Almighty and everlasting God, the source and perfection of all virtues, who didst inspire thy servant James de Koven to do what is right and to preach what is true: Grant that all ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may afford to thy faithful people, by word and example, the knowledge of thy grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Eliot presented a post-Christian world, despairing of human and divine love or redemption from its despair. The best expression of this diagnosis, in his verse, came in “The Hollow Men” (1925), where Eliot’s speakers are discovered hopelessly – but, paradoxically, with an extraordinary lyrical beauty – on the brink of Hell.
Here was a poet, according to Eliot’s contemporaries, who had evoked the nihilism of modern lives and societies. Phrases from these poems still resonate powerfully, nearly a century later: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper,” “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” and so on.

It might have been expected, after Eliot’s conversion a few years later, that his recognition of the promise of salvation which Christianity proposes would have been reflected in revolutionary changes in his poetic subjects and techniques. Instead, it is the consistency of Eliot’s poetry, from 1927 onwards, with what he had been writing before that most often strikes us. Several powerful metaphors remain, such as, for example, that of the journey (which we encounter, for instance, in “Prufrock” and in the quest-motif in The Waste Land).

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Amidst the debris of postmodernism (a movement that has basically run its course) stands a great ambivalence about the nature of truth. The great intellectual transformation of recent decades produced a generation that is not hostile to all claims of truth, but is highly selective about what kinds of truth it is willing to receive.

The current intellectual climate accepts truth as being true in some objective sense only when dealing with claims of truth that come from disciplines like math or science. They accept objective truth when it comes to gravity or physiology, but not when it comes to morality or meaning.

One result of this is that we can often be heard as meaning less than we intend. When we present the gospel, it can easily be heard as a matter of our own personal reality that is, in the end, free from any claim upon others….

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As the first nation in the history of the world based on a concept of religious freedom, the United States became a place of unprecedented religious diversity and experimentation. Now, a new documentary series examines the history of Christianity in America, from the first European Christian settlers to the myriad expressions of the faith in the 21st century. Produced with the support of a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., People of Faith: Christianity in America (www.peopleoffaithseries.com) presents four hundred years of history in three hours. It’s a brisk and informative survey of the Catholic, mainline Protestant, and Evangelical Christian people and events that shaped the nation.

The series shows how American Christianity, woven into the nation’s fabric from its founding, morphed over the centuries. “America became a religious place from the very beginning…because the people who settled this country had a genius for framing questions in religious terms,” says Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame, one of many experts interviewed for the series.

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Merciful God, who through the work of Thomas Cranmer didst renew the worship of thy Church by restoring the language of the people, and through whose death didst reveal thy power in human weakness: Grant that by thy grace we may always worship thee in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ, our only Mediator and Advocate, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, who didst give to thy servant Thomas Ken grace and courage to bear witness to the truth before rulers and kings: Give us also thy strength that, following his example, we may constantly defend what is right, boldly reprove what is evil, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and ever.

When I received a letter from the President of the Historical Society asking if I would consider being the speaker at this year’s annual meeting I was flattered. Then I read the fine print: would I consider talking about “the position of the third world Anglican churches in the current crisis”¦it would be helpful to have a clearer picture of the response of the African churches than the rather cryptic press accounts sometimes provided.

