Tyndale has been called the architect of the English language, and in many cases he invented words to better convey the original:
“atonement”
“scapegoat”
“Jehovah”
“mercy seat”
“Passover”
And scores of his phrases have proved impossible to better in the last five centuries”¦
“Let there be light”
“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”
Wonderful stuff–make sure to read it all.
Almighty God, who didst plant in the heart of thy servants William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale a consuming passion to bring the Scriptures to people in their native tongue, and didst endow them with the gift of powerful and graceful expression and with strength to persevere against all obstacles: Reveal to us, we pray thee, thy saving Word, as we read and study the Scriptures, and hear them calling us to repentance and life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Lord, who hast warned us that without thee we can do nothing; and by thy holy apostle hast taught us that in thy strength we can do all things: So take and possess us, that our weakness may be transformed by thy power; that we be no longer our own, but thine; that it be not we who live, but thou who livest in us; who now reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end.
Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever! Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or show forth all his praise? Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!
–Psalm 106:1-3
In the past few weeks, several large-scale college sexual assault prevention initiatives have launched, focusing on “bystander intervention” ”” which might be campuses’ best bet toward creating a safe environment for students.
Bystander intervention trains students to identify and intervene in potentially harmful situations. For example, bystander training teaches students to interject themselves if they see a clearly incapacitated friend being led off into a sexual situation they would likely have no control over.
As concern mounts over Ebola, US officials in charge of dealing with the infectious disease have one basic message meant to address public fears:
“The bottom line here is we know how to stop it,” says Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Dr. Frieden explained his confidence: “It’s not going to spread widely in the US, for two basic reasons. We can do infection control in hospitals, and we can do public health interventions that can stop it in its tracks. We do that by identifying every possible contact, monitoring them for 21 days and if they get any symptoms, isolating and monitoring them as well.”
When Shamon Smith witnessed her mother being abused, she never dreamed it would spark within her a passion to address domestic violence all these years later.
A woman of deep faith, Smith realized many victims seek help from their pastors, who often didn’t know how to help abused congregants facing very real dangers within violent relationships.
As a result, her North Charleston church is hosting a free three-day domestic violence conference Oct. 17-19 titled “Uniting the Pastors, Equipping the Clergy and Gathering God’s People.”
“Pastors have sent victims back to their abusers,” Smith said. “They felt they were doing the right thing.”
ECKSTROM: Well, the argument is really about, most immediately about communion for divorced Catholics. So under church law right now, if you are divorced and get remarried outside of the church, you can’t get communion. And so what they’re arguing about is whether or not they should change that rule and allow those divorced Catholics access to communion.
ABERNETHY: Now there’s no voting, no decision-making, no change in this synod. But next year there’s going to be another synod next October about the family again, and then, Kim””
KIM LAWTON, managing editor: Well, then there could be some change. I mean, nothing’s ever guaranteed, especially when you’re talking about the Catholic Church, but this is supposed to be the time for just discussing and debating some of these issues. And then decisions would come later, down the road. And on this issue of divorce and remarriage, you know, the church doctrine is that sacramental marriage is forever. It cannot be dissolved. And so therefore they don’t recognize divorce, and therefore if you are divorced and you get remarried, in the church’s eyes you’re living in adultery, and that’s why you cannot take communion and other sacraments. And so what the cardinals are arguing about is does it affect the doctrine that marriage is not able to be dissolved if you change how you treat people who are in those situations? And I think some of the conservatives are worried if you start tinkering around with that, what other issues and areas of teaching can be tinkered around with?
ABERNETHY: But there’s a lot more that they could be discussing and probably will be discussing.
Manchester United moved to fourth place in the Premier League Saturday with a nerve-wracking, heart-stopping 2-1 win over Everton, and it required goalkeeper David De Gea’s best performance in a Manchester United shirt to hold on to all three points.
De Gea was immense in goal, robbing Everton of goals on three separate occasions. Ãngel Di MarÃa gave United a 1-0 lead in the first half, curling a brilliant shot past Tim Howard from the top of the box, but Leighton Baines had a chance to equalize the game just before halftime. Luke Shaw conceded a penalty in stoppage time, but De Gea saved Baines’ low drive from the spot.
