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  • The Country Where Merit is Run Down, Part IV: High Schools Take it Literally

    Well, at least one did:

    Last fall, along with about 1.5 million U.S. high school juniors, the Yashar teen took the PSAT, which determines whether a student qualifies as a prestigious National Merit scholar. When it came time to submit his college applications this fall, he didn’t have a National Merit honor to report—but it wasn’t because he hadn’t earned the award. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a nonprofit based in Evanston, Illinois, had recognized him as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide—one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction. Principals usually celebrate National Merit scholars with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements.

    But not at TJ (Thomas Jefferson.) School officials had decided to withhold announcement of the award. Indeed, it turns out that the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years. Recognition by National Merit opens the door to millions of dollars in college scholarships and 800 Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors.

    It’s been seven years since I ran this series, which include the pieces The Country Where Merit is Run Down, The Country Where Merit is Run Down, Part II: The STEM Curriculum Dilemma and The Country Where Merit is Run Down, Part III: The Asians Strike Back. This incident, however, made it convenient to add another installment to the series. The justification for this information suppression was thus:

    “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” he told her, claiming that he and the principal didn’t want to “hurt” the feelings of students who didn’t get the award.

    It’s interesting to note that many of the students in this school–which has an admissions process, at one time mirabile dictu for public schools–are Asians, the same group featured in the last installment of the series and whose case against Harvard is now before SCOTUS. One of these days we’re going to revise our racial paradigm, but that will probably come with external force.

    In the meanwhile, there are those who would consider our system a “meritocracy” as racist. For me, it’s just a lie, certainly now, to a lesser extent in the past. We need to wake up on this, otherwise we, as Herodotus ended the Histories, will find ourselves left “…to cultivate rich plains and be subject to others.”

    Full disclosure: back in the day I was a National Merit Scholar. I tended to downplay the award–much to the consternation of my parents–because a) we didn’t need the money, that especially as b) I had opted to turn away from the American gateways to “meritocracy.”

  • Humanism is a heresy

    “There is nothing particular about man. He is but a part of this world.” This observation on the pretensions of humanity — cool, disillusioned, …

    Humanism is a heresy

  • Christmas: The Beginning of the Gospel

    Again from Bossuet’s Elevations on the Mysteries:

    The beginning of the Gospel is in these words of the Angel to the shepherds: I announce to you, word for word, I evangelize you, I bring you the good news, which will be the subject of great joy, and it is is that of the birth of the Saviour of the world. What happier news than that of having a Saviour? He himself, in the first sermon he gave in the synagogue after leaving the desert, explains this subject of joy to us through the words of Isaiah, which he found at the opening of the book: The Spirit of the Lord is on me; therefore he consecrated me by his anointing; he sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, and to bring them the good news of their deliverance; to heal those who have a grieving heart; to announce to the captives that they are going to be set free, and to the blind that they are going to receive sight: send back in peace those who are overwhelmed with evils; proclaim the year of mercy and forgiveness of the Lord, and the day when he will give good people their reward, as also punishment to others.

    What joy like this could be given to men of good will, and what greater cause for joy? But at the same time is not the greatest subject to glorify God? And what can good people desire more than to see God exalted by so many wonders? So this is what the Gospel is: it is by learning the happy news of man’s deliverance, to rejoice in seeing there the greater glory of God. Let us rise to the high places, to the most sublime part of ourselves; let us elevate ourselves above ourselves, and seek God in himself to rejoice with the angels in the great glory.

    It’s interesting to note that Bossuet implies that Jesus found the reading from Isaiah rather than having chosen it. This is discussed in the earlier post You Really Can Do Biblical Preaching From a Lectionary.

  • The Song of the Angels

    From Bossuet’s Elevations on the Mysteries:

    Glory to God, the highest of the heavens, and peace on earth to men of good will. Peace is proclaimed throughout the earth: the peace of man with God through the remission of sins; the peace of men among themselves; the peace of man with himself, by the concurrence of all his desires to want what God wants. This is the peace that the angels sing and announce to the whole universe.

