The Prayer Book Society, USA

02/11/2026

Here’s the schedule for the upcoming Anglican Way conference on baptism:

The Anglican Way Conference

02/11/2026

Link for upcoming Anglican Way conference on baptism schedule

The Anglican Way Conference

02/06/2026

February 8 is Sexagesima Sunday, the second before Lent. The scripture lessons (2Corinthians 11:19 FF and Luke 8:4FF) speak of the patience required to bring the promises of the gospel to fruition in the soul. The Durer woodcut illustrates the parable of the Sower, with the birds already on their way to sn**ch away the seed of God‘s word.

01/26/2026

A detail of Michelangelo‘s fresco in the (Pauline) chapel of the Vatican, depicting the conversion of Saint Paul. Recent scholarship indicates that the painter was deeply influenced by the evangelical ideas filtering over the Alps on the absolute priority of grace - one of the great Pauline teachings that shaped the classical Prayer Book (whose first edition came out in 1549, the year Michelangelo completed his frescoes in the Pauline chapel).

06/28/2025

Saint Peter the Apostle
June 29th

Before the reformation, this feast of St Peter the Apostle was coupled with a commemoration of St. Paul, a pairing that reflects their martyrdom in the city of Rome in the persecution of Nero (c. 64 AD), where their tombs became the focus of devotion (and eventually, of extra-mural basilicas built by the Emperor Constantine), and their memories enhanced the prestige of the church of Rome, an apostolic see, and its bishops, who became known informally as “popes” (a custom that persists in Alexandria, another ancient church of Petrine tradition). The lessons, however, speak only about Peter, and in the reformation of the liturgy in 1549, Peter’s name alone was retained – Paul having his own commemoration on January 25th, the feast of his Conversion. A worthy emendation has been proposed that restores the ancient partnership of the apostles to the circumcision and to the uncircumcision: “O Almighty God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst give to hy Apostle Saint Peter may excellent gifts, and commandest him earnestly to feed thy flock, and madest thy Apostle Saint Paul a chosen vessel to bear thy name amongst the Gentiles… “.

The primacy of honor accorded the church of Rome and its bishop was one that was shared with other apostolic sees, and especially the patriarchal sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem and Constantinople,. It was only in the high middle ages, that the claims of universal papal monarchy were advanced, a primacy not merely of honor but of jurisdiction, not merely in things spiritual but even over things temporal, but we should not let those abuses inhibit us from keeping this feast in commemoration of Peter’s apostolic witness. In particular, it should be noted that today’s gospel lesson (Matthew 16:13ff) provides no grounds for a papal monarchy: in Christ’s promises to Peter there is no mention of successors to Peter, or any hint of a permanent “Petrine office”, nor grounds for a Petrine primacy of jurisdiction, as the authority of binding and loosing made here to Peter is extended to the other disciples in Matthew 18:18 and John 20:23. Though Jesus hear tells Peter “thou art the rock on which I will build my church”, all twelve apostles are elsewhere named as foundation stones of the New Jerusalem (Rev 20:14). Moreover, various episodes in Acts indicate that Peter was subject to the corporate authority of “the apostles and elders” in Jerusalem (e.g. Acts 8:14, where Peter is sent by them on a mission to the Samaritans).

Thus Peter has a primacy among the disciples during the earthly ministry of Jesus, merely as their spokesman and representative, not as their superior; but in Matthew 16:13ff Jesus singles out Peter’s own particular role as an individual (as denoted by the use of “thou” and “thee” in the English version). On the basis of his readiness to confess openly Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Jesus tells him that he is “the rock on which I will build my church… and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven” with authority to bind and loose: “and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven”. (The scholars note that the translation more correctly should be “shall have been” rather than “shall be” – the decreed of God precedes and does not follow the decisions of man. Either way, however, the binding and loosing comes with the power of God.) The fulfilment of this prophecy is recorded in the opening fifteen chapters of Acts, which records Peter’s leadership of the early church in Jerusalem, and in the publishing of the gospel to the Jews of Jerusalem, to the Jewish authorities, to Samaritans, and to the Gentiles. Peter’s readiness to suffer for the sake of the gospel is also noted, in today’s epistle lesson, as also the divine protection and deliverance afforded him in his ministry in Jerusalem – evidence of Christ’s promise that the “gates of hell shall not prevail” against his church, and a foreshadowing of Peter’s eventual martyrdom in the city of Rome (to which John 21:18 makes a suitably enigmatic reference).

