Recapturing Relevance in the Church

How?

By playing rock music during communion, of course!

Introducing the U2 Eucharist.

What will they think of next?

The Other Shoe Drops

Remember Eugene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church-USA? It turns out that he is also an alcoholic.

Not to worry, though. Condemnation of drunkenness is so first-century, just like condemnation of homosexual offenses. God is more enlightened now, apparently. According to Robinson, "We worship a living God, not one locked up in the Scripture of 2,000 years ago."

Translation: The "Scripture of 2,000 years ago" is no longer the Scripture of today. It speaks volumes about the ECUSA that it would make a man with such a view of Holy Writ one of its bishops.

Last weekend I met a member of the University of the South's board of trustees. (The University of the South is affiliated with the ECUSA.) He told me that the ECUSA is set to be ejected from the worldwide Anglican communion within the next year or so over this bishop. That should be interesting to see.

The Forgotten Byzantine Era

Here is a brief but largely accurate article about how most Westerners are ignorant of the Christian civilization that flourished in the East during the European "Middle Ages." The Byzantine Empire had its problems and its heretical ideas (caesaro-papism comes to mind), but we can still learn from it in some areas. I just wish we had time to cover it more in the Western Heritage series.

It Had to Happen . . .

You may have suspected that I wouldn't be able to resist making a post about Brokeback Mountain. No, I have not seen it and have no intention of doing so; one doesn't have to enter the sewer to know that it stinks. However, I did want to pass along some perceptive comments made by Chris Ortiz over at the Chalcedon Foundation's blog:

"Brokeback Mountain

The world is swimming in hogwash over the release of Brokeback Mountain. Critics are falling over themselves to laud compounded praise over this story of two ranch handlers who can't keep their hands off each other. What is disturbing -- beyond the celebration of sodomy -- is the idea that "love" redefines all God-created categories of the Biblical social order. God created man and woman and ordained their consecrated union as the covenantal unit upon which civilization find its fulcrum. Yet, Joe Bob and Jethro can two-step over divine order "cuz they love each other."

It's Romeo and Juliet from the pit of Gomorrah -- forbidden love that leads to self-destruction. And, again, it is the oppressive authority of Christian culture and the Christian family that forbids "lovers" from fulfilling their persecuted desire and drives them to self-destruction. The victim is now the sinner, and God and His order are the tyrannical perpetrators.

Is Brokeback Mountain a great movie? I'll never know. Is it superbly acted? Who cares? It's celebrated for it's "bold statement" more so than it's creative content. Much the same as Scorcese's Last Temptation of Christ was held up as creative genius. Yea, right. What men love is not art, they treasure war against God. Producing such movies is their way of thumbing their noses at the pious ethic of Christianity. Their target is the Church and it's 2,000-year reign of puritanical morality. Perverted man seeks freedom to sin but obtaining a gay marriage license will never quiet his God-given conscience. Removing the Church will never stifle the Spirit that strives with man (Gen. 6:3)."

The entire post can be found at http://www.chalcedon.edu/blog/2006_02_01_archive.php#113968791200630743

Oh . . . my . . . goodness

I'm having trouble believing that it's not some kind of joke. The title of this article makes it clear (unwittingly, no doubt) that this upcoming movie about "Jesus" preaches exactly the opposite of what Jesus himself taught.

The Further Decline of Civilization . . .

as seen in the vanishing of movie manners. (I was prompted to post this article after hearing Dr. Woods complain about this very thing a few days ago.)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0113/p20s01-almo.html

Final Exams and the Playoffs

An idea struck me as the MLA faculty discussed various end-of-semester events over lunch this week. We noted that some students begin the semester in a lackadaisical fashion (failing to turn in assignments, skipping class, and performing poorly on exams), and then try to turn things around late in the semester by studying intensely, asking for extra credit work, etc. The funny thing is that many of these students are confident that they can get their desired grade by this last-minute outburst of energy, as though what happened earlier in the term is irrelevant to the final outcome.

