On August 7, 2024, my father passed away. That very same day the standing committee of the Reformed Episcopal Church approved my application to be a postulant. You might think it odd that I start a post with information that is so long passed. I have been less than active for quite some time on this blog and I have been thinking of ways to try to pick it up and this just seems like the best place to start.
Or maybe restart.
The journey of a postulant in the Anglican tradition varies wildly, depending on which particular province or communion one is in. In the REC where I am, they handed me a very large packet of questions. Forty-Two pages of very dense questions. It is a laundry list, as it were, of the various concepts that one should at least have some understanding of. There are five sections: Scripture, Church History, Dogmatics, Liturgics/Book of Common Prayer, and Pastoral Theology. I shared it with a very dear friend who is a minister in a different branch of Christ’s Church and he said he kept waiting to see something that said never mind JK lol, so there’s a lot of questions in that booklet. Some of the questions have had entire books written about them so it’s obvious that the point is not necessarily know everything about it, but to at least have some sort of passing understanding of the concepts involved.
Without trying to painstakingly review everything that’s happened since this journey started I’ll make a summary .
I’ve moved from just independent study to taking courses at the denomination’s seminary. I’ve completed two courses. The first course was Cure of Souls, which is an overview of ministry itself with the different aspects of it from the individual to the corporate to marriage, etc.
The second course was on Anglicanism itself, which was a broad overview of the history of the church in England, since there’s a presence of Christianity since the second century; through the arrival of Saint Augustine from Rome to put us in communion with Rome (an important distinction from being under the authority of the Bishop of Rome, aka the Pope) to the events of the first thousand years of the church till the reformation. The events of the reformation in England and how that was affected by the fact that we have such a long history before the reformation and the distinctions of the English reformation from the continental reformation. The professor for the course is currently the presiding Bishop of the REC, Bishop Ray Sutton. If you know him at all, his phrase for Anglicanism is Reformed Catholicism. I’ve had my own diatribes about ceding the word Catholic to the Roman Catholics, so this was refreshing. Cata-Halos, of the whole. The Church is the Bride of Christ, she is His Church.
John 17:9-11
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
My current course is on the 39 articles of religion, which is an overview obviously of 39 articles of religion and the history of each one and the distinctions between the English reformation and the Lutheran approach and the Geneva approach. I am currently an articles 14 and 15, which are discussions of the dynamic of sanctification versus justification.
Grace and Peace to you all.
Amateur Anglican 
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