David Schultenover S.J. is a Professor of History at Marquette University in the United States and he’s a specialist on the modernist crisis. He’s the author of a magnificent biography of one of the leading modernists, the Irish Jesuit George Tyrrell and also a book called ‘A View from Rome on the eve of the Modernist Crisis’. I asked him to begin by painting a picture of the wonderfully mad world of late 19th century Catholicism in Europe, with the Pope as the self-styled prisoner of the Vatican, Royalist pretenders, secret societies, the Dreyfus case, when some new religious order seemed to be created just about every other week, a period of enormous activity and intensity.

David Schultenover: It was, it was very complex and the church was in a very bad situation all over the place. And it largely reacted out of fear, very understandable fear, coming out of all the forces that were unleashed by the French Revolution. You know, all of the ideas that were promoted by the Enlightenment, ideas that centred around individual rights and various freedoms, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, limits on the power of governments and rule of law, free exchange of ideas, market economy, transparent system of government, accountability, participative government, all of those things, those values that were very foreign to the church’s own polity, the church’s own organisation, it’s own sense of itself.

Stephen Crittenden: Things – of course – that 100 years later we all take for granted.

David Schultenover: Yes, but at that time, they were ideas that were regarded as very dangerous, and for good reason, because they led to the overthrow of the monarchy, and with that, the overthrow of the church in France which was wedded to the monarchy, or the marriage of throne and altar idea. So that when the absolute monarchy fell with the French Revolution, so in the eyes of many of the leaders and intelligensia of France, so did the church, and everything the church stood for was almost kind of polar opposite of what the values of the French Revolution were, the values they’d fought for.

Stephen Crittenden: David Schultenover S.J.

So what were the specific intellectual issues that Pi us X and his followers were attacking? Marvin O’Connell is Emeritus Professor of History at Notre Dame University.

Marvin O’Connell: They were attacking what the Pope called ‘the movement of modernism’, a term which he invented really in the Encyclical. And what he was concerned about was what he called ‘a kind of consensus of heresies, all kinds of doctrines hostile to the Catholic church, all bound into one’, as he liked to say. Basically the matters that he was concerned with were on the one hand, philosophical and on the other hand I suppose you could say, literary, or specifically Biblical. On the philosophical front though he never mentioned Immanuel Kant’s name in the course of the Encyclical, he’s really after a kind of philosophical tradition which had grown up out of the Enlightenment and which at least in the 19th century, had come to have a sort of an attachment to what we might call imminentism.

Read it all.

One of the miracles to emerge from the history of slavery was evident on the banks of the River during that service of Holy Communion. There, hundreds of years later, drinking from the same cup of blood-red-wine were both white and black. The fact that the slaves came to share the Christian faith of those who’d enslaved them is extraordinary. That borrowed faith sustained them as they laboured in the cotton fields singing their spirituals, longing for freedom.

Somehow the slaves were able to see through the hypocrisy of the white religion that oppressed them, to see that the God of the whites didn’t thirst for their tears, but shed his own at their misery. Somehow they came to find in Jesus a kindred spirit, one who himself had been ‘sold down the river’.

Standing on the banks of the James River I began to see an unnoticed fact of history. I see it here in Liverpool whenever black and white gather together to worship God. It was the Christian faith of black slaves that rescued and redeemed the Christian religion.

Read it all.

As the Anglican Communion navigates the current presenting issues that affect all Anglican provinces, The Episcopal Church should undoubtedly take counsel with other Anglicans, and very often we would do well to heed their advice. Indeed, it has been largely due to the pressure brought to bear upon us by our Anglican brothers and sisters that we have begun to tend more responsibly to the concerns of those within The Episcopal Church whose theological convictions have led them to dissent from the consent for Bishop V. Gene Robinson and other recent actions of the General Convention.

