Fr Christopher Poore
@HappyThurifer
Followers
1,064
Following
916
Media
521
Statuses
2,455
Episcopal Priest. PhD student in theology at UChicago Divinity School. Editor at VTS Press.
Chicago, IL
Joined August 2014
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
McDonald
• 1058803 Tweets
الهلال
• 782058 Tweets
سالم
• 182077 Tweets
Liz Cheney
• 173565 Tweets
AFIP
• 163262 Tweets
#grandefratello
• 82660 Tweets
Samantha
• 53019 Tweets
#岸優太
• 48933 Tweets
Baker
• 42636 Tweets
アニメの日
• 36062 Tweets
#WWERaw
• 35230 Tweets
Ravens
• 33337 Tweets
Nolan
• 25793 Tweets
Tom Holland
• 21296 Tweets
Elvira
• 17608 Tweets
Shaila
• 17052 Tweets
ARCA
• 16977 Tweets
Chargers
• 16308 Tweets
Buccaneers
• 14027 Tweets
Cardinals
• 12660 Tweets
Alejandro Toledo
• 12506 Tweets
CULLEN FOREVER 18
• 12349 Tweets
Odebrecht
• 11987 Tweets
Bucs
• 11809 Tweets
#سعود_القحطاني
• 10702 Tweets
Pinned Tweet
Gotta say, I really love the Book of Common Prayer.
8
10
217
I saw this great parish profile that has a section about what kids want in their new pastor. One said, "The new priest needs to be really strong and able to lift big babies for baptism." 🤣
11
12
197
What does Anglicanism need? Here's the answer theologian Keith Ward gave at a forum last week:
We need an intellectual renaissance, we need to show people how fascinating it is to think about God—they need to be invited to bring their love of science & beauty & poetry along.
10
28
178
Lord, thank you for making me a priest in your holy church.
12
4
174
Who wants a little thread of Anglican divines defending the doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice? You? Oh good—buckle in.
First up, we've got William Laud! No surprises here, I suppose...
2
14
145
Seriously got choked up professing that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, containing all things necessary to salvation. Wow, seriously, I'm not crying, you're crying. What can I say? The Lord made another deacon. Glory to God.
9
9
138
So the pastoral care in the film Winter Light is...not great, but just look at those Swedish Lutheran aesthetics!!
9
11
97
Friends, I just found out that I will be ordained to the priesthood in nine days. And in an incredible sign of God's lovingkindness, guess whose feast day it will be?
8
2
99
Some really, really good news.
The University of Chicago Divinity School has invited me to enter their doctoral program in theology! And I can't wait to start.
7
0
95
A bit of a big announcement, as a 🧵. When I came into
@episcopalchurch
, I was surprised at how hard it was to begin reading the theology of the tradition: so much of it was out of print, hidden away in strange corners of the internet or available only in poor facsimile copies.
10
16
93
Celebrated my first Mass today with a chalice gifted to the parish by Oxford Movement leader EB Pusey, whose feast is September 18.
As Pusey himself preached in 1843: "His Flesh and Blood in the sacrament shall give life!"
8
1
123
Eight years ago I read this biography of John Keble and I discovered there were these people called Anglicans who loved the writings of the early church and who prayed morning and night for everyone through this thing called the Book of Common Prayer. Happy Keble Day everyone!
3
9
88
So what appears to be a consecrated host is taped into the back cover of a St Augustine's Prayer Book I just received: former owner, a priest of blessed memory. Another adventure in Anglican eucharistic theology? Someone tell me what I'm supposed to do now. 😮
16
1
85
Went to lunch with the parish music director and got to hear things like: "In Anglicanism, our iconographic tradition is found in our music." 🤯🤯🤯
Amazing.
9
5
79
Do not give your suffering to those who will devour you. Do not give your suffering to those who made you suffer in the first place. Do not take up your cross and follow the wolves. But take up your cross and follow the Lord.
From my first sermon as a deacon! (link in reply)
3
7
71
"But young people are too young to be priests."
