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  • The West’s monumental crisis — UnHerd

    In 1998, the urban planning student Mohammed Atta handed in his masters thesis at Hamburg’s University of Technology. Examining in depth the architecture of Aleppo’s historic Bab al-Nasr district, Atta’s thesis presented a picture of the human-scale “Islamic-Oriental city,” whose winding cobbled streets, shaded souks and alleys carved from honey-coloured stone had been violated by…

    via The West’s monumental crisis — UnHerd

  • There’s Still Time for Justin Welby to Hand the Anglican Communion to the Africans

    He’s agonising over the statues:

    Justin Welby said monuments would be looked at ‘very carefully’ to see if they all ‘should be there’.

    In a wide-ranging interview, he also urged the West to reconsider its prevailing mindset that Jesus was white, and pointed to different portrayals of Christ as Black or Middle Eastern in different countries.

    But why do something really stupid when you can do something really substantive? My advice in 2007:

    The Archbishops of Canterbury and York participated in a much publicised “guilt march” across the UK about the evil of slavery.

    But there’s an easier and more substantial way to even the score: just let the Africans and their allies, including the descendants of slaves in the West Indies, take the lead in the Communion.

    We find, however, that, Western church leaders–liberal and conservative alike–are reluctant to bow to the obvious and allow the centre of power of Christianity to shift where its people are.  The liberals are especially adverse to this process, as they are further from the Africans’ idea than their conservative counterparts.

    The desperation of conservative parishes in TEC, however, has them affiliating with provinces such as Uganda and Nigeria, along with others.  They have gone past guilt.  It is time that the rest of us follow suit.

    It’s so bad that even Nelson Mandela’s widow objects to statue removal:

    Nelson Mandela’s widow Graca Machel has implored anti-racism campaigners not to topple statues because they serve as grave reminders of past atrocities.

    The activist said: ‘I believe even it might be much more positive to keep them because you are going to tell generations to come “this is how it started and this is how it should never be.”‘

    Her remarks put her at loggerheads with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who today revealed he would be reviewing statues at Canterbury Cathedral.

    This is the core issue of the statue removal: it’s easy to tear down a bunch of statues and declare victory.  It’s a whole different ball game to actually recognise the shift of Christianity, especially to people you basically don’t like, as is the case with Justin Welby and the large provinces of Nigeria, Uganda and others.  And it’s really hard to act on that reality.

    But it’s been time since 1998 Lambeth and it certainly is time now.

  • On Liturgies, Shapes and Texts — The Porcine

    Recently I read both Samuel Bray’s piece over at Ad Fontes, and Rev. Ben Jefferies’s piece over at The North American Anglican. Both present different schools of thought regarding Anglican liturgy, and I recommend you read them both. I did notice, however, that several people interpreted Prof. Bray’s essay as arguing that a. no deviation…

    via On Liturgies, Shapes and Texts — The Porcine

  • Tolkien’s mythic plan for England — UnHerd

    On a family holiday in Yorkshire in 1925, J. R. R. Tolkien’s young son Michael lost a beloved toy on a large stony beach. A long search by Tolkien, and Michael’s older brother John, proved fruitless; to console the boy, Tolkien made up a story, Roverandom. It’s an odd tale, featuring a small dog, wizards,…

    via Tolkien’s mythic plan for England — UnHerd

  • Another Scanlan Prophecy, and How Did Ralph Martin Get to #straightouttairondale?

    Ralph Martin has posted a follow-up to his broadcast of Michael Scanlan’s prophecy:

    There’s a lot to unpack here.

    First, much of what he says is fine.  One of the things I’ve tried to do is to discourage people from leaning too hard on the benefits of the civilisation (such as it is.)  The call of Jesus Christ is too high to do so, either in times of prosperity or certainly in times of trouble like we’re in now.  In this country the worst thing we do is wrap our Christianity around “moving up,” and I’ve decried this for a long time.  It may produce big numbers but it isn’t prepared for what we’re facing now.

    My real issue is his context, and that may seem abstract, but it’s not.  He’s come up with another prophecy from Fr. Scanlan and that brings up two important questions, one for the time it came out and one for now.

    In the traditional Roman Catholicism Martin professes to live in, the prophetic gift didn’t (and doesn’t) work in the way that Scanlan exercised it.  The Church has generally taught that the Holy Spirit acts through the church as a whole.  The way he exercised it is more in line with what we’ve seen in modern Pentecost.  So how can he fit the two together?  Or better, how did Ralph Martin, like Scanlan, get to #straightouttairondale?

    The fact is that many of us at the time, when confronted with this radical call, couldn’t figure out how to respond to that meaningfully in the parish system then and now.  So we left.  Given the current state of things, the only way to do this is to go for a “church within a church.”  That was what the Sword of the Spirit was all about, and it wasn’t all that Catholic.  (It had other problems, too.)  That’s also what SSPX is about, and they’re having problems.  The Trads are trying to do the same, and they’re not getting the cooperation from the Church they think they should.  It’s great to set forth a radical call to the Gospel, but how do we get there?  We couldn’t figure it out forty years ago, why should we think you can?

    There’s no doubt that we’re facing bad times.  There’s also no doubt that the Catholic Church at large in this country is unprepared for them or unprepared to defend its flock.  Do we need two layers of problems when it’s hard enough to deal with one?

    But I guess these are the problems that result when you’re better at making unlikely transitions within the Church rather than facing the problems the way they are.