However, taking counsel differs immensely from establishing new legal arrangements within the Anglican Communion that would serve to undo the principle of autonomy and independence expressed in the Act in Restraint of Appeals. I would argue that this principle could legitimately be called the “First Principle of Anglicanism.” (The detailed discussion of autonomy in Section B of The Windsor Report arguably does not fully appreciate the intention and subsequent ramifications of autonomy as embodied in the act.)

As the Executive Council, the House of Bishops, and the General Convention consider various communiqués, potential plans of action, and ultimately the Anglican Covenant, we would do well to remember this first principle of Anglicanism that initiated our distinctive way of being church and heed the wisdom of our English reforming forbears.

Read it all.

For the laying down of the law of once marrying, the very origin of the human race is our authority; witnessing as it emphatically does what God constituted in the beginning for a type to be examined with care by posterity. For when He had moulded man, and had foreseen that a peer was necessary for him, He borrowed from his ribs one, and fashioned for him one woman; whereas, of course, neither the Artificer nor the material would have been insufficient (for the creation of more). There were more ribs in Adam, and hands that knew no weariness in God; but not more wives Or, “but no plurality of wives.” in the eye of God. And accordingly the man of God, Adam, and the woman of God, Eve, discharging mutually (the duties of) one marriage, sanctioned for mankind a type by (the considerations of) the authoritative precedent of their origin and the primal will of God. Finally, “there shall be,” said He, “two in one flesh,” not three nor four. On any other hypothesis, there would no longer be “one flesh,” nor “two (joined) into one flesh.” These will be so, if the conjunction and the growing together in unity take place once for all. If, however, (it take place) a second time, or oftener, immediately (the flesh) ceases to be “one,” and there will not be “two (joined) into one flesh,” but plainly one rib (divided) into more. But when the apostle interprets, “The two shall be (joined) into one flesh” of the Church and Christ, according to the spiritual nuptials of the Church and Christ (for Christ is one, and one is His Church), we are bound to recognise a duplication and additional enforcement for us of the law of unity of marriage, not only in accordance with the foundation of our race, but in accordance with the sacrament of Christ. From one marriage do we derive our origin in each case; carnally in Adam, spiritually in Christ. The two births combine in laying down one prescriptive rule of monogamy. In regard of each of the two, is he degenerate who transgresses the limit of monogamy. Plurality of marriage began with an accursed man. Lamech was the first who, by marrying himself to two women, caused three to be (joined) “into one flesh.”

–Tertullian

Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston hoped to reverse a series of Rebel losses in the Western Theater by surprising Union Brig. Gen. U.S. Grant’s forces near Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River.

Grant had easily defeated some of Johnston’s subordinates at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. Nashville had fallen without a whimper to Union Gen. Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio.

Johnston, a Texan, was regarded as one of the best, field commanders active in the U.S. Army when he resigned and joined the CSA. He was held in even higher regard than Robert E. Lee, particularly by his U.S. Military Academy classmate and friend, Jefferson Davis, who had given him an impossible mission.

Appointed a full general in August 1861, Johnston assumed command of Department No. 2 (the Western Department) the following month. He was placed in direct command of what was initially called the Army of Central Kentucky.

Davis had assigned his friend to defend a line from the Appalachian mountains across the Mississippi River to the Kansas territory. He had, at first, only 20,000 poorly (or often non) equipped, inexperienced soldiers.

While Johnston was trying to form an army, another U.S. Army veteran, William J. Hardee, was ordered to gather a brigade of Arkansas troops. Episcopal Bishop Leonidas Polk, a U.S. Military Academy graduate, joined theater No. 2 as a lieutenant general. With a force of 5,000 men, Polk seized the town of Columbus, Ky on Sept. 3, 1861. On Nov. 7, 1861, Polk defeated Grant at Belmont, Mo. It was Grant’s first action in command.

Read it all.

“Sacred compulsion joined with a visceral revulsion against injustice to give him not just passion but unshakeable commitment.”

