Quotes and Excerpts on ! Commonplacing

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 18:30:00 -0700

I have written frequently that we are not in charge of the outcome of history. “Management” is among the great myths of the modern mind. Humility is the path of Christ.
– Fr Stephen Freeman
Source: Disappointment and Modernity

Wed, 20 Sep 2023 15:54:41 -0700

On this episode of the Stand Firm podcast, Matt and Nick continue tracing the beginnings of the ACNA with Dr. Jon Shuler. On this episode, he tells the story from the foundations of the AMIA in the late 1990s to the Jerusalem GAFCON meeting in 2008.
Source: #89: ACNA Origins: The Rev. Dr. Jon Shuler (Part 2) | Stand Firm

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 11:08:52 -0700

Ultimately, the future of Anglo-Catholicism lies with Orthodoxy or a reconstituted Old Catholicism because they have held to the reformed catholic identity within Anglicanism whilst rejecting its doctrinal Protestantism. The neo-Evangelicals ultimately have more in common with the Holiness and Pentecostal churches through the Convergence Movement than they do with wider Anglicanism because they share the same sort of spirituality, albeit in a moderated form. This leaves the Confessional Anglicans who share more in common with moderate Lutheran and Reformed Christians than they do the Anglo-Catholics and the Neo-Evangelicals.
Source: PETER D. ROBINSON The Greater Church

a different three Anglicanisms, where Anglicanism disbands and starts side projects.

Wed, 23 Aug 2023 12:17:34 -0700

Technopoly tells us that we own ourselves, and that everything we need to fulfill our own (unchallengeable) desires is available for sale in the marketplace. But of course this is a system that only works if what we desire can in fact be purchased; and since that cannot in advance be guaranteed, the initial imperative of Technopoly is to train our desires, to channel them towards what the system already has for sale.
And the greatest instruments ever devised for such channeling are our internet-connected devices, especially when we connect to the internet through apps. The reason? Because while pens and paper can be used in extraordinarily varied and unpredictable ways, apps can’t: the ways in which we can interact with them are determined with great specificity and no deviation from the designed user-interface paradigm is permitted. You can use a pen to write a poem in elaborate cursive, sketch a tree, play Hangman, or, in moments of desperation, scratch a mosquito bite or skewer a chunk of watermelon. (I am describing, not recommending.) With TikTok, you can … make TikToks. The app is so far the ultimate extension of what Albert Borgmann called the device paradigm.
Source: against apps, for wander lines – The Homebound Symphony

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:44:20 -0700

“These departures are indicative of a disconnect between two groups within the ACNA: former mainline Protestants, including former Episcopalians, standing against revisionist theology, and post-evangelicals reacting against cultural hallmarks of their prior church homes, such as complementarianism or Christian nationalism,” Walton said.

“The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others is among the largest and fastest growing dioceses in ACNA partly because it can speak to those originating from an evangelical, charismatic, or Pentecostal context. These three departing parishes were all within C4SO, but this isn’t exclusively a C4SO problem. It’s a post-evangelical problem.”
Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…… | News & Reporting | Christianity Today

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:42:13 -0700

the bishop of C4SO is reconsidering his role in helping these churches. For the congregations in Austin and Indianapolis, Hunter said his approach involved “giving them a lot of space” and “being very patient with their exploration.”

“Here’s what I regret and what I’ve learned: that while I’ve done a good job caring for the clergy, I don’t think I’ve done a good job caring for the people in the church who are not progressive,” he said. “By the time I’ve stepped in, everything’s too far gone.”

Going forward, Hunter is working with C4SO leaders and their canon lawyer to develop a clearer process for how and when the bishop “can have his voice in a church earlier, so that it doesn’t get to a place where it’s very far off from not only just what I teach, but what the rest of the diocese expects.”

Like other C4SO clergy, Hunter has been called out and labeled communist, Marxist, and woke for his concern for racial justice and for ordaining women. He says his willingness to engage in conversation attracts the sort of people who are asking questions and deconstructing faith.

“It’s fascinating in online and other spaces to be criticized for these things … I am thoroughly committed to orthodox Christianity,” he told CT, “but I’m equally committed to figuring out how to live that out winsomely and truthfully, without engaging in culture wars constantly.”

Source: Two Anglican Church Plants Leave for the Episcopal Church…

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 11:15:36 -0700

English Altar - A cream and blue damask frontal with embroidered design, riddel curtains, riddel posts and polychromed reredos. Wynnewood, PA
Source: Davis d’Ambly

Daytime shot of Lady Chapel:

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 14:45:36 -0700

When we say their Eucharist is invalid, we’re merely asserting that it lacks the assurance that grace is conveyed in the way it was intended by Christ. Because it is invalid, we cannot say that grace is contained and has its effect through the administration of the sacrament. However, the signatory function of the Bread and Wine is not dependent upon priestly consecration but derives its function primarily through the Word. As such, one need not argue over the validity of signs. It is in regard to these signs that those outside of Apostolic Succession maintain some kind of proper intent. In what they put forth and offer, they truly administer signs of the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, even if the real presence of Christ is not contained therein.
Source: Apostolic Succession and Sacramental Grace

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 11:34:15 -0700

This is what it’s been like for at least five years in certain corners of the ACNA. Some clergy and congregations look like ducks, they sound like ducks, they walk like ducks, and sure enough, they are happier in TEC after all.
Source: Lingering Between Opinions - by Anne Kennedy

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 10:03:28 -0700

“The American Missal” and “The Anglican Missal (American Edition)” are basically the BCP liturgy embedded in the context of the private prayers of the Tridentine Missal, which alters the theology quite considerably. Hence the old joke about the Anglo-Catholics being prepared to fight to the death for the 1928 Prayer Book provided they never actually have to use it.
Source: The 1928 and Cranmer’s Shape | The North American Anglican

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 09:29:55 -0700

This move was prompted by a number of issues on which the clergy felt, in their words, “increasingly misaligned” with the ACNA - women’s ordination (our former diocese ordains women deacons/priests, but many ACNA dioceses don’t and are very hostile to female clergy; and of course there are no female bishops in the ACNA), racial issues (our rector and one of our curates have been repeatedly attacked on Twitter by ACNA clergy for their race/perspective on racial issues), abuse in the church, and treatment of LGBTQ people.
[…]
These tensions have been brewing under the surface for quite some time, but the actual process has been very quick. The clergy brought all of this to the parish less than a month ago! The speed of the process was actually requested by our former bishop [Todd Hunter], for numerous reasons I’m too lazy to get into lol.
Anyway, as the results of the vote indicate, most of us are excited to reconcile with TEC and be part of a body that supports our vision for how we worship God and serve our community. Largely due to the quiet rule-breaking of our clergy, we actually have a number of LGBTQ folks in the parish, myself included (I’m a bisexual cis man), and we are excited to be able to openly celebrate our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, continue to pursue racial reconciliation, and joyfully submit to female clergy (including Bp. Kai Ryan, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Texas, who was gracious enough to cut her vacation short to join us this past Sunday for a Q&A!).
Source: Ladies and gentlemen: we got ‘em. : r/Episcopalian

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:40:26 -0700

A very large percentage of people were legitimately unaware of the history of the ACNA and its policies about women/sexual minorities, until the clergy started talking about it as a preface to why they felt at odds with the denomination. It seems as though many folks came to Anglicanism to heal the wounds they received in evangelical churches, stumbled into a welcoming and loving parish, and never gave it a second thought. It would be very easy to assume we were in an affirming denomination, because there are numerous openly LGBTQ folks around the church who are valued and beloved members of the community. Source: Ladies and gentlemen: we got ‘em. : r/Episcopalian

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 09:51:34 -0700

“But any attempt to ‘modernise’ liturgy in terms of making it more acceptable to modern society (i.e. ‘pastoral respectability’) should be undertaken with extreme caution; the warning of Charles Davis is paramount here: ‘My thesis is that there is no modern form of worship, because worship itself is outdated in the modern world and Christian Faith a state of deviancy from contemporary culture.'”
– Bryan D. Spinks, “Christian Worship or Cultural Incantations?”, Studia Liturgical, vol. 12 (1977), 1, 12-13 (quoting Charles Davis, “Ghetto or Desert: Liturgy in a Cultural Dilemma” in Worship and Secularization (1970), pp. 10-27, p. 12).Source: 1662 Book of Common Prayer: International Edition

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:42:21 -0700

However, those boys who grew up in neighborhoods where there were more fathers present — even if not their own — had significantly higher chances of upward mobility.

