Anglican Quotes & Sayings

The idea of women having sex without risking pregnancy is deeply disturbing to the vision of women's role that Western civilization has inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition.....In Britain, the Anglican Church denounced it (birth control) as 'the awful heresy'. As families grew smaller in the US during early years of the twentieth century....the moral reaction mounted. Theodore Roosevelt attacked the use of condoms as 'decadent'. He declared women who used contraceptives as 'criminals against the race...the object of contemptuous abhorrence by healthy people. — Jack Holland

Optimism hopes for the best without any guarantee of its arriving and is often no more than whistling in the dark. Christian hope, by contrast, is faith looking ahead to the fulfillment of the promises of God, as when the Anglican burial service inters the corpse 'in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God's own commitment, that the best is yet to come. — J.I. Packer

My mother's family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a leap of Anglican upward mobility, became a vicar in the Church of Wales. But my mother converted to Islam on marrying my father. She was not obliged to; Muslim men are free to marry ahl al-kitab, or people of the Book - among them, Jews and Christians. — Shereen El Feki

We often speak of Anglican "comprehensiveness." If this is a way of making relativism palatable or a means of accommodating all shades of opinion with no regard for truth, then it needs to be rejected. If by comprehensive we mean the priority of a dialectic quest over precision and immediate closure, then we are speaking of the Anglican consciousness at its best. — Urban T. Holmes III

Death will find me long before I tire of contemplating an evening spent in his company during which he enthralled a mixed audience consisting of a fur trader, a Cree Indian matron, and an Anglican missionary, with an hour-long monologue on sexual aberrations in female pygmy shrews. (The trader misconstrued the tenor of the discourse; but the missionary, inured by years of humorless dissertations, soon put him right.) — Farley Mowat

I'm very eclectic, musically as in other things! But also to frame the hearing and knowing of Scripture within a context of worship, which is what Anglican liturgy does, just seems to me such a very complete and compelling thing. — N. T. Wright

All the demons of Hell formerly reigned as gods in previous cultures. No it's not fair, but one man's god is another man's devil. As each subsequent civilization became a dominant power, among its first acts was to depose and demonize whoever the previous culture had worshipped. The Jews attacked Belial, the god of the Babylonians. The Christians banished Pan and Loki anda Mars, the respective deities of the ancient Greeks and Celts and Romans. The Anglican British banned belief in the Australian aboriginal spirits known as the Mimi. Satan is depicted with cloven hooves because Pan had them, and he carries a pitchfork based on the trident carried by Neptune. As each deity was deposed, it was relegated to Hell. For gods so long accustomed to receiving tribute and loving attention, of course this status shift put them into a foul mood. — Chuck Palahniuk

One of the effects of indoctrination, of passing into the anglo-centrism of British West Indian culture, is that you believe absolutely in the hegemony of the King's English and in the proper forms of expression. Or else your writing is not literature; it is folklore, or worse. And folklore can never be art. Read some poetry by West Indian writers
some, not all
and you will see what I mean. The reader has to dissect anglican stanza after anglican stanza for Caribbean truth, and may never find it. The anglican ideal
Milton, Wordsworth, Keats
was held before us with an assurance that we were unable, and would never be able, to achieve such excellence. We crouched outside the cave. — Michelle Cliff

I really do feel that these people are brothers and sisters in God's family. I am looking to build bridges with the Orthodox Church, looking to build bridges with the Catholic Church, with the Anglican church. — Rick Warren

His [brother in law Jim Hampson] appointment to the Episcopal parish in Wenham, near Gordon College brought them in close touch with leading evangelical faculty members in their pews and church leadership, including Elizabeth Elliot and Addison Leitch. They were instrumental in drawing Jim and and Sarah into the cutting edge of evangelical intellectual leadership, with friendships with Tom Howard and J.I. Packer. My ongoing relationship with Jim Packer, FitzSimons Allison and many other brilliant Anglican evangelicals would not have happened without Jim Hampson. His early influence on me in my transition from modern to classic Christian teaching was immense. While I was trying to demythologize Scripture, he was taking its plain meaning seriously. His strong preaching led him to become one of the founding sponsors and supporters of Trinity School of Ministry in Abridge, Pennsylvania ... — Thomas C. Oden

I find when most people are honest about their spiritual pilgrimage, they admit to the difficulty of maintaining the habit of a spiritual discipline. What attracks me most about the Anglican spiritual tradition is that it provides purposeful spiritual direction in the life of Christ. — Robert E. Webber

