Suffice to say, some find the moral landscape of modernity rather impoverished, and the options for pursuing it in a liberal world frustratingly limited. One can chase what one believes to be the good life, but one cannot place moral claims on others. This is the “catch,” as it were, of liberalism: “Liberalism,” political theorist Judith Shklar wrote, “has only one overriding aim: to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom.” Or, as Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain had it: “Obey none but yourself.”

Thus ardent Christians who believe that a life modeled after Christ’s is not best for them but simply best have little room to advance their case in public life. To do so would be to infringe upon the liberties of others, and liberalism cannot abide such a violation. (It’s no accident that the earliest liberals had a special contempt for Catholics, who are especially inclined to protest the reduction of the faith to a private sentiment.) The absence of robust religious instruction in public life, Dreher contends, has led us to a world wherein sin and vice run rampant among abundance and pleasure. “The long journey from a medieval world wracked with suffering but pregnant with meaning has delivered us to a place of once unimaginable comfort but emptied of significance and connection,” he writes, “The West has lost the golden thread that binds us to God, Creation, and each other. Unless we find it again, there is no hope of halting our dissolution.”

Option is Dreher’s attempt to grasp that golden thread. But, from there, things go awry.

Dreher doesn’t put it in these terms, but it seems to me that his real complaint with liberalism is that it produces liberal subjects. It would be one thing if there were masses of orthodox Christians yearning for that simpler fourteenth-century existence yet miserably enduring life under the yoke of a liberal order enforced by those outside their ranks, but as Dreher notes, many of today’s Christians are perfectly at home in a liberal world: Liberalism has changed them, and they, in turn, have changed Christianity.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), a foggy set of feel-good notions about the divine and the good life coined by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in 2005, has, in Dreher’s estimation, mostly supplanted Christianity in America….

Read it all.

You can listen directly here and download the mp3 there.

The global liberal order is holding up better than many feared a year ago.

In Europe, right-wing populists lost elections to the establishment in the Netherlands, Austria and France. U.S. President Donald Trump has prioritized traditional conservative causes like tax cuts over protectionism.

But globalists should not breathe easy. The nationalist insurgency is both growing and metamorphosing. It is not just eating away at relations between countries on issues such as free trade; it is also eroding the institutions and norms that prevail within countries.

This is not a problem for the global economy yet, as a synchronized upswing drives growth and stock prices higher. But it’s a shadow over the future. Populists sustained by legitimate grievances at the cultural and economic upheaval caused by globalization often govern by authoritarian or divisive means, undermining the stable, rules-based environment that businesses crave.

Read it all.

Speaking to Radio Tamazuj on Monday, Bishop Yel said he accepted the results of what he termed as a tight race in which he lost by one vote to preserve unity and strengthen harmony within the Anglican Church and the whole country.

“The election was conducted in a harmonious atmosphere although there were election fevers during campaign but at the end of the day Bishop Badi was declared the successful candidate. He won by 1 vote. He got 80 votes and I got 79 votes. Immediately after the announcement was made, I stood up and congratulated him. I did it so to preserve the unity of the church and to strengthen harmony of our believers and the faithful,” he said.

Read it all and you may find more there.

Here’s an example. Many people believe that German crimes in the medical context were Hitler’s idea, or were purely a product of Nazi ideology. Not true. The doctors who committed these crimes had embraced the eugenicist ideology that views some lives as of lower “quality” and, hence, lower value than others. The support among German medical, legal, and academic intelligentsia for euthanasia and terminating the disabled long predated Hitler’s rise to power.

Medical historian Robert Jay Lifton has identified the 1920 book Permitting the Destruction of Life Not Worthy of Life (Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens), written by law professor Karl Binding and physician Alfred Hoche, as “the crucial work” promoting the agenda of death. Permitting the Destruction of Life profoundly influenced the values of the general public and the ethics of the German medical and legal communities—to the point that a 1925 poll of the parents of disabled children reported that 74 percent of them would agree to the painless killing of their own children!

The book is a truly chilling read, not only because of its crass advocacy for killing the defenseless, but also because of the ways in which it mirrors many concepts propounded by bioethicists and euthanasia advocates today. Binding and Hoche believed that some lives are so degraded that they constitute “life not worthy of life.” Who were these unfortunates?

1. Terminally ill or mortally wounded individuals who “have been irretrievably lost as a result of illness or injury, who fully understand their situation, possess and have somehow expressed an urgent wish for release.” This view is virtually identical to the euthanasia and assisted suicide policies urged upon us today.
2. Binding and Hoche believed it was permissible to euthanize “incurable idiots,” whose lives they denigrated as “pointless” and “valueless.” They were deemed an economic and emotional “burden on society and their families.” Today’s advocates do not depict the developmentally disabled as “idiots,” nor do most go as far as Hoche and Binding did in calling for non-voluntary killing. However, the economic cost of caring for those labeled as having a low quality of life is frequently noted by euthanasia advocates and asserted as grounds for healthcare rationing and the withdrawal of wanted life support.
3. The “unconscious,” who “if they ever again were roused from their comatose state, would waken to nameless suffering.” The United States and other Western nations already allow terminating such individuals by withholding tube-supplied sustenance—as vividly exposed in the legal and cultural conflagration over the court-ordered dehydration death of Terri Schiavo.

