I had not read Thielicke for many years until I recently discovered a book of his that I had never heard of: Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer. This work is stunning, for it identifies the problem at the center of our contemporary culture: a collapse in the cultural consensus about what it means to be human. The book’s context is the anthropological challenges posed by Nazism and Marxism in the twentieth century, but its argument offers insights for today.

At the heart of the problems of his day Thielicke saw the rejection of two basic principles: the idea that human beings had an end, a telos; and the notion that limits were good. In short, what it meant to be human was up for grabs. In practice, this made human beings anything that their will could achieve, given the technological possibilities available in any given time or place. And that was a key component of nihilism.

We have witnessed amazing technological advances since the 1940s. The transformation of humanity from a given, limited, teleological essence to a potency whose limits and ends are merely technical problems to be overcome is now complete (at least in the cultural imagination). Ironically, human technical brilliance has served to make human beings into nothing of any great significance. We are the only creatures on the planet who are intelligent and intentional enough to have abolished ourselves.

Read it all.

This is fantastic from @firstthingsmag https://t.co/IS26rEGPG6

— Scott Howard (@ConservaMuse) March 18, 2024

In this month’s interview, Public Discourse’s managing editor, Alexandra Davis, interviews Tara Isabella Burton, author of Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. The two discuss the development of the modern self-help movement and the less-than-desirable fruits of a culture whose consciousness has been shaped by the notion that reality is not discovered, but made.

Alexandra Davis: What initially sparked your interest in this topic?

Tara Isabella Burton: My doctoral research at Oxford was in theology, but specifically it was in the theology of Dandyism. So I was looking at nineteenth-century decadence, particularly in France, and the idea of the person who creates their life as art. I was looking at a particular nineteenth-century phenomenon, but I was particularly interested in the relationship between technological modernity and the idea of art and self-creation as something that was both seemingly a resistance to mass production and urbanization, but also very much a modern theological statement about the self vis-à-vis a natural world or a divinely created world that had meaning outside of what the self makes it. A lot of these later figures were also influenced by philosophical currents, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and so that dynamic was something that I really loved exploring.

After I finished my doctorate, I came to New York, where I’m from, started working for Vox.com as a religion journalist, and wrote my first nonfiction book, Strange Rites, which is much more about the “spiritual but not religious.” It’s more of a contemporary book. As I was thinking about what I wanted to do for a follow-up to Strange Rites, I thought about this idea that, particularly in the internet age, we think of ourselves as our own gods, we want to curate our own bespoke realities. And I realized that a lot of this historical material would be relevant to a much more contemporary story, and so that was the genesis of Self-Made.

Read it all.

https://t.co/3s6AXPhTOa As this idea of self-creation has become seen as the fundamental element of human life, that means those of us who participate more fully in self-creation are more human, and those of us who participate less fully are, in some sense, less human.

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) February 1, 2024

Should we mourn the slow death of the traditional funeral?

The soaring cost of ceremonies and an increasingly secular society mean that fewer than half of Britons now want a funeral, according to a study this week. This raises the question, what do they want instead? The answer — which anyone who watches daytime television will surely know — is a direct cremation.

Also known as a “takeaway funeral”, the rise of a cheap, no-frills cremation with no relatives in attendance started under lockdown, but has remained enduringly popular, now accounting for nearly one in five UK deaths. Costs are kept low by using out-of-the-way crematoria, often very early in the morning before traditional ceremonies with mourners and wreaths begin.

Read it all.

The untimely death of the funeral https://t.co/cT2HaZQjGU

— Finance News (@ftfinancenews) December 2, 2023

Fewer than half (47 per cent) of respondents to a new poll say that they would like a funeral.

The poll of 2569 was commissioned by the thinktank Theos and carried out by YouGov in July. The authors of Theos’s report on the polling, Love, Grief, and Hope: Emotional responses to death and dying in the UK, Madeleine Pennington and Nathan Mladin, speak of a “significant realignment in British grieving practices”. They warn of the potential for a “significant pastoral gap left in the wake of a decline in formal funeral ceremonies”, and that funerals could become a “luxury or niche requirement for a few”….

In total, 24 per cent of respondents said that they did not want a funeral, while 28 per cent were not sure or did not know. Financial factors influenced the responses: 13 per cent of respondents who did not want a funeral said that this was because they did not have enough money saved.

The commonest response was: “I think the money could be better spent another way” (67 per cent); followed by “I don’t see the point” (55 per cent); and “I don’t want a traditional service” (43 per cent).

Read it all.

