Fr Christopher Poore
@christopherpoore.bsky.social
Episcopal priest. PhD student in theology at UChicago Divinity School. Bringing Anglican texts back to life: editor of Seminary Street Press and VTS Press.
“However, this essential solidarity, in accord with Jesus’ solidarity with all sinners—to the extent of taking upon him their sinful condition—means that the Mother is given the ‘last place’, behind the last sinner, to whom she does not refuse her solidarity.” TD4
So I've heard Jesus is just another jerk in our world who needs to be called out. But I’d like to offer an alternative reading of the liberating Gospel of the Canaanite woman, one grounded in the theology of St. Cyril, St. Thomas Aquinas, Katherine Sonderegger, and James Cone. Link in reply.
Three hard truths about Anglican-Orthodox relations. 1) Anglicans, they’re just not that into you. 2) The reasons for separation keep on shifting. 3) Sometimes you have to choose. But read the piece to find out exactly what I mean by all that: drawnfromthechalice.substack.com/p/3-hard-tru...
3 Hard Truths about Anglican-Orthodox Relations
This last week I overcame my absolute horror of appearing on video and sat down with All Things Necessary, the wonderful podcast hosted by Fr.
drawnfromthechalice.substack.com
This was a lot of fun. Many thanks to All Things Necessary for having me on.
David Johnston@dljohnston.bsky.social · 4mo agoBeards, kissing, and getting the liturgy right. What more could one ask for in a theology podcast? My guest (@christopherpoore.bsky.social) offers up a bespoke curation of Anglican-Orthodox history and it is both fun and filled with wisdom ⚓ youtu.be/Z-1Mr-hqCaE?...
Head over and watch. Already watching and it’s an amazing conversation. ⚓️
David Johnston@dljohnston.bsky.social · 4mo agoBeards, kissing, and getting the liturgy right. What more could one ask for in a theology podcast? My guest (@christopherpoore.bsky.social) offers up a bespoke curation of Anglican-Orthodox history and it is both fun and filled with wisdom ⚓ youtu.be/Z-1Mr-hqCaE?...
Loved this so much! Learned a ton. There is NOTHING like God's people speaking from the heart.
David Johnston@dljohnston.bsky.social · 4mo agoBeards, kissing, and getting the liturgy right. What more could one ask for in a theology podcast? My guest (@christopherpoore.bsky.social) offers up a bespoke curation of Anglican-Orthodox history and it is both fun and filled with wisdom ⚓ youtu.be/Z-1Mr-hqCaE?...
New pfp giving evidence of man bun deletion
I admit I still have not switched over, but I'm very glad to see this new edition of the NRSVue Bible with Apocrypha coming out from Church Publishing. Release date is April 14.
But come on: if you think our orders are utterly null and totally void, then why are you so bothered? (I sometimes wonder whether this sort of reaction is sometimes motivated by a fear that the Anglican Communion might be a real church after all)
"Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me."
One of my favorite images from Archbishop Sarah's installation: her swearing of the oath with the St. John's Gospel Book open to the incarnation illumination. So powerful and moving.
Melting down one's valuable possessions to make a chalice, fiercely advocating for the sacramental care of the poor and dispossessed. Such is the ministry of Isabella Gilmore, who oversaw the reinstitution of women to the diaconate in the Church of England. More of this energy please.
Lindsay@revteapot.bsky.social · 6mo agoShe was also shocked to her middle class core by the horrific conditions in which the poor of London were living. She rolled up her sleeves, galvanised other women to do the same, and ministered to them - physically and spiritually.
!["Two stories, I think, exemplify Gilmore's commitment and ministry. The first is that on the eve of Gilmore's own ordination she puts all her rings, including her wedding ring, aside as a gesture of her wholehearted commitment to her new ministry. Giving them up is not a light gesture. "It was not vanity, but all that they had meant to me." She has them melted down and added to a chalice that she has made for the chapel at Gilmore House. Thereafter, like the clergyman perpetually in holy black, Gilmore is seen only in deaconess blue. The other is of her response to the discovery that few in the patch in which she serves are baptised. On investigation[35] she hears it is in part because the women in the slums rarely leave their own house and even more rarely leave the small selection of streets that is their community. Should they muster the audacity to do so, Gilmore found, they still will not go to church on a Sunday because they cannot dress for church, having only one set of ragged clothes. Gilmore browbeats her incumbent into offering a baptism on a weekday evening. The sceptical cleric gives her a service slot of half an hour, just before the parish meeting. The service overruns by a full hour and 93 children are baptised.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gbhsjjgjkvgjbrsbbjzwzvb4/bafkreift75l2ml2zwyg5tc3t74sqdu772qcmu5mf3jpsmuudftlci3x47u)
And I also.