On the contrary, the Episcopal Church's own study found that congregations are most likely to grow when the priest is 39 or younger.
Meanwhile, only 5.7% of TEC clergy are under the age of 34. The avg ordinand age? 50.
9
20
68
RT if you wish the charming, little Daily Office Book was still in print. It fits so perfectly in the hand and can go anywhere!
10
9
68
I'm always dreaming of making breviaries and missals that compile authorized TEC material. I know I shouldn't dream such dreams but I do.
7
2
69
In class, we were asked what was our favorite part of the Nicene Creed. I have to say, I'm a lovesick fool for "Light from Light." For me, this phrase conjures memories of what it was like to go to the candle-lit Christmas Eve service with my mom when I was a kid... 1/3
4
1
65
Sure, the 79 BCP's layout and design deters congregations from using the actual book—but can we also talk about how difficult the book is to use in emergency situations? For instance... 🧵
4
4
62
In the end, the 79 Prayer Book shows us one way to be a book: it's a reference manual, a compendium, a library for the "curating" experts. This type of book *is* dying into the digital. So, sure, put it up in the cloud! But that's not the only way to be a book!
3
3
58
"The liturgy was not invented, it was discovered." I remember reading this Pavel Florensky quote when I was living my 'unconverted bohemian life' lolz, and it floored me. It formed the bedrock of my liturgical sensibility—not always an easy foundation to bear around in the world.
3
3
56
So I am indeed taking the General Ordination Exams tomorrow. Say a little prayer for me, if you would!
8
0
55
I love that Lancelot Andrewes referred to Morning Prayer, the Litany, and Communion collectively as "the Great Service," a title that emphasizes an ideal of liturgical integration, of being steeped in Scripture as deciphered through liturgy in its various forms.
0
10
58
Morning Prayer on this ordination day with my grandma's tried and true 1962 Cokesbury RSV Bible.
3
3
56
More 18th cent Anglican pastoral advice from Burnet:
"When a priest performs the holy functions, is sanctifying the holy eucharist, & is offering a crucified Christ to the people, his thoughts should carry him heavenwards, & as it were translate him into those upper regions."
3
7
51
Imagine going to the Louvre to see the Orthodox Metropolitan of Trebizond celebrate the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and you will have imagined yourself into a day in the life of that great Anglican divine, John Cosin. Oh! And Queen Henrietta Maria was in attendance too.
1
9
53
I never get tired of showing people this image when we talk about pre-Oxford Movement "Anglican" liturgy. Forgive me for clogging your feed with something you've probs already seen—but look how beautiful it is!!
5
2
46
Just turned in my FINAL final paper here at VTS. What fun that Bulgakov saw me over the finish line.
7
1
48
If I republished an Anglican treatise on confirmation every time I heard that confirmation is a "sacrament in search of a meaning," the world could not contain the books that would need to be republished.
7
2
51
I love the humble realism of Judith Pinnington, an Eastern Orthodox historian: "All religious traditions are dilapidated, impoverished, broken, more or less, no matter what divine charge is laid upon them..."
1
9
48
The baptismal liturgy doesn't provide the lections: you'll need to juggle a Bible/phone. Then the responses are complicated—as if they presume everyone can read the responses from a bulletin. The book simply presumes the world of the suburban parish, with a nice printing budget.
3
1
47
When I hear that Anglicanism needs an "intellectual renaissance," it's funny: my Orthodox training kicks in.
Because in Orthodoxy, the intellect is your capacity for wonder, awe, the very eye of the heart and the seat of non-destructive love. I hear it as a call to loving wonder
2
3
50
So today, I’m launching
@SeminaryStPress
to do exactly that, and it’s
#ReleaseDay
for Jeremy Taylor’s Perfective Unction: A Discourse of Confirmation. You can buy it here ().
1
1
46
Did you not get censed at today's Eucharist? Well come here then, let me help with that!
First Sunday throwing smoke at St. Paul's, K Street, and it was great fun. I am now a VERY happy thurifer!!
