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  • Reinventing the English Reformation

    In twenty years’ time, Anglican enthusiasts will mark the bicentennials of three nineteenth-century libraries: the Wycliffe Society Library, the …

    Reinventing the English Reformation

    In spite of all of the issues that the last century and this one dumped on the Anglican/Episcopal world–WO, the social justice issues, the sexual identity and practice issues, you name it–one that continues to bedevil it like no other is the Evangelical/Anglo-Catholic divide. Even those of us who have tried to take a (somewhat) even-handed approach to this find ourselves in the crosshairs of partisans of one side or the other (in my case, the Evangelical side.)

    I think in this case two observations need to be made:

    • The problem of “Evangelical vs. Anglo-Catholic” is to some extent wrapped up in the beginnings of the Church of England itself. It’s probably one of the messiest and least pleasant tales to come out of the Reformation. The English opted to retain the Episcopate (not to the taste of the Calvinists) and the liturgy (not to the taste of the radicals) which led to many conflicts and to some extent the English Civil War itself. Any attempt to claim to be the “sole heir” of this mess requires a great deal of “papering over” and the North American Anglican article on the subject describes some of that.
    • The Anglican/Episcopal world was influenced by those around them, and in some ways imported the divide from outside a strictly Anglican context. The Evangelicals were certainly impressed by the progress the Methodists and Baptists did in getting people saved. (Had they been more receptive to the Wesleyan revival, they might have been the Joneses rather than having to keep up with them!) The Anglo-Catholics were impressed by the continuity and doctrinal clarity (on some issues) that Rome seemingly provided. This turned into a tug of war that has plagued the Anglican/Episcopal world to this day.

    If Anglicanism wants to be something else than a way station to somewhere else, it needs to establish its own identity. That may involve altering the Reformation era dialectics (such as the Eucharist) that don’t mean the same thing now as then. This would be a good time to do this, esp. with the current Occupant in Rome. But I’m not holding my breath.

  • Maybe Our Ministers Are Really a Trade Union After All

    In Iceland, this is literally the case:

    A proposal to ban clergy from charging or accepting fees for funerals, weddings and baptisms has prompted threats of industrial action by the clergy union of the Church of Iceland (Þjóðkirkjan).

    A little while back I lamented the following:

    The second is that (with exceptions) our ministers and academics alike have a “trade union” mentality, that thinking and speaking/preaching of the deeper things of God is “bargaining unit” work and that the laity (“scabs” in union terminology) don’t have any business delving into this kind of thing on any level. Sometimes it’s framed as a replication of Roman Catholicism’s view of the priesthood, but that’s too high of a view of what’s going on.

    As George Conger points out, the Church of Iceland is a state (Lutheran) church and its ministers employees of the government. They have a trade union with a collective bargaining agreement. One of the things that agreement permits is for same ministers to collect honoraria on things such as baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc. The church wants to revoke this right unilaterally, thus the threat of the ministers to strike. In the trade union setting I’m familiar with, the union would file a grievance for this kind of thing, but different contracts stipulate different responses.

    My experience with ministers in the Church of God tells me that, if our church were to do the same thing, the reaction of the union (er, ministers) would make the threat of a strike look tame. Honoraria are a time-honoured practice from the lowliest exhorter right up to the Executive Committee. Our ministers may have different classifications but they are, ultimately, one bargaining unit.

    But I also suspect that the reaction of ministers in the more “refined” churches I routinely cover on this site wouldn’t take such a revocation with more equanimity than their counterparts across the tracks, and the situation in Iceland demonstrates what I’m talking about.

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  • Real Socialists, Fake Socialists and the Virginia Governor’s Race

    Earlier today I posted a link to a free Soviet textbook entitled Systems of Linear Equations. It was published in the late 1980’s and is one of a series of Soviet textbooks I’ve highlighted on my websites.

    Why, you ask, do I pass along Soviet textbooks? There are two reasons. The first is that I have a long-term commitment to free and low-cost textbooks for students. The second is that the Soviet Union had one of the greatest mathematical and technical academic and institute establishments the planet has ever known, it’s putting things into hardware where it broke down.

    Linear algebra has become a favourite subject of mine but late in life; I didn’t take a formal course in it until my PhD pursuits. Because of my specific major, I didn’t have to take linear algebra as an undergraduate back in the Dinosaur Age, although the aerospace engineers, for example, certainly did.

    The kicker with this little book is in the description, as follows:

    The book is intended for a wide circle of readers, including pupils of senior classes of secondary schools, who are interested in mathematics.