“Ultimately,” Reynolds mused, “it’s about relationships and finding older men who, you know — they’re not flashy, they’re not ‘important,’ necessarily, but they actually are living virtuous lives as men. And then being able to then learn from them.”

This cultural shift is one reason why the crisis of masculinity might take time to fix: because fostering positive representations of manhood requires relationships and mentorship on an individual level, in a way that can’t be mandated.

Source: Opinion | Christine Emba: Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness. - The Washington Post

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 10:22:07 -0700

Until there is such clarity, there will be no unity among those of us who like to think of ourselves as Catholic and Anglican Churchmen. There will be no unity because you cannot be a pure cup of water in a dirty puddle. That is the simple, basic message of the Continuing Church to the neo-Anglicans. You have gone a very long way down a very wrong path, and that is true even if all the time you were avoiding a still worse path. You have a journey home to make, things to unlearn and to remember and recover. We want to welcome you at home. But there can be no restored communion with us without hard decisions and firm actions from you.

Source: Anglican Catholic Church Archbishop Mark Haverland’s Sermon at ICCA

I remember talking with a bishop who attended ICCA 2015, and this presentation stuck out as singularly off-putting –especially to the international bishops– to most of those present, that “home” was to be the Anglican Catholic Church for all the other Anglo-Catholics, and ACC was setting the terms. It appeared a public assertion that everyone in the room had strayed from the way, but could be welcomed into ACC. Two years after this, the continuing groups began the “joint synods” called the G4. In 2021, DHC was absorbed into ACC, making it G3. So it did work, but just for other continuing groups. Those outside the 1979 secession from the Episcopal church remain, apparently, part of a dirty puddle.

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 15:12:15 -0700

Canon John Fenton, the New Testament scholar, once said of Christianity: “You’ve got to feel it in your guts.” Charles I came to feel Christianity - and, in particular, the Church of England - in his guts.
This meant that he was always going to clash with those of his subjects who felt other sorts of Christianity in their guts: Puritans and Presbyterians. After his imprisonment by Parliament, the king had several opportunities to save his life and regain his throne, but the price was always that he should consent to the abolition of the Church of England and its replacement by Presbyterianism.
The king refused. When all else had fallen away, he still believed that the Church of England was the purest form of Christianity, freed from later accretions, and in tune with the ancient Fathers. For this, he was prepared to die.
Source: Did King Charles I have Asperger’s syndrome?

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 09:04:35 -0700

One of the many threads that link together the post-evangelical left and the Christian nationalist right is a shocking indifference to arguments, ideas, and, ultimately, truth. Both movements are driven chiefly by vibes. The primary rhetorical posture of both most post-evangelicals and most Christian nationalists is the sneer. It is not marked by saying, “this argument is wrong because x, y, and z.” It’s marked, rather, by “oh, you can’t possibly believe that, can you?”

The sneer works rhetorically because it creates a kind of atmosphere in which arguments don’t need to be made because social pressure is exerted in such a way to coerce people into a position. Put another way: Those who sneer don’t actually care about ideas; they care about power.

Source: Bad Readers and Their Twitter Swarms

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 22:56:05 -0700

I am now questioning the accuracy of my claim that the use of the vernacular is as characteristic of the Eastern rites as it is of the Novus Ordo in its vast number of translations into modern languages. Yes, in many linguistic spheres the vernacular will be used (as when the Divine Liturgy is offered in English, as throughout the United States), but there are far too many exceptions.

Greek speaking churches/patriarchates use liturgical Greek, not vernacular. Some patriarchates use Arabic and others alongside Greek.

Slavic Orthodox churches have always used exclusively liturgical Church Slavonic. Recently, Eastern modernists managed to introduce vernacular, but not everywhere. Russians still use only Slavonic. Even though Serbians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Belarusians, Ukrainians use much vernacular, Slavonic is still in use.

The Romanian Orthodox Church used Church Slavonic/liturgical Greek from 10th to 17th century, when it was replaced by Romanian (which was nevertheless influenced by Church Slavonic, making it quite non-vernacular).

The Georgian Orthodox Church uses old literary Georgian as liturgical language.

The Coptic Orthodox use literary Coptic language as liturgical language. Even though its use diminished during long Muslim rule (replacing it by Arabic), it’s still alive and it’s being reintroduced.

The Ethiopian Orthodox use Ge’ez as liturgical language, not one of many vernaculars.

The Syrian Orthodox use classical Syrian and Arabic. Use of Arabic is related to centuries of Muslim rule.

The Armenians use a classical literary Armenian.

Moreover, what do we mean by “vernacular”? Old Church Slavonic, for example, was created so that the Slavs could understand the liturgy, but at the same time, it was created to translate a very fancy liturgical Greek. And historically, in most cultures there was by definition a large gap between literary language and spoken language, much larger than is typical today, both because more people today are literate, and because high literary language has basically disappeared.

Source: New Liturgical Movement: The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo — Two Brothers and a Stranger

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 22:53:08 -0700

Compared to the Novus Ordo, the Byzantine liturgy looks like a king next to a pauper, a Rembrandt next to a caricature, a feast after a famine. But compared with the traditional Roman rite in all its intricate splendor and regimented solemnity, it is an equal at the table of tradition. We do an injustice to the Holy Spirit’s work in the Western Church by speaking as if Byzantine liturgy is the “gold standard,” when the Roman rite in its fullness — sadly, so rarely seen by Roman Catholics! — is fully its match. Instead, it is the Novus Ordo that should be shown the door, for it has no claim to be seated at the royal table of authentic liturgical rites.

Source: New Liturgical Movement: The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo — Two Brothers and a Stranger

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 16:39:32 -0700

The key to spiritual therapy is not killing of the desire, for most desires, being a connection to our wills, are gifts from God.

Source: Sunday Letter: The gift of holy influence

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 15:29:06 -0700

Some people asked me to share what I just shared in a space about the rate limits. I don’t work for Twitter but, I do architect IT cloud solutions as my day job.

It is temporary. Twitter’s rate limiting is not what everyone is thinking it is. It is not to punish non-paying users.

“Data scraping” is a big deal. This is where automated systems load the website or app and pull your tweets/data. It’s a huge security issue. Automated systems are pulling every tweet/word/user account information to store in an unknown database somewhere else.

This could be state actors like China, the US Government, Australia, or other bad political actors like PAC’s that are trying to gain access to everyone’s information to analyze and use for nefarious things. Manipulating what is said on the site can be done at scale with data scrapping.