We get a lot of polling around religious affiliation and attendance. This @Theosthinktank one on public’s attitudes to death and funerals feels very significant. Fewer than half want a funeral with 55% of those who don’t citing ‘I don’t see the point’ https://t.co/C9nI2JZF54

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) November 28, 2023

“People are yearning for something greater than themselves — beyond their own understanding,” said Jack Grogger, a chaplain for the Los Angeles Angels and a longtime Southern California fire captain who has aided many people in their gravest moments.

That search for something bigger, he said, can take on many forms, from following a religion to crafting a self-driven purpose to believing in, of course, angels.

“For a lot of people, angels are a lot safer to worship,” said Grogger, who also pastors a nondenominational church in Orange, California, and is a chaplain for the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks.

People turn to angels for comfort, he said. They are familiar, regularly showing up in pop culture as well as in the Bible. Comparably, worshipping Jesus is far more involved; when Grogger preaches about angels it is with the context that they are part of God’s kingdom.

American’s belief in angels (69%) is about on par with belief in heaven and the power of prayer, but bested by belief in God or a higher power (79%). Fewer U.S. adults believe in the devil or Satan (56%), astrology (34%), reincarnation (34%), and that physical things can have spiritual energies, such as plants, rivers or crystals (42%).

Read it all.

Do you believe in angels? About 7 in 10 U.S. adults do, a new AP-NORC poll shows | AP News https://t.co/ToRPGMUoUW

— James F. McGrath (@ReligionProf) July 29, 2023

In fact we are discovering that the decline of organised religion does not imply the eradication of human irrationality, human tribalism or the human longing for moral certainty. Astrology is — astonishingly — a booming industry. Antivaxers prosper on GB News. Among educated people there is a burgeoning faith in the existence of a quasi-spiritual “personal truth” that trumps objective reality. A fascination with apocalypse afflicts the “doomer” fringes of the climate movement and AI pessimists such as Eliezer Yudkowsky warn that the end of days is near (“everyone will die, including children”). Conspiracies such as QAnon have morphed into quasi-religions promoting visions of a child-sacrificing, blood-drinking elite that would not look out of place in a medieval Doom painting.

Fifteen years ago “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens launched gleeful attacks on religion. It turns out that what they really despised was human nature. Few are capable of living without faith of any kind. “Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” as TS Eliot wrote. The political theorist Samuel Goldman has proposed “the law of the conservation of religion”. All societies have a relatively constant level of religious feeling. What changes is how it is expressed.

It is no accident that the decline of religion has coincided with the outbreak of an age of secular moralising. It seems we cannot get by without the reassurance of absolute moral laws.

Read it all (subscription).

Fascinating (and admirably candid) material from @j_amesmarriott in today’s @thetimes

‘It is no accident that the decline of religion has coincided with the outbreak of an age of secular moralising. It seems we cannot get by without the reassurance of absolute moral laws.’ pic.twitter.com/2mrBpL2TkR

— Andrew Roycroft (@AndrewTRoycroft) July 13, 2023

Bush never stipulates that the rest of the world must “become like America” in so many words. How could he? The whole point of his rhetoric was to assure himself that he was at the helm of the gigantic killing machine that is the United States military not merely to protect and promote American interests, but in order to bring the blessings of liberty to every corner of the earth. The final paragraph of Bush’s introduction reveals the self-deception:

Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilization. Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s ­triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.

One is hard pressed to imagine a more utopian vision—freedom’s triumph over all its foes! But Bush was president of the United States, not of the world. Moreover, this document and its urgency stemmed from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. There can be no doubt that Bush was concerned for the weal and woe of Americans.

We can substitute America or American interests for the key word “freedom” in this final paragraph without altering the strategic implications. Indeed, if we make these substitutions, Bush’s words become more faithful to events. Here is my rendering in that spirit:

Being American is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilization. Throughout history, American interests have been threatened by war and terror; they have been challenged by clashing wills of powerful states and evil designs of tyrants. . . . Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further America’s triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.

To speak about America in this way seems rather grandiose. But in truth, both versions, Bush’s actual words and my rendition, border on the delusional. This is perhaps to be expected. Baby Boomers were intoxicated by the fusion of hard responsibilities with the most exalted moral idealism. An intoxicated person has blurred vision and a tenuous grasp on reality, and he often makes bad judgments.

Read it all.

Cursed by the Boomers by R. R. Reno | Articles | First Things https://t.co/qLylAU4XXl

— Allen Mendenhall (@allenmendenhall) February 14, 2023

Direct cremations, when the body is cremated without a service and the ashes are returned to the family, have risen in popularity in the last few years, partly because they are the cheapest option.

Janet Jones, 70, of Attleborough, Norfolk, is considering whether to book one for herself and her husband, as she wants to make sure her two children can benefit from whatever money they have left.

