Sunday, May 30, 2021
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
Trinity Sunday
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Trinity Sunday
Who, with your co-eternal Son and Holy Spirit, are one God, one Lord, in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Substance. For that which we believe of your glory, O Father, we believe the same of your Son, and of the Holy Spirit, without any difference or inequality.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Psalms 144, 145, 146
Psalms 147, 148, 149, 150
Red Letter Day
Social Reformer
Anglican Commemoration
The feast of the Holy Trinity — the one God in three Persons. The Church confesses the fullness of God as revealed through the mighty acts of salvation.
Trinity Sunday is the feast of the Holy Trinity — the one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It falls on the first Sunday after Pentecost, completing the great arc of the liturgical calendar: the Father sends the Son (Christmas), the Son accomplishes redemption (Easter), the Spirit is given to the Church (Pentecost), and on Trinity Sunday the Church confesses the fullness of God as revealed through these mighty acts. Unlike most feasts, Trinity Sunday commemorates not an event but a doctrine — the central mystery of the Christian faith. The feast is comparatively late in origin. While Trinitarian theology was definitively settled at Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), a distinct feast of the Trinity did not become widespread until the medieval period. Individual bishops promoted it — Thomas Becket, consecrated on Trinity Sunday 1162, established it at Canterbury. Pope John XXII made it universal for the Western church in 1334. The BCP tradition, however, gave Trinity Sunday a structural importance beyond Rome's: in the English Prayer Book tradition, the Sundays of the long season after Pentecost are numbered 'after Trinity' rather than 'after Pentecost,' making Trinity Sunday the hinge of the entire second half of the church year. The BCP 2019 lists it among the seven Principal Feasts, and the Athanasian Creed — the most detailed creedal exposition of Trinitarian doctrine — is traditionally appointed for this day.
Trinity Sunday's liturgical tradition reflects the challenge of celebrating a doctrine rather than a narrative. The appointed readings across the three-year lectionary cycle present different facets of Trinitarian revelation: Nicodemus's nighttime conversation with Jesus (John 3), the baptismal commission 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28), and Paul's Trinitarian benediction (2 Corinthians 13:14). The Athanasian Creed (Quicunque Vult), with its precise and paradoxical formulations — 'neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance' — has been associated with this feast since at least the ninth century in the West, and the BCP 2019 includes it among its historical documents. The collect for Trinity Sunday is among the most theologically careful in the Prayer Book: 'by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity.' Cranmer's 1549 language echoes here. The white or gold vestments used on this day reflect its status as a feast of the Godhead. In Anglican practice, numbering Sundays 'after Trinity' rather than 'after Pentecost' has given this feast a unique structural role — it names half the church year.
Josephine Butler (1828–1906) was an Anglican social reformer whose prophetic witness grounded radical social transformation in Christian theology. Her relentless campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts—legislation that subjected women suspected of prostitution to invasive, mandatory medical examination without legal recourse—mobilized public opinion and ultimately secured parliamentary repeal in 1886. Butler established rescue homes for exploited women, articulated a theology of human dignity rooted in the Incarnation, and pioneered a distinctively Christian feminism that challenged both patriarchal institutions and complacent religious respectability.
Josephine Grey Butler was born in 1828 to a prominent English family and educated at home with exceptional rigor. In 1852, she married George Butler, an Anglican cleric and reformer. After the death of their young daughter in 1863, Josephine experienced a spiritual crisis that redirected her energies toward the plight of vulnerable women. When Parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864, 1866, 1869)—legislation authorizing police to forcibly examine women suspected of prostitution—Butler became the leading voice against this institutional violation. She organized meetings, published exposés (The Constitution Violated, Woman's Work and Woman's Culture), corresponded with international reformers, and mobilized working-class women as advocates for their own dignity. Her theology grounded this activism in Christological conviction: the Incarnation affirms the worth of every human body and spirit. Butler's rescue homes offered practical hospitality and spiritual formation to women exiting prostitution. She worked across denominational and class boundaries, building alliances with Quakers, Methodists, and working-class activists. The repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1886 vindicated her decade-long campaign. Butler continued lecturing and writing on Christian ethics, human dignity, and women's spiritual authority until her death in 1906.
Josephine Butler exemplifies the prophetic Anglican voice grounded in incarnational theology and committed to defending the dignity of the most vulnerable. Her work pioneered a distinctively Christian feminism and established a model of faithful activism in which theological conviction drives social transformation. She is venerated in contemporary Christian feminism and in the witness of those defending exploited and marginalized persons.