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  • They Were Both Radicalised by Their Pastors

    Hillary Clinton’s statement about Barack Obama’s pastor is just a little disingenuous:

    Hillary Clinton stoked up the row over Barack Obama’s fiery pastor today when she claimed she would have left any church where such intemperate remarks had been made.

    "He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said, in her first public comments since the Reverend Jeremiah Wright row began more than two weeks ago.

    The problem here is that both of these people were radicalised by their pastors.  Obama’s is obvious to everyone, although he may not have needed help.  In Hillary’s case, her Methodist youth pastor, Don Jones, very much raised Hillary’s "social consciousness" and led her on the road to people such as Saul Alinsky and being the left-wing person she is.  It’s true that one doesn’t have the same level of choice of a youth pastor (especially when she was growing up) but left wing pastoral influence is left wing pastoral influence.

    Today we look at the secular left as the source of all problems, but strangely that secular left has been covered up in the Democrat Party.  We’re looking at the religious left back in action, and as we see in TEC, it’s no improvement.

  • Is Palm Beach Really the Centre of the Universe?

    I know it sounds conceited, but now I have support for this idea:

    At Metro, M.D. Bashar, a very helpful and engaging salesman, saw me looking at a display for the magicJack, invented by Palm Beacher and telecom wiz Dan Borislow. Yet more proof that Palm Beach is still the center of the universe.

    My last year living there, I discovered Dante’s Divine Comedy, a book which literally changed the course of my life.  There the centre of the universe was Jerusalem.  Little did I suspect that I was actually living in the real one!

  • The AMiA Prayer Book: Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Said That

    Sometimes, as a blogger, you come up with what you think is a great idea only to have doubts about it later.  Consider this posting:

    One thing that the various groups, such as CANA, AMiA, and the like, could be working on is a new prayer book for themselves.  We can hear the sigh of disgust from here:  "Another new prayer book…"  And, given our opinion of the 1979 production, we are sympathetic to this idea.

    The "sigh of disgust" is now verbosely verbalised by Robin Jordan in his reaction to the 2008 project.

    First revelation: we now know that people in Kentucky can write.  Over the line here in Tennessee, we had our doubts.  (Just kidding!)

    Let me make a few comments about his article:

    1. I’ve followed some of Peter Toon’s writings on the subject of the Prayer book; I’m not sure all he ascribes to Dr. Toon is justified, although he’s probably has a more in-depth familarity with Toon’s stuff than I do.
    2. He’s right about the 1928 Prayer Book being more Anglo-Catholic than its predecessors, and that it does depart from the 1662 Reformed theology in significant ways.  This illustrates one of the central dilemmas that reasserters face in putting orthodox Anglicanism back together again in North America and elsewhere: at this stage in history, it is impossible to completely dispense with Anglo-Catholicism and its influence.  As much as one might want to (and in one very important respect need to,) it just isn’t going to happen.  That’s not only reflected in this country, but everywhere else too.  We see common cause, for example, between the Province of the West Indies (which is very Anglo-Catholic) and provinces like Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya, which tend to be more Protestant.  But they’re geographically separated, which means that they can gloss over the difference more easily than, say, Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals can in a single AMiA parish.
    3. When growing up at Bethesda, I was certainly taught that the Holy Spirit was received at Confirmation.  As a Pentecostal, I certainly know better now!  Seriously, though, the attempt by Anglo-Catholics to sacramentalise Acts 2 is a stretch in any kind of Biblical theology.  Confirmation is definitely a good "step-up" recognition (a kind of rite of passage, perhaps?) in a Christian’s life but to hog-tie it to the reception of the Holy Spirit is too much.
    4. Advocates such as Robin Jordan of a "Reformed" theology in Anglican churches need to be aware that, although the 1662 BCP certainly is imbued with that, the expression of what constitutes "Reformed" (especially with regards to election) is undermined by Article XVI.  Issues such as this underline one of the long-running dilemmas of Anglicanism: in it’s attempt to be comprehensive, it sometimes ends up ambiguous, and that has been used with deadly effect by reappraisers in TEC for a long time.
    5. Anyone who reads the Thirty-Nine Articles (and I even included them in my discipleship book for Pentecostal men) knows of the running horror they have for the transubstantiated Eucharist and any logical results therefrom (such as the reserved sacrament.)  This is because, in late Medaeval Catholicsm (and afterwards) the Host was ascribed almost magical attributes.  We all know, however, that, unless an individual is regenerate and in a right relationship with God, reception of the Eucharist is unworthy and will lead to one kicking the bucket in this life and the life to come.  However, anyone who is honest about the Biblical evidence knows that the New Testament doesn’t teach a purely symbolic Eucharist either, and coming up with a reasonable via media between these two extremes has been one of the great "Gordian Knots" of Christian theology.
    6. Although only partially related to the last point, anyone who looks objectively at the 1662 BCP’s Holy Communion service has to admit that it is a liturgical mess.  (I offered one solution here, a product of my work with my fiction.  I think the magenta rubrics make it, but that’s just me.)