It could also be used to figure out the identity of Anons or to punish people in their country for what they tweet. Looking at you #Australia and #Canada and #UnitedKingdom

The temporary measures of limiting tweets is to protect users just as much as it is to protect the entire Twitter network from going down. They are currently scrambling to get ahead of this and tune their network security to block it from happening again.

It’s also important to note that twitter has 500,000+ servers. That’s not free. In cloud data centers, the companies that use them have to pay for what is called “ingress and egress” of data going “in and out” of the servers. A data scrapping event that is large enough for them to start limiting means that it was a MASSIVE event that could be considered an attack on the site. It would also put massive load on their servers and cost them so much money it could threaten the site’s financial ability to keep running. It could be on purpose to put twitter out of business from cost alone.

Many people are misunderstanding why @elonmusk wants people to pay for twitter or for the twitter API (a programming interface that can pull data for other sites and apps).

The reason he wants people to pay is because if China or porn companies want to create massive bot farms of fake accounts, it is currently free. These bad actors are highly skilled and operate like a business. They have professional staff that continuously change their tactics and Twitter engineers have to fight 24/7 to stay ahead of them. If they have to pay for every account or pay to use the API, it would cost them A LOT of money. This limits the amount of people who could create bots, put automated porn on here, and the hacking/scrapping/DDOS attacks on the site. It protects you.

Source: The Sicilian Irish Robot on Twitter

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 14:00:28 -0700

Bring back the Zine!

We started a zine, and just like it’s 1992 . . . it comes with a sampler cd ! Feature interviews w/ Fine China / Unwed Sailor / and artist Sarah McPhail, along with classic record reviews, recording with Frank Lenz, and other stuff. Contributing writers include : Emanuel Mora, Ronnie Martin, Andrew Horton, J. Cloud, Ed Harbour, and Ben Heywood. Cd comes with a lot of unreleased tracks.
Source: SMALL SOUNDS PRESS – Zine + CD No. 1 : Velvet Blue Music

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 13:44:11 -0700

Since the English Reformation, Anglican theologians have been keen to retain inherited liturgical practices that do not violate Scripture and have support in the tradition. Bishop John Jewel wrote, “Kneeling, bowing, standing up, and other like, are commendable gestures and tokens of devotion, so long as the people understandeth what they mean, and applieth them unto God, to whom they be due.”¹ Bishop Jeremy Taylor wrote a tract, dripping with Scripture and typology, called “On the Reverence due to the Altar,” that makes a biblical case for the use of our bodies in proper adoration while critiquing abuses.² Archbishop Laud similarly insisted “‘tis no Popery, to set a Raile to keep prophanation from that Holy Table.”³ All of this is to point out that Kay’s concerns are not new and have been addressed by a number of Anglican Divines quite extensively.

Source: On Railing Against Rails – Theopolis Institute

Bishop John Jewell, The Works of John Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1845), article 3, division 29. ↩︎
anglicanhistory.org/taylor/reverence.html ↩︎
anglicanhistory.org/laud/laud1.html ↩︎

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 08:59:45 -0700

Why is it that at this particular historical juncture numerous churches—Catholics and Orthodox largely excepted—have changed eucharistic admission policies that prevailed throughout the preceding tradition? Why is it that Derridean pure hospitality has made huge cultural strides at precisely the same time that we have witnessed the loosening of eucharistic guardrails? And why is it that in the wake of Lambeth 1968, Protestants increasingly question any kind of eucharistic boundary?
We should be aware what is at stake when we apply the notion of pure hospitality to the Eucharist: It is the erasure of ecclesial boundaries and hence of ecclesial (or confessional) identity. If, as Henri de Lubac used to put it, the Eucharist makes the church, then a boundaryless Eucharist makes a boundaryless church. Pure hospitality applied to the Eucharist implies a universalism of the worst sort: It is the radical insistence that the church is without any positive identity whatever.
Source: Open Communion Invites the Devil to the Table | Hans Boersma

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:45:49 -0700

Inter-Parish Associations promote communication, camaraderie, and cooperation across Orthodox Christian parishes of all jurisdictions in a given geographical area. They are local (ie. the city/town level) and include both clergy and laity. Their purpose is to break down barriers across Orthodox Christian jurisdictions and, as a unified Orthodox Christian community, witness Christ’s love in local society. Source: AoB Announces its Inter-Parish Association Program

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 19:55:40 -0700

We are in a post-catastrophe world, and yet the catastrophes did not happen. There are worse things than catastrophes. There is the surrender of the will before even the catastrophes come. There are worse things than war. There are worse things even than unjust war: unjust peace or crooked peace is worse. To leave life by withdrawal is worse than to leave life by murder. To be bored of the world is worse than to shed all the blood in the world. There are worse things than final Armageddon. Being too tired and wobble eyed for final combat is worse. There are things worse than lust — the sick surrogates of lust are worse. There are things worse than revolution — the half-revolution, the mere turning away, is worse. – R. A. Lafferty, “Epistle to the Church of Omaha in Dispersal” in the short story “And Walk Now Gently Through The Fire” (1972) Source: Coming to Terms

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:13:33 -0700

Metropolitan Jonas laid out three major issues to resolve when he addressed the inaugural ACNA gathering in Plano:

Eliminate ordination of women to the priesthood - this has not happened

Drop the Filioque Clause from the Nicene Creed - this has occurred in theory as stated in the 2019 BCP (the Lambeth Conference recommended its removal in 1988), but it has not happened in practice.

Remove the last vestiges of Calvinism - I don’t think anyone wants to go there.

and:

Met. Jonah gave his stirring invitation in the afternoon; at the evening Eucharist, Abp. Duncan shot it down with derision and ridicule. It was “not edifying” to listen to him do that.

Source: What ever happened with the possibility of communion with the orthodox church

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 15:48:03 -0700

The modern world suffers from a crisis of loneliness we are told. I believe that much of that crisis is simply the by-product of an information society. The economy (whatever that is) knows pretty much everything about us. It is carefully mined from every action we take in the electronic world. That data is mined, stored, and sold. This is not only true, it is more true every day. But all of that information is the opposite of intimacy. Whoever possesses that information does not know you – though they could easily use it to destroy you. The information is dangerous precisely because those who possess it do not love you.
God has no desire to gather information about us. I’m not certain that God knows anything in a manner that could be described as information. God knows us as He knew Simon Peter. He could predict Simon’s denials while reassuring him that he was being prayed for (and preserved). Perhaps those words of reassurance are the very thing that saved him in the end. God knows us as He knew the Woman at the Well (John 4). He Himself was thirsty, but He knew her thirst (living water).
The crisis of our loneliness is, I think, two-fold. It is the lack of intimacy on the one hand (surrounded by information gatherers). It is also a crisis of vulnerability (humility) in which we fear to be known, for ever-so-many reasons. Intimacy is something of a dance. It requires a gift, for the knowledge that comes from love can only be made available freely and as a gift. The gift requires love in order to be received. For what can be known in intimacy can only be known through love. It dissipates in the hands of anything else.

Source: The God Who Sees Us - Glory to God for All Things

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 10:02:19 -0700

The recent actions of the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON), which purport to upend the historic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the life of the Anglican Communion, can be traced by a very clear line back to what the Episcopal Church did in General Convention 20 years ago this summer.
Source: Dealing with the Detritus of General Convention, 2003 – Covenant

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 15:14:37 -0700

Forward in Faith Mission:

Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) is a fellowship of people and churches who embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who uphold the Evangelical Faith an d Catholic Order which is the inheritance of the Anglican Way. Our fellowship works, prays, and witnesses for reform and renewal of the Church without compromise of truth or limitation of love. Our fellowship includes faithful Anglicans spanning many jurisdictions and structures, with the mission to witness to the “faith and order of the undivided Church.”