–Stephen Tomkins, William Wilberforce: A Biography (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2007), p.221

Crisis of Doubt is an impressively researched, clearly written, and forcefully, even polemically, argued work of scholarship. Moreover, Larsen is careful not to overplay his hand. Despite supplying an appendix of some thirty additional names of erstwhile secularists who found some sort of religion, he acknowledges that reconversion from secularism was not exactly rampant in Victorian Britain. He is also careful to show that his seven converts did not necessarily return to an impeccably conservative form of evangelical Protestantism. In fact most embraced fairly conservative positions on important Christian doctrines, but many held a more flexible view of biblical inspiration, and most remained radical in their social and political orientations. Reconversion did not mean capitulation to the religious or political status quo, and old radicals lived on in new Christian clothes.

By suggesting that the “crisis of doubt” within Victorian secularism was a more common and powerful reality than was the “crisis of faith” among the Victorian intelligentsia, Larsen is hoping not only to correct an exaggerated emphasis on the Victorian crisis of faith but also to show the intellectual robustness of Christianity in the 19th century. Challenging the notion that there was an inevitable and inexorable slide towards Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” Crisis of Doubt argues that the tide of faith could come in as well as go out. In that sense the book also acts as an important counterpoint to intellectually sloppy versions of secularization theory.

Read it all.

St. Paul, in relation to just such a divine grace, ties the “richly indwelling Word” (Col 3:16) to the relational virtues of peace, harmony, forgiveness, and love. But also, because what is involved here is a coming to one mind, a learning, what is required is a discipline within the church, where “admonishment”, of the kind he himself was willing to offer, is a necessary and essential aspect of the Scripture’s power to bring minds together. “Discipline”, after all, is a word cognate with “disciple”, the “student” who learns through following and standing ever near. The “teacher” points to the Scriptures and holds the student ”“ the disciple ”“ close to its formative demands. And “discipline” represents that framework of order through which this teaching or Scriptural indication is permanently applied.

If the councils of the church in the Communion exercise a magisterium, it is in just this way. And it is a way that, arguably, the Communion is currently engaging.

The goal of any Covenant for the Communion, then, would further the one-mindedness of Anglican churches through the discipline of Scriptural listening. Does the conciliar model of the current proposal do this? It would appear, at least, that this is exactly what is happening in the present ”“ we are, through the interplay and adjudication of our councils, being taken close to the Scriptures and made to hear them, often in contested ways to be sure, but ultimately in “symphonic” or agreed upon ways, even if not all are convinced at once. And thus it would seem that the proposal itself is in general congruent with the goal. If anything, the Proposed Covenant could be strengthened through a greater Scriptural focus that linked conciliar discernment with Scriptural conformity and “non-repugnance”, to use the Articles’ own phraseology. This is a point that underlines the fact that Anglican identity need not be sacrificed by stepping to the side of full-fledged confessionalism. Rather, as John Webster has noted, confessions “bind only as [they] present the Gospel’s claim” (Nicene Christianity, p. 131). Agreeing in the truth of God’s holy Word is the act that receives that claim as God’s, and hence makes confession ”“ the “one-speaking” (1 Tim. 6:12f.) that comes from “one-mindedness” — possible. To this act, the Communion is now called to give itself.

This was but one of the papers presented at last week’s Conference in Oxford that I was privilieged to attend–read it all.

One factor in our current turmoil in The Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Communion is the power and authority of bishops. One way to read the primates’ communiqué is as a rejection of the polity of The Episcopal Church that limits the power of bishops to make policy for the larger church. William White never proposed a distinct House of Bishops separate from the House of Deputies. For him, the clergy and laity meeting together, with their bishops, was adequate, as is still the case in diocesan conventions.

