An Anglo-Catholic Visionary for Modern America

"Anglo-Catholic" is not an abstract label for Father Gordon Butler Wadhams, the vibrant personality whose life is narrated and whose writings are anthologized here. In the Episcopal (Anglican) Church, Anglo-Catholicism attracts, repels, confuses, and has a variety of meanings that Wadhams sorted out across the years as an Episcopal and a Roman Catholic priest. Joseph F. Byrnes here presents and clarifies his writings on the church and ecumenism, the liturgy, the Bible, and Christian mission. The lifelong Anglo-Catholic vocation of Gordon Wadhams was marked by inspiring family experiences, enlivened by his own youthful experiments with churchgoing and focused by his friends and mentors, Episcopal and Catholic. His timeline cannot be our own, but it serves as a template for our own search to understand how the church is built up by ecumenism, how its liturgy develops by acculturation of timeless traditions, how it valorizes the biblical writings for each generation, and how it inspires the rejection of war, elimination of racism, and dedication to the intellectual and physical well-being of all.