In 2017 FiFNA defined its mission:

VOL: How does your message and appeal for the fullness of Catholic faith and practice within Anglicanism, address or speak to the particulars of people in TEC, the Continuing Churches, and the ACNA (and perhaps the wider Anglican Communion)?
BAUSCH: By not taking a position on jurisdictional membership, we want to be able to offer tools which can help any and all of our members to fulfill our mission in their particular context. […]

VOL: FIFNA operates across North America within a number of Anglican churches, including the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America, the Diocese of the Holy Cross, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church in America, and the Episcopal Church (United States). However, FIFNA is not a diocese of the ACNA, which is predominantly evangelical in theology and ethos. Clearly there are tensions there. How do you think you can resolve them? Do you see a time when FIFNA would be a full partner (diocese) in the ACNA?
BAUSCH: FIFNA is not itself an ecclesial entity, and is not in itself within any jurisdiction. However, some of our members within the ACNA are within the Missionary Diocese of All Saints, which is comprised of FIFNA-member parishes and priests. The tensions you describe between some of our perspective and the ACNA are real, but not necessarily negative. At our Anglican best, we strive to see these as differences of emphasis rather than substance, and then continue to promote the understanding of our essential Catholic identity as particularly expressed such things as the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. It is also noteworthy that, in the production of the ACNA Catechism, there were FIFNA members involved.
Source: Canon Lawrence D. Bausch

Later that year, following the a dissapointing-for-both-sides College of Bishop’s resolution, alongside a change in finances, it refocused towards education, and as a more volunteer organization:

So as a living organism Forward in Faith’s proclamation of the historic Catholic faith of the undivided church has not changed as much as it is being refocused.
Forward in Faith is refocusing its understanding of its place in mission by putting a renewed emphasis upon the financial support of men headed for the priesthood and training already ordained priests to better evangelize and present the Gospel message in today’s world.
Source: Forward in Faith-North America changes focus

FIFNA has since refocused again under a new president, Bp Menees:

In fulfillment of our mission FIFNA seeks to be leaven in the ACNA, offering retreats, seminars, tracts and more. (Source)

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 11:35:38 -0700

Surfaces stacked high in piles, favorite novels displayed across a piano, tiny tomes tucked under an occasional chair, books stacked high enough to hold your coffee. Not everyone thrives in a pared-down space, even when it pops up again and again as a dominant image in our visual culture.
If this is you, certainly, lean into it. A stack of coffee table or art books twenty-high makes a glorious coffee table next to your favorite chair. A shorter bookshelf built as a pony wall can help create boundaries between rooms where they don’t exist. A vertical stack of books can feel as classic an addition as a traditional column.
A set of shelves in the cramped space under the stairs might make a person feel supported. A console piled high with books invites visitors to get a peek into your passions and persuasions. A wall of books can feel as engaging a visual as the most charming wallpapers. And a room of books can feel like floating in a sea of everything you love.

Source: What to Do If Your House is Overflowing with Books

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 10:57:32 -0700

It is not a church plant per se, at least not yet, but rather a space for brothers and sisters with a shared love of the Lord Jesus Christ to gather for refreshment, nourishment, and encouragement, and also a space where they can invite others to experience genuine Christian fellowship, discover the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness in the Anglican tradition.

Source: What is Church House?

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 11:21:59 -0700

ALL churches are a mess right now, doctrinal pure or no. Churches either have problems with beliefs or praxis. Very rare to find a parish healthy in both areas. Might as well make things better where you are, then to be a gyrovague and run around!
…
Saint Benedict’s call to Stability, and having a Rule of Life helps in these matters. It sounds like the Author is sticking to his, and that’s commendable.
Source: COLUMBA SILOUAN, Comments in Why I Stay

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 11:21:40 -0700

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life…

St. John is not referencing the Scriptures. He is speaking of the living experience of the incarnate Son of God – “which we have heard – which we have seen with our eyes – which we have looked upon – and our hands have handled…” It is this living experience that “we declare to you.” And the purpose of this declaration is more than the relay of information. St. John tells his readers that these things have been declared to them “that you also may have communion with us; and truly our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” [This is one of those sad verses where English translators have rendered koinonia (κοινωνία) as “fellowship” a meaning that is almost bizarre in its failure to render the Greek.]

The communion to which St. John refers is itself the tradition, the context without which his letter cannot be rightly read. And it is clear that St. John believes that this communion is something that can be given. His word for this transmission is rendered “to declare,” translating the Greek, apaggello (ἀπαγγέλλω – related to the word for gospel). St. John’s declaration is the equivalent of St. Paul’s favorite term, gospel (εὐαγγέλιον, evangel), which is itself frequently misunderstood in its meaning and import.

What does St. Paul mean when he says gospel, the good news? Our first instinct is to find a way to summarize his preaching. Thus the gospel is “Christ died for our sins,” or some such phrase. But St. Paul clearly has an almost global meaning for the word:

For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance, (1Th 1:5 NKJ)

It is used to mean God’s revealed plan wrought in the death and resurrection of Christ. It is the preaching of Christ. It is the content of the preaching. But like St. John’s communion, the gospel is not “word only” but also “power.” Thus it is not the proclamation of an idea or a set of ideas, nor the announcement only of an event in history. Gospel is the living power of the communion with the Father through His Son in the Spirit. That living communion is our participation in the crucified and risen Christ.

Source: The Communion of Tradition - Glory to God for All Things

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 10:33:44 -0700

The first signs of Christianity coming to what is now the parish of Beith were through St. Inan who is reputed to have come over from Iona, to which island St. Columba came from Ireland and set up a monestary. In those early days there was no building where the people could assemble to worship or to listen to St. Inan. He preached to the people on the Bigholm Hills. There is a rock formation known, even until today, as St. Inan’s Chair, which, it is reputed, he used as a pulpit. Near St. Inan’s Chair there is a stone, known as the Rocking Stone, (which no longer rocks), and is thought to have been the site of pre-christian worship. This is most probably true as the first christian missionaries in Scotland usually began their work as near as possible to the spot where pre-christian rites and ceremonies took place, evidence of this being Druid’s graves near the Rocking Stone.

Source: Beith Trinity Church: A short history

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 10:13:02 -0700

Again, when modern Anglicans move on to Rome, they are following through on the logic of their position. They have been taught that they have no beliefs except for those of “the Catholic Church,” and they have been nurtured with a profusion of pre-Reformation ceremonies. Why is it surprising, then, if they embrace a church that lays claim to precisely the same inheritance, but with a more perfect unity of its pre-Reformation ceremony and pre-Reformation doctrine?

Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

In point of fact–er, experience: lay and clergy that I know who jumped from ACNA over to Orthodoxy or Rome did so largely because of ACNA’s stalemate on female ordiantion, and either persecution for opposing such, or discouragement at the lack of direction towards a solution. The former’s explicit support alienates the classical, the reformed, the catholic; the latter’s implicit support breaks confidence there is ultimately any doctrinal core in the Anglican church, which includes consequences when doctrines are not upheld.