Janet worked for 30 years in a GP surgery and her husband Chris, who she has been married to for 50 years, worked for 33 years in a factory.

“We’ve worked all our lives and we want our children to have that money to do something to remember us in their own way,” she says….

Average funeral costs were £4,056 last year, compared to an average cost of £1,647 for direct cremations, which now account for 18% of all funerals, according to insurer SunLife.

Read it all.

Andy Vermaut shares:Cost of living: 'I don't want a funeral, it's a waste of money': Cremations without a service are on the rise, but others say they need a funeral to deal with grief. https://t.co/WFVgbTRskC Thank you pic.twitter.com/LdmfDDZQyJ

— Andy Vermaut (@AndyVermaut) February 21, 2023

The assumption that proper catechesis produces assent to Catholic doctrine—which thereby fosters Catholic identity and practice—assumes that people choose their actions and identity primarily on the basis of theological beliefs. Yet this widely held assumption has come under fire recently. James K. A. Smith’s work on cultural liturgies draws on Augustine, cognitive psychology, and philosophies of action to challenge this myth: people’s behavior is not driven primarily by what they know and believe but by what they love and imagine as good. This is not to say that beliefs are unimportant, but that what gives shape to human action is primarily one’s imagination and enduring dispositions (habitus) rather than mere assent to doctrine.

This notion is consistent with St. John Paul II’s critique of modern culture in Evangelium Vitae, which focuses on “the eclipse of the sense of God” (§21). He argues that people do not lose their sense of God because of their beliefs, but due to a “loss of contact with God’s wise design,” which occurs “when nature itself, from being ‘mater’ (mother), is now reduced to being ‘matter,’ and is subjected to every kind of manipulation” (EV §22). John Paul II names this loss of the sense of God as “the deepest [root] of the struggle between the ‘culture of life’ and the ‘culture of death,’” which is characteristic of a “social and cultural climate dominated by secularism” (EV §21). People who lose “contact with God’s wise design” and their sense of God are prone to begin “living as if God does not exist,” (EV §21) also known as “practical atheism.” The most shocking aspect of this diagnosis of modern secularity is that it even describes many who maintain belief in God and superficial religiosity, since assenting to orthodox theology does not protect someone from losing their sense of God and living as if he does not exist.

This is not to say that beliefs are unimportant, but that one’s imagination—whether Catholic or secular—is ultimately more important for determining whether someone embodies a life of faith.

Read it all.

Very good article. Solid catechesis (and apologetics) is needed, but most important are parents and friends “whose everyday lives are an attractive witness to the Catholic faith.”https://t.co/w6fi5l89Xz

— Matthew (@Matthew0331) September 26, 2022

A couple’s wedding day is traditionally considered one of the most important in life, but churches have become increasingly spared from hosting nuptials.

Marriages in places of worship have hit a record low, new figures revealed on Thursday, accounting for less than a fifth of all ceremonies for the first time.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released data on marriages in England and Wales in 2019, analysed by age, sex, previous marital status and civil or religious ceremony.

It found that in 2019, religious ceremonies accounted for less than one in five (18.7 per cent) of opposite-sex marriages, a decrease from 21.1 per cent in 2018 and the lowest percentage on record; for same-sex marriages, 0.7 per cent of marriages were religious ceremonies.

Researchers said that the reason for the decline was down to “couples choosing to live together rather than marry, either as a precursor to marriage or as an alternative”.

Read it all.

💍Marriages in places of worship have hit a record low, accounting for less than a fifth of all nuptials

Here's what the data shows 🧵👇https://t.co/dM2KRZwXie

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 19, 2022

I recently received review copies of two books on the same day. The first, a galley of a book to be published by Eerdmans near the end of July, was Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age, by Dale C. Allison, Jr. The second, just out from Hurst, was Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World, by Elle Hardy. The fortuitous juxtaposition was ironic, of course, but more than that, it was very close to my heart. Like you, I expect, I have seen an ever-increasing number of articles and books intimating a radical shrinkage of “religion,” ranging from Ryan Burge’s The Nones to recent provocative columns by Philip Jenkins (to mention just two examples from a vast field). And behind this, of course, we must acknowledge the enormous, though to me still unaccountable, influence of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age.

