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  • Being Unpatriotic Slowly Becomes Fashionable

    That’s the finding of this Gallup poll:

    American pride has continued its downward trajectory reaching the lowest point in the two decades of Gallup measurement. The new low comes at a time when the U.S. faces public health and economic crises brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in police custody.

    Patriotism is the glue that holds this country together.  Without it, things will eventually come apart.

    Ever since the 1960’s, when they burned everything–flags, cities, bras, you name it–the message from the left has been that this is an evil country.  Now that they occupy places of power–with the possibility of more–they appeal to our patriotism, thus the wild goose chase re the Russians.

    You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t say that this place was born in fundamental injustice (which is the message of things like the 1619 Project) and then turn around and expect us to look up to the place as the fount of everything beautiful and good when you’re in power.  That’s especially true when Democrats who poll as proud of the country poll in the low 20’s.  They had already gone south of half before Barack Obama left office. Do they expect a solid rebound if they get back into power?

    I don’t, and neither do I think that it’s going to get better on either or both sides before it gets worse.

  • Michael Scanlan’s Amazing Prophecy

    I’ve been puzzled about the spike this week in the stats for this post about Michael Scanlan and the University of Steubenville.  A friend of mine put me on to an email blast from Ralph Martin; a video version of this is below:

    My response to this was as follows:

    Now I understand the major spike in the stats for my piece on Michael Scanlan.

    There were many people in the 1970’s who were looking for/prophesying about a time when Christians would be “at sea” so to speak. But then two things happened.

    The first was the election of John Paul II as Pope in 1978. He managed to set the RCC’s “house in order” as best as possible. The Renewal suffered the consequences of this but it happened.

    The second was the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980. He too put some things in order.

    To some extent these two events with others stalled the collapse foreseen at the time (tbh I was looking for a collapse, too.) But now things have shifted and we’re back facing the abyss again.

    One note: when Ralph Martin speaks of “Christ’s body” he interprets that eucharistically, in a good #straightouttairondale way. I doubt that this is what Scanlan had in mind. The powers that were in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (and that includes Ralph Martin) had a strong remnant theology undertow, which drove the whole covenant community movement. The “body” he was referring to was the group of saints which were not part of the falling away he refers to elsewhere. Irrespective of the merits or demerits of the covenant community system, it goes against some basic Catholic teachings, something that the Church was “looser” about at the time than it was under JPII.

  • Traditional Morning Prayer: 11 June 2020

  • An old Zenith Colour Television Broadcasts the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King

    Just about every television I grew up with was a Zenith.  So I was intrigued when I saw this video of a Zenith colour “roundie.”  We had one in our family room in Palm Beach (I’m not sure whether it was this exact model but it was close.)

    The sample broadcast he chose is riveting, especially these days: Walter Cronkite’s report of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on 4 April 1968.   I doubt we watched CBS (we were NBC, Huntley-Brinkley types) but we certainly watched the reports of this.  It’s interesting to hear Dr. King evoke the Bill of Rights in his speech the night before he was killed; now so many consider those rights to be part of the problem.

    I’ve cued up the video to that broadcast; if you’re interested in the technical aspects of the Zenith he’s looking at, just run it back to the start.

    Our own roundie went on to transmit other tumultuous events of the time, including the Watergate Hearings, as you can see below in photos from its tube.  (I’ve got recordings from that here and here.  I cropped these close, but you can see the rounding in the corners.)

    On the hot seat: John Erlichman, Richard Nixon’s Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs.
    Sen Sam. Ervin (D-NC), the Committee’s Chairman. His questioning of John Erlichman–which turned into a monologue on rights under the Constitution–dominates most of this excerpt.
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  • What can Pentecostals learn from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism? — Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

    This Week in AG History — June 3, 1944 By Darrin J. Rodgers Originally published on AG News, 04 June 2020 What can Pentecostals learn from John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism? Wesley, an Anglican priest in England, helped to lay the foundation for large segments of the evangelical and Pentecostal movements. Despite living […]

    via What can Pentecostals learn from John Wesley, the founder of Methodism? — Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center

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  • “All police forces get buffeted from time to time, but they know one thing: through revolutions, political-line changes and the fall of governments, the police are eternal.”

    From John Fraser’s The Chinese: Portrait of a People.