Most reproductions of Whistler’s Nocturne Blue and Gold ”“ Old Battersea Bridge (1877) show it without the frame. On the gilt wood frame that the painter had designed he put the stylised butterfly sigil that served for the signature that he had not put on the canvas. I was glad to see the whole thing reproduced as a frontispiece to the book Whistler and the Thames that went with the exhibition at Dulwich last year.
The same habit of leaving out frames in reproductions is even more of a loss with The Scapegoat, by Holman Hunt, dating from 20 years earlier. When he exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1856, instead of a stock commercial Salon frame, he supplied a solid, slightly convex bar of gold, into which symbolic motifs had been carved in shallow relief.
As the historian of picture frames, Lynn Roberts, points out, the motifs he used “are designed to support the Old Testament subject of the painting, but interestingly they also work to expand upon the image itself by alluding to events in the New Testament”. Thus, below the canvas is a seven-branched candlestick, but next to it a cross. One each side of the canvas are reliefs of a dove with a sprig of olive and a heartsease in a cruciform array of leaves.
When Nyasaland became independent in 1964, Arden became Bishop of Malawi. He worked hard to encourage an indigenous ministry, consecrating the first Malawian suffragan bishop and increasing the number of ordained clergy from 23 to 100. He was keen on training the laity: “If the clergy are the lungs breathing in the fresh air of the Spirit, you laymen and laywomen are the hands and the feet and the mouth of the body of Christ,” he wrote. He was also instrumental in persuading the different Christian churches to establish a health association ”” it still provides 45 per cent of healthcare in Malawi.
Arden was particularly concerned about polio; at many confirmation services, polio sufferers would crawl to the front of the church or were carried there. He organised a survey of the area, discovering 500 cases. As a result he convinced a leading government surgeon to help to procure funds for a vaccination programme. Within a few years Malawi was the first developing country to be declared free of polio.
On the theological front, meanwhile, attempts were being made to revise the Book of Common Prayer, and Arden was a key figure in producing a new, 380-page prayer/hymnbook in Chichewa, the national language of Malawi.
He became Archbishop of Central Africa in 1971, and it was a matter of pride that he was the last white Archbishop of Central Africa.
Read it all (requires subscription).
Pope Francis has summoned bishops from all over the world to Rome to discuss issues concerning families ”“ including hot-button issues like artificial contraception and gay civil unions.
The meeting, called a synod, opened on Sunday and is seen as a test of Francis’ vision of a more merciful Church.
Not since the landmark Second Vatican Council half a century ago has a church meeting raised so much hope among progressive Catholics ”” and so much apprehension among conservatives.
The American official coordinating the international coalition fighting the Islamic State said on Friday that the Iraqi military would not be ready for a campaign to retake Mosul, the largest Iraqi city under insurgent control, for as much as a year.
Mosul has become a symbol of the strength of the Islamist insurgency, which has made the city its stronghold, and of the failure of the Iraqi security forces, which wilted in June as militants swept across the Syrian border and overran the city as they pushed toward Baghdad.
The broad timeline given by the official, retired Gen. John R. Allen, seemed to reflect the immense challenges facing the Iraqi military command and its international partners, including about 1,600 American troops deployed by President Obama, as they seek to rebuild the Iraqi security forces.
Arrest and imprisonment were only a matter of time. Bonhoeffer’s time came in April 1943 and landed him in Berlin’s Tegel prison. Astonishingly, with the German capital under regular Allied bombardment, Bonhoeffer continued even as a prisoner to enjoy a privileged existence. During his confinement in Tegel, according to Marsh, he received “extra portions of food, hot coffee, and cigarettes.” Visitors brought flowers and fresh fruit. An uncle stopped by to break open a bottle of champagne. Most importantly, Bonhoeffer had access to books, pen, and paper. During his confinement, he read and wrote ceaselessly.
All such niceties vanished in the crackdown that followed the failed July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler. Transferred to the custody of the SS, Bonhoeffer was moved to Buchenwald and then to Flossenbürg, where he was finally executed. Little reliable information about Bonhoeffer’s last days is available, and Marsh does not pretend otherwise. That the end was grim and brutal suffices.
