Great Moments In Non-Theism

Hunter, a New Age devotee, even called the guru, Bob McGovern, for emergency spiritual advice at a restaurant when the waiter brought her the wrong dressing for her ruben sandwich, Young recalled.

Government Even Has Its Own Theology

FALSANI:Do you believe in sin?
OBAMA:Yes.
FALSANI:What is sin?
OBAMA:Being out of alignment with my values.

Please don't think me a horrid partisan, especially as I have no issue with the current president or any of his predecessors.  Frankly, I don't put a lot of faith in any politician, which is one of the liberating aspects of being a Christian.  God, not government, rules creation, at least in my understanding and that of my Christian culture.  I offer up this interesting quotation to display the "theological" perspective that I think is common in the contemporary governing class, including members of both political parties.

For those puzzled, sin is defined as a separation from God or, put perhaps too simply, from God's values.  We do not commit sin when separated from our own values.  [Unless, of course, we are God; something I don't think even politicians believe.]  If we did, we would confess sin to ourselves, absolve ourselves, and seek to have a closer relationship with ourselves.  God would not be a factor, nor, I think, would Jesus' redemptive moment on the cross.  If we extend the logic of this quoted exchange, we could expect to crucify ourselves for the sake of ourselves and in redemption of ourselves.

Now I'm getting dizzy.

Africa’s War of Religion Heats Up

The explosive growth of Christianity across Africa in the last half century has challenged and rattled Muslims in parts of the continent, and tensions between the groups are further exacerbated when conflicts over resources and between tribal groups get mixed in with religious competition. Add weak states, poorly policed frontiers, rapid population growth and large pools of underemployed young men to the mix, and it seems clear that these two attacks will not be the last.

More may be read here:  A later attack in the northeast city of Maiduguri saw gunmen open fire at a Church of Christ in Nigeria chapel, killing five people, including a pastor preparing for Communion, witnesses said.

No Surprise, Really

Ocean waves boost human happiness: The turbulence of breaking waves alters physical structure of the air and water and triggers endorphins and serotonin, the feel-good hormones.

I Confess, I Get A Little Nervous When Bureaucrats Start Talking About Crucifixion

EPA official: 'Crucify' oil companies

I hope he didn't try to get an "Amen" from the audience.

Why Universities Can't Grant Religious Liberty

Similarly, the modern university is a jealous university with its own commandments, and you shall not put God before it. For more than a generation, universities have sought to marginalize conservative or orthodox religious life. In the 1980s, universities tried to keep religious groups from using empty classrooms. In the 1990s, universities tried to prevent religious groups from sharing in student funds. In both decades, speech codes intended to stifle expression that some students might find offensive were enacted at hundreds of universities across the United States.

The Feast Of St. Mark

Today is the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, one of the so-called "red days", a reference to the liturgical color of the day that is used to note the feast of a martyr.

In the Epistle to the Colossians, chapter 4, he is identified as a member of Barnabas' family.
In the Acts of the Apostles, he figures often as the disciples meet at the house of Mark's mother, Mary; Paul and Barnabas would bring Mark on a missionary journey with them, their first such journey, but Mark would leave prematurely for reasons that are not identified and return to Jerusalem. On Paul and Barnabas' second missionary journey, Paul took Silas instead of Mark, as he felt that Mark was not reliable, so Barnabas made a separate journey with Mark as his partner. 

Paul would, though, refer to Mark in both Colossians and the First Letter to Timothy as a person of trust, so perhaps whatever controversy existed between Paul and Mark had been reconciled by that time. 

Outside of scripture, Papias' 2nd century work Origins of the Gospels refers to Mark as Peter's aide and interpreter.  It is possible that Mark was in Rome with Peter at the time of the latter's execution.  According to pious legend, Mark then moved to Alexandria, Egypt where he would meet his own martyrdom.

We recognize him today primarily as the composer of the Gospel that bears his name; the oldest Gospel in the New Testament.  The lections for his feast day may be found here.

