Lecture: The English Reformation

Fr. Bill Stafford returns to the Parish Hall Podium in September, guiding us in a three-part series on the Reformation. Mark your calendars for Sunday, September 7, and also September 14, and 21, and join us after the 10:00 a.m. service.

The greatest change in the history of Anglicanism happened in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, under Henry VIII, his son Edward VI, and his daughter Elizabeth I. To later Protestant Anglicans, it was the dawn of sunshine after the long night of superstition and falsehood of the Middle Ages. To Roman Catholics, and to later catholic-leaning Anglicans, it was a destructive cataclysm. To many secular progressives, it was the first step in the growth of Enlightenment against the powerful nonsense of priestcraft. Fr. Bill Stafford, who has taught the English Reformation in three seminaries of the Episcopal Church, will offer three lectures at Coffee Hour after the 10:00 services on the dates above. He sees both destruction and gifts in that crucial century in our history, and will try to describe both the light and the loss.