    Translation: including high school.

    That’s interesting because the Loudoun County School Board, at the instance of the Virginia Department of Education, has proposed to “to eliminate its accelerated math programs below 11th grade, citing “equity” as one of the catalysts for its changes to the mathematics curriculum.” This is the same Loudoun County School Board which allowed two women to be raped in the bathroom without consequence until called out. This is also the same school board that has inspired Virginia gubernatorial candidate and Clintonista Terry McAuliffe to call for the removal of parental involvement in curriculum decisions.

    “Equity” is a socialist concept that basically states that everyone should end up with the same result in life. But the real socialists in the Soviet Union knew better than to fudge on scientific education, thus the linear algebra in high school. Today we’re faced with another set of real socialists (I know, they’ve fudged on that in ways that the Soviets wouldn’t bring themselves to do) who also have a massive scientific and educational establishment that launches hypersonic vehicles which no one thought they could.

    The socialists we have in this country are and have been for the last fifty years are, to use Marxist terminology, utopian. They have grand dreams for a country where no one really has to do much of anything to succeed as long as they allow their leaders to slouch through their funded bureaucratic positions (like Pete Buttigieg is doing with his paternity leave while the supply chain breaks down.) But their country will fail.

    I’m glad that McAuliffe is in a tight space in the race, one which the Loudoun County School Board and his own inept statements have made possible. He deserves to lose. But I think that time is running out too fast on a country which has pushed real achievement, especially in the sciences, into the background.

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  • Some Old/New Advent and Christmas Resources

    For many churches, it’s time to think about the Advent/Christmas season. Maybe you’ve already started. Maybe you’re dealing with serious questions, like…should I ask N to light the Advent wreath after he/she almost burned the church down last year? Or perhaps…is there a reason why the congregation mouths the sermons I’m preaching, they are after all the same ones I’ve been doing for the last several years.

    Seriously, the Advent/Christmas season is a great season not only to celebrate the incarnation and birth of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but also to present the Gospel to people who normally don’t darken the doors of your church. But how to do so on a path so well worn and trod?

    One way is to use the Biblical story of the coming of Our Lord as a way to illustrate various parts of the Christian life. That was done masterfully by the French bishop Jaques Bénigne Bossuet in his Elevations on the Mysteries. I have spent the last seven years (off and on, mostly off) translating this work into English, and it’s now translated and being posted. The “Advent/Christmas” parts that are completely posted are as follows:

    Currently coming out twice a week are the elevations on “The Presentation of Jesus Christ in the Temple, and the Purification of the Holy Virgin.” These should be done by Christmas; if you’re interested, you can subscribe to the blog for these and the rest of the elevations that are to be posted.

    I trust these are a blessing and useful to you.

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  • That Pesky Johnson Amendment Strikes Again

    This time for the Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ video for African-American churches:

    Democratic leaders have pulled out the stops to try to help Terry McAuliffe in his struggling campaign for governor in Virginia. Figures from Barack Obama to Stacey Abrams have stumped for McAuliffe who is in a tight race with businessman Glenn Youngkin. The key for McAuliffe is black voters, and to spur turnout Vice President Kamala Harris has taped an endorsement of McAuliffe that is reportedly being played at hundreds of African American churches around the state. The problem is the “Johnson Amendment” makes such political pitches in churches a violation of federal law.

    I was (and am) unenthusiastic about repealing the Johnson Amendment, as was the hue and cry from many white evangelicals during the Trump years:

    I think that political activity needs to be the province of the laity.  And I’ve heard Christian politicians show a stronger grasp on what the Gospel is all about than ministers about political issues.  To put our ministers in the “driver’s seat” of political activity is to cede yet another function of the laity, reducing the latter to passive consumers of the church’s product.  And we have enough of that unBiblical kind of thing going on as it is.

    As I said at the start, freedom is something that needs to be used wisely.  If you get it, be careful: you may end up losing it all if you blow it.

    Although I am aware of the role that African-American churches have played in the civil rights movement, if things like this make political activity in churches de facto or de jure acceptable, it may have this effect for everyone:

    The danger of the right is the same as Harry Reid’s doing away with the super-majority filibuster for nominees: if the political wind reverses, you’ve given yourself the shaft. In both cases the reality of the Gospel is obscured by our desires of the moment.