    His observations centred on the Gonganju (Public Security Bureau) in China.  They became enmeshed (and very politicised) with the Great Leap Forward and later the Cultural Revolution, and after Mao’s death the Party began an effort to disentangle the Gonganju from political life (and ultimately involvement in the Party’s own internal affairs.)  About that he noted the following:

    The Communist Party has begun a campaign to reorient the Gonganju from being an enforcer of political thought to being a more effective custodian of law and order, but it’s going to be a long, uphill struggle.  There is every reason to believe that the police establishment will successfully resist too great a change because it knows that a one-party totalitarian state always needs a political thought enforcer eventually.

    Yi Jinping understands this completely.  Given the totalitarian urges out and about in our own society, for us–on the left or the right–to think we’re immune from this, or that we can abolish the police at will, is foolish.  The police exist, among other things, to uphold the existing order, and it’s reasonable to say that, if that existing order were to radically change, whatever replaces it will need the police as much as the one it displaces.

  • The Story of Our Hymns: All Creatures Of Our God And King — Anglican Compass

    This is the second of a series on sacred hymns, the story behind them, their text, a recording, and a simple companion devotional. “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” – St. Francis of Assisi Every Hymn Has a Story St. Francis of Assisi was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. Although…

    via The Story of Our Hymns: All Creatures Of Our God And King — Anglican Compass

  • Go to Bed With the Dogs, Get Up With Fleas: the Episcopal Church, the ACNA, Social Justice and Race Relations

    I find it strange that the Episcopal Church is up in a lather because Donald Trump marched with his entourage to St. John’s Church near the White House and held up a Bible.  Why is it strange?

    Reason I: it’s a Bible.  Episcopalians usually leave the daily Bible reading (or any Bible reading) to the impecunious rednecks across the tracks.  But I digress…

    Reason II: they’ve had numerous opportunities to give this man–whom most of them despise–the boot.  He attends St. John’s occasionally.  When he’s in Palm Beach he goes to Bethesda, he married Melania there.  I suggested that Michael Curry stand at the door of the latter and bar his entrance, if he wants to be a post-modern left-wing prophet, but he hasn’t.  He’s marched around the White House but neither he nor his minions defended his church against the assault from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, nor did they bar his pre-inaugural service from the National Cathedral.  They’ve had plenty of opportunities to make the Orange Man persona non grata in the church that “welcomes you,” but they’ve passed them up.

    We shouldn’t expect otherwise.  St. John’s is strategically located near the White House, which is why so many Presidents have visited there.  As the impecunious rednecks would say, you go to bed with the dogs, you get up with fleas.  They’ve positioned themselves at the centre of power and have no intention giving up their privilege now.

    The Episcopal Church is an overwhelmingly white, highly educated and upper income institution (and now a geriatric one too.)  Over a half century of its ministers such as Ian Mitchell and my prep school chaplain trying to motivate/shame the laity to social justice hasn’t changed that, neither has it substantially altered the demographics of the church in general.  The church which wants to have the preferential option for the poor isn’t the preferential option of the poor.  Any efforts it might make in that regard are patronising in every sense of the word.

    And now the ACNA has rumbles to make the exact same mistake, starting as it has with very similar demographics and racial makeup.  We have the efforts of one Greg Goebel in that regard.  Now Goebel is an ex-Pentecostal, and if there’s one thing I’ve found out about Pentecostals, current and former, is that (like Evangelicals) they’re deeper into their own stuff than just about anyone else, and less able to see things from other viewpoints.  I’m well aware of the failings of my Scots-Irish ancestors in the race relations field, but I’ve also experienced the failures of the Episcopal Church in trying to be something it cannot.  The ACNA will experience the same compromise and decline TEC has if it goes down this road.

    Karl Marx said that history repeats itself: the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce.  The Episcopal Church is a tragedy.  Will the ACNA, once so full of promise, be the farce?

  • Karl Friston: up to 80% not even susceptible to Covid-19 — UnHerd

    Just one month ago, the idea that most people aren’t susceptible to Covid-19 — perhaps the overwhelming majority — was considered dangerous denialism. It was startling when Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt argued in UnHerd at the start of May that the growth curves of the disease were never truly exponential, suggesting that some sort of…

    via Karl Friston: up to 80% not even susceptible to Covid-19 — UnHerd

  • Both the radical Left and Right are ‘left-behinds’ — UnHerd

    In my twenties, I inhabited a fringe of the London political activism scene that included full-on black bloc anarchists. I had begun working life as a middle-class graduate in London, soaked in critical theory and hostile to the economic system I was expected to join. Instead of knuckling down in a Big Four consulting firm…

    via Both the radical Left and Right are ‘left-behinds’ — UnHerd

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