Tracing the evolition of spirituality
Episcopal News Service
| 06 Aug 2008
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To Be A Pilgrim: The Anglican Ethos in History from the Crossroad Publishing Company, by Frederick Quinn, 306 pages, hardcover, c. 2001, US$24.95.
To Be A Pilgrim
is about the Anglican ethos from a historical perspective. Neither a denominational nor a
confessional treatment, it traces the evolution of spirituality in the English tradition from Bede and Cranmer to C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and Dorothy Sayers.
By describing the Anglican ethos in historical context, with its emphasis on reason, moderation, liturgy and culture, readers can more easily see the grounding from which this faith tradition emerges.
There are readings at the end of each chapter and excerpts throughout from key writers. Poetry, mystery, literacy, music, art, plus social justice and spirituality are all characteristic of the Anglican tradition.
"The study of a religious ethos does not hang on fixed dates as much as does conventional political history with the death of a monarch or the loss of a battle as a defining event. It is more like tracing the strands of a tapestry through time. The spirituality of Julian of Norwich, seemingly a product of the English Middle Ages, reappears in the twentieth century
Lancelot Andrews, who sprung to life during the English Reformation, becomes a pivotal figure in the Oxford Movement three centuries later. Such strands do not exist in isolation, but are interwoven with others as anyone will conclude who has tried to work their way through the multiple prayer book studies tracing the origins of new liturgical rites ... The understanding of the evolution of a religious ethos is more than a study of white hats versus black hats in any age, more like tracing the interacting parts of a Bach fugue." -- From the introduction.
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