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  • The triumph of America’s ruling class

    America is caught in a “revolutionary spiral”. An oligarchy composed of a small number of corporate and government rulers may be in control, but they…

    The triumph of America’s ruling class

  • Nazir-Ali Swims the Tiber

    As fellow swimmer Gavin Ashenden notes:

    It has been announced that Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, has left Anglicanism and become a Roman Catholic.

    He was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, entering the ordinariate on his name day, the feast of St Michael, two weeks ago.

    This is without doubt one of the most politically and theologically significant changes of allegiance in the Christian world for some time.

    The problem here–and it’s one I pointed out with Ashenden himself–is that the current Occupant of St. Peter is gunning, one way or another, to remake Roman Catholicism into the image and likeness of the Anglicanism Nazir-Ali left. It was a good move for me a half century ago; now, not so much.

    Given that Francis is putting the squeeze on the Tridentine Mass people, if some of same traditionalists decide that the Ordinariate is a reasonable alternative to the “hippy-dippy” Novus Ordo Mass, he’ll put the squeeze on them too. People like Ashenden and Nazir-Ali haven’t quite grasped that Roman Catholicism was just one bull away from going over the same cliff they’re trying to dodge, and some think that bull is either out or impending.

    It’s not a happy situation to be in, but it’s where we are, and any amount of projection that it’s something else will only bring temporary relief.

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  • Geniuses: From Suicidal to Criminal

    Now the latter is under investigation:

    Dr. James Clinton Oleson, an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Auckland, turned up this fascinating nugget of information after conducting anonymous surveys and interviews with 465 members of a high IQ society, who possessed an average IQ of 149. He compared their levels of self-reported criminality with those of a control group of 756 ‘bright’ individuals with an average IQ of 115, fifteen points above the societal mean score of 100. The ‘geniuses’ admitted to more crimes overall, and particularly committed more property crimes, white-collar crimes, and violent crimes.

    I’ve discussed the suicidal aspects of genius in The Geniuses Commit Suicide, with some backup. As a society we make peoples’ lives miserable over observations about intelligence, and breathe “intelligence” and “meritocracy” in the same breath. But on the other hand we are obsessed with socialisation and, behind the facade, we are worried that the gifted will take over, so we beat them down. The result is that, in practical life, superior intelligence is a liability rather than an asset.

    If we could just find a way to let people rise to their potential and let that benefit everyone, we’d have less suicide and criminality in those who happen to do well on IQ tests.

  • The Unsaid Lesson of Francis Collins

    He gets is both barrels from Nate Fisher at the American Reformer:

    Collins has long been celebrated by evangelical influencers, and upon his departure those praising him included Russell Moore, Tim Keller, and David French. The well-credentialed  evangelicals who populate urban churches like Keller’s have been taught to aspire to a “faithful presence” in elite institutions, and Collins is often viewed as epitomizing this. He succeeded not just at an elite level, but in the scientific world, a domain where Christians have a particularly hard time gaining respect.

    Yet Collins’s record over his 12 years atop the NIH shows serious and repeated moral compromises. That he continues to be praised as a model by elite-adjacent evangelicals suggests that what matters is the “presence” in elite circles far more than faithfulness to any clear Christian moral standard.

    If there’s one thing shocking about American Evangelicalism, it’s its blindness to the moral hazard of getting into the upper reaches of a society. Having been brought up in the upper reaches of this one, that moral hazard was definitely apparent.

    And yet, with the “have it all” and “move up” mentality that permeates American Evangelicalism, there is a general blindness to that moral hazard. I’d be the first to admit that Francis Collins’ rise is amazing—and objected to by secular types–but the things which Fisher lays out should be expected in an era when moral corners are to be cut, especially in the biomedical field.

    I think Evangelicals should be more careful about the way they lionise people who move up the way Collins has, and more importantly quit encouraging people to constantly push themselves into positions where they have to make decisions and compromises such as Collins has had to do. Do we really need to push our children into elite schools? Did we think about the compromises we would have to make in a major political movement? Questions like these and many others go unasked and unanswered in the Evangelical world, which is a major reason we ended up with Donald Trump. Many of the same elite-adjacent evangelicals (such as those listed above) who have blubbered about the support for Trump have pushed people into aspiring for high positions and secular success, which in turn encourages successful political action, which in turn…

    You can’t have it both ways; make up your minds.

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  • Continuation on the Mysteries of the Childhood of Jesus Christ

    As the title implies, these elevations expound on events after the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, mostly concerning the visit of the Magi. …

    Continuation on the Mysteries of the Childhood of Jesus Christ
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