I will not issue any predictions. Many years ago, the admirable Joseph Ratzinger foresaw a radical shrinkage of the church, suggesting that, difficult as this passage might be, it could be purifying. I don’t know for sure what the future, even the “near future,” holds in this respect, but I do know that—for the moment, at least—we do not remotely live in a “secular age.” Imagine my surprise when, as I began to read Encountering Mystery, I discovered that Allison himself, despite the subtitle affixed to his book, also does not believe that we live in a “secular age.” On the contrary, and how strange. Whence then the framing? Perhaps that is why the superb scholar and memoirist Carlos Eire describes Encountering Mystery as a “marvelously daring book.” It is just that, describing many experiences (a few firsthand, many recounted by others) of the numinous, the mystical, the supernatural. I hope in due course that you will read it yourself. Nor, it’s important to add, are such experiences limited to Christians; see, for example, Susannah Crockford’s Ripples of the Universe: Spirituality in Sedona, Arizona.

Read it all.

John Wilson reviews “Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World.”https://t.co/KLTHBepYjl

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) March 29, 2022

Standing atop an approximately 8-foot-high ladder, Evan Clark tugged at a sign tightly nailed to a utility pole on the intersection of Echo Park and Bellevue avenues, just beyond the 101 freeway ramps.

The sign quoted John 14:6, and as Clark spun and pulled it to loosen it from the pole, a man in a car shouted, “The way. The truth. The life!,” quoting the words from the Bible verse emblazoned on the placard Clark was trying to take down. The man, Clark said, likely assumed he was placing the sign, not removing it.

“People put a lot of passion behind these signs and their messages and ideas about Jesus and God,” Clark said. “I don’t like to be confrontational about any of that. I just wanted to do this as a casual thing to keep our streets secular.”

Read it all.

Religion in Southern California is being reinvented “as religious ‘nones’ create new forms of purposeful community.”

Thanks to @alemolina for referencing @usccrcc sociologists @richardflory @shindostreet @naligee & Andrew Jackson in this @RNS piece. https://t.co/B4YJmKR5nP

— USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture (@usccrcc) March 17, 2022

Death was once — potentially, at least — an expression of some ultimate triumph. Now it is the bitter failure of our technology. And whatever we spend on it, no amount of money will overcome this gap.

Death, then, is the political issue we are not talking about. Even after the pandemic, when the daily death figures were broadcast on every news broadcast, we continue to say little about death other than making the uncritical assumption it is always to be avoided.

And so we are sleepwalking into a state of affairs in which the young will resent the elderly for the burden they place upon them. Of course, we should support the generous funding for social care. What we ought to be challenging is whether the medical technologies that are keeping us alive for ever longer complement our understanding of what human existence is for.

But I see little appetite for that. In a secular society, we have few intellectual or cultural resources to challenge the pervasiveness of more-ism. And to live deeper, more meaningful lives is not the same as living longer ones.

Read it all.

We're obsessed with living for longer — but what's the point? | @giles_fraser https://t.co/DjEvkMqgqx

— UnHerd (@unherd) September 9, 2021

Steve Bruce, Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen, is a leading proponent of the secularisation thesis. Religion has been in decline in Britain for 150 years, he argues, and there is little reason to think this process is going to be halted. Religious believers will not find his new book a comforting read but it does have lessons to teach us. Members of the Church of England concerned with evangelism and church growth would do well to read it.

Bruce is adept at dismissing those who have argued in defence of the persistence of religion. Grace Davie has spoken of vicarious religion in which a small proportion of the population are seen as carrying out religious activities on behalf of a larger number of people who are not directly involved. The role clergy often play when disaster strikes could be seen as an example of vicarious religion but Bruce argues clergy are candidates to act as honest brokers because they no longer have religious significance. ‘Like eunuchs working in a harem,’ he writes, ‘the clergy are invited to play significant social roles because they are impotent’.

For many Christians the charismatic movement is an important sign of renewal. Bruce argues this has not brought many new members into the churches. Most of those who have been at attracted were already Christian. Only 1 per cent of those who attend Alpha courses have not at some time been regular church goers. Bruce sees dangers for Christianity in the way the charismatic movement prefers feelings over doctrine and moves away from a distinctive culture of church architecture, liturgy, dress, ritual and hymns. In some ways it represents a secularisation of Christianity. Examining New Age beliefs and practices Bruce, correctly argues, they are not widespread enough to take the place of Christianity.

When it comes to new African or West Indian churches, Bruce maintains that their language and style is too alien to enable them to be effective carriers of the gospel to the white, British population. He may have a point here but he is mistaken in arguing that church growth in London is only fuelled by the immigration. The Diocese of London has seen significant growth and John Wolfe has analysed why this has happened. David Goodhew has also written of growing churches in London and elsewhere but Bruce nowhere refers to his work.

Read it all.

As the temperature hovered around freezing, hundreds of men trickled into a former slaughterhouse on a recent Friday. In the overflow crowd outside, scores more unfurled their prayer mats on the asphalt as the imam’s voice intoned through loudspeakers.