5
0
45
The older Prayer Books (ironically) didn't presume literacy: they imagined their life beyond the physical page. They weren't "dead books:" but books which transcended the book, into an oral and aural world. Lections were provided. Responses kept simple, or at least simpler.
3
2
43
I've been trying to steal a little time on Friday mornings to feed my soul with good books. Here's the wonderful volume I enjoyed this morning, Bryan Spinks's history of the Book of Common Prayer.
3
2
43
Ah remember that time when I thought I was going to make a Sunday missal for the Episcopal Church but then the denomination's endless indecision about prayer book revision scared me off? Don't want to put in all the work if things are about to be tossed in the air!
8
0
41
The Calendar from the "Common Service Book of the Lutheran Church" is siiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!
4
2
43
Which is not to say "retvrn" but it is to say, if we're going to think about the future of physical Prayer Books, the past might actually have something important to offer.
2
1
40
While we're talking about the average ordination age etc., behold the 23 year-old !!RECTOR!! of Grace Church, Norfolk VA, the Rev George Freeman Bragg Jr. He would go on to write the first national history of Black Episcopalians.
3
5
42
I love a good Orthodox icon corner just as much as anyone, but here's a little reminder: Anglicanism has its own tradition of making holy corners, too! Here are some words from William Law, around 1729. Now, get out there and set up a little "place holy" for yourself!
3
9
40
Do you have any favorite images of Anglicans celebrating the rite of confirmation? I'm on the hunt! Here's some I've found so far.
5
7
39
Having now used this Prayer Book in emergency situations, having felt its clumsiness, it almost feels like this book's design was not test-driven in hospitals. Where people die suddenly. Where people might not know about churchy things.
1
2
41
"Therefore, Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to Christopher; fill him with grace and power, and make him a priest in your Church."
1
1
41
This is why they can't reconcile their visions afterwards: for Newman the CofE is this faux-church. But Keble has actually seen the sacraments WORKING and whatever intellectual/doctrinal objections you might raise against Anglicanism, he's just incapable of explaining away grace
3
0
39
Who wants to see the booklist for Dr. Sonderegger's Anglican Thought class? Me! Me!
(And would you just look at how much of it is "out of print," almost as if there should be a press publishing some of this stuff...)
5
1
41
Friends! Next month Bishop Paula Clark will ordain me to the diaconate, and the Rev. Katherine Sonderegger will be preaching the ordination sermon. Join us at Church of the Ascension, Chicago at 7 PM on Thursday, February 8. It would be great to celebrate with you.
0
0
39
Today I got to do one of my absolute favorite things. Someone asked if I could help them find artwork by Allan Rohan Crite, and I got to share his brush drawing mediations on the prayer of consecration, one of the artistic treasures of Black Catholicism in The Episcopal Church.
4
1
36
Don't forget, Prayer Book lovers! The Athanasian Creed is traditionally said today at Morning Prayer for the feast of Saints Simon and Jude.
2
3
37
So at the exact moment Newman is having this complete (mostly intellectual/polemical) breakdown in his faith in the Church of England, Keble is giving the sacraments to his wife while she is at death's door... 1/2
1
2
37
Gotta say, seeing John Hus, Luther, Calvin, and Charles Gore all enthusiastically refer to Bernard of Clairvaux def made me re-examine my assumptions about the Reformation's feelings towards the medieval past. Happy St Bernard Day y'all!
1
5
37
A photo from around 1888: some of the clergy of the Nippon Sei Ko Kai.*
*literally, the Japanese Holy Catholic Church, but also translated as the Anglican Episcopal Church in Japan
1
6
34
"But what *is* Anglicanism???"
Please please let's all read Charles Gore on this. I know he's complicated, but this is one of the finest aspirational definitions of Anglicanism I can think of—and I want to live into it!
(qtd in
@cath_cov
's recent post: )
3
3
36
Don't know if there's a term for this, but at St Paul's, K Street we have stones from sacred places enshrined in the floor. For today's feast, here's what we have from Walsingham. Our priests stand here as they vest for Mass!
