St Peter's Church, Stockport

St Peter’s in Stockport is a Georgian parish church built when just one large ecclesiastical building was not deemed large enough for so prosperous and populated a place. The eighteenth-century Church of England was rather dull and spiritually lethargic, but it was also truly Protestant, with plain worship and a greater emphasis on preaching. Imagine my surprise on entry, therefore, when I saw St Peter's so highly furnished in the Anglo-Catholic style, with excessive statuary, candles and icons. Although I was grateful to one of the members of a women’s social group who discreetly bade me enter, I was a little disappointed that the internals did not match the original builders’ ideals. Then again, few medieval parish churches match their builders’ Romanism, so I had little right to be miffed.

This is not a parish church at which I could join worship (the pool of such places seems to diminish each year) though I respect its commitment to the Forward in Faith stream of Anglicanism which is conservative in its doctrine if ritualistic in its  practice. There are many churches in our day and age which are markedly different to their builders' and founders' faith and doctrine. Evangelical fervour and Biblical zeal are replaced by spiritual torpor and doctrinal deviation. May God keep us from going the same way; may we be found faithful when He comes.

...hold fast to what you have until I come. Rev 2:25