In 1928, on the cusp of his journey of discovery, Bonhoeffer had observed that in modern life “religion plays the part of the parlor.” It had become a place “into which one doesn’t mind withdrawing for a couple of hours, but from which one then immediately returns to one’s business.” In our own day, faith remains in the parlor, the subject of polite and passing attention. The work that matters happens elsewhere. For Christians daring to rethink that proposition, Bonhoeffer’s life serves as an object lesson in what is to be gained””and lost.
St Mary le Strand, which is located in the middle of the Strand, has a long and interesting history. The original medieval church was pulled down in 1549 by Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, to make way for Somerset House. The current church was then rebuilt between 1714 and 1724, by the celebrated architect James Gibbs and St Mary le Strand has since been remembered as his Baroque Masterpiece.
The current St Mary le Strand was one of fifty new churches built in London under the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches, an Act of Parliament in England in 1710, with the purpose of building fifty new churches for the rapidly growing conurbation of London. Despite this ambitious plan, only twelve of these churches were ever built, with St Mary le Strand being the first.
Unlike many London churches, St Mary le Stand managed to escape severe damage during the Second World War, as the inspecting architect would sit in the church’s muniment room during the bombings, to push incendiary bombs off the roof.
When Brianna and Chris Lindsay married in June, they had the church, the minister, the bridesmaids ”¦ and a foot-washing ceremony for the bride and groom.
It was, they said, a sign of their mutual submission.
“First he took off both of my shoes and we had a water basin and pitcher,” said the bride, recalling the five-minute ceremony during which a friend read a poem about the couple. “In return, I got down in my dress, took off his socks. ”¦ It probably was a little awkward for us ”” maybe a little ”” but we felt like it was an important message to show people.”
In an age of big-ticket destination weddings and reality show “bridezillas,” some evangelical Christians are opting for what writer Catherine Strode Parks calls “ A Christ-Centered Wedding.”
Both Taylor’s loss of “higher times” and Rushkoff’s burden of the “infinite present” help us understand why we’re so compelled by things like the Rapture””or anything apocalyptic. Living in a flattened timescape, we long for moments to take us out of the profane and everyday. In the absence of “higher times,” global disasters and narratives of apocalypse stand in as sacred moments that rupture the monotony of secular time. “Where were you when . . . ?” is a question of almost spiritual gravitas for anyone alive on 9/11 or the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Especially since the advent of mass broadcasts of breaking news, we mark time by shared moments of global calamity and terror, existential pauses that give us transcendent perspective.
These are real if perverted expressions of our longing for the “higher” time we’ve lost, for pivot points in history, for an escape from the present. In a world where there’s “nothing new under the sun,” where generations come and go “but the earth remains forever” (Ecc. 1:4), we long to be part of an unexpected story, to witness something significant. But must that “something significant” be the earth’s fiery end?
Christians of all people need not buy into the prevailing culture’s preoccupation with doomsday. Let the world have its apocalyptic versions of the Rapture””Christians have something better. Surely there are movies to be made about not destruction, but resurrection.
O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named: Grant that, according to the riches of thy glory, we may be strengthened with power through thy Spirit in our inner being; that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith; that we, being rooted and grounded in thy love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is its length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge; that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.
O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures for ever!
–Psalm 118:1
Apples, mushrooms and pork sounds a promising recipe for a kebab, but the average barbecuer might balk at adding strawberries. According to John Gordon of IBM, however, the result is delicious. Dr Gordon is one of the leaders of that firm’s cognitive-computing team, responsible for a machine called Watson which is able to digest and analyse large amounts of English text and then draw inferences from it. When, in March, Watson was fed reams of recipes and texts about food, it reasoned that these four ingredients would complement each other, based on their sharing a number of flavoursome chemical compounds. And Dr Gordon, at least, thinks Watson’s suggestion is a winner.
Devising new recipes sounds a trivial use for a multimillion-dollar piece of kit. But Dr Gordon’s culinary experiment neatly demonstrates the idea of automated hypothesis generation””and the possible uses of that are certainly not trivial. More than 90 groups of scientists are now developing hypothesis-generation software. They hope to use it not on recipe books but on the vast corpus of scientific literature (by one tally at least 50m scientific papers) that has piled up in public databases.
