Anglican view on family worship

A while back I shared this article: 8 Solid Tips to Bring back Family Worship, which was featured on The United Methodist Church's website.

Research has shown that family worship, family devotions, family faith-sharing is critically important for raising Christian children who will become Christian adults.  Corporate worship and church involvement is the foundational spiritual practice, of course, but at best that means engagement for only a couple of hours of the week.
Family devotions bring that focus on God - on adoring, obeying, and enjoying the Father, Son, and Spirit - into our every-day routine.  As a pastor I try to make clear to parents who bring infants to be baptized, this "family worship" is absolutely crucial for passing along the Christian faith to the next generation (and it is also probably the missing link in the last few generations of Protestantism).

I recently ran across THIS great post from Episcopal priest Esau McCaulley (pictured) on how the Anglican tradition is shaping not only how he worships on Sundays, but also how his family worships together every day.  His journey has some similarities with my own, and so I really resonated with what he has written.

Following the practice of John and Charles Wesley, I try to pray the Anglican Morning Office on most weekdays at the local Episcopal church with our local clergy, but that is while my wife is at work.

When it comes to our praying as a family, currently our "family devotion time" besides the Lord's Day Service and Wednesday evening small-group, consists of meal-time prayers and reading that great "bread and butter" of United Methodist daily devotions: The Upper Room. The Upper Room includes a Scripture reading, a devotional story, and a short prayer to read (to which we often add a few of our own 'free prayers' and/or the Lord's Prayer).
The Upper Room is available online HERE (and on the side bar of this blog).

There are numerous other Devotion guides and Prayerbooks that are specifically grounded in our Wesleyan heritage that have become popular among United Methodists.

As my first daughter grows older, it might be nice to expand our family devotion times to include a seasonal Psalm or gathering prayer.  I rather like the "Daily Devotions for Families" included in The Book of Common Prayer of 1979 (p. 136-140).  I hope the forthcoming 2019 Book of Common Prayer will include something similar.

What do you do for family devotions?

Equal Justice?

The motto of the United States Supreme Court Building

Freedom of speech and expression (and, implied thereby, freedom of thought and conviction), the free exercise of religion, and the right for groups of citizens to band together to speak as a group in public are rights guaranteed in the 1st Amendment, at the very top of the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.

Yet in our day it seems that these freedoms are losing support among some (or perhaps many?) younger voters.
Much publicized has been the attempts on numerous college campuses by students to silence speakers (even some progressive speakers) who do not hold favored political or social opinions of the moment (or, who are believed not to hold them, it is difficult to ascertain with certainty what one thinks if you silence him before he has the chance to explain himself).  Even some secular liberal commentators have recoiled in horror from what they call "the regressive left" (see here, for example).

Of particular interest to me is the fact that many of these younger voters are more secular and more progressive/liberal than previous generations and are, accordingly, less likely to sympathize with conservative, traditionalist, and religious (especially Evangelical or traditional Catholic) view-points.  Indeed the ideas of religious conservatives (and even moderate-traditionalists) are despised and rejected as forms of "hatred" and even "verbal violence" that are to be silenced (sometimes, ironically, with actual physical violence).

This is a disturbing development for me and, I hope, for all lovers of liberty without regard to political stripe or religious conviction.

When I was in college studying Political Science we learned that an important principle in interpreting the Bill of Rights is that freedoms such as "freedom of speech" are enshrined in law precisely to protect the unpopular and the despised forms of expression from legal suppression.
The logic is simple: nobody calls for bans or suppression of popular speech that most people find agreeable (or at least innocuous).  It is the forms of expression that the majority of citizens find offensive or "unacceptable" that are targeted for silencing (which we saw vividly when the often unkind and harsh conservative Ann Coulter was physically prevented from speaking at Berkeley - being excluded ironically in the name of "inclusivity" and "non-discrimination").

The same principle applies when protecting the rights of religious people to freely exercise their faith, and live according to the dictates of their religion or convictions: it is not the belief systems that most people find acceptable that need protection from legal suppression, but those that most will find objectionable.

This is significant because the so-called "millennial generation" is the largest group of voters since the Baby Boomers, and as the latter die off the political power of the younger generation will increase dramatically.  Will that power be used to under-cut constitutional rights for minorities whose views they find "unacceptable"?  Time will tell.

The video below (the original reason for this post) illustrates exactly why many have been saying - and I agree - that we need more protections for religious conservatives in some parts of the country.  When asked if a progressive can refuse services to a conservative for reasons of personal conviction, the young voters agree that this is an important "right" that should be protected.  When the situation is reversed, however, the same voters find themselves much less likely to support a conservative Christian who wants to refuse to provide services that would contradict his religious convictions.

I am not attempting to answer the particular question about when it may be appropriate for someone to refuse services on the grounds of personal conviction, merely pointing out that there is clearly a double-standard at play in the thinking of these younger voters.  So the question arises, will the next generation really stand committed to "equal justice under the law", or will favored groups receive more rights than unpopular groups?



Since the current Congressional majority claims to whole-heartedly support freedom of religion and freedom of speech, this might be a good time to contact your congressmen and urge action.