Born and educated in the democratic cauldron of Philadelphia, White did not object to the role of bishops elsewhere, but believed the new American church had an opportunity to return to its primitive roots when, before Constantine, the laity participated in the selection of their bishop, and before 1066, when the power of a bishop was not an extension of the power of the state. For the New England states, White’s new democratic Catholicism went too far. The clergy of Connecticut so objected to White’s proposal to have the first duly elected bishop of the United States consecrated by presbyters, temporarily, until proper Episcopal orders could be attained, they chose (without the vote of the laity) Samuel Seabury as bishop. He sailed for Canterbury, where he would not be consecrated, and then moved on to the non-juror bishops of Scotland.

Seabury believed that apostolic bishops, not a democratic process shared by clergy and laity, should determine the governance and worship of the emergent Episcopal Church. But for William White, who knew how difficult it would be to unify an Episcopal Church out of its very diverse parts, a method of choosing bishops was needed before the choosing could happen. For White, to do otherwise would be like electing George Washington the president, and then having him write the Constitution.

Read it all.

Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the peoples of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Jefferts Schori wasn’t shy in discussing the church’s history in America.

“There are a whole lot of evil tales wrapped up in the history of this place, and a whole lot of good ones,” she said. “The rub is telling the difference.”

She specifically addressed the church’s complicity in the slave trade and the subjugation of American Indians.

“That has not yet fully redeemed itself,” she said. “The work is not yet over.”

“In the next century, God will call on us all in humility to redeem the evil deeds of the past.”

Yesterday’s service was not a somber affair, though. It was warm, but an occasional breeze offered enough respite to keep the crowd focused on the celebratory tone of the day.

“That it’s lasted this long is astounding,” David Silek, who came from Front Royal in Warren County for the day, said of the Episcopal Church’s presence in the U.S. “I realized how blessed we’ve been when I was driving down here on I-95. I realized the difference then from now. If I were the captain, I could now call the queen and say, ‘We’re here.'”

Sandra Garner, a parishioner from Petersburg, took an even more succinct approach: “It means to me that God is alive.”

Read it all.

From the (London) Times:

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles Wesley, whose hymns still remain a remarkable distillation of Christian faith and experience. It is Charles who prays “Heavenly Adam, Life divine; Change my nature into thine”, showing an understanding of the Christian life and the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit which is close to the Orthodox understanding that we are called to become “partakers of the divine nature”. “Hark the herald angels sing!” teaches the saving mystery of the Incarnation ”“ “veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail the incarnate Deity!”

Charles longs for a heart to praise ”“ “a humble, lowly, contrite heart, believing true and clean, which neither life nor death can part, from Him that dwells within.” He prays, in a morning hymn, “Fill me, radiancy divine, scatter all my unbelief”.

Quite coincidentally, this is also the 200th anniversary of another great hymn-writer, Christopher Wordsworth, the nephew of William Wordsworth and Bishop of Lincoln. He taught the faith through his hymns. It was, he said, “the first duty of a hymn-writer to teach sound doctrine, and thus to save souls”.
His hymns were drawn from Scripture and the ancient Fathers of the Church, as we can see in his hymns for Epiphany (“Songs of thankfulness and praise”); Easter (“Alleluia, alleluia, hearts to heaven and voices raise”); and Ascension (“See the conqueror mounts in triumph”).

In the end Charles Wesley is the greater poet and hymn writer, but both he and Christopher Wordsworth are above all teachers of the faith, reminding us that “orthodoxy” does not mean right belief but right glory. Their hymns invite us to lift up our hearts, pointing us to the glory of heaven where we shall be “lost in wonder, love and praise”.

Read it all.

From here:

There are a number of points that need to be made…

Firstly, a distinction needs to be made between a ”˜confessing’ church and a ”˜confessional’ church. A ”˜confessing’ church is any church that confesses Christ and the gospel before the world as all Christians are called to do. A ”˜confessional’ church, on the other hand, is a church that adheres to certain specific statements of belief.