The Roman Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone - for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do. — Oscar Wilde

Anglicans don't really forbid anything,' Kelly said. 'We just decide we're above it. — K. D. Miller

The author observes of the Inklings, "they make a perfect compass rose of faith: talking the Catholic, Lewis the "mere Christian," Williams the Anglican, Barfield the esotericist. — Philip Zaleski

In this postcolonial context, my contention is that interreligious engagement is enhanced by renewed attention to the particularity of religious traditions. From a European (Anglican) standpoint, a revised particularist theology of religions is proposed as an appropriate Christian theology for our time that respects the integrity of Christianity and of other religious traditions. This particularist approach concerns Christian terms of engagement with other religious traditions, as these may be understood in Christian theological terms. Having regard to questions raised in the opening paragraph above, centred in trinitarian thinking, as capable of hospitality to the liberative and interreligious concerns of post-colonial, Asian and feminist theologies; respectful interreligious engagement and the pursuit of gender justice amid increasing global diversity need not require repudiation of orthodox trinitarian thought and its liturgical expressions. — Jenny Daggers

As shown in the splendid recent biography by Harry Stout, Whitefield's style - popular preaching aimed at emotional response - has continued to shape American evangelicalism long after Whitefield's specific theology (he was a Calvinist), his denominational origins (he was an Anglican), and his rank (he was a clergyman) are long since forgotten.65 — Mark A. Noll

The Anglican service today was more familiar to me from movies. Like one of the great Shakespeare speeches, the graveside oration, studded in fragments in the memory, was a succession of brilliant phrases, book titles, dying cadences that breathed life, pure alertness, along the spine. — Ian McEwan

I guess, as an Anglican, there's always room to move, which can be a dangerous thing, but also a very healthy thing, because bits of the great biblical tradition which you haven't fully plugged into before you've got the space to grow into ... not least, the sacraments. — N. T. Wright

This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one. — Christopher Hitchens

I grew up in a church-going family, a very sort of ordinary, middle-of-the-road Anglican family where nobody really talked about personal Christian experience. It was just sort of assumed like an awful lot of things in the 1950's were just sort of taken for granted. — N. T. Wright

Am equally at home in an Anglican or Baptist church — David Frost

In England, we have a curious institution called the Church of England. Its strength has always been in the fact that on any moral or political issue it can produce such a wide divergence of opinion that nobody
from the Pope to Mao Tse-tung
can say with any confidence that he is not an Anglican. Its weaknesses are that nobody pays much attention to it and very few people attend its functions. — Auberon Waugh

Incarnation' does not originally mean (as it tends to today in some theologies of history, and in some kinds of Anglican today) that God took all of human nature as it was, put his seal of approval on it and thereby ratified nature as revelation. The point is just the opposite; that God broke through the borders of man's definition of what is human, and gave a new, formative definition in Jesus. — John Howard Yoder

JANE AUSTEN was born in 1775 in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. The — Jane Austen

Is the Church of England an Anglican church? The church did not start in Canterbury, the church did not start in Rome. Whether Canterbury is Anglican or not is immaterial. We are Anglicans. They are the Church of England. — Peter Akinola

In the sixteenth century the unity of western European Christendom had been shattered by the rise of Protestantism in its various strands (Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican). While the state was regarded as part of the body of Christ, the concept of sharing a political community with those of differing doctrinal commitments was unthinkable. And so it remained at first. Protestant reformers and their Catholic adversaries all insisted that one of the main aims of government was to maintain "true religion." They disagreed, of course. as to which brand of Christianity was true. Thus European history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became a chronicle of civil war, of massacre, and of the expulsion of religious minorities. The notion of religious toleration grew less out of any particular brand of Christianity than out of the fear and frustration of protracted civil war. (p. 24) — Jerry Z. Muller

In a real world, the one outside the rarified atmosphere where Popes meet Archbishops of Canterbury, people no longer care whether somebody is an Anglican or a Roman Catholic. They already take it for granted that being a "believer" is more important than having a denominational name-tag any day of the week. — Tom Harpur

Pope Benedict is an amazingly visionary person. What he has done is establish an evolutionary process that will help undo the Reformation. The Anglican Church has been hijacked by modernism, with synods trying to amend the faith and this process will allow traditional Anglicans to be themselves. — Peter Slipper