The old slaughterhouse has served as a temporary mosque for the past 21 years for many Muslims in Angers, a city in western France. Construction on a permanent home has stalled since last fall when the City Council unanimously rejected a proposal by Muslim leaders to hand ownership of their unfinished mosque to the government of Morocco in return for its completion. Local members, after donating more than $2.8 million, were tapped out.

Building a mosque in France is a tortuous endeavor at the best of times. Members tend to be poorer than other French people. Turning to foreign donors raises a host of concerns — both inside and outside Muslim communities — that are coming under intensifying scrutiny with President Emmanuel Macron’s new law against Islamism, which is expected to get final approval in the Senate in coming weeks.

Complicating matters for Muslims has been France’s principle of secularism, called laïcité, which established a firewall between state and church. While the government regards itself as strictly neutral before all faiths, the law effectively made the state the biggest landlord of Roman Catholic churches in France and the guardian of cultural Roman Catholicism.

Read it all.

The French government regards itself as strictly neutral before all faiths. But the financial implications of France's principle of laïcité tell a different story.

Our article with @onishinyt https://t.co/ZMnIYKyXGr

— Constant Méheut (@ConstantMeheut) March 31, 2021

No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology”—as in, the successor to liberalism.

At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly—and then to explain it to others.

The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game—due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself—must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with—designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” as the writer Audre Lorde put it. And the master’s house must be dismantled—because the house is rotted at its foundation.

Read it all.

Stop Being Shocked.
An important, must-read article by Bari Weiss:

"American liberalism is in danger from a new ideology—one with dangerous implications" — not only for Jews.https://t.co/Zrb6JHwfbC

— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) October 16, 2020

It is here that Farrow’s book is so singularly helpful. The essay “Autonomy: Sic transit anima ad infernum” is worth the price of the book all by itself. In it he traces with both remarkable depth and enviable conciseness the rise of the modern self: the autonomous self-creator to whom reality must bend or, better still, for whom reality is merely what works best for the individual concerned. With roots in Rousseau and Nietzsche, this self lies behind Anthony Kennedy’s oft-cited fantasy of selfhood in Casey and lurks in the background of all the subsequent Supreme Court rulings on matters involving sexuality, up to and including Bostock. Indeed, Farrow makes the necessary point:

The autonomous will really has no choice but to attack the body as well as the mind. For the body is the most obvious locus of the given, the most stubborn impediment to the power claimed by the will.

Transgenderism is the logical outcome of all this. In fact, the annihilation of gender as a stable category tout court is the logical outcome—a point that seems to have eluded Justice Gorsuch, who apparently wants to keep his binary categories while not realizing the metaphysical depths of the revolution he has now placed into law.

The shock and awe surrounding the Bostock ruling perhaps indicates that the old task of apologetics is now being oddly reversed. The pressing pastoral need of the hour for the church is not to explain the faith to the world but rather first to explain the world to the faithful. If Richard Rorty’s famous quip—the truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying—works as a descriptive rather than prescriptive principle in terms of cultural dynamics, in terms of which arguments work and which do not, then it behooves us to ask in what kind of culture the stated logic of the Bostock decision has come to make sense. If Christians do not understand the wider context, then they will continue to underestimate the true depth of the cultural problem, be perplexed at the speed of apparent change, and be disturbed by new developments. And that will make it very hard to navigate this world as both good citizens and good stewards of the gospel.

Read it all.

It behooves us to ask in what kind of culture the stated logic of the “Bostock” decision has come to make sense.https://t.co/WEDQUHVIaq

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) June 28, 2020

During the noughties, many teenage contemporaries were attracted to the shouty certainty of the ‘New Atheism’, just as today’s youngsters choose the climate change pulpit to lecture older generations. Shamefully, I accused my mother – a consummate do-gooder – of child abuse for baptising me without my consent. The canard “If you’re not a socialist at 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 30, you have no brain”, may be trite but it reflects a fundamental truth; maturity often involves the realisation that we can learn much from the past.

Indeed, the Church of England still safeguards our architectural and artistic inheritance. National identity is inseparable from its defining texts, the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer. It is impossible to interpret much great art or literature created before the 1900s without some Bible knowledge.

But perhaps the most important lesson is how churchgoing takes us outside the trivia of our own lives – the preoccupations and obsessions induced by social media and that sense of ourselves as the star of our own B-movie biopic. It enables us to escape – if temporarily – such narcissism, focusing on the wider world and taking a longer view. For me it is at least a partial antidote to the illusory optimism, anxiety and depression that has defined my generation.