Secondly, it is clear that Anglicanism is not only a ”˜confessing’ tradition but also a ”˜confessional’ tradition in the sense that there are specific statements of belief to which the churches of the Communion individually and collectively subscribe. For example, the Catholic Creeds and the three ”˜historic formularies’ (The Thirty Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the 1662 Ordinal) are accepted as doctrinal authorities by the Church of England26 and for the Communion as a whole the Lambeth Quadrilateral sets out the Anglican understanding of what the visible unity of the Christian Church involves.

In his essay ”˜Where shall doctrine be found?’ in the 1981 Doctrine Commission report Believing in the Church, NT Wright suggests that a ”˜confession’ is a document: ”˜”¦in which the Church says to God, to the world, to itself and to the next generation, ”˜This is where we stand, and what we stand for.’’27 If the term ”˜confession’ is defined in this way it is clear that there is a strong confessional element to the Anglican tradition in the sense that are some documents that are seen by the Church of England and the other churches of the Communion as declaring where they stand and what they stand for.28

The issue of whether Anglicanism is confessional in nature has been confused by a long standing debate about (a) whether the Thirty Nine Articles should be seen as a confession of faith in the same sense as the confessions of faith produced by the Lutheran and Reformed churches during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and (b) whether the Articles have the same status within Anglicanism as, for example, the Augsburg Confession has within the Lutheran tradition or the Westminster Confession has had in parts of the Reformed tradition.

The answer to (a) is that from a historical point of view the Articles should be viewed as one of the confessions of the Reformation period. Much of the material in the Articles came from the Lutheran Augsburg and Wurtemberg confessions, the Articles had the same function as other Reformation confessions (namely to make clear what the Church of England stood for both in terms of its fundamental theology and in relation to specific issues of controversy) and the Articles were regarded as the Church of England’s confessional statement at the time when they were produced.29

The answer to (b) is that the Articles have had a rather different status to that enjoyed by the Augsburg or Westminster Confessions in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions because within Anglicanism the role of the Articles as a doctrinal authority has been balanced by the doctrinal importance that has been given to the liturgy and, in many parts of Anglicanism, to the witness of the Fathers of the first five centuries.

However, acceptance of this latter point does not negate the confessional nature of Anglicanism. It remains the case that there are documents that are seen as declaring, either explicitly or implicitly, what Anglicanism stands for. This in turn means that an Anglican covenant that re-stated where the churches of the Anglican Communion stand and what they stand for would not be alien to the Anglican tradition.

Thirdly, the fact that Anglicans have been willing to say either explicitly through statements of belief or implicitly through the liturgy ”˜This is where we stand and what we stand for’ means that Anglicanism already excludes those who are not able to accept in terms of either belief or practice what Anglicanism currently stands for. Thus someone who cannot make the Declaration of Assent contained in Canon C1530 cannot serve as either an ordained minister or a Reader in the Church of England. Similarly, a church that could not accept one or more of the elements of the Lambeth Quadrilateral could not be a member of the Anglican Communion.

This means that the development of a covenant will not mean a move from a non-confessional to a confessional Anglicanism or from a situation where everyone is accepted to a position where some begin to be excluded. The Anglican Communion is already, in the way just described, a confessional body of churches and, as such, one that upholds certain specific beliefs and practices to which not everyone is able to sign up.

What it might mean, and this is what people are afraid of, is that as the result of the covenant process the confessional basis of Anglicanism will become more detailed, with the forms of acceptable expression of Anglican theology being more precisely defined and the number of things that have to be accepted in order to be Anglican being increased, and that this will mean that some people who are currently part of the Anglican Communion will be forced out.

However, and this is the fourth point in this connection, there is nothing inevitable about a process whereby the development of a covenant leads to a narrower definition of Anglican belief and practice than that which currently exists. The churches of the Communion will decide collectively what the covenant contains in and it is entirely possible (and indeed likely) that what they will decide to do is simply ratify existing statements of Anglican belief and practice without adding to them in any way.