” The “crisis,” of course, is the situation we now find ourselves in as a global communion following two events in North America: the decision at General Convention 2003 to ratify the election of a man who is a practicing homosexual to be the Bishop of New Hampshire, and his subsequent consecration, and the decision by the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to allow the blessing of same-sex unions within the diocese and the production of a liturgy for that purpose. These events have resulted in a perhaps unprecedented negative response by many in the communion. With regard to the letter of invitation I must be fair ”“ the topic was left completely up to me ”“ I was in no way coerced to speak about this subject. But the letter made its point: grave misunderstanding is far too easy if we know little about the context from which a statement is made or a position is taken. Even those of us Anglicans who live within the same culture have had a difficult time communicating with each other recently. How much more confusion is possible if we speak from differing culture contexts? The topic which the President’s letter suggested was both timely and crucial. But I immediately saw the potential landmines.
First, although I have lived in Africa and I love Africa, and although I have spent much of my academic life seeking to comprehend that wonderful place more deeply, I am not an African and I cannot presume to speak for Africa. Africa is an immense, varied, and complicated place. I am well aware that whatever I say some of my African friends will be well within their rights to question my judgement, or even my presumption to render an opinion. There is no one “African position” on the subject of homosexuality; neither is there one monolithic opinion about the wisdom of the actions of the Canadian and American churches, although it is quite clear that there is a majority opinion. Second, I was immediately aware of who my audience would be for this talk, and aware that many in the room would not share my own opinions about the meaning of the present situation. And finally, I am deeply conscious that our present troubles have left many of us emotionally raw. The issues of sexuality with which we have been struggling (and which can now be seen to involve also issues of culture and race, of money and power) touch all of us at deep levels of our being. Anger is not far from the surface of conversations. I have told my students many times that I would much rather be a church historian writing about these events three hundred years from now.

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For Gene Edward Veith Jr., provost and professor of literature at Patrick Henry College, Martin Luther’s doctrine of vocation undergirds a truly Christian theology of the family. Vocation, as he describes it, is “the way God works through human beings.” In his latest book, Family Vocation: God’s Calling in Marriage, Parenting, and Childhood (Crossway), Veith looks to Luther’s ideals of loving and serving our neighbor, and to his view of the family as a “holy order” unto itself. Coauthored with daughter Mary J. Moerbe, a deaconess in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the book applies Luther’s understanding to the various family vocations (marriage, parenthood, and childhood) and the “offices” within those vocations (husband, wife, father, mother, and child). Author and Her.meneutics blog contributor Caryn Rivadeneira spoke with father and daughter about Luther’s vision of family life….

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Sunrise seen from inside Old St Paul’s must have been astonishing. Before Wren rebuilt it, the cathedral had been amplified at the East end by the so-called New Work, begun in the 1250s. The whole of the eastern wall, 93ft high, was glass: a rose window above, with seven lancet windows filling the wall beneath it.

That was the Lady chapel, and beneath it was St Faith’s chapel, in the crypt, used as a parish church for local people. Booksellers stowed their goods there, confident of its blocked windows, as the Fire of London took hold in 1666, till the lead ran molten from above, and broken timbers smashed through the crypt vaulting, sending charred pages into the air, to be carried, so the schoolboy William Taswell reported, as far as Eton.

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Almighty God, who in thy providence didst choose thy servant Patrick to be the apostle of the Irish people, to bring those who were wandering in darkness and error to the true light and knowledge of thee: Grant us so to walk in that light, that we may come at last to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever.

What has taken the place of religious commitment is the “economy” in the form of an ever greater consumption of the goods that science in the service of technology and industry delivers. Combined with an ever more malleable and mercurial “self” defined in terms of the fulfillment of material desires, the urge for infinite acquisition has become the default religion even of believers. This “religion” prevails even though in acting it out Christians violate their own religion’s claims that self-love and covetousness are close to the essence of sin. The religion is that of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” or, more recently, “Whatever.”

Yet this state of affairs cannot last because neither science nor philosophy can prove the existence of individual rights, the maintenance of which is the liberal state’s only reason for existence. The ecological limits of indefinite production and consumption moreover threaten to topple the very foundations upon which this default religion rests.

This scenario in a few words characterizes the symptoms of liberal Western “civilization” and its discontents as sketched by Brad Gregory in The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. Or rather liberal Western civilization and its “contentments.”

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The German Church’s accommodation of the Nazi regime reveals an appalling failure of basic Christian preaching and teaching. In [Edmund] Schlink’s understanding the failure of the churches was not so much caused by the persecution as revealed by it. “The forces outside the church showed up what was real in the life of these churches, and what was only an empty shell” (p. 100).