Almighty God, by the hand of Mark the evangelist you have given to your Church the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God: We thank you for this witness, and pray that we may be firmly grounded in its truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Must Have Been A Method Actor

Brazil actor playing Judas dies from accidental hanging

Church And State Separation Seems To Dissolve During Election Years

Obama Asks Students for 'Amen'

Seriously, if I asked for an "Amen" at a secular university, I'd get in trouble.  The last time I was asked to give the invocation at a secular university, I was warned not to mention Jesus and not to ask those present to respond verbally to the prayer's conclusion.  I seem to recall that I got a tatty letter about a week afterwards from the campus' alliance of atheists/agnostics/druids/wiccans, too.

Heck, once at a well-known automobile racing track in Connecticut, I was asked to open a race with prayer as long as it didn't mention God.

The other thing that was weird about this is that the President expected people to say "Amen" after a negative exclamation.  In other words, "You will owe lots of money to a bank when you graduate.  Say 'Amen'". 

Government really is a religion in contemporary America.

This Is A Tempting Notion

Ft. Lauderdale Church Offers Drive Thru Prayer Service

The Feast Of Mellitus, c. 580-624

Well, I've never been that sure how to pronounce his name, either, but he was the first Bishop of London and the third Archbishop of Canterbury.  It appears that he died as natural a death as may be permitted early church archbishops.  During his life he is credited with...well...not that much, actually.  Although, as one may read through the link below, he did use prayer to save Canterbury from fire.  I hope he used prayer and a water bucket, actually; but to each, his own.  Mellitus does not appear on the Episcopal calendar, but is recognized by the Churches of England [natch] and Rome.  Like all of the early British clergy, he was a monastic.

Archbishop of Canterbury from 619. In 601, he was sent from St. Andrew’s Monastery, Rome, to England by Pope St. Gregory I the Great. Mellitus spent three years as a missionary in Kent, England, aiding St. Augustine. He also became the first bishop of London and was responsible for converting the King of the East Saxons. The Saxons, however, exiled him in 616 over some conflict, but Mellitus returned to England and was named archbishop of Canterbury, in succession to St. Lawrence.

 Heavenly Father, Shepherd of your people, we thank you for
your servant Mellitus, who was faithful in the care and nurture of
your flock; and we pray that, following his example and the
teaching of his holy life, we may by your grace grow into the
stature of the fullness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
for ever and ever. Amen.

[Above is "Scenes from the Passion", a tapestry alleged to have been brought by Mellitus from Rome to England as a gift from the Holy See.]

The Feast Of St. George

St George is the patron saint of England and among the most famous of Christian figures. But of the man himself, nothing is certainly known. Our earliest source, Eusebius of Caesarea, writing c. 322, tells of a soldier of noble birth who was put to death under Diocletian at Nicomedia on 23 April, 303, but makes no mention of his name, his country or his place of burial. According to the apocryphal Acts of St George current in various versions in the Eastern Church from the fifth century, George held the rank of tribune in the Roman army and was beheaded by Diocletian for protesting against the Emperor's persecution of Christians. George rapidly became venerated throughout Christendom as an example of bravery in defence of the poor and the defenceless and of the Christian faith.

O God, Who dost gladden us by the merits and intercesion of Blessed George, Thy Martyr, mercifully grant that we, who ask Thy blessings through him, may obtain them by the gift of Thy grace. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in Unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

This Week's Provocation

Of course, “man’s work” isn’t what it used to be. Forget the “war on women” you’re hearing about right now, although it may well exist. There’s been a “war on men” for the last fifty years, and it’s been more successful than any of the Middle Eastern adventurism which has burned up the lives of American men like so much unwanted firewood at the end of winter. A war against the ideas of manhood, fatherhood, responsibility, dependability. The traditional American man — think Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird — has been parodied, denigrated, humiliated, ironized, written out of existence. It’s no longer pleasant or even feasible to emulate our grandfathers and their unashamedly masculine lives.

Remarkably, this comes from a review of an automobile. Also, is "ironized" a word?