     

  • The Story of Our Hymns: There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood — Anglican Compass

    This is the third of a series on sacred hymns, the story behind them, their text, a recording, and a simple companion devotional. “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.” ~William Cowper Every Hymn Has a Story William Cowper was…

    via The Story of Our Hymns: There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood — Anglican Compass

    I was surprised to see this hymn featured.  Cowper was certainly an Anglican, but the Episcopalians saw fit to exclude this “great” hymn from both the 1916 and 1940 Hymnals.  I never heard it until I was among the Baptists.

  • Now St. John’s Episcopal Church Feels the Wrath of #BLM

    From Twitter:

     

    Evidently the protesters look at the Episcopal Church as it is and not as it would like itself to be.

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  • The Social Justice Church Loses on the SC Property

    Yes they did:

    Making factual findings as to each of thirty-six individual parishes, Judge Dickson ruled (1) following the still-controlling decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court in All Saints Waccamaw, ECUSA’s Dennis Canon by itself does not create or impose a legally binding trust on any church property in South Carolina; (2) none of the thirty-six parishes ever expressly acceded to the Dennis Canon in any written document; and (3) Bishop Lawrence’s Diocese did not lose its status as beneficiary of the Camp Christopher Trust when it exercised its legal right to disassociate from ECUSA (again following another holding of the Waccamaw case).

    If there’s one thing in recent history that belies the entire social justice thrust of the Episcopal Church, it’s the USD60,000,000 campaign of theirs to retain their church property.  Doesn’t anybody know that any social justice effort is ultimately about redistributing property from those who have it to those who don’t?  You can bet that any Antifa or BLM Marxist knows that.  So why did they spend so much money (which had better use elsewhere) on this project?

    I’m sure that some you will attempt to rebut this with the following:

    When Jesus was still at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, while he was at table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of choice spikenard perfume of great value. She broke the jar, and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those who were present said to one another indignantly: “Why has the perfume been wasted like this? This perfume could have been sold for more than thirty pounds, and the money given to the poor.” “Let her alone,” said Jesus, as they began to find fault with her, “why are you troubling her? This is a beautiful deed that she has done for me. You always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has perfumed my body beforehand for my burial. And I tell you, wherever, in the whole world, the Good News is proclaimed, what this woman has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14:3-9 TCNT)

    But this exegesis won’t work any better that the vestry’s did at Bethesda.  Today Our Lord, having sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is in heaven, ever-interceding for us.  We still have the poor, and this dreadful campaign of legal war hasn’t helped them one iota.

    So much for the social justice church…I hope the ACNA learns something from this sad adventure.

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  • It’s Not Just White Privilege in the Anglican/Episcopal World

    A short time ago I linked to a Pew Research study showing that both the Episcopal Church and the rest of the Anglican world in this country are overwhelmingly white.   A little later I showed that the Episcopal Church, for all the years of gaudy rhetoric about social justice, is still right there at the top of society.

    There are a couple of other Pew studies that I’d like to put in front of you.

    The first is this one, from 2016, that the Anglican/Episcopal world is more highly educated than the rest of American Christianity.  The church I’m now in is at the other extreme.

    I think this shows that Anglicans and Episcopalians are, by and large, out of touch with the needs of groups at the other end of the spectrum, irrespective of their ethnicity.  It’s just a fact that the two ends of the socio-economic spectrum look at things differently, but most Anglicans and Episcopalians are hard pressed to walk a mile (or even a kilometer) in the shoes (or lack thereof) of many others.

    And this leads to the consequence of that educational disparity: the Episcopalians are again at the top of American Christianity when it comes to income.  Mercifully the Anglican side dodged the bullet (wasn’t included in the survey,) but given that the ethnicity and education are so much the same, it’s hard to believe that the income Anglican parishioners are pulling in is that much different from their Episcopal counterparts.

    The class stratification of Protestant American Christianity is something that has always bothered me, which is a big reason I enjoyed being Roman Catholic for so many years (until the status seekers got the upper hand.)

    There are those in the ACNA who want to go the way of the Episcopalians in the social justice field.  The Episcopalians’ way isn’t Biblical (otherwise they’d to this) and hasn’t worked either.  American Christianity may not deserve better, but it certainly needs it.

  • Don’t Like White Privilege? Quit Your Job!

    That’s Bernard Goldberg’s sensible suggestion:

    Here’s the idea: Every white corporate CEO who thinks racism is ingrained in our culture, every white journalist who thinks racism has infected every facet of American life, every politician who thinks this is a fundamentally racist country — all of them should voluntarily give up their jobs, on one condition: that they be replaced by qualified African Americans.

    I’ve said it before: if you want to make an American really vein-bulging mad, tell him or her the obvious.  If you look at the comments, and see the virulent reaction to this idea, you’ll see what I mean.

    Renunciation of any kind is an impossible sell in this country.  Much of the fault for this, beyond ordinary human nature, can be laid at the feet of Protestant Christianity in general and Evangelical Christianity in particular, who have taught that renunciation is unnecessary, even though it’s a central part of Jesus’ message.

    This reaction mirrors a more polite form of this debate I had last summer with a prep schoolmate about a piece he wrote entitled “Renouncing Privilege.”  I actually put forth the idea that renunciation meant what it said, and his reply was as follows:

    Many of the students were, and probably still are wealthy, still privileged. I would not try to make the point that the young men became followers of Gandhi, just that they recognized an abusive power that they had the means to abolish and voted accordingly.

    Maybe that’s why they’re howling to remove Gandhi’s statue…

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