For example, the conversion of Michael Nazir-Ali to Rome appeared to be about the total breakdown in governance in Gafcon: Kenya consecrated two women to the episcopacy in violation of standards agreed upon, and nothing happened except “well it doesn’t matter that much anyway; it isn’t like Gafcon is a jurisdiction” 2) the issue of female consecration/ordination itself, which negatively impacts talks with Orthodoxy, Catholic, Coptic, PNCC; any Apostolic church except Anglican and liberal, affirming Old Catholics.

The above statement then is, in my experience, is inaccurate. People have been taught Anglicanism, including a rich doctrinal history of the classical and Anglo-Catholic luminaries. What they see in Anglicanism is a total lack of gumption to actually be Anglican, and may as well move on to a place that, like the post-Vatican II RC, and Western Rite Orthodox are each more “Anglican” than many Anglicans.

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 09:56:05 -0700

Zero was not the right number for ceremonies, but the number should be pretty low. And Cranmer anticipated in “Of ceremonies” that over time more ceremonies would need to be excised as they proved to be distracting or grounds for superstition.

One can see in this a very modern recognition of the scarcity of human attention: something will attract the attention of the congregation, something will occupy the rector’s explanatory time, something will be the focus of observation and remark for visitors. The traditional Anglican practice strips away much of the outward trappings, fixing the attention on the Word of God, prayer, and music (the one place where ornate elaboration in the service was most characteristically Anglican).

In short, before the twentieth century Anglicanism was a religion of the word. It appealed constantly and pervasively to the ear.

Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 09:46:27 -0700

The English reformers hacked away at the medieval ceremonies with a vengeance. Archbishop Cranmer banned all of the Catholic sacramentals—no candles at Candlemas, no ashes at Ash Wednesday, no palms at Palm Sunday. He prohibited lighted candles on the Communion table. Not only did he remove all crossings in the Communion service, he even revised the text of the service to remove the places where late medieval priests had been in the habit of making the sign of the cross. The mass-associated eucharistic vestments—the chasuble and stole—were gone.

Source: Why Is Anglicanism a Gateway to Catholicism? - Mere Orthodoxy | Christianity, Politics, and Culture

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 23:28:15 -0700

I see emerging trends amid my students that frighten me—eyes fixed on screens, apathy, lack of concern for God’s moral standards, and dwindling church attendance. But one thing scares me above all else: When they first enter my classroom, most of my students seem to believe that even if Christianity happens to be fully true, it doesn’t really matter.

In response, I encourage students to see that Jesus is reigning right now—socially, politically, morally—and that genuine, this-world harm follows when we ignore his directives. (Check back in a few years, and I’ll tell you if I’m making any headway.)

I also see heartening trends. In comparison with a decade prior, my current students show a deep concern for the social well-being of others. They are more welcoming to outcasts, loners, and misfits. That sounds a lot like King Jesus, right?

They also yearn to connect with others authentically, even as they struggle to learn how to do that through a thousand intervening screens. They are primed not simply to hear a Billy Graham–style gospel invitation in a stadium but to connect with fellow Christians who want to help them grow in loyalty.

Source: ‘Conscious Uncoupling’ from Church Is the New Temptation | Christianity Today

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 15:34:10 -0700

I believe the Anglo-Catholic tradition in today’s context is poised between nihilistic irrelevance and prophetic missional restoration. In the same way that the Church of England needed the Anglo Catholic movement in the 19th Century it now needs its theological and devotional theology once again in order to effectively and appropriately respond to the post-modern challenge. The movement is uniquely placed to help find new ways of engaging with society and finding new ways of spiritual engagement whilst retaining the mystery, holiness and integrity of the Christian faith. In order to realise this calling the movement must fully realise the meaning of apostolic succession and completely re-examine the liturgies and devotional styles that are leaving many Anglo-Catholics restricted and trapped in a Victorian re- enactment that had limited success in its day and is increasingly seen today as unintelligible and irrelevant.

The post-modern context is radically different to what has been before and the church can no longer resist change if it wants to share the Gospel. The church by its very nature is missional and any refusal on its part not to meaningfully engage in mission means it is denying itself, it is no longer sacred or holy and has departed from the way of God.

The extent of the changes required are so significant that a second Oxford Movement is required, a movement strong enough to effectively challenge the skepticism and individualism within the movement itself. Evidence and experience shows that where the tradition does respond to the new context positively it is able to radically reinvent catholic worship that is relevant, accessible and desperately wanted by England’s communities.

Source: Anglo Catholicism: Historical re-enactment society or a potent force for contemporary evangelism

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 15:31:52 -0700

The post-modern thesis whilst helpful in its challenge has created an eschatological hegemony of fatalism and defeat. Experience says that Anglo Catholic churches, like other traditions, can grow and establish sustainability but evidence clearly indicates that to do this they need to change and respond to their immediate context and the wider changes in society. Churches that have a focus on mission and make changes to their life and services grow and thrive.

To achieve this the movement desperately needs a second period of radical and uncompromising deconstruction and reformation, a second Oxford Movement, if it is to challenge the things that are holding it back and preventing it from proclaiming the Gospel anew. Staying the same isn’t an option and indeed could be argued as the definition of madness. Conversely, merging with the surrounding culture is of course also not a desirable option.

Source: Anglo Catholicism: Historical re-enactment society or a potent force for contemporary evangelism

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 11:42:33 -0700

After the vote reaffirming the decision to oust Saddleback, Warren said in a YouTube video that he wasn’t surprised and that he made his appeal “knowing we weren’t going to win.” He compared the movement to that of William Wilberforce, a British politician who lobbied to abolish the slave trade in Great Britain and triumphed after 17 years.
“I wanted to push the conversation,” Warren said. “I wanted to speak up for millions of Southern Baptist women, who I believe their spiritual gifts and their leadership gifts and talents are being wasted. And we can’t complete the Great Commission if 50% of our population sits on the shelf.”
Warren highlighted that the vote wasn’t unanimous.
“The next generation of Southern Baptists, they’re not here,” he added. “I can guarantee that change will happen at some point.”

Source: Southern Baptists finalize ouster of O.C.’s Saddleback Church - Los Angeles Times

A few points:

Warren wanted to push the conversation. This was a provocative effort to change a denomination’s core doctrine and identity, with a ‘Walk Together’ paradigm.

Warren said. “No one is asking any Southern Baptist church to change their theology. I’m not asking you to agree with my church, I’m asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines.”

Warren is astute that the denomination, like all denominations, will be facing new challenges as cultural norms have changed for younger generations.
Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedixt XVI:

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members."
[…]
“It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century.”

Thu, 15 Jun 2023 10:42:41 -0700

Of all the Catholic martyrs, 85-year-old Polycarp heads my list of inspirational heroes of the faith. In refusing to burn a pinch of incense to the deity of the Roman Emperor, Polycarp said: “86 years have I served Jesus and He has done me no wrong. How can I then blaspheme my king and saviour?” He wasn’t asked to do much. Just sprinkle some incense as a recognition of the crazed emperor’s ego-mania spilling over into a divinity complex. But he refused.

The unwillingness of the early Church to bow down and worship state gods is part of the rich inspiring myth and history of the Church. It set Christians apart. Their morals and their ideals were pitched so differently from their “bread and circuses” neighbours. But they had to take a stand. And from time to time, as Jesus said it would, it cost some of them their lives.

