Anglican Saints….what?

Karl Barth: Originator of Hipster Fashion

So today we celebrate the lives of Karl Barth and Thomas Merton. But what you say? Anglicans and Saints? Are you Protestant or Catholic? The Anglican church has a sort of hierarchy of feasts and fasts. There are Principal Feats (like Easter and Christmas), Other Feasts of our Lord (normal Sundays and days celebrating his life like The Presentation at the Temple, etc), Fasts (Ash Wednesday, Good Friday) and then minor feasts and fasts. It is on weekdays that we celebrate minor feasts and fasts and we often remember men and woman who have gone before us.

But why do Anglicans celebrate “saints”? Well first let me say that many Anglicans do not celebrate these “saints”. Many of the English reformers wanted to throw out these saint days and keep only the apostles as feast days. In the 1960′s a move was made in America to celebrate other Biblical characters (like Timothy and Mary Magdalene), early Church Fathers and important Anglican figures. In the 1980′s and 1990′s more “saints” we added, but these individuals were women and lay people; an important move away from a patriarchal clericalism. And in one month The Episcopal Church is releasing a new book entitled, “Holy Women, Holy Men” (HWHM) with even more “saints” to commemorate.

But here is the problem. As reformed (notice the little “r”) Anglicans, we do not celebrate saints days in the same way our Roman and Eastern friends do. Our hope is not that they will intercede for us or bless us. Rather as the writer of Proverbs says, “The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot” (10.7). I do receive a lifting of my soul from reading about these men and women of the faith and praying a Collect which directs me to pattern my life after them. However, HWHM goes too far on two levels. First, it includes too many people. I actually have no problem remembering Kierkegaard, Barth, and Merton because I see them not as “saints” but as men who can teach me about the faith, but HWHM even includes a Jewish chaplain (Lt. Goode). Secondly, some of the Collects are just terrible. They take out the phrase “our Lord” as in “Jesus Christ, our Lord” and just say “Jesus Christ”. As Barth would proclaim, the Lordship of Christ compels us to speak against the compromising nature of our culture, precisely something TEC fail to do. And secondly, they push a universalist theology. You can see an example of this here.

So my hope is to provide new Collects for the days in which I feel have been butchered. Today we celebrate both Karl Barth and Thomas Merton. Here is Karl Barth’s unchanged Collect and a revised Thomas Merton Collect:

Almighty God, source of justice beyond human knowledge: We thank you for inspiring Karl Barth to resist tyranny and exalt your saving grace, without which we cannot apprehend your will. Teach us, like him, to live by faith, and even in chaotic and perilous times to perceive the light of your eternal glory, Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, throughout all ages. Amen.

Gracious God, you called your monk Thomas Merton to proclaim your justice out of silence, and moved him in his contemplative writings to perceive and value Christ at work in the midst of our busy lives: Keep us, like him, steadfast in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.