    This peace is the subject of the glory of God. Let us not rejoice in this peace, because it makes itself felt in us in our hearts, but because it glorifies God in the high throne of his glory; let us elevate ourselves to the high places, to the greatest height of the throne of God in order to glorify him in himself, and to love what he made in us only in relation to him.

    Let us sing in this spirit, with the whole Church: Gloria in excelsis Deo. Every time we sing this Angelic Canticle, let us enter into the music of the angels by the concert and the agreement of all our desires. Let us remember the birth of Our Lord who gave birth to this song. Let us say from the heart all the words that the Church adds to interpret the Song of the Angels: we praise you; we adore you; laudamus te, adoramus te; and above all: Gratias agimus tibi, propter magnam gloriam tuam; we give you thanks for your great glory; we love your blessings, because they glorify you; and the good things you do to us, because your kindness is honoured.

    Peace on earth to men of good will. The word in the original, which is explained by good will, signifies the good will of God for us; and marks us that peace is given to men dear to God.

    The original bears word for word: Glory to God in the high places, peace on earth, good will from the side of God into men. This is how the Eastern Churches have always read. Those of the West return to it, singing peace to men of good will; that is to say, first, to those to whom God wills good; and secondly, to those who themselves have a good will, since the first effect of the good will that God has for us is to inspire in us a good will towards him.

    Good will is that which is in conformity with the will of God: as it is good in essence and by itself, that which is in conformity with it is good by this relation. Let us therefore rule our will by that of God, and we will be men of good will, provided it is not through insensitivity, indolence, neglect, and to avoid work, but through faith where we cast everything on God. The soft and lazy souls have rather done by suddenly saying: May God do what He wills; and only care to flee from pain and worry. But, to be truly in conformity with the will of God, it is necessary to know how to make a sacrifice of what is most dear to him, and with a torn heart, to say to him: All is yours; do what you want. As the holy man Job, who having lost in one day his goods and all his children, as they came one after the other to bring him the news, throwing themselves to the ground, he adored God and said: The Lord had given me everything what I had; the Lord took it away from me: it happened as it pleased the Lord; blessed be the name of the Lord. He who adores in this way is the true man of good will, and, raised above the senses and his own will, he glorifies God in the high places. This is how he has peace, and he tries to calm the disturbance of his heart, not because this disturbance pains him, but because it prevents the perfection of the sacrifice he wants to make to God, otherwise he would seek only a false rest; and that is what good will is.

    Good will is the sincere love of God, and, as Saint Paul says: It is the charity of a pure heart, of an upright conscience, and of a faith which is not feigned. Faith is feigned in those where it is not supported by good works, and good works are those where one seeks to please God, and not one’s own mood, inclination or desire; so when we seek God with pure intention, the works are complete. Otherwise, we receive this reproach from Jesus Christ: I do not find your works complete before my God.

  • Britain is haunted by Dickensian ghosts — UnHerd

    In the Celtic fringes of Europe, the idea of “thin places” persists — locations where the boundary between this reality and others is claimed to be at its most fragile, even permeable. 1,952 more words

    Britain is haunted by Dickensian ghosts — UnHerd

  • The Baptism of John and the Baptism of Jesus Christ

    In the Communion Gospel this Sunday from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, we have this in part:

    And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.

    (John 1:25-27 KJV)

    Bossuet explains this in his The Preaching of Saint John the Baptist. 5, The baptism of John and that of Jesus Christ, from the Elevations on the Mysteries:

    When Saint John opposes the water of his baptism to the fire of that of Jesus Christ, and when Jesus Christ himself explained that this baptism of fire and of the Holy Spirit is the one with which the disciples were flooded on the day of Pentecost, we understand that we must not believe that the baptism of Jesus Christ is not like that of John’s baptism, but it is that John’s contained only simple water, instead of the water that Jesus gave was full of the Holy Spirit and a celestial fire, that is to say of the same fire of the Holy Spirit whose flood poured out on the whole Church in the upper room. It is this fire which still animates the water of baptism today, and which makes the Saviour say: That we have no part in his kingdom unless we are reborn from the water and the Holy Spirit, that is to say, in the mystical language, if one is not reborn from water and fire.