I wonder if these expectations stem in part from our sports-saturated culture. In the age of the soundbite and diminished attention spans, some sports leagues at the college and professional levels have responded by instituting end-of-season playoffs or tournaments to determine the league champion. What is so silly about the process is that often the standards for admission to these events are laughably low. For example, wildcard teams in the NFL sometimes get into the post-season with an 8-8 record. NBA teams with .500 records can get into the playoffs as well.

What this does is to make the regular season in these sports almost meaningless. Every mediocre team conceivably has a shot of making it into the post-season, and a hot streak at that time could give that team the league championship.

Is this the mentality that university students bring into the last couple of weeks of the semester, that any grade is possible no matter what has transpired over the first fifteen weeks of the term? Many of my students over the years have been sadly disabused of this notion. When the final exam is 30% of the course grade, even a 100% on that exam will not bring a student up to a B average if he has been performing at a D level the whole semester. Competent work over the entire semester is necessary to achieve good grades.

Another Blow to Modernism?

The growing field of geomythology.

"'If you had asked me 10 years ago if there was value in local myths I would have said "not a lot",' added Nunn. 'Since then I have had a Pauline conversion.'"

Christianity and Architecture

As a contrast to the earlier post regarding the architecture of the mega-church, here's a review of a book describing the subtleties used by Huguenot architects who had been employed by Catholic nobility and royalty to build churches. In protest against the persecution of Huguenots, they inserted Calvinist stuff into the structures. For example: "Scripture verses would often be included on the interior of a building. Calvinists did not expect Catholics to complain about the verses because it would be a complaint against the Bible itself. However, Calvinists were careful to use verses that reflected their perspective. Fellow Calvinists walking into the building would recognize that a Huguenot had built that structure."

Structural modifications were made as well to put forward the Huguenot point of view. Art means something!

Debunking the Pilgrims

Some malcontent has decided to rain on everyone's Thanksgiving parade by exposing THE TRUTH about the Pilgrims. Among the horrors that are revealed are that the Pilgrims believed the Indian depopulation of the area preceding their arrival was providential and that the Pilgrims insisted on church membership as a prerequisite for a seat on the General Court that governed the colony.

The scales have fallen from my eyes! I repent of ever having had the slightest shred of respect for these people. From now on, I will condemn anyone having the nerve to celebrate Thanksgiving who has not first ritually secularized the holiday and denounced the Pilgrims as evil, genocidal maniacs. Singing a hymn to nature on behalf of the Indian victims could even make the celebration a virtuous act.

Oh, and apparently the transatlantic crossing took eighteen years, since we're told that the Pilgrims boarded the Mayflower in 1602 and arrived in America in 1620. That's some voyage!

Yankee Secessionists

The decentralist paradigm has spread beyond the old Confederacy, it seems. Here's an article about the Second Vermont Republic, an organization trying to get Vermont to secede from the United States. God bless 'em; at least they can't be smeared as being simply apologists for slavery and/or racial segregation. The article cites Don Livingston of Emory at length. Livingston argues for "the politics of the human scale," a localism derived primarily from Aristotle and classical republican theory.

Ethics and Natural Law

"I conclude that . . . the answer to our question is no; ethics cannot be derived from nature." So says an ethics professor at George Washington University. He's thrown down the gauntlet; are you Aristotelians up to the challenge?

Lisbon and Voltaire

Today is the 250th anniversary of the famous Lisbon earthquake, which is thought to have killed tens of thousands of people and left many thousands more homeless. Coming as it did in the context of rising skepticism among the "Enlightened" elites of Europe, the earthquake became a rhetorical weapon in the arsenal of deists, agnostics, and atheists.

Voltaire made use of the earthquake in Candide and also referred to it in several of his letters. Here's one from just a few weeks after the quake.

