I wrote this short preface for a republished version of Bp. Sutton’s Captains and Courts now on Amazon (Link: https://amzn.to/4aRnGkg). As of June 16th ranking #1 in new releases in “Anglican Christianity” on Amazon.

Dear Reader, 

I first encountered Captains and Courts long before I ever met Bishop Sutton. A PDF copy had been circulating quietly in online Reformed circles, and it found its way to me at precisely the right moment, when I was wrestling seriously with the Presbyterian objections that Scripture does not teach episcopal government. 

Sutton’s argument changed my mind. Not by rhetorical force, but by exegetical patience and the implausibility of the contrary. He traces the office of bishop through the types and shadows of the Old Testament: through Jethro’s captains, through the courts of Israel, and shows that the apostolic church did not invent episcopacy but received it. The New Testament does not depart from this pattern; it fulfills it. Today, Bp. Sutton is my bishop, he confirmed my children, and continues to lead me in the Anglican Way.  

For those who have been told that bishops are a later corruption of a simpler, elder-ruled church, this book is the answer. The Church of the Fathers was bishop-led. The Church of the Creeds was bishop-led. The Church of the English Reformation, which gave us the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, was bishop-led. This was not accident or accredtion. It was, as the evidence compels us to conclude, the intention of our Lord from Genesis.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, writing within living memory of the Apostles in A.D. 110, put it plainly: “Follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father.” That is not the language of a church still deciding the question. It is the language of a church that already knows the answer.

I offer this short work as one argument among many,  but it is an essential one. Whether you are an Anglican defending what you already hold, or a Protestant asking whether the ancient order can be trusted, I pray it serves you as it served me.