More explicit eugenics advocacy of the era is also analogous to culture-of-death arguments made today.

Read it all.

How much better, though, if the Church of England could authorise a form of prayer that busy clergy could take off the shelf when needed.

As well as being convenient for clergy and lay minsters, authorising a liturgy for trans people would also demonstrate that the Church was serious about the welcome mentioned in part one of the motion, aware of trans people’s specific needs, and willing to respond to their requests appropriately.

That was the basis of the Blackburn Motion and it passed by a huge majority in all three of Synod’s houses (Bishops, Clergy, and Laity) seven months ago. Since then, we have heard nothing, until last weekend when The Mail on Sunday leaked the story that the House of Bishops had decided that a liturgy for trans people should, in the Mail’s words, “be blocked”.

A hastily issued statement followed from the Church of England, in response to the leak, which insisted that it was welcoming to trans people, but would not be issuing a liturgy. Instead, clergy were advised to adapt the existing Affirmation of Baptismal Faith rite on these occasions and to be creative. Further guidance is promised later this week.

Like many trans people, I am deeply disappointed, and not a little angered, by this outcome. I’m sure that I will have further reflections once we hear the reasons for this decision, but here are my initial thoughts about what has happened and what we can learn from it….

Read it all.

Well, he could have done, but now he’s dug his heels in, the course is set; the trajectory is fixed, because the eminent historians, theologians and other vocal defenders of George Bell also have no intention of backing down, which is why Justin Welby’s statement is quite possibly the most bungling and inept piece of PR to have been issued by Lambeth Palace since he was installed as Archbishop in 2013. Honestly, where do they think this now goes?

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How does Lambeth Palace think this will end? The issue isn’t just going to hang around like a bad smell: it’s going to hinder and detract from Archbishop Justin’s entire episcopal ministry; it’s going to bind and frustrate every utterance he makes on the themes of integrity, truth and justice.

On the one hand is an Archbishop who cannot with integrity rescind his statement, and on the other is a growing army of very eminent lawyers, historians, theologians and crusaders for truth who cannot with integrity cease their campaign for Justice for George Bell. And this is a battle which the Archbishop will certainly lose – perhaps not while in office (so over the next three years), but either five or 15 years from now, or even 20 years after his death – because that army of eminent lawyers, historians, theologians and crusaders for truth will enlist another battalion, and if necessary another battalion after that, because people care more about the late, great George Bell than they probably ever will about Justin Welby.

That’s harsh, but it’s true. It’s true because the man who perpetuates an injustice is never going to be judged favourably by historians, lawyers, theologians or crusaders for truth (especially those who despise the Church of England), so you can be sure – absolutely sure – that some time in the future one of Justin Welby’s successors to the See of Canterbury will find it expedient to sacrifice Archbishop Justin’s reputation as swiftly as the Church of England trashed that of Bishop George Bell.

Read it all.

Following the debate and vote at General Synod in July 2017 on Welcoming Transgender People, the House of Bishops has prayerfully considered whether a new nationally commended service might be prepared to mark a gender transition.

The Bishops are inviting clergy to use the existing rite Affirmation of Baptismal Faith. New guidance is also being prepared on the use of the service.

The paper discussing the decision is now available.

Read it all and follow all three links.

The House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria has criticised the country’s government for failing to act against Fulani herdsmen who have carried out a series of fatal attacks. The anti-persecution charity International Christian Concern says that 80 people in Benue state have been killed in attacks by Fulani militants this year. At the heart of the conflict is the challenge to the herdsmen’s nomadic way of life caused by expansion of established farms and villages. According to the Global Observatory, farmer-herder violence in the country has killed thousands of people and displaced tens of thousands more since the current state of Nigeria was founded in 1999.

In a communiqué issued after a meeting of the House of Bishops, the Church of Nigeria expressed sympathy with the families of those killed and injured in attacks by Fulani herdsmen, and went on to say that: “The bishops observed that as a result of the continuous inaction of the Government, people are beginning to suspect that there is complicity of the Federal Government in these despicable acts. We therefore call on the Federal Government, as a matter of urgency to address these ugly trends and ensure that the culprits are brought to justice.”

They continued: “However, the bishops strongly believe that the permanent solution to the killings by herdsmen lies in the establishment of ranches in line with world best practices and not grazing colonies. Besides, the young herdsmen deserve a better opportunity for education and advancement in life. The bishops believe that it is unkind to design a life of perpetual wandering for these class of youth.”

Read it all and follow all the links as well.

O thou who sendest forth the light, createst the morning, and makest the sun to rise on the good and the evil: Enlighten the blindness of our minds with the knowledge of the truth; lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, that in thy light we may see light, and, at the last, in the light of grace today and the light of glory thereafter; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A #Prayer 4 the Day from Lancelot Andrewes ' Enlighten the blindness of our minds with the knowledge of the truth; lift up the light of thy countenance upon us, that in thy light we may see light' https://t.co/1uPlv7KY71 #anglican pic.twitter.com/ukWO8M6K0e

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) January 24, 2018

Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Hence even the first covenant was not ratified without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

–Hebrews 9:15-28