Category: Uncategorized

In many respects, WWI is the defining moment in modern Western history. As the 19^th century ended, incipient tensions had come to the fore, casting cautionary shadows over a new century’s overweening confidence and sense of optimism.

The technological progress of the era had been extraordinary. Science and industry were ascendent. Yet economic disparities grew, industrial workers were exploited, and the fabric of traditional society began to fray. Many felt uncertain, adrift, vulnerable.

Thus, when war came, some saw it as a referendum on Western Civilization itself. For a new challenge had arisen, one that had effectively questioned the supremacy of settled tradition. German Idealism, that is, promised a new man and a new future, mercifully detached from the past and its myriad sins and imperfections.

Continue reading “But the Earth Abideth Forever…”

While having coffee with a friend recently, the subject of pluralism came up. Not one to pass up the opportunity to pontificate, I affirmed the value of pluralism while arguing that what passes for pluralism these days is mostly anything but.

Calls for “diversity” are on offer instead. Yet diversity is really nothing at all like pluralism.

Pluralism is based on differing ideas, perspectives, backgrounds, and identities, each granted free expression. Out of this cacophony of varied and sometimes contentious speech, consensus hopefully emerges.

Continue reading “What Ever Happened to Pluralism?”

I used to visit Shirley often. She was an elderly church member who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Yet her mind remained sharp, vibrant, and probing. I always looked forward to talking with her.

One day, sitting in her living room, we got onto the subject of church attendance. A lifelong churchgoer herself, she expressed concern that neither of her two children had any interest, despite attending regularly growing up.

When questioned, her son told her he thought himself a highly moral person who always tries to live a good life. As such, he didn’t really see the need to go to church. Unsure how to counter his argument, she asked me what I would say.

Continue reading “Passport Out of Provincialism”

In preparing the liturgy for a service I recently led, I chose the classic Abide with Me as one of the hymns. To my surprise, the church secretary emailed back and suggested I leave out the last verse. Why? Because it’s so depressing, what with Covid and all. Funny, all along I had thought it a hymn of comfort and hope.

The offending stanza reads like this: “Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes; Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies; Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”

Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’ve long believed that the unofficial religion of American is positive thinking. Just think good thoughts and everything will work out.

Continue reading “The Lesson from 2020?”

There’s a fictional story of “show-and-tell” at an elementary school. The assignment? To bring something to class that symbolizes your faith.

The first child gets up and says, “I’m a Catholic, and I brought my rosary beads.”

The second goes to the front of the class and says, “I’m Jewish, and I brought a yarmulke.”

The third stands up and announces, “I’m a Congregationalist, and I brought a casserole.”

As much as I love the lightheartedness of this joke, it does make a serious point. It suggests that Christian doctrine may no longer hold a place of honor in our churches.

Continue reading “Sermon: “A Case for Dogmatics””

We are creeping up on the Fourth of July again. It is, as we all know, our nation’s annual commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776.

Over the years, I’ve come to reject the name given the ensuing conflict, “American Revolutionary War,” preferring the “American War of Independence” (to distinguish it from real revolutions like the one in France a few years later).

For, unlike the French Revolution, the Colonists did not intend to reject the basic insights of British culture, its values, morals, principles, or religion. Rather, it sought to confirm and strengthen them while eliminating what were perceived as corruptions of the existing British model.

Continue reading “Which Revolution Shall It Be?”

Since we’re still largely barred from attending church, I’ve used the opportunity to watch a number of services online, some altogether different from what I’m used to. To that end, I recently watched a curious, hipster-like Evangelical service on the World Wide Web.

Now, one of my longstanding critiques of Evangelicalism is its tendency to focus almost exclusively on the “Jesus and me” phenomenon. I sometimes get the impression that I’ve entered “Jesus World,” a hermetically sealed, bubble-like place largely disconnected from the world around it.

Whatever is going on, the message always seems the same: ignore what’s going on and focus on being saved; focus on your personal relationship with Jesus.

Continue reading “A Prevailing Social Vision”

A few days after New Year’s I visited a dentist who cheerfully announced how he thought 2020 had ‘a nice ring to it’ and that it no doubt would be a great year.

Oops.

Though I’ve never had any real interest in space travel, aside from cheering it on from the couch, I am now downright envious of those astronauts who recently, at supersonic speeds, were catapulted away from earth and into outer space. Oh, to be in orbit in the spring!

As a corollary to the cartoon above, I once saw one showing God, also with the requisite long white beard, sitting on a cloud, and pointing his TV remote at a distant earth frantically trying to change the channel.

Continue reading “Moral Confusion”

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. (C.S. Lewis)

On a related note, I just read an email from a former colleague announcing that his church’s leadership “prayerfully decided” to cancel worship services until September 6^th! By my count, his church will have been closed for six whole months. No doubt the heavens rejoiced!

Continue reading “Bubble-Wrapped Culture”

On two or three occasions I have introduced a Prayer of Confession into the liturgy of churches that hadn’t previously been using one. Why they hadn’t is a whole other post.

In any event, more than once I was told that such a move was “too Catholic,” a charge leveled not infrequently by diehard New England Congregationalists, generally when dismissing any idea deemed unattractive.

At one time a hot button issue, the doctrine of “papal infallibility” used to be one of the defining issues in the sometimes contentious squabble between Catholics and Protestants. It was a popular cudgel Protestants might use to establish Catholicism as non-biblical and heretical. (In actual fact, the doctrine of papal infallibility is far more nuanced and sophisticated than generally assumed – but that is also another post.)

Continue reading “Trained Poodles”