasons, and years.

Jared and Jesse discuss the need for us, here in the 21st century, to think about how we inhabit time. St. Paul wrote in Ephesians that we should be “redeeming the time.” How do we apply that in a world that resists deep reflection on Time? Ritual and the Christian Calendar can be helpful here: filling the hours and days with Christian meaning rather than emptying them and creating a vacuum for our secular age; or rejecting them in the name of a “simple, old-time religion.”

Join the conversation as we consider various questions: How is ritual useful? How can we, as modern, untethered, evangelical Christians, think about ritual? Why was it virtually impossible to disbelieve in God in the Middle Ages, but so easy, perhaps unavoidable, for many in our modern day?

Instead of living in a world where Time is marked by reminders of the God who created us, we live in a world where, if you’re mindful of Time at all, you’re doing it wrong. But what if there is a better way?

Time will pass, no matter how or whether we mark it. Life will still fly by, but in a world where Ritual marks Time, you can think back: “what did I do this morning, or last week, or last year at this time?” And you will know. Because it’s a particular season of the Church Year, you know what you did, and what was going on, because you’re aware of the time.

And because you mark the time using Christian categories, you can relate your story, your time on earth, to the Great Story of Christ.

Image of Anglo-Saxon map by Hel-hama - Own work using:InkscapeSource: England and Wales at the time of the Treaty of Chippenham (AD 878). From the Atlas of European History, Earle W Dowe (d. 1946), G Bell and Sons, London, 1910 (see: File:England-878ad.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19885072

The image on the thumbnail, "The Ancient Custom of Blessing the Fields on Rogation Sunday at Hever, Kent", was taken from the Geograph project collection. The copyright on this image is owned by Ray Trevena and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

What does it mean to be an Anglican? Or even a Christian? The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, written and adopted by the Anglican Church in 1571, have a lot to say on the subject. But today, The Thirty-Nine Articles are regarded as more of a formulary, little more than an interesting historical document Anglicans use for reference. Thus this important confession has been relativized, diminished, and reduced from its original importance, when subscription to it was required for ministers of the Church of England.

On Today’s episode of Canterbury Trails, hosts C. Jay Engel and Jared Lovell discuss this important subject in Jared’s forthcoming article, “Toward a Confessional Anglicanism: The Importance of The Thirty-Nine Articles for Anglican Identity and Unity” (to be published in The North American Anglican).

To correct this downgrading trend that has been going on for 150–200 years, The Thirty-Nine Articles must take a more elevated position in the Anglican Church. Without a clear doctrinal standard, the “via media” of the Anglican Way becomes a mere negation: we’re neither this nor that. But what are we? What does it mean to be a Christian in an Anglican context?

Join Jared and C. Jay for a discussion that involves history, liturgy, doctrine, and even politics. The Thirty-Nine Articles were written in a political environment where a degree of compromise with other Christians—without forsaking the Gospel—and of preserving orthodoxy without excessive specificity—was badly needed.

Requiring subscription to this historic Anglican confession today will help but will not solve every problem. Given the many challenges to the Christian faith in our day—including the full spectrum of Wokeness—might there even be a need to add new Articles to the historic 39? And why is it so controversial in our day to suggest that The Thirty-Nine Articles should be the binding confessional document among Anglicans?

Doctrine is historical, rooted in the story of a people as they came to confess their beliefs in specific ways, and in specific contexts. Once we understand this, the church can be seen for what she is—not a dead church, but a living church, a church of history. The Thirty-Nine Articles, as you will soon discover, are steeped in 2000 years of Christian struggle and triumph.

Image of Anglo-Saxon map by Hel-hama - Own work using:InkscapeSource: England and Wales at the time of the Treaty of Chippenham (AD 878). From the Atlas of European History, Earle W Dowe (d. 1946), G Bell and Sons, London, 1910 (see: File:England-878ad.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19885072