Read it all.

On the joy of attending church as an atheist https://t.co/DAWSOVksbU

— Madeline Grant (@Madz_Grant) February 23, 2020

Question. We went from ‘I think therefore I am’, to ‘I feel therefore I am’, and then to post-truth. What is the reference that will be an anchor to human beings in this new decade?

Answer. The two great anchors of human beings are truth and hope. Both come together, they are inseparable and make the backbone of human existence. These two do not vary with time, we need them today just like twenty centuries ago. What changes is the relationship, the attitude of Man towards these two anchors. That’s where the origin of the current deep crisis of values lies. The replacement of ‘the Truth’ by ‘my truth’ has broken one of the anchors, dragging the other one, hope, with its breakup. In his best known work From Dawn To Decay, the renowned French historian Jacques Barzun, already warned that ‘the postmodern assault on the idea of truth could lead us to the destruction of 500 years of civilisation’.

The root of the conflict is not cultural or ideological, it is a moral one. Ultimately, it is not a matter of a new philosophy, but a matter of who has the authority in my life and in the world. Does anyone rule up there or can I rule?

A strong earthquake has shaken the foundations of Western civilisation, because in the last 30 years the foundation and nature of the truth have amazingly changed. The change is summed up in one sentence: ‘Truth is dead, long live to my truth!’

Read it all.

In the remainder of this report I want to focus on responding to the immense missionary challenges that are facing the Christian Church in general and the Cathedral in particular. In November I gave a set of talks in the Diocese of Dallas on this problem entitled Modernity and Mission. The topic was the focus of my study and prayer for the Summer and Fall. I believe I have a better understanding of what is distinctive about the missionary environment in which we find ourselves and greater clarity about what an authentic missionary engagement with modernity looks like. I have been trying to share some of these thoughts in the Dean’s Forum. As a result of this study I believe strongly that The Cathedral of All Saints is uniquely positioned to be especially effective in reaching contemporary people for the sake of Jesus Christ.

There are many blessings of modernity for which to give thanks, modern medicine and a remarkable rise in the standard of living right across the world. Modernity is also characterized by what the old preachers called worldliness, a mentality which is preoccupied with the things of this world in which God is not so much denied as forgotten. The experience of transcendence, of holiness and otherness is rare. The experience of awe which leads to worship is rare and so modern people are in jeopardy of losing their souls and of losing that which is essential to our humanity: the worship of the one true and living God. It requires something powerful to break out of the captivity to this worldliness and the diminution and constriction of the human heart that must be its consequence. It requires something like a Gothic Cathedral.

Read it all.

“Sunday Is Not the New Monday” shouted the headline of the “Success” section in a recent edition of our Chicago Tribune (Monday, December 30, 2019). Having many reasons—cultural, theological, traditional, personal, etc.—to care about Sunday (or analogues to it in Judaism, Adventism, Islam, and more) I took the bait and read on. Author John Boitnott opens the article with a description of what Sunday used to mean—or what he thinks it used to mean—and how it served: “Sunday used to be for relaxing, spending time with family and friends and catching up on personal tasks.” Boitnott says that he associates with “entrepreneurs” and authors of advice columns who encourage their readers to “stay available for work outside traditional business hours.”

Boitnott offers four clusters of advice in settings where “work” casts its shadow on Sundays: “Stop the guilt,” “Remove yourself from the work environment,” “Set limits and retrain those around you,” and “Plan for Monday on Friday.” So far, so good, if “workism” or “workaholism” is your problem. But is that all that is at stake and all that is to be offered to face the problem? We Sightings columnists are charged to notice those overlookable stories wherein religion or the religious may in fact be significant. Reread the Boitnott sentence again, the one about how “Sunday used to be for relaxing, spending time with family and friends and catching up on personal tasks.” Yes, but for tens of millions of North Americans, among others, Sundays (for Christians; Fridays for Muslims; Shabbat for Jews; etc.) were also for helping people tend to general and specific matters of the spirit and the soulful flourishing of life….

Read it all.

The modern world is dominated by the cult of politics. There is no better way to describe how we imagine things to work. Regardless of our protests to the contrary, contemporary people believe in a secular world – a world that operates according to its own laws and principles (cause and effect) – and where those with power are those who are able to “make things happen.” Power is understood to be identical with coercion (or the “authority” to coerce) and wealth (the ability to pay people to do your bidding). The apex of this power is identified with governments. As such, we understand “politics” to be the primary means of controlling and shaping the world. This is life as cult. We are told (and agree) that the thing we call “government” controls and shapes the world, and that it is its legitimate role. Every protest to the contrary is met either with perhaps two verses of Scripture (if you’re a Christian) or dismissal as some sort of nut (perhaps an Amish nut of sorts).

