Canterbury II
The Revd Todd Wetzel, Anglicans United & Latimer Press
The place, this ancient Canterbury, humbles the pilgrim with the weight of history and charms with its Medieval, Tudor and Victorian architecture. People are drawn here: French, German, Japanese, American, British, African and so many others. There is something “holy” about the place and it has been so for such a long time: prayer and praises lifted, human voices permeating the walls reaching toward the heavens hour by hour, day by day, century upon century. The courage of the martyrs comes into sharp focus here on the steps to the high altar where St. Thomas a Becket was murdered.
The cruel shedding of his blood humbled a king, protected the prerogatives of the Church and the Gospel and added immeasurably to the holiness of this place.
To Canterbury the Anglican Communion once more has come. Once every ten years, this pilgrimage has served to refresh bishops, shore up the walls and encourage the mission of the Church. In years past a consensus of the faithful existed: the 39 Articles provided the bumpers along the highway of faith; the 1662 Book of Common Prayer served as the standard for liturgical worship; the Homilies pointed the way to Biblically faithful preaching; the Ordinal provided common understanding of ministry and the Scriptures as the primary source of authority proved the spring from which Gospel ministry flowed. Even though the sources of mission in Britain and America got a bit shaky, the seed was good and missionaries took the basics of an Anglican Christian Faith that was both Evangelical and Catholic to the ends of the earth.
Overlooking the port city of Mombassa, Kenya there is another holy place. It is the missionary cemetery and there rest the remains of hundreds of some of England’s finest who set out in the Nineteenth Century for Africa to seed the Gospel and bring in a harvest of souls. Many of them died within a few weeks and months of their arrival. So many, it is said, that those departing England soon packed their belongings in a coffin expecting that shortly after arrival they, too, would be placed in it. And, still they came. Today’s millions of faithful and vibrant African Christians bear testimony that these fine young Christians did not die in vain. Their lives seeded the Gospel and it produced a manifold harvest that continues today. The Anglican story of faith is written in Africa and in Asia and in South America.
This Anglican Christian Faith did not come easily and certainly not quickly. Its roots run deep, its truths time tested.
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