The Franciscan Anglican

Spirituality & Practice

The Body Remembers: How Franciscan Mystical Experience Invites Anglicans to Rediscover Embodied Faith

When Francis of Assisi received the stigmata on La Verna in 1224, he offered the Western church one of its most theologically charged and perpetually unsettling images: the human body as a site of divine encounter. For many contemporary Anglicans, shaped by a tradition that prizes intellectual formation and liturgical restraint, such mystical intensity can seem foreign — even suspect. Yet a closer examination suggests that Franciscan embodied spirituality and Anglican sacramental theology may sh

Jul 21, 2026

Theology & Tradition

When Mercy Disrupts Order: Reconciliation, Power, and the Healing the American Church Has Yet to Attempt

St. Francis embraced lepers, forgave his persecutors, and dismantled every social hierarchy that stood between the sinner and God's compassion. Anglican institutional structures, by contrast, were built to endure — to govern, to adjudicate, to hold the line. In an American church confronting clergy abuse, racial wound, and political rupture, these two instincts are no longer merely in creative tension. They are in collision, and something transformative may yet emerge from the wreckage.

Jul 21, 2026

Theology & Tradition

Holding the Tension: How Franciscan Humility and Anglican Comprehensiveness Offer a Model for a Fractured American Church

American Christianity is fracturing along ideological fault lines that increasingly mirror the broader culture's political and social divisions. Yet two venerable traditions—Franciscan spirituality and Anglican comprehensiveness—carry within their DNA a distinctive theology of unity that resists both false consensus and bitter division. Across the United States, communities shaped by these traditions are quietly modeling a form of Christian life that neither surrenders conviction nor weaponizes

Jul 21, 2026

Spirituality & Practice

Silence in a Noisy World: Ancient Contemplative Disciplines Finding New Life in the Digital Age

As smartphones and social media fracture the interior life of modern Christians, Franciscan and Anglican spiritual directors are drawing on centuries-old contemplative disciplines to cultivate genuine stillness. From lectio divina apps to digitally-bounded Sabbath practices, communities across America are discovering that monastic wisdom need not be abandoned in the hyperconnected age—only reimagined. The question, however, remains urgent: can ancient silence truly take root in soil so thoroughl

Jul 21, 2026

Spirituality & Practice

Brother Sun, Sister Earth: How Anglican and Franciscan Traditions Are Weaving a Common Theology of Creation Care

Across the United States, Anglican and Franciscan-rooted faith communities are discovering that their shared reverence for creation is more than a theological coincidence — it is a foundation for urgent, collaborative action on ecological justice. Drawing on St. Francis's mystical kinship with the natural world and the Anglican Communion's increasingly robust environmental commitments, this article explores how two ancient traditions are finding contemporary common ground in the sacred work of c

Jul 21, 2026

Theology & Tradition

The Poor Man of Assisi Speaks to the Prosperous Pew: Franciscan Simplicity and the Wealth Gospel in American Anglican Life

As prosperity-inflected preaching finds a foothold in certain American Anglican congregations, the eight-hundred-year-old witness of St. Francis of Assisi offers a searching and uncomfortable counterpoint. What does the radical divestiture of the Poverello demand of communities that have grown comfortable equating divine favor with financial blessing? This article examines the theological fault lines — and the invitation to renewal — that emerge when Franciscan simplicity meets the modern Americ

Jul 21, 2026