Written by On both our church’s website and Facebook page you will find the following concerning our Congregation’s theological identity and mission:
Holy Communion Anglican Church: STANDING FIRM on Biblical Truth and Church Tradition. We are an independent Christian Congregation grounded in the Anglican tradition. Our mission is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and worship Him in Word and Sacrament. Join us for Christ-centered worship and trusted teaching that cuts against the grain of woke culture.
Committed as we claim to “Christ-centered worship and trusted teaching that cuts against the grain of woke culture,” we know by moral conviction what we are up against at Holy Communion Anglican Church: Transgenderism, the Woke revolution, the Cancel culture movement, etc., etc., etc. But what are we FOR as a Congregation? Indeed, this is a most important (and even urgent) question, for the power of “yes” is always greater than that of “no.”
As I have personally pondered that question, here are some thoughts as to what I believe we should aspire to affirm as an orthodox Christian Congregation “STANDING FIRM on Biblical Truth and Church Tradition.”
The Triune God’s authority is a blessing for the Church Universal. From our founding, Holy Communion Anglican Church has defended the Holy Scriptures as being the rule and ultimate standard of the Christian Faith, defended orthodoxy in doctrine, dignity in liturgy, and depth in devotion, as is all codified in the venerable tradition of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. We do so with the great confidence that walking in the way of Our Lord Jesus Christ brings true happiness to the human soul. We are not a community of Believers who grind our teeth and force ourselves to dutifully obey the Word of God. Ours is a joyful Faith.
In the years to come, Holy Communion Anglican Church shall continue to bear uncompromising witness to the Good News. We in the Congregation have a shared conviction that the secular conceit of man’s self-sufficiency (see Jeremiah 17:5) demoralizes the human spirit and ultimately dehumanizes all people. To expectantly respond to Christ’s call to follow Him daily and carry our respective crosses (Matthew 16:24) prepares us as a church to engage in the fulfillment of His collective plan for us – the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20), that is, to make disciples of all we meet.
“Progressives” who (falsely) claim to be followers of the Nicene Creed make the conscious decision to sponge off the secular system for their own self-comfort.
Truth and beauty are a gift from the Triune God and are meant to be enjoyed. We live in an immensely political time in history, within which partisan (and uncharitable) hysteria threatens to wipe away the magnificent achievements of Western Civilization. A vast majority of secular universities and colleges have allowed radical political activism to take sole possession of the humanities, social sciences, and in many cases even the natural sciences. And liberal “Christian” seminaries have long ago forfeited historical biblical orthodoxy. Everything, for the “Progressive” (Marxist) ideologues, must be tossed into their (falsely claimed) great cause of social justice.
This mentality rejects Christian contemplation, which produces in us a gratefulness of what we, by God’s grace, learn and study, rather than using it as a tool to pound out an ungodly political agenda. Holy Communion Anglican Church resists this latter temptation. Whether it’s Saint John Chrysostom (c.347-407), Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), blessed Richard Hooker (1554-1600), blessed C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), the Venerable Servant of God Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), blessed John Stott (1921-2011), or the incomparable Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI (b. 1927) – among many other of the faithful across the course of two-thousand years – we seek to take the measure of the great touchstones of our Christian culture (“Biblical Truth and Church Tradition”) – and to be measured by them.
An immeasurable “treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7) is at stake in today’s cultural and political social civil war (both inside the Church and out). But true regenerate Christians who walk as “children of the light” (Ephesians 5:8) refuse to capitulate to “the way of the wicked [which] is [ultimately] doomed” (Psalm 1:6). We endeavor to stand in awe and wonder at the infinite majesty of the Triune God and in the magnificence of His created order (the entire universe) and of all nature, as well as in the great works of Christian and classical art, literature, history, philosophy, true scientific discovery, and orthodox Christian theology: “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8).
“It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives.”
The Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
A conservative outlook, widely understood, is what we must pursue. Since the end of World War II, the progressive outlook has incrementally taken hold of the Western world. Our most pressing current social and political problems stem from the disintegration and dissolution of the once solid foundations of a robust Judeo-Christian culture: the centrality of marriage between a biological man and a biological woman, the nuclear family as the essential unit of a functioning society, the local faith community as the cultural center of identity, the integral coherence of the Judeo-Christian moral life, and a nation that truly believes all our rights and true freedom come from the Creator Himself and not from a governmental edict. Today, all these things have nearly fallen completely apart.
“Conservatism” (from a traditional Christian perspective) honors, preserves, and renews the authority of Natural Law and the Sacred Scriptures, which have been the glue that have held a functionary free capitalist society together in this land for the past 246 years. We know that in 2022, we need as a church to be defending the sacramental Rite of Holy Matrimony, encourage married couples to want to joyfully give birth to children, strive to restore the proper place of biblical morality, and do our part to renew our national covenant with the “Creator” – “Nature’s God” — who has “endowed” us “with certain unalienable Rights,” including those of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (see The Declaration of Independence). Doing this, of course, means speaking boldly of the immutable fact of the Natural Law and the orders of all creation. It means always using an unapologetically biblical vocabulary. It means proclaiming faithfully the true Gospel which “cuts against the grain of woke culture” – not with self-righteous arrogance, but with a certain confidence that comes from the knowledge that our Christian witness harkens us to a higher calling then just being the citizens of a free, massively prosperous country of incomprehensible military power.
Our greatest challenges in 2022 and beyond as a Congregation and as Christians in general are twofold: Addressing modern people’s preoccupation with the management of their own inner psychological state, and individuals who simultaneously always attempt to achieve “happiness” without the acknowledgement of the existence “Nature’s God” – He alone who can give any larger significance or purpose to human life.
“Progressives” who (falsely) claim to be followers of the Nicene Creed make the conscious decision to sponge off the secular system for their own self-comfort. Refusing to face the facts or tell the hard truths of what is really going on – and that is what one day will be figuratively inscribed across their headstones. In a subtext it could also be added that they died from a lack of integrity. It seems to me to be fitting to quote here from the Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: “It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives.”
Holy Communion Anglian Church is firmly grounded in the Truth that endures. We join in the battle for the soul of contemporary society with the confidence that it is the Triune God who oversees the Church Universal’s victories and her setbacks. This confidence allows us to see clearly and speak boldly of “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2) during such turbulent times.
Now is the time for us with a new vigor to marshal our gifts and talents for the glory of God. We must stand up for “Biblical Truth and Church Tradition.” For if souls are not worth saving, then nothing is. That is WHAT WE ARE FOR.