5
1
35
"The reality of creation as a whole has become a monstrance."
Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Incarnation.
0
5
35
Literally brought me back to God.
3
1
31
And this is just a sample of what you can find in the newly digitized "Testimonies to the Anglican Teaching on the Eucharistic Oblation," originally published by The Society of S Peter and S Paul in 1975, and now available from Project Canterbury:
2
2
31
Lancelot Andrewes apparently had a cruet specially designed to make it look like blood was gushing out as he filled the chalice at communion.
If that's not the most metal thing you hear today, I don't know what to tell you.
2
1
33
Dust off your 1892 Book of Common Prayer!
The parish where I interned last summer is turning 125 years old—and they're doing so by celebrating Holy Communion from the 1892 BCP, the liturgy in use at the time of their founding. A great idea—and proposed by the laity!
4
0
33
This year I'll be doing my field ed for ministry at St. Paul's Parish, K Street in DC!! So excited to be led deeper into 'the beauty of holiness' that just hangs in the air here, a dense glory.
2
0
33
Twitter advice from the Laudian Bishop Walter Curll? Yes plz.
"even Religion it selfe is in a maner lost in the quarrels and questions of Religion...it were better for the Church, to want some trueth, then to have no peace." (Sermon Preached at White Hall, 1622)
3
2
31
So you and I want Anglican ressourcement? Okay then—this will have to mean more than reading older formularies, praying from older BCPs. As Péguy warns us, ressourcement means first of all the discovery of a humanity deeper than the humanity on offer in the dominant theology.
4
0
30
Just turned in my final project for Anglican Thought, and I am now half-way done with seminary. Wild.
1
0
31
First read of 2022. Avis has been one of my guiding lights into Anglicanism. He captures its breadth while not losing sight of its coherency, a coherency grounded in ongoing conversation and interrogation—rather than a totalizing coherency interested in only replicating itself.
3
0
29
Please, I am begging you, let's not wait to be the Church until COVID is "over."
The works of mercy still exist. The virtues still exist. The daily sacrifice of prayer is still waiting to be offered. God is still waiting to be found in the face of the neighbor.
0
1
30
It is my prejudice that the Bible is a good book and that it is worthwhile for someone to take its thoughts at the very least as seriously as their own.
Karl Barth, 1925, in a letter to Thurneysen.
1
6
26
A social justice devotional arranged according to the liturgical year? Pretty sure our friend Vida Scudder was behind this. Featuring the Sarum Missal, Thomas Traherne, Evelyn Underhill, Julian of Norwich, the Episcopal Female Tract Society + many others.
4
4
30
“It’s really important for the new priest to know my first name and my family’s last name. Flash-cards might help with that.”
1
2
29
First Sunday at my summer field ed parish and I only tripped on my surplice once, sending my hymnal flying to the floor. But I also got to preach about Israel expressing faithfulness to God through lament, so alleluia anyhow.
3
0
29
Here's from another kid: "The new priest should have a decent enough amount of knowledge about the bible. They should know the story of creation, Noah’s Ark and the first couple of chapters in the bible.”
2
1
29
Two years of seminary done! One more to go! Gosh, there are so many beautiful souls in this world.
1
1
28
One last glance through before Solemn High Mass this morning!
0
1
29
Schmemann writing about how he learned something of the sacred from the West, French Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism. The Mass "a spot of light on the dark wall." Here is an Orthodoxy capable of perceiving a beauty and truth outside itself: the Other a revelation.
1
4
27
It was a good thing when the actual Book of Common Prayer contained the lections. Would I give up the three year lectionary to have the readings back? I don't know. Would you? I admit I also love having an OT lection
12
0
28
Oh no, what if I become that guy and just post quotes from the Book of Homilies all week???? It's just that I've so enjoyed re-reading "A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading and Knowledge of Holy Scripture." Just one of the best things you'll ever read.