Source: Gavin Ashenden - Catholic Herald

Wed, 14 Jun 2023 13:19:59 -0700

The blunt truth of the matter is that large churches like Saddleback really don’t need a denomination to thrive. These days denominations generally exist to support their medium and small size churches. The fact that the SBC has several large churches in its stable is a testament to a century and a half of evangelisation and organisation. Whether it’s going to be able to use either or both to break out of its ethnocentric and respectability trap and reach out again in a meaningful way is a whole different issue.
It’s worth noting that many of the churches which have defected to the Global Methodist Church are the UMC’s larger churches. Although denominations primary serve their medium and small size churches, they need their larger churches for financial reasons. Given their structure and strength, the SBC, IMHO, is in a better position to survive the loss of one large church like Saddleback than the Methodists several.

Source: Giving Rick Warren the Final Boot – Positive Infinity

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 21:12:43 -0700

I believe that without such clarity and catholicity in theological method the ‘conservatism’ of, say, ACNA on sexual morality or of a traditional Old High Churchman on the ordination of women will prove to be merely the slow lane to the destination already reached by TEC, the CofE, and the Anglican Communion in general.

Source: Old High Churchmen and Continuing Anglicans – Anglican Catholic Liturgy and Theology

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 15:48:59 -0700

We who are Evangelicals recognize the need to address the widespread misunderstanding in our community that sola scriptura (Scripture alone) means nuda scriptura (literally, Scripture unclothed; i.e., denuded of and abstracted from its churchly context). The phrase sola scriptura refers to the primacy and sufficiency of Scripture as the theological norm—the only infallible rule of faith and practice—over all tradition rather than the mere rejection of tradition itself. The isolation of Scripture study from the believing community of faith (nuda scriptura) disregards the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding the witness of the people of God to scriptural truths, and leaves the interpretation of that truth vulnerable to unfettered subjectivism.

Source: Evangelicals and Catholics Together

Fri, 09 Jun 2023 12:05:32 -0700

The danger of departure from the hermeneutic of the Anglican Reformers has already become clear. The Kigali Commitment promises to “affirm and encourage . . . leadership roles of GAFCON women in family, Church and society.” This statement implicitly ratifies women’s ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. All three are already being practiced in several GAFCON provinces, and the first two in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).

We believe in ministry for women in a large variety of roles that the ancient fathers endorsed, including the order of deaconesses. But the ordination of women to sacramental ministry violates the plain sense of Scripture, which the English Reformers prized.

Disagreements among Anglicans about women’s ordination (as well as homosexuality and other controversial issues) make clear that this plain sense can be arrived at only by reading Scripture through the lens of the tradition of the Church.

Furthermore, women’s ordination breaches the conciliarism that the English Reformers practiced and esteemed. They knew that the rule in the early Church in resolving disputes was to accept only rites that agreed with Scripture as understood by the whole Church. The biblical authors insist not only that Scripture is the Word of God, but also that the Church of the living God [is] a pillar and buttress of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Their criterion is Scripture as understood by the whole Church.

Rites for women’s ordination have been approved without the consent of the whole Church. They have come primarily from a minority of the world’s churches, those that are heretical and dying. This is a new and (mostly) Western development. The ACNA College of Bishops insisted upon this in 2017 when it concluded that women’s ordination is a “recent innovation” with “insufficient scriptural warrant.” This salutary statement recognizes that the recent departure from the traditional understanding of man and woman within the Bride of Christ deviates from the way the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church has understood Holy Order for two millennia.

Source: Is the Anglican “Reset” Truly Anglican? | Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, Greg Peters | First Things

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 11:31:25 -0700

The situation in the Diocese of the Upper Midwest was, however, a largely internal matter and the complaints about BR largely concerned his administration. While the situation was contentious throughout The ACNA and has caused emotions to run high and a good bit of poor publicity, it is hard to say that any other diocesan bishop in particular were themselves personally, in the legal sense, grieved by the administration of BR in his own diocese.
Source: About The ACNA canonical problems

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 12:28:19 -0700

Fr. Maximos of Mount Athos is quoted extensively on the subject of logismoi in Kyriakos Markides' book, Mountain of Silence. Fr. Maximos describes five stages of logismoi as detailed in the teachings of the Fathers of the Church:

Assault - the logismoi first attacks a person’s mind

Interaction - a person opens up a dialogue with the logismoi

Consent - a person consents to do what the logismoi urges him to do

Defeat - a person becomes hostage to the logismoi and finds it more difficult to resist

Passion or Obsession - the logismoi becomes an entrenched reality within the nous of a person

Fr. Maximos explains that no sin is committed until the stage of Consent, though he warns that if a person is of weak temperament, they are unlikely to be able to resist the logismoi at the Interaction stage.
Fr. Maximos teaches that the best way to combat logismoi is to be indifferent, to ignore them. He suggests that a person should pray to combat logismoi, but only when not overcome by fear.
Source: Logismoi - OrthodoxWiki

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:41:12 -0700

The truth is that the GAFCON primates have expressly chosen language that shows they are bent on forgetting that there is still great division, especially on issues of the ordination of women to the episcopate. They have chosen instead to move forward in a way that relegates these very serious issues to secondary, adiaphora, hang-ups. The problem is, if I may be utterly clear, they have even misrepresented the language of the Jerusalem Declaration. This is particularly dangerous.
Source: Convenient Forgetting and the Jerusalem Declaration - The North American Anglican

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:23:39 -0700

The ordination of women has halted Anglican-Roman Catholic negotiations, for now; but if Anglo-Catholics have a place in GAFCON, they could bring Grafton’s dream of reunion with the Old Catholics and Orthodox closer to fruition. GAFCON has essentially exorcised latitudinarians from the Anglican picture, leaving them to fade away in their Canterbury ghetto. It is undoubtedly an evangelical-dominated movement. Nonetheless, that leaves a significant Anglo-Catholic minority, particularly in the U.S. and Africa. That minority could be all that is needed to graft the majority of Anglicans firmly onto the apostolic vine. The Union of Scranton founded by the Polish Old Catholic hierarchy that Grafton once courted is already moving toward reunion with some Anglo-Catholic jurisdictions, and the Anglican Church of North America, which split off from the U.S. Episcopal Church in 2009 to join GAFCON, could become a bridge between the Old Catholic movement and the worldwide Anglican majority. This could help GAFCON to decide whether it is just evangelical, or both evangelical and Catholic. If it opts for the latter course, then Grafton’s thesis may not yet be a dead letter.
Source: Anglicans and the Reunion of Christendom | Thomas Plant | First Things

Excellent thoughts, although I believe that the PNCC halted discussion with ACNA because of its unresolved policy on gender & holy orders.

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:12:40 -0700

let us remember that we are fighting for God’s Truth: truth revealed in Holy Scripture; truth more fully shown to us in modern discovery; and for the liberty of the sons of God; liberty ecclesiastical, political, intellectual. The Anglican Communion, and the Anglo-Catholic Movement which is its spearhead, its only consistent manifestation, are the only hope for the re-union of Christendom and the reconciliation of the modern world to Christianity. Roman propaganda, both inside and outside the Church, is an effort to pervert and ultimately to destroy that movement. I have avoided making accusations, but I cannot but warn you, that there are very sinister elements in what we are fighting against. If there is a “Protestant underworld,” as we are sometimes told, there is also an Anglo-Catholic underworld, and a very queer region it is. The use that is being made of the confessional and of the retreat movement in certain quarters, may lead to very disastrous results; and some of our smaller religious communities need watching carefully.