The writing of this letter in itself, however, is not enough. The statement is ambiguous in crucial areas, which not only weaken its argument, but also question whether it is truly a rigorous and valid refutation of ISIS’s deeds and claims. In what follows, I will focus only on two of them: the concept of jihad and the restoration of the Muslim caliphate. While this letter claims to present the correct version of the Muslim teaching, its imprecise description of important areas makes it subject to different, and sometimes opposite, understandings, leaving the reader, especially the non-Muslim, puzzled regarding correct Islamic teaching.
First, concerning the concept of jihad, the letter reads: “The word ”˜jihad’ is an Islamic term that cannot be applied to armed conflict against any other Muslim.” Okay, but what about non-Muslims? Can jihad be applied against them? The letter, though recommending jihad as a form of self-piety or a way to strive against one’s ego, does not specify against whom armed jihad should be applied. This leaves the door open for interpretation.
Moreover, it states that “All Muslims see the great virtue in jihad,” and does not explain what “the jihad against the enemy” really means. In fact, the letter applauds and praises the “intentions” of the members of ISIS, noting, “it is clear that you [Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi] and your fighters are fearless and are ready to sacrifice in your intent for jihad.” The approval sends mixed signals….
A pop up Cathedral will take faith on the road when it journeys through the towns and cities of the newest Church of England diocese here in West Yorkshire and the Dales and collects donations for some of its food banks.
Pop Up Cathedral is the brain child of Wakefield Cathedral. A mobile trailer, it was bought with a combination of local grants and supported with further funding from the Archbishop of York’s Youth Trust, to provide detached youth and outreach work at the Cathedral and for other churches across the new diocese.
It is run by Wakefield Cathedral’s mission and outreach team of Canon Tony Macpherson, Canon Missioner and Heidi Smith, Community Missioner, who are taking it on the road to serve in some of West Yorkshire’s towns and cities and collect donations for food banks along the way.
Anyone hoping for ecclesiastical preferment in London should have been at the launch last night of London Witness at the Bishop of London’s home, where the bishop, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, revealed his approach to making appointments ”” never choose anyone who puts himself forward.
London Witness is a group of Anglicans committed to bringing a Christian perspective to London, and the bishop revealed that none of those present had volunteered their services. “You all had to be asked,” he said approvingly. “By definition, anyone who puts themselves forward would have been unsuitable. That’s my own philosophy when I’m making appointments.”
The bishop observed with relief that, unlike him, all the members of London Witness were spreading news of the CofE’s good work on social media. “I never read anything after 1649,” he confessed. “In many ways it makes you very avant garde”. Peculiar, because we were just thinking how similar Chartres’ philosophy was to Douglas Adams’s argument that it’s “a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it” ”” and we could have sworn Adams started writing the Hitchhiker’s Guide series later than 1648.
To the beloveds of God’s church in the world
Some of you may be following the unfolding of various controversies surrounding The General Seminary of The Episcopal Church here in New York City and around me, it’s Dean and President. Until today, there were three main issues: (1) allegations against me personally, (2) faculty employment issues, and (3) overarching and intensely serious issues regarding the future of Christian theological education in America, in The Episcopal Church, and at General Seminary. While dutifully silent until now, I have felt for a while that I need to touch on all three.
But, this morning something much more serious emerged. It is about my support for our LGBT community and those loved by God around the world. My hubris in addressing this letter to all of God’s beloveds worldwide is because statements which may hurt one of us actually hurts all of us, wherever you live. I think that’s what Christian community is about.
If we are going to reflect on a theme like “The Ethics of Sex, Marriage and Family,” and presume to be doing so on the basis of the canon of scripture, we must be prepared to accept a cardinal reality. To speak of Christian Ethics is to speak of scripture in action, in the lived life of Christian formation and catechesis. Increasingly, very few progressives dismiss the scriptural record on sex, marriage and family. Some of course still do. They are bold to proclaim that the biblical witness is not just wrong in its parts (Genesis 1-3 as ancient Hebrew musing, Paul as wrong or speaking about something else, Jesus as all loving and disinterested in a modern phenomenon like gayness, which exists in a timeframe the bible does not nor could ever be expected to comprehend). The Bible is wrong, outdated, or just not addressing the matter of the challenge of new understandings of sex and human thriving, altogether. If it gets things right, it does so accidentally or inferentially, like the proverbial blind hog finding an acorn.