4
0
28
I want to see your Bibles! Your well-loved, much-read, dearly beloved Bibles. The Bible you're just starting to read. Evidence of wrestling with the Word always welcome.
(This is the Bible I carry in my backpack when I'm going on visits.)
13
0
27
One of the best things about being a 2nd year MDiv? Not getting closed out of classes! Looks like Fall 21 will include:
-Anglican Thought w/ Sonderegger
-Moral Problems w/ Markham
-Homiletics w/ Hooke
-NT w/ Yieh
And best of all: I get to start learning at a parish!
1
0
27
Tempted to hang this image over my desk, so that Moses can threaten to break the commandments over my head as I try to learn how to write theology.
3
0
26
And then there's L'Estrange, with a view from the pews.
1
2
26
First trip to the VTS library!!! Gah! I can't believe it! 😮😮🤯
6
2
27
It's that special time of year: move your ribbon, friends! Advent is here!
0
2
25
Most Episcopal parishes fill in this blank with just one name: "St Mark and all your saints." But we Orthodox converts to TEC are over here like: "our Lady the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, St Joe her spouse, Ss Joachim & Anna, St Chrysostom, St Basil, and oh yeah St Mark too!"
3
1
26
"To love God is to love oneself truly; to help another person to love God is to love another person; to be helped by another person to love God is to be loved."
—Kierkegaard, Works of Love
First Series, III.A
0
3
25
Not just Godly Play but Gothic Play, that's what I want to teach: Mary punching the Devil, a little wound devotion, and then we can make Eucharistic hosts with some medieval wafer irons. Now where do I apply for a grant to develop this curriculum?
4
4
26
I started with this text because I badly needed to understand what had happened to me when the bishop laid his hands on my head and welcomed me into
@episcopalchurch
, and this book started to point towards some answers.
1
1
21
"Keeping Up with the Cappadocians."
Why yes, this was the title of my sermon on this, St. Macrina's feast day.
1
2
22
Prayer Book revision anyone can love: red rubrics are coming back y'all!
0
0
24
Schmemann's Orthodox spirituality is remarkable for its compete apathy towards icons, Athos, Jesus prayer. He's much more focused on cherishing memory, as if recollecting one's life in thankfulness is a way to image eternity, eternity's harvest of all the good things in time.
1
0
24
What if instead of reading the latest panic piece about church decline, I just prayed, "Lord, behold and tend this vine"? I mean, do the stats really change that much year to year? One article per 5 yrs seems plenty.
3
1
23
One of the thrilling aspects of Anglican orthodoxy in the time of Cranmer: when one member of the Church receives the Eucharist, every single member of the Church is nourished. That's what it means to be Christ's body. Crazy! It's in The King's Book!
2
1
23
Entering the church these days can leave you feeling like you are running into a burning building. Or as Balthasar would put it, into something "naked and wounded."
1
3
24
The Anglican nonjurors were really quite audacious. They thought unity with the Orthodox could be achieved by drawing up a new Liturgy compiled from Greek sources, w/ a few careful omissions. And they insisted that Jerusalem should be recognized as the first among the patriarchs.
4
0
23
I realize that I'm quickly becoming that person on here who just shouts over and over again, "Can you believe this Anglican treasure is out of print?!!" Thank you for bearing with me: let me assure you that my surprise is genuine and painful each and every time.
3
0
24
So there's chatter about the prayer "attributed" to St Francis, but did you know there's another prayer "attributed" to him?
"May the power of your love, O Lord, fiery and sweet as honey, wean our hearts from all that is under heaven, so that we may die for love of your love,...
1
3
24
And here's Hickes with the idea that even as the Son, the High Priest of Heaven shows his passion to the Father, so the priests of this earth join in, displaying the symbols of Christ's passion to God.
1
1
22
Sunday evening treat: Newman's sermon on reverence.
3
0
23
Very excited to begin a class called "The Doctrine of Scriptural Authority" here at VTS. Today, we're starting with Protestant confessional documents, including the Book of Homilies.
2
0
21