In any event, nothing will be able to be imposed on the Communion without the consent of the churches of the Communion and this means that any attempt to narrow down the confessional parameters of Anglicanism could only succeed if the Communion as whole decided to go in this direction and after a process in which opponents of such a move would have plenty of opportunity to argue their case.

It should also be noted that there is also a concern about exclusion among many conservative Anglicans. They fear that unless what they see as a drift towards unacceptable theological liberalism within Anglicanism is halted by clear theological boundary markers being laid down in an Anglican covenant, such liberalism will become the norm and they will end up being excluded either because of intolerance of traditional Anglicanism by liberal church authorities or because they will be conscientiously unable to remain in churches that deny the basic tents of Christian belief and behaviour.

“Anglicanism is not a confessional church” is one of the many false mantras one hears as almost a liturgical chorus these days from numerous leaders of The Episcopal Church. It is not only false in that it is not accord with our history, as Dr. Davie shows, but it is also contradicted every week in TEC nationwide in the liturgy when those participating in eucharist confess their faith in the Nicene Creed. The question rather is: Anglicanism is a confessing church in what sense? Read it all-KSH.

From the diocese of new Westminster:

The Anglican Communion described in 1930 at the Lambeth Conference: “…a fellowship, within the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted dioceses, provinces or regional Churches in communion with the See [Diocese] of Canterbury…”

In other words, “dioceses, provinces, or regional Churches” are in the Anglican Communion if they are “duly constituted” and Canterbury wants to be in communion with them.

In practice, how you can tell whether you’re still on the good side of the See of Canterbury seems to work out as being invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lambeth Conference.

It’s up to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, to decide who to invite. Up till now at least, the Archbishops of Canterbury have invited everyone, except in very rare instances of competing bishops in the same geographical area.

There’s nothing said about heads of the various national Anglican Churches, the Primates, helping the Archbishop of Canterbury decide who’s to come – although the present Archbishop of Canterbury in some statements seems to have suggested he might seek advice.

To turn to history, it was North Americans who got us into this strange situation in the first place.

It was an American bishop from Vermont who originally had the idea of a Lambeth Conference. But it was Canadian Bishops, who in 1865 urgently asked for the then 144 bishops in the Anglican Communion to meet at Lambeth in 1867.

Read it all. Please note that the author fails to give adequate attention to the way in which the controversy focused on how to work with and understand Holy Scripture. As Bishop Colenso wrote:

the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot personally have been written by Moses, or by anyone acquainted personally with the facts which it professes to describe, and, further, that the (so-called) Mosaic narrative, by whomsoever written, and though imparting to us, as I fully believe it does, revelations of the Divine Will and Character, cannot be regarded as historically true.

From Zenit:

Benedict XVI says contemplating the history of the Church should lead the faithful to be awed by God’s great work of salvation.

The Pope said this today when dedicating his reflection at the general audience to Eusebius of Caesarea, the first to write a history of the Church.

Eusebius was born around the year 260 and lived during the first years of peace for the Church under Constantine. He was one of the main protagonists at the ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325.

The Holy Father explained: “Eusebius [”¦] sought to reflect upon and take stock of the three centuries of Christianity, three centuries lived under persecution. He consulted, for the most part, the original Christian and pagan sources that had been preserved in the great library of Caesarea.

“He was the first to write a history of the Church, and to this day his work is still foundational, mainly due to the sources Eusebius puts forever at our disposal. His ‘History’ preserved from sure oblivion numerous events, people and literary works of the ancient Church. His work is therefore a primary source for knowing the first centuries of Christianity.”

The Pontiff showed that Eusebius covered various topics in his 10-volume “Ecclesiastical History”: “apostolic succession, as the structure of the Church, the spreading of the Message, errors, persecutions by pagans, and the great testimonies which constitute the shining light of this ‘History.’ Amid it all, shine the mercy and goodness of the Savior.”

Read the whole thing.

