Category Archives: culture

Sam Wells: Christmas is really for the Grown-Ups

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Wonderful piece to consider on this second day of Christmas and feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr.  Hat tip to Bishop Graham Kings (@BishopSherborne).

Around 15 years ago I had the opportunity to be in northern India in December. The churches in Delhi had a remarkable tradition I’d never contemplated before. They had nativity plays, like everyone else. But all the adult characters – Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels, the wise men, Herod and so on, were played by grown-ups.

I was flabbergasted. How could the church in India have got it so wrong? Surely they must understand that the whole point of nativity plays is that they be performed by children.

Surely December is to be filled by fathers comforting their daughters with the reassuring words that not everyone can play Mary (and that Third Angel really is the crucial role), mothers finding squares of burlap that look convincing on the head of Joseph without being too scratchy, and Sunday School teachers persuading a reluctant wise man from the east that there’s a subtle but significant difference between frankincense and Frankenstein.

Everyone knows the unique charm of Christmas is lost if adults take it too seriously. I sat there in Delhi and thought, Don’t these people realize that Christmas is really for the children?

But look what happens when you see a nativity play performed by adults in a country like India, a place where to be a Christian is always to experience being in a minority, often to face cultural discrimination, and sometimes to find yourself in a place of physical danger. You start to see aspects of the story that get overlooked when it’s all about a little donkey on a dusty road.

You see for a start that Christmas is about suffering people.

Read it all via Christmas is really for the Grown-Ups – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Last SEVEN remaining Jews in Baghdad are named by WikiLeaks… leaving their lives in danger | Mail Online

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Julian Assange is one arrogant SOB (as are the others at Wikileaks), having taken it upon themselves to reveal sensitive information as part of their self-appointed crusade, believing that they somehow had sufficient knowledge and right to endanger the lives of others and usurp the authority of officials elected and appointed by elected officials of multiple democratic governments. Answerable to no one, elected by no one, granted authority by no one, they decide to share everything they get their hands on, and now a tiny minority is under threat because of their actions. I agree with one of the commenters, if anything happens to these folks, Assange and his proteges ought to be charge at least with incitement, if not as accomplices to murder.

The seven remaining Jews in Baghdad have been named by WikiLeaks, leaving them in danger of persecution, according to the city’s Anglican vicar.

Their lives are now in immediate danger, according to Canon Andrew White, and they’ve been advised to hide their religion.

Canon White said Baghdad’s Anglican Church is trying to protect them, as they fear extremists might try to kill them if they’re identified.

Read it all via Last SEVEN remaining Jews in Baghdad are named by WikiLeaks… leaving their lives in danger | Mail Online.

Salvo Magazine – Cohabitation by Alan F. H. Wisdom

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Since seminary I’ve been researching the history of the marriage liturgy and Christian approaches to marriage (I’ve written two essays here: Love That Has Ends Will Have an End & History of the Marriage Liturgy), especially the ways in which Christians have dealt with existing relational patterns and have either baptized them or critiqued them.  Many people fail to realize that much of the structure of marriage promoted for so long by the Church was not a means for the social control of women–far from it–it was a means of protecting women and providing protections for them in societies where they had little to no recourse (the double consent formula of “I will” and “I do” in the marriage rite of the Book of Common Prayer is just one example of this, as is the prohibition against clandestine marriage).

One thing is quite obvious: in our society there is no way that Christians can avoid the question of cohabitation.  I attempt to approach the topic as a missionary would.  The difficulty, however, is the number of people who would self-identify as Christian, yet still cohabitate with no clear expectation or plan for marriage.  The consequences of this way of organizing family life are far reaching.  Marriage is indeed, much more than a “piece of paper.”

To the article below, i would simply add the observation that the Church did indeed recognize some concubinage as equivalent to marriage–namely those relationships that were committed and monogamous and blessed by by the Church but, because of the difference in social status of the partners, could not be contracted as a legal marriage.  This allowance, it should be noted, was one which encouraged commitment and recognized the sacramental nature of the unions in a manner that called into question the legal limitations imposed upon them by the Roman state.

The piece from Salvo below discusses many of the problems with the current trend toward cohabitation.  It is but one example of the ways our society encourages transitory and unstable relationships.

