A Lecture on the Death and Life of Anglican Monasticism
On April 27, 2022 beginning at 10:00 a.m. (CT), Dr. Greg Peters will be giving a lecture for the Michael Ramsey Centre at Durham University entitled, "Bare ruined choirs?: The Death and Life of Anglican Monasticism." If you are interested and available you may join here.
Dr. Peters is the Servants of Christ Research Professor of Monastic Studies and Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House and is the conference chair of the Breck Conference hosted each summer at Nashotah House. To register, please go to this link or click the image below.
This year’s conference is entitled, From Anchorhold to Parish: English Monasticism & Anglican Spirituality.
The sixteenth-century Church of England was greatly influenced by late medieval English monastic spirituality. John Bede Pauley and Bede Thomas Mudge have both shown the monastic influence, especially from the Benedictines, on the Book of Common Prayer; and scholars such as Eamon Duffy have demonstrated that there was continuity between late medieval devotional practices and early Anglican piety. The use of the vernacular and an emphasis on the suffering Jesus, for example, are late medieval themes that recur in early Anglican faith and practice. Thus, the 2022 JAMES LLOYD BRECK CONFERENCE ON MONASTICISM AND THE CHURCH seeks to explicate how late medieval English monastic spirituality was resourced by early Anglican Christians in both their personal devotional life and in parish practice.
Fr. Peters joined Nashotah House in 2018 and oversees the annual James Lloyd Breck Conference on Monasticism and the Church and teaches courses in monasticism and ascetical theology. His research interests include the history and theology of Christian monasticism, the history of Christian (esp. monastic) theology, and ascetical theology. He has presented papers regularly at the International Congress on Medieval Studies and the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting. His published articles have appeared in the American Benedictine Review, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Tjurunga: An Australasian Benedictine Review, and the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, alongside articles in other peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. His most recently published books are Thomas à Kempis: His Life and Spiritual Theology (Cascade Books, 2021) and The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality (Baker Academic, 2018).
Fr. Peters is also Professor of Medieval and Spiritual Theology in the Torrey Honors College of Biola University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Von Hügel Institute, St Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge. In the past, he has also served as a visiting professor at St. John’s School of Theology. He serves (since 2012) as rector of the Anglican Church of the Epiphany in La Mirada, California. Ordained in 2009 in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), he served from 2009-2012 in part-time ministry at the Diocese of Western Anglicans’ All Saints Cathedral, Long Beach, and until 2020 as a diocesan examining chaplain. Prior to his Anglican ordination he was a Baptist minister, serving parishes in Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. He is currently a member of the ACNA-Roman Catholic dialogue and the ACNA’s Monastic Communities Task Force. Until July 2022, he will serve as the first non-monastic, non-Roman Catholic president of the American Benedictine Academy.
Fr. Peters is a proud Virginian who loves to travel and read, especially nineteenth-century Russian fiction (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov) and the twentieth-century French novelists Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac. He also enjoys the poetry of John Donne, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Fr. Peters’ hobbies include running, home improvement projects and watching films with his family. He was married to Christina in 1994, and they have two sons, Brendan and Nathanael.