Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
I hope that the New York Times' blog is doing a late April Fools' joke with Christian Conservatives Consider Third-Party Effort. But I'm afraid not. Christian conservatives need to come to a few realisations about their current situation. Evangelical Christianity has been functionally absent from the halls of power for a long time, Billy Graham's …
Continue reading "Christian Conservatives Consider Third-Party Effort. You’ve Got to be Kidding"
In his reply to my last post, Robert Easter makes the following comment on the Holy Communion: The earliest records show that weekly Communion was standard from the very first. John Wesley stressed it as still being important for the Methodists to take it weekly, and he took it several times during the week. That …
Continue reading "More on Communion as the Main Order of Worship"
My friend Robert Easter at Sanctifusion has thrown me some very deep questions in the course of a discussion: I was talking about you to a young man who is in the process of shifting form Church of God to Anglican. Something about the ancient ties and the Nicene writers. When we look at it, …
Sami Moubayed's article Unveiling men in the Arab world is one of those rare admissions from a (presumably) Muslim source that things are not quite in the altogether within Islam. It makes me think of the following, in this case relative to the Jews: For, if there was a glory in the religion that involved …
In his Anglican Action blog, Ralph Webb, Director of Anglican Action at the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) noted the most significant detail of the "Mind of the House Statement" from the recent Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in New Orleans: I (Webb) asked Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori why the mind of the …
Continue reading "The House of Bishops and the Deadly Meaning of “Until”"
There is something about being human that craves a “comfort zone.” We all just naturally want to be able to say, “I understand this,” or “I can handle that.” To be ablaze with the Holy Spirit brings us very quickly to say, “I can't, Lord, but You can!” This violates our pride, and, while pride …
This album concludes this week with You Will Find Your Life in Mine. This is an "altar appeal" type of song, and it is one of the best. Emmanuel was capable of being both artistic and conform to the conventions of the genre, and this is in some ways the best example of this. Click …
Continue reading "Yahweh in the Morning: You Will Find Your Life in Mine"
One thing that has buffaloed me from the start of this fiasco over TEC, Gene Robinson and the very strong existence of the GLBT in this and other historically Christian churches is this: why would anyone want to join a church whose Scripture explicitly casts as sinful their defining way of life? It's true that …
Continue reading "The Paradox of GLBT People and the Church"
Evidently there's not much funny on the Upper West Side these days, as outrage turned to laughter at Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia. After having had the bad taste to invite him, Columbia's president Lee Bollinger proceeded to trash Ahmadinejad, which was rude to do. That kind of "bait and switch" will not go down well …
Continue reading "Ahmadinejad: They Can Laugh If They Want. But Then What?"
One recurring issue in Episcopal/Anglican life is the "Baptismal Covenant" that appears in the 1979 BCP. (For a look at it, click here.) This has been Peter Toon's cause célèbre for a long time, and now it's been picked up by Gary L'Hommedieu. Now it seems that Rowan Williams has joined in the chorus. As …
Continue reading "A Semi-Marxist View of the Baptismal Covenant"
Positive Infinity 