By God’s grace an astonishing renewal of the Church occurred as well. “The renewal began when the Church recognized the enemy’s attack as the hand of God ”¦ and when resistance to injustice became at the same time an act of repentance and of submission to the mighty hand of God” (p. 100). As the contrast with anti-Christian propaganda became more intense “the Church’s ears were re-opened to the Word of God. ”¦ But at the same time God’s Word challenged us, questioned the reality of our own religion, and forced us to recognize God simply and solely in His Word….”

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(Please note that the original blog thread on this was there–KSH).

Of course the procreation of children by two same-sex partners is not possible. But the Church has never seen procreation as a necessity for marriage, and so has always married partners past the age of childbearing. Even in Genesis the first reason given why God created Eve is not childbearing but because ”˜God saw that it was not good for man to be alone’. While the Prayer Book states that marriage was ordained first for ”˜the procreation of children’ the modern marriage service begins by emphasising the quality of relationship between marriage partners ”˜that they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind.’

So same-sex monogamy seems to me to be spiritually indistinguishable from a marriage between two people who are unable to have children together. Admitting same sex couples to marriage would extend the sacrament, not undermine it. Like the Church’s decision to admit women to the sacrament of ordination, it is a lot less revolutionary than it seems at first sight. The ordination of women has not fundamentally changed the priesthood, but has extended and enriched it. The same would be true of extending the sacrament of marriage to people of the same sex. It is not the physical gender of the people involved that matters, but the quality of their commitment and their response to the call of God.

It is important that you take the time to read through it all.

Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us, that in thy light we may see light: the light of thy grace today, and the light of thy glory hereafter; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626)

(Please note that the ITC is an advisory body to the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith–KSH).

The full title is “Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria,” and it examines developments in Roman Catholic theology since Vatican Council II and offers criteria for recognizing orthodox theology for Rome.

Read it all (24 page pdf).

Read this obituary and then check this article out also.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams visited the Benedictine abbey of Montecassino on Monday, the final stage of his 3 day visit to Italy and the Vatican. Over the weekend, the Anglican leader had an audience with Pope Benedict and attended Papal Vespers at the Church of San Gregorio al Celio marking the millennium of the Camaldoli community there.
In his words to the monks of Montecassino, the archbishop continued his reflections on monastic life as a pivotal part of the Church’s mission ”“ from the history of the Church in Britain to the re-evangelisation of Europe today. Philippa Hitchen reports”¦.

Read and listen to it all.

For if I could please myself”¦I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the taproom the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them.

The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude”¦for eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies, there is no reasons why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is an essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock.

Such is my ideal, and such the (almost) was the reality of “settled, calm, Epicurean life.” It is no doubt for my own good that I have been so generally prevented from leading it, for it is a life almost entirely selfish. Selfish, not self-centered: for in such a life my mind would be directed toward a thousand things, not one of which is myself. The distinction is not unimportant. One of the happiest men and most pleasing companions I have ever known was intensely selfish. On the other hand I have known people capable of real sacrifice whose lives were nevertheless a misery to themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But till the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration.

–C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (Harcourt Brace, 1956), pp.141-144

Most gracious God, by the calling of thy servant James Theodore Holly thou gavest us our first bishop of African-American heritage. In his quest for life and freedom, he led thy people from bondage into a new land and established the Church in Haiti. Grant that, inspired by his testimony, we may overcome our prejudice and honor those whom thou callest from every family, language, people, and nation; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

…often the wicked so devote themselves to the practice of sin that they succeed in doing more wickedness than they would have been able to learn from the bad example of reprobate sinners. For this reason the torment of greater punishment is inflicted on them, in that they, by their own initiative, sought out greater ways of sinning, for which they are to be punished. Consequently it is well said: “According to the multitude of his devices, so shall he suffer [a citation from Job 20:18]. For he would not find out new ways of sinning unless he sought them out, and he would not seek out such things unless he were anxious to do them deliberately. Therefore, in his punishment, this excess in devising wickedness is taken into account, and he receives proportionate punishment and retribution. And even though the suffering of the damned is infinite, nevertheless they receive greater punishments who, by their own desires, sought out many new ways of sinning.

