Nashotah House is traditionally described as the Anglo-Catholic Seminary, and so it is. However, that descriptor can often be confusing. Does it simply mean that we're, as one writer put it "Roman Catholicism lite," or, being concerned with "smells and bells," or even "gin, lace, and back-biting?" No. To think in terms only of approaches to worship or vesture is to miss the point of what it means to be Anglo-Catholic in its truest and deepest form.

Ivan Clutterbuck quotes Bishop Colin James, then of Winchester, in his wonderful little book, Marginal Catholics Anglo-Catholicism: A Further Chapter of Modern Church History, who offers three aspects that typify Anglo-Catholicism. First, holiness. "The primacy of God: the call to love and adore Him in the perfection of His own being and in response to His love for us." Second, "Catholic life is sacramental. The world is God's creation, and within its beauty and wonder we see intimations of the beauty and mystery of God Himself." Third, Anglo-Catholic belief is incarnational. "Our Lord becomes at one with us in the flesh, and his work of redemption includes the whole range of our social and political relations in life. . . ." Set free from the bondage of sin by the Redeemer, we are called to love and serve Him in the needs of the poor and challenge the forces and structures which oppress people and demean the human spirit."
 

Anglo-Catholicism is a movement that produced intellectual lights like E.B. Pusey, Charles Gore, and Eric Mascall. It was also behind addressing the condition of the poor through the work of Basil Jellicoe and a score of others. It is a movement that continues to remind us that we are to worship God in "the beauty of holiness" and serve Him "in the least of these." Nashotah House strives to continue to form priests and religious leaders who are committed to holiness, and a sacramental life grounded in the Incarnation. Anglo-Catholicism is about a great deal more than many think. Come, visit us, and find out!

- The Rev. Dr. Steven Peay, 

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, 

Professor of Homiletics and Church History