"The Anglican Communion has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ's Church from the beginning."
- Geoffrey Fisher, 99th Archbishop of Canterbury
Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, martyred for Christ in 156
"O happy fault! If we weren't sinners and didn't need pardon more than bread, we'd have no way of knowing how deep God's love is."
- Louis Evely
"Avoid, like the plague, a clergyman who is also a businessman."
- St. Jerome
"Slander is worse than cannibalism."
- St. John Chrysostom
"Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
- Jaroslav Pelikan
"The Jesus of Suburbia is a lie."
- Green Day
"It's true romance is dead I shot it in the chest and in the head"
- Fall Out Boy
"Don't just adore the Eucharist, enact it."
- William Cavanaugh
"If you can be talked out of your faith, you probably should be."
- Roger Ward
"Don't ever deny someone the luxury of being human or broken. That is not a luxury you yourself can afford to lose."
- Sarah Cunningham
"It is better that the United States be liquidated than that she survive by war."
- Dorothy Day
"Wherever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian Church. With its recovery will come unexpected power."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Friday, September 23, 2005 Who Is This Guy? A quick word on who I am and what I like to write about.
I am a native of Kentucky, USA. I am a 2003 graduate of Georgetown College, where I earned a B.A. History, and a 2008 graduate of the M.Th. (Applied Theology) program at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. My research modules included Doctrine, Context and Practice, Interpretation of the Bible, and Christian Mission in the Modern World. The title of my dissertation is "Encountering the Christian Colony: An Evaluation of Hospitality as Proclamation."
My interests and hobbies include theology, politics, cooking, writing, discussing all kinds of things all the time, and sitting around coffee houses and libraries.
I spent two years employed by Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, where I looked after the Religion section and hosted a few author events. I still lead a monthly reading group there. I presently work as a "Library Technician" at Georgetown College. I have responsibilities for cataloging, instructing classes in library research, assisting students with research plans, and various small projects as needed.
I became a Christian of the Southern Baptist persuasion at 16, disaffiliated at 18, and became an Anglican at 21. I spent 8 months interning at a parish in Dallas followed by a year in ministry in Georgetown, while discerning for Orders in the local diocese. These experiences brought me to the conclusion that the Episcopal Church no longer viable as a form of Catholic Christianity. I appreciate the present Ancient-Future interest of some aspects of the "Emergent" conversation, but I am an Anglo-Catholic Christian. I am, frankly, quite postmodern in my outlook, and I'm far more interested in telling you about the "emerging catholic church" in the United States, as well as the monastic spirituality my parish and household seek to live out. I am a layman of the Church of Rwanda as a communicant of Saint Patrick's Church. My usual responsibilities fall within the realm of Christian formation and mission leadership. I am a Missioner of the Anglican Mission in the Americas, and have begun a multi-year process of church planting in Georgetown, Kentucky.
I was confirmed in the Church of England in 2002, while studying in Britain as an undergraduate. Whilst studying and sojourning in Great Britain over this past year, I was a communicant of the hOME Community in the Diocese of Oxford. My hOME away from, um, home, if you will.
If God wills and his Church consents, I would be ordained a presbyter. We're not marking our calendars just yet, though.
I studied at Oxford for a few months as an undergraduate (which is how I came to be a C of E confirmand!) and taught English in Kosovo. I was gravely injured in an auto accident in the fall of 2002, and the incident itself and the subsequent recovery have colored most of my thinking and writing about life as God's New Community as well as those regarding the presence of Jesus and the Sacraments.
My friends are the most important part of my life, more than any hobbies or theological pontifications. Everything I write about community and most anything else comes out of my experience with them as we learn to love and be loved just the way we are.
I live in a household with two others, and we are bound together by a friendship of several years and an ongoing liturgy of meals, prayers, and study. Jesse is a second year medical student at the University of Kentucky (you can find his contributions to the blog on the left sidebar), and Kyle is in a nuclear medical technology program at BCTC. Oh, and we have a kitty. His name is Thunder. Thunder Katt.
I keep links to my favorite essays on the right sidebar of any page. I like to write about myself (what did you think this was for?) and my theological convictions, for the most part.
If you skim it, you can easily find essays that struggle with life as the Church, the whys and hows of appropriating spiritual disciplines, the felt absence of God, patriotism, and the nature of "calling."
I welcome comments, e-mails and discussion. Honestly, I really thrive on the attention.
Kyle Potter, MTh (Oxon)
Catechist for Adult Formation,
Saint Patrick's Church
Missioner to Georgetown, Kentucky
Anglican Mission in the Americas E-mail me
Library Technician for Research Assistance & Cataloging
Department Liaison for Religion, Philosophy, Sociology & Theatre
Instructor of Christian Theology
Ensor LRC, Georgetown College
"The Church claims to be the most comprehensive human society there is - the new human race in embryo. And it claims this because of its belief that it is established not by any human process grounded in and limited by events, cultures and so on, but by God's activity." - Rowan Williams
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