Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Rowan Williams' resignation/retirement as Archbishop of Canterbury has generated a great deal of comment within and without the Anglican/Episcopal world. It's not been a happy tenure of the seat of Becket and Cranmer (it ended badly for them, too, from a temporal standpoint) and everybody knows it. But life is too short to make all …
Continue reading "Rowan Williams: Anglican Fudge Doesn't Work Any More"
Glide Memorial's Bobby Kent (Olympia 6052N2) 1976 The San Francisco Bay Area was the scene for much of what made the 1960's and 1970's what they were, and this album is right in the groove of that. Glide Memorial is one of the premier black liberal churches in the U.S. It was in the forefront …
David French at NRO thinks so: During my years in the pews, I’ve witnessed a moral collapse — and a corresponding collapse in positive influence over the real lives not just of our fellow congregants but also of our fellow citizens in need. Of course it’s difficult to present a compelling witness when our own …
Continue reading "Is Evangelicals' Cultural Influence Collapsing?"
And, true to form, the Archbishop of Canterbury isn't helping matters: Today the Archbishop of Canterbury is reported as saying: “The cross has become a religious decoration.” It is something which religious people hang on to as a substitute for faith. He goes on: “I believe that during Lent one of the things we all …
Continue reading "The Brits Give a New Meaning to "Taking Up Your Cross""
The liberals are picking themselves off of the floor at the realisation that Pat Robertson has come out in favour of the legalisation of marijuana. (He's been working up to this for some time.) NORML, at this writing, hasn't even gotten around to admitting it. Many others are in shock also. His logic on this, …
Continue reading "No Stems, No Seeds That You Don't Need: Pat Robertson and Marijuana"
Had former Secret Service agent Dan Emmett been raised in a place like Palm Beach, he would have seen this coming: In several anecdotes, former agent Dan Emmett revealed that Clinton’s young staff had “fundamental traits of rudeness and arrogance” that teetered on the verge of being dangerous at times. “Most of these youngsters were …
Continue reading "In a Rich Kid World, Secret Service Agents are the Hired Help"
In an unusually barefaced statement of what many Christians actually think, Michael Olgren, Finance Committee Chairman of dying Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, MI, blurted out the following: At the parish's annual meeting on January 12, 2012, Dr. Michael Olgren, Chair of the Finance Committee, painted a dire financial picture of the parish stating …
Continue reading "Do We Really Want Rich People to Join Our Churches?"
In a culture that imputes statistical studies with authority they don't deserve, this warning, from Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN 77, is very salutary: Data consist of numbers, of course. But these numbers are fed into the computer, not produced by it. These are numbers to be treated with considerable respect, neither to be tampered with, …
Continue reading "A Salutary Reminder About the Limitations of Data and Statistics"
This, from David Virtue's Online Digest, sure makes it look that way: The saga of TAC Bishop David L. Moyer and his Newman fellowship continues. He announced to his small flock this week that he would not be accepting Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson's offer of laicization in order to enter the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, he …
Continue reading "Have Loose Cannons Hepworth and Moyer Gone Overboard?"
It is fashionable (especially in Anglican/Episcopal circles where it is so common these days) to refer to conversion to Roman Catholicism as "swimming the Tiber." Although Hillaire Belloc never actually had to convert (although a recovery was in order,) his The Path to Rome (which he actually walked, via the Alps) is probably a better …
Positive Infinity 