    Here then is the consolation. The water of the baptism of Jesus Christ is not empty and sterile water; the Holy Spirit animates it and makes it fruitful; by washing the body it inflames the heart; if you do not come out of the baptism full of the heavenly fire of the love of God, it is not the baptism of Jesus Christ that you have received. Christian penance, which is nothing more than a second baptism, must be animated with the same fire: He to whom more is given must also, says the Saviour, love more. When you have only the tears that terror causes to shed, it is still only the water and the baptism of John. When you begin to love God as the author and source of all righteousness, Jesus begins to baptize you internally with his fire, and his sacrament will complete the work.

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  • Georg Cantor and infinity

    On 03 March 1845, the German mathematician Georg Cantor was born in St. Petersburg. In 1862, he entered the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, eventually becoming a member of the mathematics department. At the death of his father, he left Zurich for Berlin where, in addition to his mathematical interests, he began to study philosophy […]

    Georg Cantor and infinity

    Georg Cantor is a special interest of mine, not only from a mathematical standpoint but because his discoveries in transfinite mathematics can be used to solve the problem of subordination in God. That was the basis (on a crude level, admittedly) for my 1998 work My Lord and My God: A Layman Looks at the Deity of Christ and the Nature of the Godhead. I refined it in my more recent piece The Challenge from Aquinas That Changed Mathematics. The latter shows the clear connection between theology and mathematics, that the former inspired Cantor to change the latter.

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  • A Lesson for Anglicans: The Rt. Rev. Brian Barnett

    It seems I’m linking to quite a few obits these days. But those who have passed on have lessons for us who are left behind, and this is another one of those lessons. I knew Brian for many years, especially when he was Administrative Pastor of the North Cleveland Church of God and I was on the Finance Committee.

    As his obituary states, Brian Barnett was born in London, England. His religious background wasn’t much, but he met his future wife Jean and she took him to a meeting where he got saved. Shortly thereafter he enlisted in the Royal Air Force (his brother had fought in the Battle of Britain) and he was sent to Egypt.

    Newly saved, he was brimming with enthusiasm to do God’s work. So he reported to his Church of England chaplain ready to do ministry in any way he would. The chaplain’s response: “You’ll get over it.” Barnett, being a military man, knew that a dud was an explosive that didn’t, and that this one was definitely a dud. So when he returned to Old Blighty, he married Jean and joined the Elim Pentecostal Church, where he was a successful pastor and encountered “Jesus Music” artist Len McGee.

    The British Isles, however, are fabled places which filled two continents with the people who wanted to had to leave. When Brian decided to join that happy throng, he took his family (he lost one daughter to the NHS, an institution the Barnetts didn’t have much nice to say about) to the United States. He went on to be a successful pastor and State Overseer/Administrative Bishop (hence the need to refer to him as the “Right Reverend.”) He finally came to Cleveland where I get to know him.

    His story about the encounter with the Anglican chaplain has stuck with me because it rings true. In both its British and North American forms at least, Anglicanism has always discouraged excess enthusiasm in its adherents. I know I experienced this growing up as an Episcopalian. Whether this is due to the shattering experience of the English Civil War (which the Scots, true to form, helped to start) or the elevated demographics of the Episcopal Church, the message was clear–our execution of the liturgy was expected to be top drawer, but otherwise no one was expected to get too worked up about being a Christian.

    That puts a ceiling on the level of our relationship with God that the New Testament doesn’t justify. The change of being reborn as a new creation in Jesus Christ (2 Cor 5:17) denotes a revolutionary change in a person’s life, and a church which thinks this is in bad taste will deprive its adherents of that experience and of the high level of participation that goes with it. Those who put the true rebirth and the life that comes with that first will find other places to live out the life that God has given them in Jesus Christ. Brian Barnett did this and so did I.