In ancient times, there was an option for a man who desired a regular sex partner but did not wish to marry her. He could take a low-status woman as a concubine. He could enjoy her company as long as it pleased him, and he could dismiss her at any time. The man made no promises and signed no contract; consequently, the concubine had few legal protections. Any children that she bore would have an inferior legal status.

The early Church fought long and hard against concubinage. It insisted that such a sexual relationship, without the permanent and total commitment expressed in marriage vows, was immoral and unjust. Over the course of a thousand years, concubinage retreated into the shadows of social disapproval.

In the past 40 years, it seems, concubinage has come to light again under a different name. Like ancient concubinage, contemporary cohabitation is a deliberately ambiguous relationship. The partners make no promises and have no legal obligations to one another. The arrangement has no specified duration and can be terminated at a moment’s notice. Those who cohabit tend to be of lower social status. Their children, on average, do not fare as well as children born to married couples.

Read it all via Salvo Magazine – Cohabitation by Alan F. H. Wisdom.

What I’m reading: From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin

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From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin
A timely corrective for evangelicals.

Christopher Benson | posted 11/08/2011

Everyone loves an iconoclastic thesis, the kind that elicits a flabbergasted response of “Oh, really?!” Three immediately come to mind: in an essay on military service, theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas argues that gays (as a group) are morally superior to Christians (as a group); in God’s Battalions, sociologist Rodney Stark argues that the Crusades were a justified war waged against Muslim terror and aggression; and in Defending Constantine, theologian Peter Leithart argues that the heresy of Constantinianism should not be named after the historical Constantine.

Add this eyebrow-raising thesis to the mix: in From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism (a book whose title and subtitle should have been switched), historian Darryl Hart argues that “the evangelical temperament is inherently progressive.” Despite being the largest single voting bloc in the Republic Party, evangelicals—owing to their religious and moral idealism—are no more fitted to traditional conservatism than an armadillo is suited to Antarctica. Currently a professor at Hillsdale College, the premier academic enclave for conservatives, and prolific author of such books as A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State, Hart offers a historical account of evangelical political reflection since World War II.

Focusing on the evangelical intelligentsia rather than the rank-and-file, he considers “the reasons that representative born-again Protestant academics and pastors give for political participation, their understanding of the good society, or the value of the American polity.” The literary evidence that Hart marshals is impressive. He takes us through the writings of young progressives in the 1970s (Richard Pierard, David Moberg, Mark Hatfield, Richard Mouw), historical revisionists (Peter Marshall, Jr., Francis Schaeffer, Donald Dayton), correcting historians (Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, George Marsden), fundamentalist “party crashers” in the 1980s (Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson), faith-based pundits (Chuck Colson, Ralph Reed, Marvin Olaskey, James Skillen), leftist evangelicals (Jim Wallis, Randall Balmer, Tony Campolo, Ron Sider), and “heroic conservatives” (Michael Gerson, Joel Hunter, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren).

Hart then turns to traditionalist conservatives (Russell Kirk, Roger Scruton, Michael Oakeshott, Mark Henrie, Patrick Deneen) for an alternative to the “redemptive utopianism” that prevails among evangelicals. In Hart’s account, latter-day evangelicals, for all their internal differences, closely resemble their revivalist ancestors, stitching a patchwork quilt of American exceptionalism and providential benediction, patriotism and piety, evangelism and social action. “Deep within the soul” of members of the Religious Right, Hart observes, beats “the heart not of a Burkean conservative but of a Finneyite activist.” If we follow the levels of reading in How to Read a Book, Hart has reached the highest level as a syntopical reader, placing multiple books in relation to one another and constructing a new and perceptive analysis on the subject. However, I do question how much can be extrapolated about the political ethos of evangelicalism—a remarkably pluriform movement—from literary evidence alone.

According to Hart, evangelicals forged a third way between the accommodationist posture of mainline Protestants and the separationist posture of fundamentalists. They found their political calling in the postwar years when the character of the United States was tested in the crucible of secularity. Animated by a transformationalist vision to reclaim America as the new Israel or redeemer nation, evangelicals developed a parallel universe with all of its insularities, myths, and propaganda, leaving them bystanders to the arguments and institutions of modern conservatism. Traditionalists, anti-communists, and libertarians shaped the conservative outlook between 1950 to 1965 as they debated the future of the American republic.