Much of this cult has been created in the crucible of modernity itself. At its heart, modernity (and all of its political forms) teaches that the shaping and control of history is the proper role of government. It is the agent of change. If anyone resists this claim or refuses to participate, then they are charged with failing to take up their responsibilities. It is a cult that demands our participation (the very nature of a cult).

Malick’s film concludes with a quote from George Elliot’s Middlemarch:

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

I would go further than Elliot. The hidden life is the only true life, and what is deemed “historic” is little more than propaganda. The propaganda does not serve the moment-by-moment reality that each of us necessarily inhabits. Rather, it serves to empower those who most want to do violence without the distraction of a conscience.

Read it all.

Why are fewer people going to church?

It’s very hard to put your finger on this, but this is what I’m trying to work out: that there’s another kind of spiritual life, spiritual searching, going on to a great extent in our contemporary West—sometimes it’s in totally different religions, or totally non-religious—and that this somehow is taking off at the expense of an earlier way of expressing one’s spirituality, which involves being members of national churches or in the case of a very diverse country like Canada, at least a church which you know is very big and solid in some parts of the country.

It’s not that religion is disappearing, or spirituality is disappearing; it’s taking different forms. If you put yourself in the mindset of people, in particular of younger people, who are concerned about the meaning of life, concerned about becoming better people, more loving, more open, etc., and are seeking in some way some discipline—it could be meditation, it could be various things—if you put yourself in the mindset of these people, when they go to the pews the least bad thing is that they don’t feel it’s very relevant! The worst thing is they feel that their whole way of approaching this is not really appreciated and it may be seen as threatening the people in the pews. Now of course this is perhaps more the case—I’m a Catholic—in the case of the Catholic church [laughs], where you have these very backward-looking people who are screaming abuse at [Pope] Francis and so on [laughs]!

That’s the extreme case, where you actually feel, “I’d better rush out of this place [laughs]! Or I’m going to be badly treated.” But the least worrying or problematic [for those outside the church] is just that this is not a concern that people [in the pews] recognize, this searching concern. “Everything is all settled, and we’re all together in these pews affirming it.”

Read it all.

Philosopher Charles Taylor on a more inclusive world and winning $1M Berggruen Prize: https://t.co/jdD2dcouKm pic.twitter.com/rwSgDID7iu

— As It Happens (@cbcasithappens) October 5, 2016

If religion is that which holds our attention and which binds us together, then it’s not Christianity. Christianity today is mostly just sentimentality, escapist devotion, mere identity politics and mere posture. It’s no longer religion in any genuine sense. Because what holds our attention today, what binds us together, are no longer dogma and precepts, but instead all those decadent diversions, customs and conventions of our rich but interiorly vacuous society. This is our religion today: binge-watching Netflix, consumption addictions to various social media, pornography, and the litanies of endless news, fake or otherwise. This is what we relegit, what we re-read, what holds our attention, not God or the good, the true, or the beautiful. This is the new religion, homogenizing imagination and sedating moral impulse, rendering us more pliable to the free movement of capital. This is the economic spirituality of “influence.” This is the theology of advertising.

Likewise, we also see our new religion in what schedules us. No longer rhythmed by the worship of our gods or by the earth’s seasons, now our lives are paced by the quarters of our fiscal year, by our Black Fridays, for instance, and no longer our Thanksgivings. Add to this, especially among the middle classes, the religion of sports, that countless meaningless practices and games now set the schedules for innumerable families, no longer Sabbaths or Sundays or family ties. That is truly religare. This is what binds us, not holy days, rituals or quaint moralities. More than any persecutions, these have displaced the old religions: these new screened, advertised, unstable rites and less any incarnate, old, fickle gods.

And it’s why the question for me is not how we’ll live in some new non-religious world, but about what piety and devotion looks like in this new emerging religion. But of course, this, I admit, I can’t begin to imagine, tied, as I prefer to be, to my ancient God. I just wonder if it will be a religion of charity, a religion that will either cherish or kill the poor. I wonder if it will restore or ruin the earth, if it’s a religion of equality or elites. These are the questions that haunt me as I wonder what the “nones” with their “nothing in particular” will become.

Because they must become something. I’m just frightened by what that may be.

Read it all.