    My deep condolences to his family, his daughter Shirley and her husband Terry (our long-suffering sound man for many years) and their children Hilary (now Dr. Hilary Pace Reid) and son Robert and their grandchildren as they mourn his loss and celebrate his legacy.

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  • Daniel Vassell: The Man Who Took the Celebration to the People Now Celebrates in Glory

    Daniel Vassell, dean of Mobilize in the Church of God Division of Education, has gone to glory:

    Dr. Daniel J. Vassell Sr., 64, was many things — a husband, father, grandfather and reverend — but one thing was certain: he was a visible representation of joy. You could always feel his presence in the way he lit up a room and welcomed all who graced him because his laughter would radiate contagiously throughout any space. Whether he knew you for 20 years or had just met you, you were immediately his friend.

    That was manifest in my post Take the Celebration to the People, which I wrote right at the time I left the International Offices of the Church of God, and I’ll reproduce most of that as my tribute to him:

    One Christmastime I met him in the lobby, and I think I mentioned something to him about my Anglican activities.  For someone whose roots are Jamaican like Daniel, Anglicanism is a familiar thing.  You even see Anglican traits reflected in the way Pentecostal West Indian churches worship and operate.  I remember one church I preached at in New Jersey where the Grenandan pastor changed the colour of the pulpit stoles.

    Daniel was emphatic at the mention.  “You mark it down,” he said, not wanting me to forget what he was about to say.  Anglican and other liturgical churches were, in some ways, better at taking the “celebration” outside of the four walls of the church.  Pentecostal churches gathered on Sunday, exuberantly worshipping, and, in too many cases, that was it.  Because of the constraints of the liturgy, other churches had to celebrate elsewhere–and if there’s one thing that West Indian churches like to do, it’s celebrate.  But it’s better when the church took the celebration to the community around it and not just kept it to itself.

    In many ways, that encapsulates what is, IMHO, wrong with most of North American Evangelical Christianity these days.  To start with, our churches–especially our Anglo ones–are far and away too performance oriented.  That’s odd, considering we preach that Jesus Christ’s work on the cross is what gets us to heaven, not our own works.  But we’ve come to equate fulfilling the mission of Jesus with what amounts to a business model of performance.

    Beyond that, our obsession with worship has led us to focus our attention and resources on our Sunday service and how it’s done and housed.  That in turn has led both to wrapping our Christian life around our worship and to the expensive edifices that we’ve built to house that worship, edifices that have sapped the financial resources God has given us from directly ministry related activities, to say nothing of the celebration we’re supposed to be having.

    But our life in Christ is to be celebrated, and that celebration needs to come out of the confines of the walls of our churches and into the world around us.  How that takes place depends upon the culture we’re ministering into and the legal status we have, but in a world racked by economic uncertainty the sight and experience of people who still have something to celebrate and do it is a powerful message.

    So, as I prepare to venture out from the confines of the International Offices (my work has been part time, so the venturing in has been likewise) my message is this: it’s time to take the celebration of the life that Jesus Christ has given us out of the confines of our churches and into the community around us.   It’s time to take the celebration to the people.

    Rest in peace Daniel, we’ll do our best to take the celebration to the people.

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  • Duane Alexander Miller Attempts a Reality Check for Anglican Missions

    In this video:

    I would strongly suggest that Anglican provinces visit the Church of God World Missions website. It shows how a centrally, episcopally governed church manages its missions, both in places where Christianity is welcome and in those places where it is not. Unlike the poker playing dog, we don’t tell everything we know. World Missions plays all kinds of shell games with its missionaries (and their oversight) to insure their safety (and we do have a pastor or missionary killed from time to time, even in places like Guatemala where the church is well established.)

    Pentecostal churches have never made being invited into a country a prerequisite for doing missions there, and Anglican ones shouldn’t either. World Missions isn’t perfect but it’s an improvement over what many Anglican provinces do.

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