I mention this right up front because, as with the early church, what we now see is something else: a heavy assault mounted from within Christian circles themselves on prior understandings of the estate of marriage and its goods. Not from cultural despisers or secularists, but from those who purport to argue that their new understanding is indeed scriptural after all. Many secular and religious proponents of same-sexuality had concluded earlier that marriage was a patriarchal invention that no card-carrying proponent of sexual liberation””gay or straight””ought to go near. Inside Christian circles, this has changed.
So alongside those dubious about scripture having anything to say, accidentally or properly, are those who argue that their new understanding of sexuality is somehow biblical after all. In this sense, the debate over marriage, sex and family is one in which both sides, or several sides, all appeal to scripture. That is, not unlike the early church examples just cited. So we must ask: What account of scripture is it that has been brought to bear on our present and older understandings of sex, marriage, and family. Because of its scale, depth, and complex two-testament character, Scripture is infinitely capable of producing multiple interpretations. Irenaeus used the image of a mosaic. One receives a gift of scripture with all its myriad pieces, and the goal of interpretation is to see the face of the king, Jesus Christ, when all the pieces are properly and proportionally assembled….
The Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed the authority to determine who is Anglican. In a wide ranging conversation with the Church of Ireland Gazette, the archbishop offered his appreciation of the ecclesiology of the Anglican Communion, placing his office in the center of the church’s polity.
He further stated he saw the Anglican Church in North America as an ecumenical partner, not a member church of the Anglican Communion.
While Archbishop Justin Welby’s comments about the ecclesial relationship between the Church of England and the ACNA break no new ground, his defense of his appointment of an ACNA priest to an honorary post in the Church of England by asserting the priest’s orders were valid as they were conveyed by the Episcopal Church of the USA raises the question of the validity of the ministerial orders conveyed by ACNA’s bishops.
(Blog readers are asked to note that “the newspaper is editorially independent of the Church of Ireland, the views expressed in the newspaper, including editorial comment, not necessarily reflecting official Church of Ireland policy.”)–KSH.
ORDER & TIMING OF TOPICS
The Anglican Communion, 00:00-02:22;
Anglicans/Episcopalians in North America, 02:22-04.45;
The Lambeth Conference, 04:45-05:40;
Payday lenders & Wonga, 05:40-08:33;
The Media, 08:33-10:00;
European Court of Human Rights & Human Rights issues, 10:00-13:07;
ISIL & Iraq situation, 13:07-17:10;
Northern Ireland political situation, 17:10-18:47;
Doubt in the Christian life, 18:47-end.
The Diocese of NW Australia, meeting in synod this weekend, passed the following motion,
That this synod:
welcomes the impending investiture of the Most Reverend Dr Foley Beach, the Archbishop of The Anglican Church in North America;
recognizes the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) as a member church of the Anglican Communion, in full communion with Diocese of North West Australia; rejoices that the orthodox faith is proclaimed in word and deed through ACNA and its member churches…
She dreamed of the bustling streets of Los Angeles and the leafy towns of Pennsylvania. She dreamed of working two jobs, not three. She dreamed of sleeping, really sleeping, for six or seven hours at a stretch.
But dreams rarely pay the rent. So Ms. Fernandes worked three jobs, at three Dunkin’ Donuts stores in northern New Jersey, shuttling from Newark to Linden to Harrison and back. She often slept in her car ”” two hours here, three hours there ”” and usually kept the engine running, ready in an instant to start all over again.
The last day of her life was no different. She got off work at 6 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 25, and climbed into her 2001 Kia Sportage, officials from the Elizabeth Police Department said. She was dreaming again, this time about taking a break to celebrate a milestone with friends. But first, she told her boyfriend, Mr. Carter, during a brief cellphone conversation, she was going to take a nap.