Anglican practices and rituals are primarily found in the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer book of Anglicanism, which helps define Anglican beliefs and worship practices on every level. The book is almost as important as the Bible itself to Anglicans. The Book of Common Prayer, which defines the “common”
The Baptist denomination is the largest free church denomination in the world with 43 million members. It is one of the largest Protestant Free Church denominations. More than 75 percent of all Baptists – about 33 million – live in America. There are about 216,000 Baptists in Great Britain, 850,000
The Catholic Church, known as the Roman Catholic Church, has well over one billion members, about one-sixth of the world’s population. It’s the world’s largest Christian denomination. It’s also the largest organized body of any world religion. Catholics are led by the Pope, also known as the Bishop of Rome,
Lutheranism is not a single entity. It is organized in autonomous regional or national churches. Globally, there are some 150 such Lutheran church bodies. Lutheranism is one of the largest Protestant denominations. It is also the oldest Protestant denomination. Lutheranism retains much of the tradition of the ancient and medieval
There are Methodist Churches in nearly every country in the world and global membership numbers about 70 million in 138 countries. The World Methodist Council (WMC), an association of churches in the Methodist tradition, comprises more than 40.5 million Methodists. There are at least 19 Wesleyan Methodist denominations in the
There have been proud spirits who placed the whole efficacy of the virtues in free will alone; in our age there are also many who utterly despair that free will is anything at all.[1] So Anselm in the early eleventh century contrasted the issues of his day to Augustine’s contest
All lovers of the visual arts are certainly familiar with the work of Hans Holbein the Younger, such as his famous portraits of St. Thomas More, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves. His friend and mentor Erasmus of Rotterdam referred to Apelles of Kos, the most renowned
Meridian Magazine
Sanctification and the Sacraments: Encountering the Transforming Presence of God By Jonathan A. Powers This article is the fourth in a four-week series on sanctification drawn from the webinar sponsored by the John Wesley Institute, exploring the biblical and Wesleyan vision of a life made holy by the power
This week on the Sermon Notes Podcast, Jay Strother and Brian Ball close out their five-week series through Ecclesiastes, Chasing the Wind, with a conversation on chapter 12, verses 9 through 14. It’s the epilogue to a book that opens and closes with the same hard word: everything is fleeting.
God Brought Them Here: How to See Church Visitors This Sunday afternoon I was speaking with my pastor on the phone about first-time visitors—those people who walk through the doors of our churches for the very first time. As we reflected on this, one thought kept returning to my mind:
When St. Thomas Aquinas set out to prove God’s existence in his Summa Theologiae, he articulated two objections. The first was the problem of evil: How can there be an infinitely good God if there is evil in the world? He answers it by positing the principle of o felix
Does God love you and your fellow travelers on Earth unconditionally? Do Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love all Their children completely, without condition or limitation, no matter what you (they) do, did, or didn’t do? I asked five active members of the Church that question. One said, “Yes.” One