–Gregory the Great (540-604), Book of Morals 15.18.22

Almighty and merciful God, who didst raise up Gregory of Rome to be a servant of the servants of God, and didst inspire him to send missionaries to preach the Gospel to the English people: Preserve in thy Church the catholic and apostolic faith they taught, that thy people, being fruitful in every good work, may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Book of Common Prayer, 1551

This object is doubly resonant. It is the first book printed in Ireland and, as such, marks the island’s rather belated acquisition of one of the defining features of modernity. The revolutionary process of printing on a press with moveable type was pioneered by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany almost exactly a century earlier. The delay in catching up with this new technology says much about Ireland’s absence from the mainstream of the Renaissance.

But if the advent of the first printed book brings a key aspect of modernity to Ireland, that modernity arrives in a form that is unwelcome to a substantial majority of the population….

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The first suffering of Christ we must experience is the call sundering our ties to this world. This is the death of the old human being in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Every call of Christ leads to death. Whether with the first disciples we leave home and occupation in order to follow him, or whether with Luther we leave the monastery to enter a secular profession, in either case the one death awaits us, namely death in Jesus Christ, the dying away of our old form of being human in Jesus’ call.
”¦.Those who are not prepared to take up the cross, those who are not prepared to give their life to suffering and rejection by others, lose community with Christ and are not disciples. But those who lose their life in discipleship, in bearing the cross, will find it again in discipleship itself, in the community of the cross with Christ. The opposite of discipleship is to be ashamed of Christ, of the cross, and to take offense at the cross. Discipleship is commitment to the suffering Christ.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditations on the Cross (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1998 [trans Douglas Stott]), pp. 14,16

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nyssa, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest now and for ever.

Glorious God, we give thanks not merely for high and holy things, but for the common things of earth which thou hast created: Wake us to love and work, that Jesus, the Lord of life, may set our hearts ablaze and that we, like Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, may recognize thee in thy people and in thy creation, serving the holy and undivided Trinity; who livest and reignest throughout all ages of ages. Amen.

The recent theft of a 12th century Irish saint’s heart from a Dublin church has left local Christians stunned and devastated.

“All I would ask is that whoever took it would return it with no questions asked. It’s valueless to anyone but the Cathedral here and our community and the community of Dublin”¦we’re grieving over it, really,” church dean Rev. Dermot Dunne told CNA on March 5.

The heart of St. Laurence O’Toole was stolen from Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin sometime between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on March 3 and has yet to be recovered.

Read it all.

O God the King of saints, who didst strengthen thy servants Perpetua and Felicitas and their companions to make a good confession, staunchly resisting, for the cause of Christ, the claims of human affection, and encouraging one another in their time of trial: Grant that we who cherish their blessed memory may share their pure and steadfast faith, and win with them the palm of victory; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

William Hamilton, the retired theologian who declared in the 1960s that God was dead, died Tuesday (Feb. 28) in his downtown Portland apartment. He was 87.

Hamilton said he’d been haunted by questions about God since he was a teenager. Years later, when his conclusion was published in the April 8, 1966, edition of Time Magazine, he found himself at the center of a theological storm.

Time christened the new movement “radical theology,” and Hamilton, one of its key figures, received death threats and inspired angry letters to the editor. He lost his endowed chair as a professor of theology at what was then Colgate Rochester Divinity School in 1967.

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We readily allow that the sacred offices of our most holy religion, may be performed in private Houses; but it is evident from the Prayer at the Dedication of Solomon’s Temple, that religious services performed in the House of God are more effectual in removing Judgments, and procuring Mercies, than those offered in private Places. The Goodness of the Lord never shines with a greater lustre, than when the united Devotions of his faithful Servants, wrestle as it were with the Almighty in his own House.