Source: English Catholicism, by CB Moss

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 12:40:12 -0700

Dr Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1928 to 1942, successfully cursed a hotel when a friend complained that it ruined the view at his lake house. The hotel burned down — twice. Thoroughly pleased with his success, the Archbishop went on to curse other minor items, such as ugly windows, when asked by his friends and fellow clergy. Anecdotes such as these might suggest that, if Anglicans were dabbling in the occult, it was all nothing more than the idiosyncrasies of strong personalities.

In truth, Anglo-Catholic involvement in the occult is much broader and deeper than most would suspect. Take, for instance, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, established in 1887. Devoted to the Western esoteric tradition, and practising various forms of initiatory ritual magic, the Golden Dawn recruited heavily from the clergy. Some of these men were, indeed, simple eccentrics.

The Revd William Alexander Ayton, Vicar of Chacombe, in Oxfordshire, was one such case. A Freemason of extraordinarily deep occult learning, he maintained a clandestine alchemical lab in his rectory basement, and declared that he had made the Elixir of Life […]

The Revd A. H. Baverstock, twice Master of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) in the 1920s, was a member [of the Golden Dawn], as was the Very Revd Frank Selwyn Bennett, the Dean of Chester Cathedral, a formative influence on the culture of Anglican cathedrals in the 20th century.

The Revd Francis Heazell, secretary of the Church of England’s committee on ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox from 1917 to 1929, was a Ruling Chief of the Order’s London Temple. His duties would have included teaching the Order’s hermetic doctrines to new initiates. […]

So were some of his brothers at Mirfield. In fact, Rees, and a fellow monk of Mirfield, Fr Charles Fitzgerald CR, helped to found a Golden Dawn temple in New Zealand while on mission there in the 1910s. The chapter that they started eventually came to include several Anglican bishops from that country. […]

Although the Golden Dawn and its daughter organisations had a notable contingent of clergy and Anglican laity, the Order was necessarily restrictive. It remained, primarily, a phenomenon of a very select elite. Theosophy, by contrast, was more widely diffused within the Church of England. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a popular interest in “mysticism” which took various forms. […] ANGLICAN clergy were not immune to this wider cultural force. Sermons on Theosophical topics could be heard in some early Edwardian parishes. Many Anglo-Catholics of the era were able to blend beliefs in the astral body, reincarnation, and root races with Catholic doctrines and ritual practices. But the Anglican liaison with Theosophy was not to last. At the 1920 Lambeth Conference, Theosophy was formally condemned, alongside Spiritualism and Christian Science. Some Theosophical Anglicans, such as J. I. Wedgwood and C. W. Leadbeater, eventually decided to leave the Church of England and start their own Theosophical churches as episcopi vagantes.

Source: On the wings of the Dawn — the lure of the Occult

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 17:49:41 -0700

All around us is the image of the skull. We are in a living memento mori. Everything and everywhere ceaselessly depicts for us in word and image the demise we find ourselves inhabiting. We do not look upon the skull from without: we observe it as we dwell from within.

Yet composting habituates in a person an unanxious embrace of death. The real end of one thing can usher in the real beginning of another. God, just as much now as He did on Pentecost, has provided for us all that is necessary for life and godliness in this and every age. We have what is dead and what is dying, and He has sent to us His Spirit which gives us air and heat and moisture. It is only left to us to prayerfully and care-fully place it all together and pay attention.

We Christians are, God as our helper, both the gardeners of Western civilization, cultivating its rise and enjoying its fruits and now amassing its remains in the compost pile, and its heap-dwelling microorganisms, responsible for discerning the bits and pieces that are worth decomposing into the precious stores of nutrients and energy that will become the fertile soil of a future crop and its harvest.

When the culture becomes the memento mori, we become the shepherds of decay.

Source: Shepherds of Decay by OblateNate

Thu, 01 Jun 2023 14:53:40 -0700

one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD mission to identify and destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human. However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator in the simulation. Said Hamilton: “We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”
He went on: “We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

Source: Highlights from the RAeS Future Combat Air & Space Capabilities Summit

Tue, 30 May 2023 08:56:27 -0700

there were two distinct flavors of Christianity, both of which I tried to avoid. One was the fusty old Church of England variety. You would see this if you had to go to a wedding or a funeral, or when a vicar was invited to give a sermon at school. The vicar would be a slightly Victorian figure, an older man almost dainty in his manners, trying his best to speak in a dying tongue to a generation of kids more interested in their ZX Spectrums. The Victorian vicar would hand out morality lessons from a man who had lived two thousand years ago and whose core imagery might as well have been from Mars: wine presses, fishing boats, vineyards, masters and servants, virgins. The basic pitch seemed best summed up by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I’d rather have been reading than listening to a vicar: “One man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change.”

The second flavor was the trendy vicar. Unlike his predecessor, the trendy vicar was plugged into the spirit of the age. He knew that instead of bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist, we were watching The Young Ones and playing Manic Miner, and he was on our side. The trendy vicar had a clipped beard and wore jeans and sang folk songs about how Jesus was our friend, and gave awkward, vernacular sermons in which biblical stories were interspersed with references to EastEnders or Dallas or Michael Jackson songs. Despite his good intentions, the trendy vicar was much worse than the stuffy vicar. At least the Victorian sermons were in some way otherworldly, as religion should be. If it was pop culture we wanted, and we did, we were better off sticking with the real thing, which was to say the thing without any Jesus in it.

So, I had no reason to take any notice of religion in general or Christianity in particular.

Source: Cross and machine — pk

Mon, 29 May 2023 10:49:04 -0700

Was Jesus the focus of our attention?

Was the Bible taught well?

Was hope offered to hurting people?

Did anyone come to faith in Christ?

Did church members love, serve and encourage each other?

Were guests made to feel welcome?

Is there more excitement about the future than longing for the past?

Were any broken relationships healed?

Are people more prepared to live for Jesus after having been here?

Do people want to come back?

Source: 10 Questions More Important Than “What Was Your Sunday Attendance?” by Karl Vaters

Wed, 24 May 2023 20:48:28 -0700

Satan’s hobby is religion. That’s because his real job is far darker. As a priest, you cannot have reading religious books as your pastime, because that is part of your job. You will need moments of escape from stress of parish life and religion, which is what a hobby provides.

Do not think that every waking moment will be devoted to perfect prayer, because it will not. We all need to pray and study, but we also need to relax at times.

Parenting is important, but that is also not a hobby. It is important to spend time with the family, but you will also need another way to blow off steam without falling into immorality, the temptation to which will be your constant companion if you become a priest.

There are lots of hobbies out there. Just walk through an art supply shop or the tool isle of the hardware store. You may try three or four before you find the right one, so just keep trying.

If you are going to identify with your parishioners, then you will need to experience their world. Take off the cassock and make friends with non-Orthodox. It is good to be around people who will not judge you the way your parishioners will.