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Will the Kids be Alright? Part II – Some Lessons from our Youth « The Curate’s Desk

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Some thoughtful comments from Fr. Robert Hendrickson, of Christ Church New Haven reguarding the results of the National Survey of Youth and Religion.  I commend them to you:

Identity Crisis Part II

So, having put up results from the NSYR study of youth and religion, I have gotten some interesting responses.  They ranged from “Oh my God, the Church is dying” to “These numbers are really suspect” to “We are Episcopalians, we don’t do Church the way these other denominations do.”

None of these is especially helpful.

[...]

To allow our young people to grow up without clear teaching means that we cede faith to those who continue to use it for political or personal gain because those are the loudest voices or we risk them drifting aimlessly between self-exploration, astrology, reincarnation and the like without a firm foundation so that when life’s trials come they do not have a spiritual and moral footing that will hold them fast.

 

The study notes that “The majority of adolescents reported remaining at the same level of religiosity, and when adolescents did report a change in their overall religiosity, a higher proportion of them reported becoming more religious than becoming less religious.” In other words, there are opportunities for us to draw young people deeper into the life of faith. They are not rejecting the faith so much as having it presented to them in such a slipshod manner that it is irrelevant.

 

The survey results bear this out. Read again these results:

  •  “…while 93 percent of Presbyterian Church (USA) teens and 91 percent of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America teens report that their churches usually feel warm and welcoming, only 69 percent of teens whose parents are Episcopalian say the same.”
  • “65 percent of Church of God in Christ teens and 57 percent of both Assemblies of God and Southern Baptist teens say that church is a very good place to talk about serious issues…while only 31 percent of Episcopal teens agree that church is a very good place to talk about serious issues.”
  • “less than one-half of Episcopalian teens who attend church more than a few times a year (46 percent) say that church usually makes them think about important things.” (by far lowest and the only group under 50%)

We have the lowest percentage of respondents that say our churches are welcoming to them. We have the lowest percentage that says that church is a good place to talk about serious issues. We have the lowest percentage that says church makes them think about important things. If we are serious about intellectual engagement with the faith then the numbers would bear this out. We would have young people who felt challenged and believed we talked about serious things and made them think about important things.

Read it all via Will the Kids be Alright? Part II – Some Lessons from our Youth « The Curate’s Desk.

Fulcrum: The Real Battle of St Paul’s Cathedral

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Using the events at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London as a lens through which to view the conflict, Luke Bretherton over at Fulcrum (moderate Evangelicals in the C of E) brings into focus the battling anarchisms represented by the Occupiers and Bankers (or rather, some–maybe many of each)

If the Occupy movement bears the mantle of one form of anti-statist, anti-capitalist school of anarchism that stretches back to the anarcho-syndicalism of Proudhon and Sorel, many of the bankers seem driven by an alternative stream of anarchism, what Murray Rothbard, a student of Ludwig von Mises – the grandfather of neo-liberalism – called ‘anarcho-capitalism’.  This stream is equally anti-statist but pro-capitalist.  It is no less a millennial vision of the end of history than that embodied in the TAZ or witnessed in the worship at the Cathedral.  It sees the best of all possible worlds as an apolitical socio-economic realm that spontaneously organizes itself and provides material prosperity for all through the free decisions of individuals in the marketplace.  In this vision it is government and regulation that must be resisted and defeated if the new time and space when there will be prosperity for all is to be ushered in.

Read it all via Fulcrum: The Real Battle of St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Associated Press: Most of the unemployed no longer receive benefits

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[Note: Staggering to think of the long term consequences of this degree of joblessness over such a long period.]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America’s unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.

Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent – a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

Congress is expected to decide by year’s end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further.

The ranks of the poor would also rise. The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people from slipping into poverty last year. It defines poverty as annual income below $22,314 for a family of four.

Read it all via News from The Associated Press.

Francis Bacon on Muck and Money

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Above all things, good policy is to be used, that the treasure and monies in a State be not gathered into few hands; for, otherwise, a State may have a great stock and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread. This is done chiefly by suppressing, or, at the least, keeping a strait hand upon the devouring trades of usury, engrossing, great pasturages, and the like.

The essays or Counsels, civil and Moral, of Francis Bacon, Henry Morley – Google Books (page 101).