We are no longer bound together by religion, but by vacuous consumption addictions | Commentary https://t.co/gnm4ifLLWE

— Dallas Morning News (@dallasnews) November 4, 2019

“In Silicon Valley,” Mr. Seibel added, “we did not talk this much about mental health even three years ago.” He estimates that more than 50 related start-ups are coming onto the scene. His firm just funded three: Stoic; Quirk, an app that uses cognitive behavioral therapy to treat people with anxiety and depression; and Mindset Health, which creates hypnotherapy apps that it says can treat anxiety, depression and irritable bowel syndrome.

Mindset Health was founded by two brothers, Alex and Chris Naoumidis, who previously created a peer-to-peer dress-sharing app for women. When that app failed, the brothers felt overcome with anxiety.

“We fell into this period of mental health problems,” said Alex Naoumidis, 24.

The brothers tried some of the existing wellness apps — meditation products, mindfulness tools — but remained unmoored. Their father suggested in-person hypnotherapy. It gave them the idea for Mindset.

Read it all.

Silicon Valley Goes to Therapy: the questions that are percolating in the national consciousness are making tech work not as glamorous or as noble as it was https://t.co/nDix8lMj5q #digitaldetox #mentalhealth pic.twitter.com/FasuRqLrST

— Tanya Goodin ☜ (@tanyagoodin) September 23, 2019

An all-black dress code, pallbearers marching in unison, and a steady stream of tears are not often associated with golf courses, zoos and Chinese takeaways.

Yet according to the most extensive ever report on UK funeral trends which, the religious funeral is dying a death.

Instead of services in crematoriums, churches and cemeteries, Britons are instead opting for increasingly quirky ways to mourn their loved ones.

The Co-op, the UK’s largest national funeral provider which conducts more than 100,000 every year, has today published a report revealing that since 2011 there has been a 80 per cent decline in religious funerals.

Eight-years-ago 67 per cent of people requested traditional religious services and just 12 per cent were non-religious. However by 2018, just 13 per cent wanted a religious funeral.

Read it all.

What is happening to death?

80 per cent decline in religious funerals as mourners opt for golf courses and zoos over churches https://t.co/0pwP4Jk9iF via @telegraphnews

— Fr Timothy Ezat ✠ (@Fr_Ezat) September 1, 2019

The Christian Church today faces severe challenges globally. In the ‘two thirds world’ it faces persecution of great severity, notably in cultures wishing to stress Islamic identity and practice such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Simply being a Christian brings daily hazards and vulnerability to accusation and attack. In the wealthy West the Church faces very different dangers, largely in the form of pressures to conform its faith to strong currents of cultural development. Society is said to affirm ‘diversity’ and yet at key points this diversity disappears to the detriment of traditional Christianity.

The astonishing rise of the transgender movement is a prime example, clashing as it does with the biblical assumption that the one significant distinction within the human race is that between a man and a woman, and this is part and parcel of the Christian understanding of creation. Now this distinction appears to be made secondary: gender is becoming a secondary matter of choice or preference.

Related to this issue is that of sexuality and the ever increasing demand by the state that children be schooled in an ethical framework that clashes with that of the Abrahamic faiths. The role of family and parental responsibility for this dimension of life is being removed or very fiercely diminished….

Read it all.

They are weddings that are, officially speaking, not even legally recognised.

But such a small detail, it seems, is not stopping increasing numbers of couples from opting for humanist marriage ceremonies across England and Wales.

Such weddings have risen by more than 250 per cent in the last 15 years, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics.

The massive rise makes it the fastest growing type of wedding in the country – and comes as the number of faith-based ceremonies fell in the same period.

While humanist weddings went up 266 per cent between 2004 and 2016, Church of England weddings fell by 28 per cent, Catholic by 34 per cent and Baptist by 42 per cent.

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Humanist weddings rise by 266 per cent across England and Wales https://t.co/vfcIPahVnJ

— The Independent (@Independent) June 2, 2019

Gov. Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains.

It allows licensed facilities to offer “natural organic reduction,” which turns a body, mixed with substances such as wood chips and straw, into about two wheelbarrows’ worth of soil in a span of several weeks.

Loved ones are allowed to keep the soil to spread, just as they might spread the ashes of someone who has been cremated — or even use it to plant vegetables or a tree.

“It gives meaning and use to what happens to our bodies after death,” said Nora Menkin, executive director of the Seattle-based People’s Memorial Association, which helps people plan for funerals.

Supporters say the method is an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation, which releases carbon dioxide and particulates into the air, and conventional burial, in which people are drained of their blood, pumped full of formaldehyde and other chemicals that can pollute groundwater, and placed in a nearly indestructible coffin, taking up land.

Read it all.

Ashes to ashes, guts to dirt: Washington becomes first state to allow composting of human remains. @AP: https://t.co/A983MSF7FM

— Gene Johnson (@GeneAPseattle) May 21, 2019