Source: Read This Before You Think About Seminary…

Wed, 24 May 2023 20:37:42 -0700

A priest who cannot serve in a parish is like a hammer without a handle. And, if he has no need for you, don’t expect his attention or any favors. He has a lot of other priests who are serving faithfully and are more deserving of his energy. Source: Read This Before You Think About Seminary…

Wed, 24 May 2023 11:15:34 -0700

Thornton summarizing Jeremy Taylor’s Eucharistic ascetic – a basic approach to the Eucharist that we all ought to make accessible for newcomers from other Christian traditions
Source: Fr Mark Perkins

Sun, 21 May 2023 18:32:19 -0700

On Thursday Apr. 27, Twitter user Ashley Gjøvik tweeted(opens in a new tab) about Bluesky’s disconcertingly broad terms of service(opens in a new tab). She tweeted several screenshots of the terns, including a snippet that reads “If you post any content to the Bluesky Web Services, you hereby grant Bluesky and its licensees a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, modify, sublicense, and distribute the content, on or in connection with the Bluesky Web Services.” In plain English that means: we own everything you post. Source: Want to try Bluesky? Look carefully at the terms of service. | Mashable

Sat, 20 May 2023 22:15:12 -0700

In that reluctance to come to grips with “Classical Anglicanism” (despite protestations to the contrary), the ACNA project remains strongly entangled with the theological, historical, liturgical, and institutional perspectives that so disastrously reshaped the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Anglican Church in Canada in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Source: A Curate’s Egg - The ACNA Prayer Book of 2019 - The Anglican Way

Sat, 20 May 2023 22:07:33 -0700

the modern English liturgy is clueless about the wedding ring: ‘I give you this ring as a sign of our marriage.’ Whether at a coronation or a wedding, if you have to say that something is a symbol and a sign, it is not a very good symbol and it fails to signify. ‘With this ring I thee wed,’ says nothing about a symbol but actually symbolizes. ‘This is a symbol’ merely asserts something that is not in fact the case. Source: The Coronation of King Charles III – Anglican Catholic Liturgy and Theology

Fri, 19 May 2023 11:37:00 -0700

The main thing Tim wanted to say was always about someone other than him: his mind seemed never to be on himself but rather on his friends, on those he pastored and mentored, and above all on the God who is known to us in Jesus Christ. The criticism he received — almost all of it irrational and misinformed — slightly bemused him but otherwise left him unaffected; he had more important things to think about than his own reputation.

In one of his last books he wrote of

Christianity’s unsurpassed offers — a meaning that suffering cannot remove, a satisfaction not based on circumstances, a freedom that does not hurt but rather enhances love, an identity that does not crush you or exclude others, a moral compass that does not turn you into an oppressor, and a hope that can face anything, even death.

Source: Tim Keller – The Homebound Symphony

Wed, 17 May 2023 16:29:42 -0700

This depicts Jesus Christ ascending into Heaven. Mary and the Apostles stand around the rock atop Mount Olivet and watch. I framed the scene in a twelve-pointed star surrounded by plant and animal ornament. Above I wrote the words Ascendit Deus in a Lombardic script; below I drew a miniature of the prophet Elijah taken to Heaven in a fiery chariot.

Source: ASCENSION of JESUS CHRIST ~ DRAWING by DANIEL MITSUI

Tue, 16 May 2023 22:20:05 -0700

First and foremost, stick to the basics. Teach and preach the Bible. Disciple and evangelize. Make sure children and young people are taught and fed. Work for strong families. Gather at the Lord’s table, weekly. Learn the Psalms. Pray, pray, pray.
Second, did I mention Psalm-singing? If you want a congregation that hungers and thirsts for justice, a congregation that weeps with those who weep, and congregation prepared for discomfort, sing the Psalms, even or especially the hard ones. If they have the Psalm in their mouths, they’ll develop a taste for God’s justice, and they’ll become inoculated to various off-brand forms of pseudo-justice.
Third, call the pastor at the church down the road. Call the pastor at the next church down the road. Start a pastors' prayer group in your city, town, or village. If you’re a white pastor, call the pastor of a black church; if you’re black, call the pastor of a white church. If you’re a Catholic priest, pursue a friendship with a Pentecostal; if you’re a Presbyterian, search out the Orthodox priests in town. Contact the pastor of an immigrant congregation. Organize a day of prayer, led by the pastors of your community. Pray, pray, pray together.
[…]
two virtues are crucial. One is hope. Teach your people that, no matter what comes, the Lord is in it. No matter what happens, the Lord is opening new avenues of service, witness, and worship. The Lord dismantles and He rebuilds. It’s hard to live through demolition, but it’s also a chance to lay the foundations for rebuilding.The other is courage. Panic is everywhere, greatly amplified by social media feeds. Christians need to follow Jesus, the fearless One whose favorite exhortation to timid disciples was, Fear not. Source: To Pastors – Theopolis Institute

Tue, 16 May 2023 11:40:05 -0700

St. Brendan was an Irish monk of the fifth and sixth centuries who made extensive sea journeys to spread the Gospel to the islands around Ireland and to found monasteries. His most famous adventures are recounted in the Voyage of St. Brendan. According to the Voyage, St. Brendan and his monks celebrated Mass on several occasions on an island that was really the back of the largest fish in the ocean, which is named Iasconius.

the borders are in the style of 6-9th century Northumbro-Irish art, with its distinctive ornamental knotwork, lacertine animals and geometric patterns.

Source: ST. BRENDAN ~ PRINT by DANIEL MITSUI

Sun, 14 May 2023 23:04:25 -0700

There is a reason why the Orthodox do not approve of war but simply look at it as something that may be a lesser evil than the alternative of not fighting a war. It is because there is that in us that shouts, “Thou shalt not kill.” There is that in us that says that we were created to have communion one with another and all of us with God. As permitted as some killings may be, there is that in us which shouts that this is not right, that this was never meant to be. Source: Unexpected scene in a manga light novel | OrthoCuban

Sun, 14 May 2023 22:41:20 -0700

The incensation of the Altar (including the Cross) and Oblation. Source: Latin Mass Society Australia

Thu, 11 May 2023 09:20:01 -0700

Where identity was once a result of multiple aspects of life, for some in Silicon Valley, identity, meaning, and even purpose are all being found in one central place, work. But what happens when work replaces religion?

Source: Via Media: What Happens When Work Becomes Religion w/Carolyn Chen on Apple Podcasts

Sun, 07 May 2023 09:34:00 -0700

We support “right to repair” legislation for consumer products and capital equipment. We believe more ownership means more economic freedom in the truest sense. If you can’t fix it without being bound to the manufacturer’s terms, you don’t really own it.Source: Twitter

Sat, 06 May 2023 15:21:12 -0700

A Sunday service is held at a church in Nagero. Source: ‘Am I going to get out of here alive?’ In one of Africa’s most dangerous corners, a fight to the death for the elephants - Los Angeles Times

Thu, 04 May 2023 14:32:40 -0700

“Three Streams” is a phrase that has come to the fore in the last 10 years or so, especially amongst Anglicans in the ACNA and in continuing Anglican churches. The phrase is meant to suggest (a) that there are three historic “streams” within historic Christianity — the Catholic, the Evangelical, and the Charismatic — and (b) that Anglicanism embodies these in a distinct way that can serve the renewal of the Church.

Prof. Gillis Harp has suggested that the notion may have its origins in Lesslie Newbigin’s The Household of God (1953) or possibly an article by Richard Lovelace in Charisma magazine in 1984. Regardless, it was brought to prominence by the late Wheaton College professor Robert Webber in his wide corpus on “Ancient-Future” worship, sometimes called the Convergence Movement. In an article for ACNA’s newsletter Apostle, Trinity School for Ministry’s professor emeritus, the Rev’d Dr Les Farfield writes:

The genius of Anglicanism is that for five hundred years it has held in creative tension three different strands of Biblical Christianity. Those three streams are the Protestant, the Pentecostal/Holiness and the AngloCatholic [sic] movements.

I must say I find this a problematic argument from a historical perspective: How many Anglicans before the twentieth-century charismatic movement would have found recognizable the claim that the “Pentecostal/Holiness” stream is an integral part of Anglicanism?
Source: Three streams (but not the ones you’re thinking of) – Covenant