    Robin Jordan’s article is a good one, I hope that those at the AMiA will take heed to his thoughts.  Rest assured that I will continue offering the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for download, which remains an all-time popular standing resource of this website.

  • When “Beauty” Isn’t Worth It

    The death of West Boca Raton High School cheerleader captain Stephanie Kuleba during breat augmentation surgery strikes me as singularly sad.  To start with, I went to prep school in Boca Raton, and her love for the Beatles’ "Hey Jude" only takes me back to the world that inspired The Ten Weeks.  My heart and condolences go out to her friends and family.

    Now I know that a reaction to anaesthaesia is possible with any kind of surgery.  That’s one reason why doctors aren’t as "knife happy" as they were when I was growing up (how my mother found that out the hard way!)  But to die in surgery for this reason–especially someone who was described by her peers as "perfect"–is very, very hard to take.  The allure of the results of this kind of procedure (from the standpoint of observers of the opposite sex, at least) is maternal.  And let me assure you that, if a guy is obsessed with mother, you need to look for someone else!

    It ain’t worth it.

  • The Unobvious Problem with Shari’a

    Muhammad ‘Abd Al-Muttalib Al-Houni has hit up one something that most people don’t think about in the whole debate about whether Shari’a should be allowed in the UK (or anywhere else in the West) or not:

    The concept of citizenship in Europe will change. There will be [different] classes of citizenship and of citizens, with some citizens being exempt from having the general law applied to them because they belong to a particular religion or belief. There will be a Muslim [class of] citizen, a Christian [class of] citizen, a Buddhist [class of] citizen, a Confucian [class of] citizen, and so on. Each will apply his own laws… Thus, faith will not be an individual freedom or belief; it will [come to] have extremely serious public ramifications…Recognizing all, or [even] some, of these laws would take European societies back to the age before the Enlightenment and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a result, the West would revert to barbarism.

    Before the Enlightenment, people were first and foremost "tagged" (for want of an easier word) as being part of a group, not as individuals.  In Europe, for example, the group that most conspicuously fit into this category were the Jews.  They were governed by their own religious community authorities and these authorities in turn answered to the crown.  During the Enlightenment, these authorities lost their civil status either through action of the crown or through revolution, depending upon the country.

    On the other side of the Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire ran the millet system, where various groups (usually Christian, but also the Druze and others) were subject to the same kinds of restrictions.  (An illustration of that is here.)  The various groups were sealed entities (legally and socially) within the empire.  It’s interesting to note that, in the Ottoman Empire, shari’a was still considered to be the supreme law of the land, something that most modern jihadis would find find inconsistent with the existence of millets.

    In any case, the concept of individual equality under a uniform legal system is a hallmark of states which are heirs to the Enlightenment.  That’s truer in the United States than anywhere else, the Enlightenment heir par excellence.  But here the last forty years have seen the de facto creation of all kinds of protected groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation and the like, which has effectively undermined the whole concept.  The long term problem with this, as I have pointed out on this site in many different contexts, is that in a society where shared values are as important as they are in the U.S., the existence of protected groups will lead in the long run to persecuted ones, which remains the greatest long-term challenge Evangelical Christians face here.

    Be that as it may, I really don’t think that most people really want a society where your entire existence is marked out by the group that you’re tagged to be a part of, at least from a secular legal standpoint.  The call for shari’a is the ultimate "calling of the bluff’ of multiculturalism.  It would be a supreme irony of history that so many of the "liberating" moves of liberal multiculturalism would lead to the introduction of one of the most restrictive jurisprudences on the planet.

  • Was Benedict’s Baptism of a Muslim Convert a Good Idea?

    Pope Benedict XVI’s rather spectacular baptism of a Muslim convert has generated a good deal of discussion amongst Christians and Muslims alike.  Rather than adding unnecessary heat to the subject, I commend the dialogue between Abu Daoud and Sister Sherry–Anglican and Roman Catholic respectively working in the Middle East–on this subject.

    On this, I am inclined to agree with Abu Daoud.  Conversion has long been conceived of as a "one way street" between Islam and Christianity, by Muslims, Christians and secularists alike.  But that isn’t the reality, and Allam’s baptism is one of many who have passed from Islam to Christ.  It’s risky, but then again ministry to Muslims has always entailed risks, as the More than Dreams series is just one reminder.