Dr. Fairfield: Classic Biblical and Anglican theology believes in a God who exists as a community of three Persons, who are nevertheless one God. We believe that these Persons exist beyond the universe, “other” than time and space. And we believe that God created the universe out of nothing.

Likewise we trust that God loves the universe and intervenes constantly to preserve it, and to heal it from the toxins that evil has mysteriously spread throughout it. We believe that Jesus was and is the Second Person of the Trinity. He existed and exists outside of all time and space. Nevertheless in His love he entered history in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago, to be with us, and to rescue us. We believe that Jesus died on the Cross to pay for our sins, thus to satisfy the norms of justice that He, the Father and the Spirit forever uphold.

And we believe that Jesus rose from the dead as a matter of historical fact – not as the resuscitation of a corpse, however, but as the first instance of a wholly new life that He wants to share with us for all eternity. Finally we believe that Jesus personally affirmed the authority of the Old Testament Scriptures, and personally commissioned and sanctioned the teaching that the Church later acknowledged to be the New Testament.

These Scriptures represent God’s official message to the human race. And while its interpretation requires the utmost of care, scholarship and grace, its central message is non-negotiable. Modernism, taken to its logical conclusions, rejects all of these classic Biblical and Anglican affirmations. For Modernism, the word “god” refers to an impersonal force that is wholly within the universe.

There is no dimension of this “force” that is not fully invested in the cosmos. This “force” neither speaks nor acts. But we know it exists because we encounter it in the depths of our psyches, in moments of transformed experience that the 19th century German thinkers like Friedrich Schleiermacher called “god-consciousness.”

Modernists attribute these moments of transformed consciousness to an undefined “Spirit.” Modernism therefore rejects Jesus as the pre-existent Second Person of the Trinity.

For Modernism, Jesus was simply a Palestinian sage, who was the first human being in evolutionary history to experience “god-consciousness” fully and perfectly. Otherwise he was purely human. He did not rise from the dead. Rather, His followers experienced a “Christ event” in which their dead teacher seemed to be still present and alive to them. Therefore the prospect of an actual life after death is both iffy and unimportant for Modernism.

Finally Modernism views the Bible as it does all the holy books amongst the world religions, namely as a human artifact. The Bible represents one ancient people’s attempt to talk about “god-consciousness” and to pass on that experience to new converts.

But Modernists believe that the Bible was completely conditioned by its ancient environment, and has considerable historical interest but no authority for Christians today. As one Episcopal bishop recently put it, “The Church wrote the Bible, so the Church can re-write the Bible.” To sum it up, Modernism uses all the old familiar Christian words, but changes all the meanings. And it neglects to tell the laity. “Why does any of this matter anyway?”

Dr. Fairfield: As you can see, these two belief systems are mutually exclusive. Either you believe in a God who is both beyond time and space and within it, or you believe in a “god” who is merely an impersonal force completely inside the cosmos. There is no half-way point, no via media between these two opposing religions (the classic Anglican via media meant something entirely different).

Read it all.

THE king’s word was law. Rules were made and amended according to his whim. He was elevated to the status of a deity – a spiritual being whose reign was shrouded in mysticism. Worshipping the Kabaka was the reason a Muganda lived. But the arrival of Anglican and Catholic missionaries in the Buganda kingdom from Europe in 1877 opened the gates for a religious, social and political revolution in a conservative traditional set-up.

The revolution would culminate into King Mwanga II’s vicious persecution of his servants. The missionaries taught a new religion (Christianity) and about a supreme loving God, who they said was the creator and ruler of everything, including Kabaka Mwanga, their king.

Whoever denounced all native religious behaviour and practices as heathen and satanic and converted to Christianity, would be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven.

Heaven, Mwanga’s subjects were told, was a place where there is no death, disease or suffering of any form.

Read it all.

The couple had arrived in the city in March or April of 1885 and, according to reports, found the parish disorganized and the church building in deplorable condition.