Peter thus emerges as an example and template for the ministry of the Church, for all bishops and priests (cf 1 Peter 5:1 “who am also an elder”, that is a presbyter or priest). On the basis of their open acknowledgment as their own (“confession”) of Peter’s faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God – and not apart from that confession of faith – the clergy are authorized to exercise the power of the keys, the authority to bind and loose - authority in matters of doctrine and of discipline, powers exemplified in Peter’s judgment of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1ff), and in the momentous announcement of the council in Jerusalem, “it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us” (Acts 15:28). These powers the late medieval church of Rome arrogated to the papal monarchy, and to the clergy under its control, and one major aspect of the Reformation was a lay revolt clerical privilege and pretention at every level. As the rubrics which still survive at the end of the service of Holy Communion indicate, churches of the Reformation retained powers of penitential discipline over clergy and laity, administered individually by parish priests over their parishioners, or in egregious cases by ecclesiastical courts in accord with canon (ecclesiastical) law, powers backed by the civil authorities of the state. Moreover, at the ordination of priests, at the laying on of hands, the bishop declares the gift of the Holy Ghost that is committed to them by this act, “for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God … Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.”

In these late days of secularized societies, those powers are now close to vestigial, except over the clergy, and we might doubt their relevance. Yet Calvin rightly notes (ad loc.) “the power to bind and to loose can no more be separated from the office of teaching and the Apostleship than light or heat can be separated from the sun”. Even apart from the exercise of penitential discipline by the institutional church, the power to bind and loose is exercised in the very proclamation of the gospel itself, and takes effect in our own response to it, either to receive or to reject . As Calvin notes again (ad loc.):

“Christ, in delivering us, by his Gospel, from the condemnation of eternal death, looses the cords of the curse by which we are held bound. The doctrine of the Gospel is, therefore, declared to be appointed for loosing our bonds, that, being loosed on earth by the voice and testimony of men, we may be actually loosed in heaven. But as there are many who not only are guilty of wickedly rejecting the deliverance that is offered to them, but by their obstinacy bring down on themselves a heavier judgment, the power and authority to bind is likewise granted to the ministers of the Gospel”.

Calvin also notes, that the power of binding “does not belong to the nature of the Gospel, but is accidental” – the condemnation is not the purpose of the gospel, but its effect in those who reject it.

For Anglicans, the liturgy itself is a locus for this inherent authority of the ministry of the word, and thus every day the faithful are put in mind of the power of binding and loosing at work in the gospel – and in their response to it:

“ALMIGHTY God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and live, hath given power, and commandment, to his Ministers, to declare and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the Absolution and Remission of their sins. He pardoneth and absolveth all those who truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel….”

On this feast of Peter, therefore, it is fitting that the collect teaches us to pray both for the clergy and the people, in proclaiming and receiving the gospel– “make, we beseech thee, all Bishops and Pastors diligently to preach thy holy Word; and the people obediently to receive the same, that they may receive the crown of everlasting glory”.

06/24/2025

Nativity of John the Baptist - June 24th.