It's interesting, although not surprising, to see the unbelievers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina trot out the same arguments as Voltaire and the other philosophes: "If there is a God, how could he allow such a catastrophe to take place?" It's just another example of how the study of the past sheds more light on the present.

It's the Greeks, not the Mayans

Although this essay is written from a secular perspective, it's refreshing to see writing not bound by the canons of multiculturalism:

"I don’t care if the Maya civilization did collapse. I don’t think we should shed a single retrospective tear. It might be interesting to know how or why it fell—whether from war or drought or disease or soil exhaustion—but I don’t much care about that either. Because quite frankly, as civilizations go, the Mayan civilization in Mexico didn’t amount to much."

The Architecture of the Mega-Church

I didn't know whether to laugh or weep at this article and slideshow about mega-churches. Apart from the monstrosities in the photographs, consider these quotations from the article:

"The desire of congregations to make their place of worship a part of everyday life rather than a place apart is admirable, and one can sympathize with the wish to avoid the traditional ecclesiastical symbols that have been pretty much co-opted by mainstream religions."

"It doesn't look like a place of worship, but what does it look like? A performing-arts center, a community college, a corporate headquarters?"

"Paul Goldberger once observed, 'The Gothic cathedral was designed to inspire awe and thoughts of transcendence. Megachurches celebrate comfort, ease and the very idea of contemporary suburban life.' "

"[M]ost contemporary megachurches are resolutely secular in design."

"The arena seating, the mainstream decor, the profusion of lighting and television broadcasting equipment, as well as the surrounding lobbies and vestibules, are distinctly secular. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

"[T]he abstract forms and louvered windows make this graceless building look more like a power plant than a cathedral."

Can you think of a better example to illustrate the identity crisis in which mainstream Christianity has floundered? The Christian mind and the culture it produces are AWOL.

New Book on Helen of Troy

There's a new book out on the woman whose face launched a thousand ships; it bears the arresting title Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore. I'm not familiar with the author (Bettany Hughes), but the book appears to be a standard deconstructionist work stressing an "ambivalence towards the ideal of female beauty." On the plus side, it looks like Hughes allows the possibility that Helen was real person.

A London Times review of this and another new book on Hercules can be found here.

The Reliability of Pre-modern Sources

I recently saw a link to an article which described an experiment proving that the "legendary" death ray of Archimedes could have been real. The account prompted me to reflect on the deep skepticism with which most moderns view ancient and medieval accounts of all sorts.

I suppose it is post-Renaissance arrogance and disdain for the past which leads to the dismissal of stories of advanced technologies and supernatural events. We [the MLA program] reject modernism as well as post-modernism, or say we do, but I wonder how many modern prejudices are still ingrained in us. Would I have countenanced the possibility of Archimedes's death ray in the absence of this new "scientific" account? I don't know.

What degree of faith or skepticism should we have when we approach documents produced in a different age, when the standards to which we are accustomed did not apply?

The Continuing Relevance of the Ancient Image

Back in May, the BBC ran a television series called "How Art Made the World." The producers discovered (gasp!) that most modern images have antecedents in the ancient world! What revelation will we be treated to next by these geniuses?

Pagan Tourists and their Modern Counterparts

Someone named Tony Perrottet has written a book entitled Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists. The first chapter is online here. Anyone doubting the resurgence of paganism in our day should consider that the big attraction at Pompeii, as Perrottet shows, is the various depictions of male genitalia found on walls throughout the ruin. (I believe Dr. Woods had to ask specifically that his group of students not be shown that side of things during his visit to Pompeii last summer.) In this article, Perrottet says today's New York City is analogous to ancient Rome. According to him, that's not a bad thing.

It gives one a better idea of what Paul was talking about in Romans 1, doesn't it?

Odysseus's Home Found

According to this article in the Madera Tribune, the home of Odysseus--yes, that Odysseus--has been located on the island of Kefalonia off the west coast of Greece. Maybe we can arrange a field trip . . .