During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic. — Gary Hamel

And here at our Anglican Consultative Council, we have many reports of growth and great encouragement. — George Carey

When I became Archbishop I set myself three goals for my term of office. Two had to deal with the inner workings of our Anglican (Episcopalian) Church - the ordination of women to the priesthood which our Church approved in 1992 and through which our Church has been wonderfully enriched and blessed; and the other in which I failed to get the Church's backing, the division of the large and sprawling Diocese of Cape Town into smaller episcopal pastoral units. The third goal was the liberation of all our people, black and white, and that we achieved in 1994. — Desmond Tutu

Nor, strictly speaking, is it correct to call them Puritans. They were Separatists, so called because they had left the Church of England. Puritans were those who remained in the Anglican Church but wished to purify it. — Bill Bryson

William Henry Flower the Anglican too praised evolution as a cleansing solvent, dissolving the dross which had 'encrusted' Christianity 'in the days of ignorance and superstition'. — Adrian Desmond

The conversion of agnostic High Tories to the Anglican church is always rather suspect. It seems too pat and predictable, too clearly a matter of politics rather than faith. — Terry Eagleton

It isn't so long since a test of Anglican orthodoxy was applied to anyone seeking to study or teach at Oxford and Cambridge universities. One of the most celebrated victims of this theocratic policy was Shelley (1792-1811) who was expelled from University College, Oxford, for writing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. He and his poetry were much influenced by the climate of skepticism engendered by the French and Scottish enlightenments, and he himself was to marry the daughter of the freethinker William Godwin. In this extract from A Refutation of Deism, Shelley sets about the propaganda of the creationists. — Christopher Hitchens

But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God ... is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. — Michel Faber

When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution. — Niall Ferguson

It is true that as World War II recedes into the mists of time, almost all big-hearted progressives or liberals (or whatever self-congratulatory term they apply to themselves) denounce Nazism and fascism with the utmost ardor. Yet when these odious movements were on the rise, many among the British elite cautioned prudence in dealing with them; and some actually admired them, including members of the royal family and, of course, clerics in the Anglican Church. — R. Emmett Tyrrell

The prince's official job description as king will be 'defender of the faith,' which currently means the state-financed absurdity of the Anglican Church, but he has more than once said publicly that he wants to be anointed as defender of all faiths - another indication of the amazing conceit he has developed in six decades of performing the only job allowed him by the hereditary principle: that of waiting for his mother to expire. — Christopher Hitchens

I thought that perhaps if the sky was truly free of clouds and any other distractions (birds, kites, skywriting), we could see if there was something else out there. I wasn't really raised in any religion (in England I attended an Anglican school and went to a Methodist church, but I left that all behind at the age of eight when we moved to the U.S.), but like most people, I sometimes wonder if there's anything or anyone out there. — Matthea Harvey

The insurance companies involved had all claimed that this was, by any reasonable standards, an act of God. But, Dirk had argued, which god? Britain was constitutionally a Christian monotheistic state, and therefore any "act of God" defined in a legal document must refer to the Anglican chap in the stained glass and not to some polytheistic thug from Norway. — Douglas Adams

One need not be a rabid Anglican to be extremely sensible to the charm of an English country church ... — Henry James

God, save me from temperance," Tilly said. "You haven't seen a party till you get a group of Anglicans and Catholics trying to beat each other to the bottom of a bottle."
"Now, that's not nice, Mrs Fagan," Father Michel said. "I've never met an Anglican that could keep up with me. — James S.A. Corey

I am 52 years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth, I cannot vote. — Desmond Tutu

I suppose I'm a cultural Anglican, and I see evensong in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green. I have a certain love for it. — Richard Dawkins

I did not worry about what a man or woman personally believed, but the nation's official religion should be outwardly practiced by all its citizens. A religion was a political statement. Being a Calvinist, a papist, a Presbyterian, an Anglican labeled a person's philosophy on education, taxes, poor relief, and other secular things. The nation needed an accepted position on such concerns. Hence the fines for not outwardly conforming to the national church. — Margaret George

As regards my own 'philosophy,' I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals - such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge. — Martin Rees

The English Church, it was claimed, was Catholicism purified and reformed. And what was the nature of this reform? The truth was that nobody, least of all Henry himself, had much idea. — Edward Rutherfurd