The Bible says that John the Baptist was born six months before Jesus, and that's why we keep the feast of his nativity on June 24th, just six months before Christmas. Perhaps that is a cooling thought in a hot summer, but the collect of this feast is not ‘jingle bells’: it speaks of John's mission to "prepare the way of thy Son our Saviour by preaching repentance", and asks for grace that "we may truly repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly to speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake". To be honest, it's not a very appealing prospect - we don't like hearing the truth about ourselves, or changing our ways; and though we very much like telling other people the truth about themselves, we don't like suffering patiently for doing so! As T. S. Eliot said, "human kind/ cannot bear very much reality".

The necessity of repentance comes into view as we consider the song that was sung at the birth of John the Baptist by his father Zachariah, the canticle we know as Benedictus. Luke tells how the angel Gabriel – the messenger of eschatological fulfilment (Daniel 7-10) - had in the temple announced to aged Zachariah the priest that his equally aged and childless wife Elizabeth would bear him a son, to be named John, the one sent to prepare God's people for the Lord's coming. Doubting the angel's word, Zechariah had asked for a confirming sign - which he got, in the form of punishment on his unbelief - he was struck dumb until the child's birth. It is a version of the curse of Babel - that those who despise the word of God lose use even of the word of man also; but today's gospel tells the happy ending of the story - how the child was born, and how Zachariah proved his faithful obedience to God's word by naming him as the angel told him.

Judgment gives way to mercy and unbelief to faith. It is then that Zacharias' tongue was loosed in Spirit-inspired praise of God, in the song or canticle we call Benedictus, the Spirit speaking through him to unfold the meaning of the birth of John, and of the approaching birth of Jesus, already conceived and present in Mary's womb. The psalms of the Old Testament foreshadow Christ yet to come; but the New Testament canticles – the Song of Zacharias, the Songs of Mary and of Simeon, which we know as Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis - they alone welcome Christ at his coming, and set forth more clearly and fully what coming means. That’s why (as Richard Ho**er notes in the Laws V.xl.2) these gospel canticles have such a privileged place in our liturgy, as corporate responses to the reading of the word of God fulfilled for us and in us by Christ.

One of most striking details in the Benedictus is its use of the word "salvation” (soteria or soterion in Greek). You might think that the word "salvation" would appear hundreds of times in the gospels, but in fact it is only used six times, and three of those are right here: in v 69, which is the second line, God has "raised up a mighty salvation for us"; in v 71, the fourth line - "that we should be saved from our enemies" - which could be more literally translated, "that we should have salvation from our enemies"; and in v 76, the tenth line, "the knowledge of salvation" that John is charged to bring us. Salvation, then is what the Benedictus is about, the great comfort of salvation of which Isaiah speaks in today’s epistle (Isaiah 40:1ff): but salvation from what, and for what?

Israel's primary experience of salvation was the exodus, when God set them free from slavery in Egypt, gave them a law at Sinai, brought them to the promised land, and formed them into a community of worship united in his service. That's the pattern we see here too: a new exodus, a new deliverance, resulting in a freedom to serve God "without fear", "in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our life" (a very good thing to say and hear at the beginning of each day of salvation for service). There was also a kingly experience of salvation, when David the warrior-king defeated Israel’s enemies, and united the tribes under his rule in worship in Jerusalem. Both models are combined in Benedictus, for by the Spirit Zachariah now announces God's raising up "a mighty salvation for us in the house his servant David" – a new exodus led by the new and greater David (at this point still unborn but hiddenly present in Mary’s womb). The salvation brought by the Messiah raised up from David's house is liberation from “our enemies” – from all that prevents God’s people from living under God’s rule according to God’s will abd in his service.

So far Zachariah’s hymn hews closely to the Old Testament archetypes of national liberation from pagan oppressors, yet in the final third of the canticle, when he addresses his new born son, he defines salvation in terms of inward freedom of the soul from spiritual bo***ge. (This is not without OT precedent: “and he shall redeem Israel frim all his sins”, Psalm 130). Zacharias speaks of John as "the prophet of the Highest", whose mission is to "go before the face of the Lord to prepare his way" – the Lord being the Christ of God, the one who brings salvation. John's preparation of the Lord’s way consists in giving God’s people "the knowledge of salvation", salvation defined as “the remission of their sins". (The familiar Prayer Book version says “for the remission” but the King James is more accurate in translating it as “by the remission” – salvation consists in remission of sins.)

