David Mills (born 1957) is an American editor and writer who is known for his work within Christian media. He was the executive editor of the journal First Things and was the editor of Touchstone magazine from 2003 to 2008.
An activist in the conservative Episcopal movement, he was a long-time member of the board of the Evangelical and Catholic Mission and of its successors the Episcopal Synod of America and Forward in Faith, editing the groups' theological The Evangelical Catholic from 1986 to 1998. He was also a member of the board of the pro-life organization NOEL (the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life). His "A Hope for Collapsing Churches" was widely reprinted in the Anglican world, and for many years he wrote a "Letter from America" for the English Anglican magazine New Directions, published by Forward in Faith/UK.
Mills, his wife, and their four children were received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2001, sponsored by the Catholic writer Mike Aquilina and his wife. He writes a column for the Inside Catholic website, Lay Witness magazine, and the diocesan newspaper The Pittsburgh Catholic, and has also written for Columbia, the National Catholic Register , the New Oxford Review , First Things , and Our Sunday Visitor .
Under his editorship, Touchstone magazine won the Associated Church Press' "Award of Excellence" (First place) for journals the five years it was member, from 2004 to 2008, and his own articles won several awards. Before becoming editor of Touchstone, he served as director of publications at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, where he edited the seminary's journal Mission & Ministry.
Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation.
Apostolic succession is the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is held to be derived from the apostles by a continuous succession, which has usually been associated with a claim that the succession is through a series of bishops. Christians of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Old Catholic, Anglican, Church of the East, Moravian, and Scandinavian Lutheran traditions maintain that "a bishop cannot have regular or valid orders unless he has been consecrated in this apostolic succession." Each of these groups does not necessarily consider consecration of the other groups as valid.
Full communion is a communion or relationship of full understanding among different Christian denominations that share certain essential principles of Christian theology. Views vary among denominations on exactly what constitutes full communion, but typically when two or more denominations are in full communion it enables services and celebrations, such as the Eucharist, to be shared among congregants or clergy of any of them with the full approval of each.
Ecumenism, also spelled as oecumenism or œcumenism, is the concept and principle in which Christians belonging to different Christian denominations work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjective ecumenical is thus applied to any interdenominational initiative that encourages greater cooperation between Christians and their churches.
Forward in Faith (FiF) is an organisation operating in the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church. It represents a traditionalist strand of Anglo-Catholicism and is characterised by its opposition to the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. It also takes a traditionalist line on other matters of doctrine. Credo Cymru is its counterpart in Wales. Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) operates in the U.S.
The Church of South India (CSI) is a united Protestant Church, being the second-largest Christian church in India based on the number of members; it is the result of union of a number of Protestant churches in South India.
James Innell Packer was an English-born Canadian evangelical theologian, cleric and writer in the low-church Anglican and Calvinist traditions. He was considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, known for his best-selling book, Knowing God, written in 1973, as well as his work as an editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible. He was one of the high-profile signers on the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, a member on the advisory board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and also was involved in the ecumenical book Evangelicals and Catholics Together in 1994. His last teaching position was as the board of governors' Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, in which he served from 1996 until his retirement in 2016 due to failing eyesight.
Ravi Zacharias was an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian apologist. Zacharias was the author of more than 30 books on Christianity, including the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association's Gold Medallion Book Award winner Can Man Live Without God? in the category "theology and doctrine" as well as Christian bestsellers Light in the Shadow of Jihad and The Grand Weaver. Zacharias was the founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) and host of the radio programs Let My People Think and Just Thinking. He was a lifelong minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Keswickian Christian denomination in which he was ordained.
Richard John Neuhaus was a prominent Christian cleric and writer. Born in Canada, Neuhaus moved to the United States where he became a naturalized United States citizen. He was the longtime editor of the Lutheran Forum magazine newsletter and later founder and editor of the monthly journal First Things and the author of numerous books. A staunch defender of the Roman Catholic Church's teachings on abortion and other life issues, he served as an unofficial adviser to 43rd President George W. Bush on bioethical issues.
Trinity School for Ministry (TSM), formerly known as Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, is an Anglican seminary in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. It is generally associated with low church, evangelical Anglicanism.
The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) is an Anglican church of evangelical Episcopalian heritage. It was founded in 1873 in New York City by George David Cummins, formerly a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Apostolicae curae is the title of a papal bull, issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void". The archbishops of Canterbury and of York of the Church of England responded to the papal charges with the encyclical Saepius officio in 1897.
The term Evangelical Catholic is used in Lutheranism, alongside the term Augsburg Catholic, with those calling themselves Evangelical Catholic Lutherans or Lutherans of Evangelical Catholic churchmanship stressing the catholicity of historic Lutheranism in liturgy, beliefs, practices, and doctrines. Evangelical Catholics teach that Lutheranism at its core "is deeply and fundamentally catholic". The majority of Evangelical Catholic Lutheran clergy and Evangelical Catholic Lutheran parishes are members of mainstream Lutheran denominations.
The Living Church is a biweekly magazine based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, providing commentary and news information on the Episcopal Church in the United States. In continuous publication since 1878, it has generally been identified with the Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism, and has been cited by national newspapers as a representative of that party. It absorbed a number of earlier Anglo-Catholic publications, including The American Churchman, Catholic Champion (1901), and The Angelus (1904). Theologically and culturally, it tends to have a moderate-to-conservative slant.
The Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches is a Christian Convergence Communion which blends the Evangelical (Scripture), Charismatic (Spirit), and Liturgical-Sacramental streams of the Christian faith. The CEEC is a communion unified by the essentials of the faith, while being rooted in an ancient-future vision. The CEEC has a footprint in many countries, ranging from a single missionary priest in a country, to countries with multiple dioceses and hundreds of churches in them. The CEEC is made up of autocephalous jurisdictions held together by our Instruments of Unity. The Communion currently has 14 Archbishops, 120 Bishops and many deacons and priests serving with them around the world.
Anglican interest in ecumenical dialogue can be traced back to the time of the Reformation and dialogues with both Orthodox and Lutheran churches in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the Oxford Movement, there arose greater concern for reunion of the churches of "Catholic confession". This desire to work towards full communion with other denominations led to the development of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, approved by the Third Lambeth Conference of 1888. The four points were stipulated as the basis for church unity, "a basis on which approach may be by God's blessing made towards Home Reunion":
The Episcopal Church (TEC) is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and is based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere. It is a mainline Christian denomination divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Michael Bruce Curry, the first African-American bishop to serve in that position.