  • Resurrection Power

    Rising from the dead was not an ordinary occurrence before or during Jesus time on the earth; it is still not. In order to accomplish such a thing, it takes power, lots of it. Jesus Christ was able to rise from the dead because, being God, he had the power within him to do so. Or perhaps it is better to say he had the power never to die, as his immortality is part of his deity.

    "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."  The fellowship of his suffering is something that Christians have been experiencing from the days of the Apostles. There is no way to get around the natural enmity of the life of Jesus with the world, the flesh, and the Devil, and those who decide to live the life of Jesus every day will experience the consequences of this enmity whether they want to or not. This is not to say that every trial that a Christian goes through is a result of this spiritual warfare; it is not right to ascribe to God our own folly. However, adversity is something that Christians find quite a lot of in their walk with and towards God.

    But what about the power of his resurrection? Doesn’t that just apply in the life to come? Paul wrote while he was living on this earth, and he wanted to know this power while on this earth. How can this be?

    First of all, when Paul wrote and lived on the earth, the resurrection of Jesus was a historical fact, just as it is today. The event had already taken place. To have made the event a reality, it took literally resurrection power to do it. Since Jesus lived after the resurrection and followed this by his ascension into heaven, this power was still in existence. Jesus continued to be and, being God, had infinite power.

    Having infinite power, which included his own resurrection and that of others, it is reasonable to say that Jesus Christ has power to accomplish things not as great as the resurrection of the dead, such as healings, miracles, and other supernatural acts. We can then say "…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

    We can conclude from this that when Paul speaks of the resurrection power, he speaks of something that is not reserved for the last day, but is a part of the portion that we have in Christ Jesus.

    This is something that, while it may not be exclusively Pentecostal in nature, is very much a distinctively Pentecostal emphasis. Theologians had spoken about God’s infinite power, and about the nature of the resurrection, both Jesus’ and ours, for centuries. But it takes the move of the Spirit to put the two together and then to apply all of this to our everyday lives on this earth. It was God’s intention that we as his believers walk each day in the power of his resurrection, power that comes only from him: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right (authority) to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God."  When Pentecostal preachers go on about "resurrection power," they are not just blowing smoke or trying to induce their hearers to run the aisles; they are speaking of one of the greatest facts the Christian life has to offer.

    We will spend more time on this later. We see, though, that the power of the resurrection is another necessary prerequisite to Pentecost. We also see that this resurrection power is not something just for our death but for our life as well, and not only just a part of our life, but also an expansion of it.

    From Born to be Alive.

  • Richard Russell and Tribal Wisdom

    Some good stuff to think about from 1964, during the Vietnam era:

    Redolent of the late 1940’s, (U.S. Ambassador) Henry Cabot Lodge cabled Washington that South Vietnam might have to be run by a U.S. "High Commissioner," having himself in mind.  Georgia’s Richard Russell was still chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and had known Lodge and (President Lyndon) Johnson for more than twenty years.  He cautioned the president that Lodge "thinks he’s dealing with barbarian tribes out there."

    Russell was in a position to know: he was a part of the greatest "barbarian tribe" that ever hit the U.S.  He had more wisdom than that, though:

    Russell merely wanted Congress to spend whatever it took to install a government in Saigon that would promptly ask the Yankees to go home.  That possibility was lost with Diem’s murder.

    Forty years later, we invaded Iraq with the idea of instilling democracy on the "barbarian tribes" of the Middle East, complete with "High Commissioner"  Paul Bremer, rather than install someone who would aid U.S. interests by making the Iranians’ life miserable.

    All quotes from Derek Leebaert’s The Fifty Year Wound, written before the adventure in Iraq.

  • Rowan Williams: Old Earth Creationists Still Hung Out to Dry

    It seems that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a talent for leaving people who just might help solve problems hanging out to dry, as he blithely ignores the existence of "old earth creationism" in the debate over evolution:

    Dr Rowan Williams, said "Neo Darwinism and Creationist science deserve each other. Creationism is a version of slightly questionable science pretending to be theology, and Neo Darwinism is a questionable theology pretending to be science."

    That leaves us who are old earth creationists in the lurch again, as I noted three years ago:

    A bill had been introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly which would give students additional redress in the event they felt they had been downgraded by a professor became same faculty member didn’t care for the student’s views. This is primarily aimed at liberal faculty of the arts.

    Needless to say, this piece of legislation got a cool response from the faculty. The surprise came from which part of the faculty; the most vociferous opposition came from evolutionists, who feared that another Scopes trial was in the making. Coming back at them were the new earth creationists, and this led to a long, generally informative but serious debate on the subject of creation and evolution.

