Restoring Canterbury’s Lost Glow

An Excellent Article About the Ancient Provenance of the Stained Glass Windows in Canterbury Cathedral 

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient  Church of the West) 

People often ask me, “What is worth saving of the Anglican Patrimony, filled with liberalism, apostasy and anti-Patristic teachings as it is?” My answer is, “Reinforced by the changeless power of the doctrinal Orthodoxy of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, everything is worth saving.” 

There is a black, oily crust of iconoclastic, puritanical, self-sufficient, rebellious, hateful, and reactionary attitude blocking the radiance of our Patrimonial Christianity, but when it cleansed by Water and the Word, chrismated and reunited to the root of the Church, it can yet glow with the light of the Son!

How do we restore the lost glow of Canterbury Cathedral, allowing the Saints of the Orthodox Church to shine once again through the myriad of shards brought together, broken but never destroyed or divided, in a Anglo-Orthodox Christianity that joyfully declares the Apostolic Gospel to the world? The way is hard, filled with dangers and abuses, and pushes against the very essence of the prevalent culture in the West’s secular mentality. But, it can be done! By waging a multi-generational guerrilla war to retake our ancient patrimony and reinforce our flailing parishes with big families and many children; by having faithful, young, married priests; by building up asceticism that follows the example of our ancient British Celtic Saints, who wandered far and wide proclaiming the Gospel; by moving our movement to the third world, Asia, Africa and South America; and by remembering that, inevitably, this sterile, anti-human, consumeristic secular vision will fail. 

Secular humanism and godless atheism will fail, and when it does, someone has to be there to pick up all the pieces and make saintly stained glass windows out of them!