“[The] (Rev. Diller) went at once to work, and out of the chaos brought forth and restored a beautiful house of prayer and parish building of excellent design and a united and happy parish,” wrote his bishop, the Rt. Rev. Cortlandt Whitehead of Pittsburgh.

The congregation grew to more than 200 communicants.

Diller also was active in outreach ministry to other small municipalities in the area including a fledgling mission church in Ehrenfeld.

“He was particularly loved and honored among the lowly and the success of his ministry among them was most remarkable,” his bishop wrote.

“Among the coal miners he had made himself the personal friend of all.”

Diller wrote of the young church to his fellow clergyman.

“It would do your heart good to see such a crowd of men, chiefly, all shining with soap and cleanliness that cost miners a great deal, all attentive to my long services and explanations and addresses in a hall without a particle of heat, when it was nearly zero and one’s breath looked more like steam from an engine.

“There were two fatal catastrophes at the mines, besides a couple of other deaths, since I have been going there and they were all so grateful for my simple ministries,” he continued.

“They are so poor that there is no hope of their building a church.”

It was the love of a shepherd for his flock that kept the sincere man of God from instantly accepting the call to a better position.

“I so fear my successor will abandon these dear sheep in the wilderness,” he wrote.

But Diller was exhausted, conducting half a dozen services a week in addition to numerous funerals. He wrote of his frequent illnesses and of the isolation he sometimes felt.

“I am so alone here … 40 miles from the nearest clerical neighbor. And I am so terribly tired …”

But the challenges he faced did not compare with his commitment to his people. And so, a little more than a month before the flood, Diller made his decision.

“O, sir, I do not want to go away; my people are so kind and foolishly fond of me,” he wrote.

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The Rev. Dennis J. Bennett, for one, is sure the explosion is on the way; last week he took up new duties in Seattle at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church as the direct result of his interest in glossolalia. London-born Father Bennett, 42, a graduate of Chicago Theological Seminary (Congregational) who later became an Episcopalian, was assigned to St. Mark’s Church in Van Nuys, Calif, in 1953. Last October he agreed to meet with some members of a fellow minister’s church who had found themselves beginning to speak in tongues. First he was surprised to find that they were neither far-out types nor emotionally unbalanced; then he discovered that he had the “gift” himself and that the experience was “enriching.”

Father Bennett brought the idea into his own parish””and began to run into trouble. Of his 2,000 parishioners, he says, some 700 developed a positive, sympathetic interest”””they included the junior warden and the chairman of the women’s guild. They were about equally divided between men and women, and there was a large number of couples. The group included a Ph.D. and a brain surgeon.” But conservative Episcopalians were shocked. In April the vestry asked Pastor Bennett for his resignation, and Bishop Francis Eric Bloy of Los Angeles sent St. Mark’s a new priest and a pastoral letter banning any more speaking in tongues under church auspices.

Father Bennett has no plans to get glossolalia going again in his new post, a small missionary church, but he “mentions” it privately to people he thinks could benefit. “The gift of tongues is a freeing of the personality in expressing one’s self more profoundly, particularly toward God, even though the symbols are not understood by the speaker. It does not happen in a trance. The person is releasing something deeper than the ordinary symbols of language.”

Doyosi Ki-i-yeno. One evening last week, in an apartment motel in Van Nuys, seven Episcopalians of Father Bennett’s former flock met together to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. Bursts of laughter from a television set across the courtyard invaded the reverent silence, but the two men and five women paid no attention, praying aloud from time to time for individuals in sickness or trouble and for “those who are resisting the out pouring of the Holy Spirit….

California’s Methodist Bishop Gerald Kennedy dismisses the movement. “In the past there have been movements of this sort, but they never did the church any good.” But Seventh Day Baptist Paul Henry, a lawyer of Fontana, Calif., speaks for many of the “spirit-filled” when he says: “It’s only my guess, but I think it may be an outpouring just before the termination of this age.”

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