As they left, Anglican vicars in the area pinned a notice from their bishop to the front doors of their evacuated churches. Addressed to "our United States allies," the notice read in part: "This church has stood for several hundred years. Around it has grown a community which has lived in these houses and tilled these fields ever since there was a church. This church, this churchyard in which their loved ones lie at rest; these homes, these fields are as dear to those who have left them as are the homes and graves which you, our Allied, have left behind you. They hope to return one day, as you hope to return to yours, to find them waiting to welcome them home. — Lynne Olson

God, Agnes has decided, is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach. So, They tolerate each other, and take care of the world as best They can. Moving — Michel Faber

We are at our best when we love the Lord and his church more than our style of life. We do not believe in our country, right or wrong. If evil has such a grip upon the institutions of government, we know that evil must be overthrown by one means or another. We are not monarchists, republicans or socialists, although our membership includes them all and more. We are pilgrims, who want to pass through a land that will support our journey to the Kingdom; and, if need be, the noblest of us will choose to occupy that land for a bit shorter time than usual rather than deny the Lord of the Kingdom. — Urban T. Holmes III

unity. Evangelicals, by definition, don't care about "unity" nearly as much as they care about truth. When you say "We may differ on some issues of morality and theology, but the important thing is that we stay together in one united Church" you pre-suppose that the liberals are right and the evangelicals are wrong. Which, when you think about it, isn't very liberal at all. — Andrew Rilstone

In the nineteenth century, many Anglican theologians, both evangelical and catholic, embraced positively the proposal of evolution. — Arthur Peacocke

Protestantism's evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel to political democratization. The king of England, questioning the pope, inspires English subjects to question the king and his Anglican bishops. Such dissent is backed up by a Bible full of handy Scripture arguing for arguing with one's kIng. This is the root of self-government in the English-speaking world. — Sarah Vowell

That Britain today is a liberal society is largely because of the philosophy and outlook of the Anglican Church, which did so much to shape our core values in the past few centuries. — Robert Winston

His Grace called Virginius in and said: "Do you think a priest of the Anglican Communion should be a divorced man with two wives living?" That's the way he talks. And do you know what Virginius said? He said: "Your Grace, if it weren't for divorce, there wouldn't be an Anglican Communion. — Florence King

The Anglican position, stated clearly in the service of ordination and elsewhere, is that we should require no beliefs except what we are persuaded can be solidly based on the Scriptures, but we are free to adopt beliefs and customs that seem consistent with the scriptural witness even though they may not be directly stated. — Christopher L. Webber

IMITATION CITRUS FLAVORED DIETARY ARTIFICIALLY SWEETENED CARBONATED BEVERAGE. That, I submit, is not a label; it is an incantation. Someday, it should be set to a suitable plainsong tune or Anglican chant. — Robert Farrar Capon

I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican. — Stevie Smith

The merit claimed for the Anglican Church is that,
if you let it alone,
it will let you alone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even the great Thomas Paine, a friend to Franklin and Jefferson, repudiated the charge of atheism that he was not afraid to invite. Indeed, he set out to expose the crimes and horrors of the Old Testament, as well as the foolish myths of the New, as part of a vindication of god. No grand and noble deity, he asserted, should have such atrocities and stupidities laid to his charge. Paine's Age of Reason marks almost the first time that frank contempt for organized religion was openly expressed. It had a tremendous worldwide effect. His American friends and contemporaries, partly inspired by him to declare independence from the Hanoverian usurpers and their private Anglican Church, meanwhile achieved an extraordinary and unprecedented thing: the writing of a democratic and republican constitution that made no mention of god and that mentioned religion only when guaranteeing that it would always be separated from the state. — Christopher Hitchens

If you believe in resurrection, you believe that the living God will put his world to rights and that if God wants to do that in the future, it is right to try to anticipate that by whatever means in the present. — N. T. Wright

I was the rector's son, born to the anglican order,
Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;
The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept
With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure. — Louis MacNeice

Roman Catholics have always been able to appeal to the traditions of holy Mother the Church. But the Church of England, as such, has nothing to appeal to. How can we [Anglicans] pretend to appeal to Church traditions, when we have cut ourselves off from the main stream of it and any exposition of it must needs be a raking up of old dead documents, instead of obedience to a living voice? And how can we pretend to appeal to the Bible, when the Bible is for everyman's private interpretation, and not expounded by authority? — Ronald Knox