Fr Christopher Poore@christopherpoore.bsky.social · 7mo agoDon't know how this is possible, but: I've never been a monk and yet the Rule of St. Benedict has profoundly shaped my life, challenging me to listen more deeply and to live life with deep roots. Very happy to share these reflections with you all. ⚓ drawnfromthechalice.substack.com/p/how-the-ru...
Don't know how this is possible, but: I've never been a monk and yet the Rule of St. Benedict has profoundly shaped my life, challenging me to listen more deeply and to live life with deep roots. Very happy to share these reflections with you all. ⚓ drawnfromthechalice.substack.com/p/how-the-ru...
You do realize that if Hooker beats Cranmer, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity immediately becomes an authorized liturgy of the Episcopal Church, and we'll just start reading that aloud for Sunday service?
RT@ryankturnbull.bsky.social · 7mo agoWhat a match-up. www.lentmadness.org/2026/02/rich...
btw the point of spiritual direction is not for your director to say: “Ignore your conscience and listen to me!”
Fr Christopher Poore@christopherpoore.bsky.social · 7mo agoI’m just convinced. Raïssa Maritain’s life as a contemplative in the world informed the positions taken at Vatican II. Her reflections on conscience should strike fear into every abusive spiritual director, even as her words on spiritual freedom will give courage to the timid.
I’m just convinced. Raïssa Maritain’s life as a contemplative in the world informed the positions taken at Vatican II. Her reflections on conscience should strike fear into every abusive spiritual director, even as her words on spiritual freedom will give courage to the timid.
Who Was Raïssa Maritain? The Spiritual Mother Behind Vatican II
Raïssa Maritain's writings on the importance of spiritual liberty appear as premonitions of the positions taken by the Church during Vatican II.
drawnfromthechalice.substack.com
The most recurrent and persistent insight spoken by retreatants, visitors, guests, and students is that we monks are so peaceful and welcoming to them. My honest response to them usually entails something akin to, "Yes, it's because we take naps, and don't work ourselves to death."
"I wish every seminarian would read it on their first day of liturgical studies." Just one of the heartening comments on my latest. Thank you for the warm responses! ⚓
What is wrong with the modern liturgy?
On technocracy, spiritual avarice, and liturgical ascesis
drawnfromthechalice.substack.com
My own training/tradition is that stoles are removed for the foot-washing, but to see the Bishop of Rome in a deacon's stole says some very good things.
Fr Christopher Poore@christopherpoore.bsky.social · 8mo agowe can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere. Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 124
we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere. Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 124
we are obliged to respect the right of all individuals to find a place that meets their basic needs and those of their families ... Our response to the arrival of migrating persons can be summarized by four words: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 129
If every human being possesses an inalienable dignity ... and if the world truly belongs to everyone, then it matters little whether my neighbour was born in my country or elsewhere. My own country also shares responsibility for his or her development. Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 125
Whatever is opposed to life itself … whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation … all these things … poison human society … Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator. Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes 27
As someone very interested in trying to help theology along in the university, I love both the daring and the humility of this approach. Universities study things that exist. God exists—ineffably so. Therefore universities should include a place for the study of God.
Jonathan Heaps@jonathanrheaps.bsky.social · 8mo agoBasically, I'm arguing (incredibly briefly) that God definitely exists & universities are obligated to have theology departments as a result, but also that, as a culture, we have only the most embryonic notion of how the results of theology can be credible among modern science & scholarship.
A beautiful definition of reason from Rowan Williams: reason as our capacity to behold the world together, to listen to one another. "We’ve lost sight of the notion that what God gives us is the capacity to listen to one another and learn from one another in a common world."
@churchtimes.bsky.social · 8mo agoIn a united service for the #WeekofPrayerforChristianUnity in #WestminsterCathedral on Tuesday, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams recalled Pope Benedict XVI and his vision of Christian unity #lordwilliams #churchnews #churchtimes
But in his passion to become superhuman, man becomes subhuman, estranged from the source of his being, threatening and threatened by his neighbor, transforming a situation destined for intimate human fellowship into a spider web of conspiracy and violence. —James H. Cone
This crisis, and the insistence that God ought not be violent to His own creature’s “inalienable core,” funds Balthasar’s most radical speculative seeking of the “most” lost soul, following it into the very depths of Hell. It ends abruptly in silence and indecision. He can reason into it no more.
"Rage... can feel like moral seriousness. It can masquerade as courage. It can even borrow the language of prophetic witness. But it corrodes the very capacities that priesthood is meant to cultivate: patience, attentiveness, the willingness to remain with people rather than reduce them..."
Wake Up Dead Man and the New Seductions of the Cloth
Wake Up Dead Man reimagines clerical corruption, shifting the threat from lust or greed to rage, grievance, and culture-war ideology for modern times.
martycenter.org