    I mentioned this to my state representative, who cooly responded that the faculty should have stuck to the subject matter at hand. For me, however, as a Christian, an old earth creationist, an adjunct and someone who deals with geological issues in Soil Mechanics, this was a perilous situation. If the evolutinists win, I get the boot over the origin of the universe and being a theist (the evolutionsts are for the most part rabid secular humanists.) If the new earth creationists win, I get the boot over the age of the earth. Real academic freedom these days consists of forcing the administration to find really creative ways to give people the boot!

    It’s too bad I’m not in the position to really write this letter…

  • The Letter I’d Write if I Were an Anglican Primate

    Lisa Severine Noland’s article about the perils of going to Lambeth this summer has galvanised me to draft the letter I’d write if I were an Anglican primate in a predominantly "reasserter" province:

    Esteemed ++Rowan Williams!

    It is with the deepest regret that I find myself compelled to write this letter to you.

    At this point there is little purpose to be served by recounting the events of the last ten years and more in our Anglican Communion.  Starting with the resolution we passed on homosexuality at our last Lambeth gathering, we have seen a perverse pas de deux unfold as provinces such as The Episcopal Church and certain dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada have allowed (and in many ways encouraged) the inclusion of openly non-celebate homosexuals into their sacerdotal and episcopal hierarchy, the formulation and performance of same-sex blessings in their churches, and many other related permissions and actions.  We have also seen that the response of (this province and) many other provinces in our communion to these and the many other humanistic and syncretistic developments in these and other provinces (including your church, I hasten to add) by affording proper pastoral oversight to those who dissent from these pernicious trends has been met with decidedly non-Christian responses both in ecclesiastical and secular proceedings.

    There is also little purpose to be served by recounting the many meetings we have had, both in the regular course of business of the Communion and the special meetings.  The Communion on the whole has expressed its dissapproval of the actions of TEC and ACC, based on the plain sense of Scripture and Anglican doctrinal tradition.  Nevertheless these expressions have been in reality evaded with vague official statements which are not backed up by the reality of the dioceses represented by those making the statements.

    Now we face yet another Lambeth conference with the serious possibility that those churches which have forwarded these condemned agendas use the economic superiority and favourable image with sympathetic elites to shame those who come into acquiesing to their idea, which would constitute an abrogation of the episcopal vows of each of us who would attend such a gathering.

    At this point this Province, having considered things carefully, has come to the conclusion that the Anglican Communion has lost the will to effectively uphold the Christian sexual ethic of sex solely within the bonds of Holy Matrimony between one man and one woman.  This is not simply an issue concerning homosexuals; it is the entire teaching of the Holy Scriptures on this subject which is under attack.  We have also come to the conclusion that the Communion has lost the will to either effectively deal with provinces which encourage this abandonment or to allow other provinces to remedy the situation, as evidenced by the exclusion of certain bishops in communion with you from the Lambeth invitation.  We believe that this loss of will is not a general one amongst Anglican churches, but one at the Communion’s highest levels.

    As a result of this, this letter is to inform you that I am intiating the process of this Province’s formal withdrawal from the Anglican Communion, effective immediately.  I should also add that, because we are an Anglican church in doctrine, in Apostolic succession, in worship and in affection, we would like to remain in full communion with your see for the indefinite future.   I say "indefinite" because, as I alluded to earlier, current trends in your church–to say nothing of possible government coercion in the future–may jeopardise any communion that we might have between us.

    It seems that some mention of the social agenda of the Anglican Communion is in order.  Although the provinces that promote the agenda described above generally vocalise great enthusiasm for social justice in general and the Millennium Development Goals in particular, a cursory examination of the wealth distribution in our world makes one doubt the real meaning of two score of rhetoric on these issues.

    This is a decision that we do not take lightly or in haste; however, we believe that the integrity of this Province and the ministry that God has entrusted us to must be safeguarded, and our decision should be considered in this light.

    "May God, the source of all peace, who brought back from the dead him who, ‘by virtue of the blood that rendered valid the unchangeable Covenant, is the Great Shepherd of God’s Sheep,’ Jesus, our Lord– may God make you perfect in everything that is good, so that you may be able to do his will. May he bring out in us all that is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be all glory for ever and ever. Amen." (Hebrews 13:20-21)

    Yours faithfully,

    +/s/
    Primate

    P.S. I have opted to use the Russian salutation, as the use of "Dear" amongst men may give rise to misinterpretation in certain circles with which we are both familiar.

    I am confident that those of you who are better versed in Anglican canon law will take exception to the way in which I have expressed many things here.  I attempted to replicate to the greatest extent possible the prose I see in Anglican documents, especially with the use of long, complicated run-on sentences.

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