The Sacrament Of Holy Baptism

The Third Sunday of Easter will feature the baptism of Lexie Jean Armbruster at the 10am celebration.  She will be the third generation of her family to worship at Christ Church.

The lections for tomorrow may be found here.

An Obituary Of Note

Levon Helm dead at 71: Drummer for The Band succumbs to cancer

You may have seen him in some unremarkable films, as he acted quite a bit in his post-Band years.  I particularly enjoyed him in "The Right Stuff" as Chuck Yeager's bemused flight engineer, or in "Coal Miner's Daughter" as Loretta Lynn's father.

But he is primarily known for the work he did with The Band as drummer and vocalist, especially memorable when singing lead on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”.  There was something wonderfully American about his accent, as it seemed to contain traces of the disparate places of our country, from central Ohio down to the Delta.

The photo above is of the lamented Tony Mart's in Somers Point, New Jersey, where I misspent a fair portion of my youth.  In the mid-1960's, the house band was Levon and The Hawks.  They were noted for bringing Delta Blues from the cotton fields of Mississippi to a bunch of mostly white kids on the Jersey shore.  One night, Bob Dylan stopped by, liked what he heard, and asked them to be his backup band.  For the sake of irony, they were re-named The Band.

Here's a moment from their heyday:

George Orwell May Have Been On To Something

From the British press, we learn of the latest attempt to use nuanced language to re-cast history and its facts.

Today we learn that the European Union (our real ruler) is opening a £44m museum that will be a House of European History...World War II is to be described as "the European Civil War".

That's some "civil war", given that it included places outside of Europe like...oh...Burma, North Africa, Micronesia, China, Hawaii, etc.  Not to mention that the European Civil War included Americans, Australians, West Indians, Canadians, Japanese, and so on. 

I just hope I'm never named as today's Emmanuel Goldstein.*

[*You have to read 1984 to get it.]

The Feast Of Alphege, 953-1012

Archbishops of Canterbury used to be absolute fire-eaters, to use an English expression.  About fifty years before William the Conqueror and the Normans invaded Britain, the Danes did so and established their king.  When tribute [bribes] was demanded of the church, Alphege politely, but resolutely, told the Danes that it wasn't going to happen.  A collection of drunks then abused and murdered him for not giving them money.  [Interestingly, something similar happened to a Jamaican priest just a few years ago, although not by Danes.] 

More about him may be found here.  By rough count, about eighteen Archbishops of Canterbury have been martyred or otherwise killed for their faith.  Nowadays, they are simply ridiculed by the BBC and Oxford faculty.

O loving God, your martyr bishop Alphege of Canterbury suffered violent death when he refused to permit a ransom to be extorted from his people: Grant that all pastors of your flock may pattern themselves on the Good Shepherd, who laid down his life for the sheep; and who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Sounds Like A Tong War

Man tries to rob deli with hot dog tongs.

I Guess Not

A Korean fishing boat sank in New Zealand waters because it was not watertight, an expert witness testified at an inquest today.

The Feast Of Athanasia, 790-860

Again, this is a feast day in the Church of Rome, not the Church of England and All the Colonies [or, as we prefer, The Episcopal Church in the United States], but the life of Athanasia, though not terribly remarkable compared to many of her contemporaries, does highlight an interesting aspect about the relationship between the church and the state in the early Middle Ages.  To wit:

Greek widow and abbess who lived on an Aegean Island. Athanasia's husband of two weeks was killed fighting Saracens. She remarried, and her second husband decided to become a monk. Athanasia agreed and converted her home into a convent, where she became an abbess. Moving the convent to Timia, Athanasia became an advisor to the Byzantine empress during her seven-year stay in Constantinople.

 In fact, she appears to be so minor that I can't find a collect for her.  I was, however, able to find the icon above.  Here's the Collect of a Monastic from our Book of Common Prayer:

O God, whose blessed Son became poor that we through his
poverty might be rich: Deliver us from an inordinate love of
this world, that we, inspired by the devotion of your servant,

may serve you with singleness of heart, and attain to the
riches of the age to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who
lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and for ever. Amen.