This deliverance from guilt and judgment of those who have sinned is based not on our merit but, the Spirit says, on "the tender mercy of our God" - the compassion, grace and favor he freely gives to those who have no right or claim to it. It is through this mercy of God, says the Spirit, that "the dayspring from on high hath visited us". The word “dayspring” means “the dawn”, and “the dayspring from on high” is the dawning of God's new day of salvation; who in the child already present in the womb of Mary “hath visited us”. As "dayspring from on high" he will give "light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death", the light not just of knowledge but of life itself, bestowed on the captives of spiritual darkness and death - ignorant, the blind, the nations that know not God, those who are dead in soul and also in body. It is that light that will break into Satan’s stronghold, harrowing hell, sending the devils shrieking in fear, and liberating the prisoners of hope from their captivity. It is this same victorious and liberating light that will also "guide our feet into the way of peace", into the way of those who are reconciled with God, and each other, in Christ’s kingdom. And thus the salvation that John prepares for and Jesus brings is light - the light of life. It’s truth. It’s reality – the reality of God.

We are all looking for salvation of one kind or another - from disappointment in work or love, from injustice, grief, disease, depression, addiction, and above all, death; but in the Song of Zacharias, the Spirit is telling us that the key to the salvation we long for is found in the forgiveness of sins - our deliverance from wrath and judgment by the one John proclaims as "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world" (John 1:29). In the forgiveness of sins we know the salvation that God brings us in Christ, and which leads us to serving him in holiness and righteousness now, and finally in the resurrection of the dead.

That's why John, and his preaching of repentance, matters; because if we don't repent, then the forgiveness of Christ is of no benefit to us. The mission that began in John is brought to fulfilment in Jesus: John binds that Jesus may loose; John puts all under judgment, that Jesus may have mercy on all; John summons us to repentance of our sins, that from Jesus we may receive absolution and deliverance from their guilt and power. We are familiar with this dialectic of law and gospel – that we can’t hear the good news of our justification unless we have first heard the bad new of our condemnation. But the gospel is not a deliverance from legalism of the Pharisees into the antinomianism of the Publicans – from harsh judgmentalism into enabling sentimentality; it is a deliverance from them both, into the perfect righteousness of Christ, and the fruits of righteousness – his righteousness fufilled in us. And do iur repentance is one made in thought (contrition), word (confession), and deed (satisfaction or reparation). Only thus can we amend our lives.

Repentance is hard to do, but what’s involved is straightforward. It happens when we bring our habits and decisions, our actions, our words, our thoughts and imaginations into the light the dayspring gives to those who sit in darkness, the light of the truth revealed in Christ. It is seeing ourselves as God sees us: that's what leads us to repentance. We find that light in Scripture, but (as Tim Keller says) God also uses other people to lead us to repentance even people who with whom we disagree - people who criticize us, even when they do so unfairly, harshly, or angrily. Normally, our defensiveness kicks in quickly, and we engage in self-justification: yet if we listen to them with humble hearts, we may hear in them what God is saying to us through them. So can we take criticism? humbly, patiently, without defensiveness, without self-justification, without anger? Can we hear what God might be saying to us through those who criticize us? To do so, even just a little bit, is to open yourself to the saving power of the light that is Christ.

"Human kind / cannot bear too much reality": and so we beg for Christ to descend once more by his Spirit’s bold speech into the unreality in which we too often bury ourselves – “to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the ways of peace”. As we rejoice in the wonderful birth of John the Baptist, may we find grace “truly to repent according to his preaching; and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake”. Amen.

05/22/2025

The logic of Easter to Trinity Sunday.

By Father Gavin Dunbar