We find that our blessed Saviour paid particular Respect to Places dedicated to the Service of God. The sacred Jesus coming to Jerusalem, was filled with a pious indignation at seeing his Father’s House vilely prostituted. When his Person was treated in the most cruel and ungrateful manner, he bore it with wonderful patience; but when the Temple of God was prophaned, an holy Zeal instantly kindled in his breast. The meek Lamb of God, thus provoked, had Recourse to holy Violence, and whipped the impious merchants out of the Temple….

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The last decade or so has seen a great resurgence of radical skepticism not only about God – the “new atheism” ”“ but also about Man. It is skepticism updated with reductionist attempts to explain human existence and experience, thought and feeling, in terms of matter alone. The mainstream view trumpeted in the “intelligent” media is that the moral sense, love, and reason are really just survival mechanisms developed in the course of human evolution. The mind is just the tool of a social primate developed in order to give it a competitive edge in procreation. As the effort of ‘the selfish gene’ to replicate itself, the mind can have no inherent claim on our loyalty. And God is just another construct, one which we would do well to discard. (The self-contradictory nature of such radical skepticism is rarely noticed. If reason is just a construct of the selfish gene, then the claim that reason is just a construct is itself a construct.)
The new atheists proclaim their gospel with the fervour of believers: God is dead, man is free, free from the destructive illusions of religion and morality, of reason and virtue. But then a someone dies, suddenly and cruelly, like the young man known to many in ..[this] parish [in [Eastern Georgia] who was killed in a freakish accident last weekend. And his death casts a pall of grief over his family, his friends, their families, his school, and many others. Yet if he was no more than an arrangement of molecules, a selfish gene struggling to replicate itself, there can be no reason for grief, or for the love that grieves, since these are (we are told) essentially selfish survival mechanisms left over from some earlier stage in hominid evolution. Friendship is just another illusion. But of course we do grieve, even the atheists. And in so grieving, they grieve better than they know (or think they know).

The grieving atheist cannot provide any reason why he grieves, or why he (rightly) respects the grief of others. For to grieve the death of such a young man is implicitly to affirm the reality of the soul. Man is embodied, to be sure; but what is embodied is a soul, capable of memory, reason, and love. To grieve the loss of anyone then is to lament the departure of a unique being, whose mind and heart have touched our lives in spontaneously beautiful and inimitable ways. To grieve is to travel even beyond the lost life of a loved one to the origin and source of the love we have known, and there to register our gratitude. To grieve, therefore, is to affirm that there is a higher source of value than ‘the selfish gene’ – there is a God, who is absolute truth and goodness, the very possibility of knowledge and love.

To love, to grieve, is to affirm the dignity of man; and to affirm the dignity is to acknowledge gratefully a special instance of God’s creative and lifegiving power expressed in one whose unique nature is gone. When we can no longer grieve, it is not God who dies, but we ourselves.

As C. S. Lewis says somewhere, God “whispers to us in our pleasures and shouts to us in our pains”. In our griefs God shouts, ”˜the Lord thunders out of heaven’, and his thunder dissolves the attempt to live as if he does not exist. We easily forget him; but he does not forget us, nor does he forsake us; and he permits these pains and griefs to fall upon us that we may turn to him again, and know him truly, not as our enemy but as our friend: as the one who “bears our griefs and carries our sorrows”. Our first need “in all our troubles” is (as the Litany teaches us) “to put our whole trust and confidence in him”. He confronts our grief and bears it, that he might transform sadness to joy, despair to hope, and death to new life. He does this in our souls and minds – a space from which the selfish gene is banished by necessity, and the soul that dies to itself inherits eternal life.

God shouts in our pains; and we awaken from dreams to the fact that he has travelled this way before. “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4) up to and into his Cross. The young man who died, the friend of so many, once ”“ wonderfully! – said, “If we really believe in God, there is nothing to be afraid of.” The friend who takes our grief and carries our sorrows confirms his testimony: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he ”¦ said, Behold I make all things new” (Revelation 21:4, 5).

——The Rev. Gavin Dunbar is rector of Saint John’s, Savannah, Georgia