What Would Jesus Drink?

Great article at First Things about Christians and drink.  See previous posts:

The Anglican Beer Club

What Does the Bible Really Say About Alcohol?

In Praise of Christian Walls

Srdja Trifkovic delivers a well-deserved smackdown to Pope Francis and, by extension, to all who reason similarly.  This would include many Neo-Anglican clergy and immigration activists.

The Bishop of London Calls for More English Pride

Too bad it takes a crisis like the one England is experiencing for CofE clergy to find their tongues.

Syrian Templars

It’s Time to Boycott the Worship Industry

It’s time to stop mimicking pop culture.

It’s time for us to learn how to sing and make music again, instead of allowing others to do it for us.

It’s time to rediscover the proper place of music in corporate worship.

It’s time to end the Tomlinization, dethrone our jesusy American Idols, and once again foster creative beauty and artistry, especially in our children.

It’s time to make worship about the work of the people once again, not just a good show and an hour of vegging out.

It’s time to take a radical step. It’s set up to fail us, and there’s no fixing it.

The whole thing is nonsensical, anyway. There’s not real worship industry, anyway, only a group of commercial entities that must call itself such because their very existence requires it.

Don’t let them fool you. Corporate worship doesn’t depend on the mass production of raw materials and goods.

The whole thing started from nothing when our good Creator spoke everything into existence.

Our Redeemer was begotten, not made.

You can keep your worship industry. With one big book, a loaf of bread, and a little wine, we have all the materials we need.

Yes indeed.

Truer Words Were Never Spoken

Very similar in substance to Dante Alighieri's execration: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."  It applies across the board, including Anglican officialdom.

 

Peter Hitchens - Britain Should Defend Its Christian Culture

From one of Anglicanism's finest political commentators.

Class Notes and Videos for Inquirers - St. Matthew's Anglican Catholic Church

Added to my sidebar.  Highly recommended for people curious about the Anglican Way.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy

Yet more evidence of the growing angst in Europe over the prospect of civil war:

-- Warns (sic) of civil wars and chaos

-- Britain warned to expect far-right ‘violence’ as anti-Muslim hatred becomes ‘mainstream’. (Now there's an unbiased title of an article for you. :) )

Blessing of the Harleys

Two things:

1) This is one reason among many that I'm a trad Anglican. It's earthy, the furthest thing from gnosticism;

2) My wife and I intend to retire soon in this area of the country (Western North Carolina).  I just may have to look up this church.  (St. Patrick's Anglican, APA).

The Fury of the Nations

Read the lines.  And between the lines.  War is coming to Europe.

A world divided: Violent clashes break out across the globe as thousands take to the streets in anti-Islam protests organised by far-right group PEGIDA.

Pitchfork Time? "Elites Have Lost Their Healthy Fear Of The Masses".

Laurence Auster on the "Babylonian Impulse" vs. the Biblical Doctrine of Nations

When I was in seminary I belonged to a Christian apologetics and activist organization called Christian Research Associates.  One of the things I developed for the organization was a lecture on the New Age Movement that analyzed the movement historically and theologically.  In the course of my research, I happened upon a number of sources pertaining to the spiritual and social meaning of the Babylonian ziggurat, both to the ancient Babylonians and to modern occultists who have made use of it in their writings.  The text of Genesis 11: 1-9 is the account of prototypical ziggurat - the Tower of Babel - as interpreted theologically by its Hebrew author. 

I have referred to the beliefs and activism of certain New Age liberals, modern humanists, and political elite with respect to the creation of a one-world government as the "Babylonian Impulse",  hence my use of the term in the title of this blog entry. 

Several years ago I was pleased to find that the late traditionalist conservative writer Laurence Auster was thinking similarly about the Babylonian Impulse, as evidenced in a two-part article he wrote for Front Page Magazine entitled, How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism.  For those of you unfamiliar with Auster, he was a Jew who converted to Anglican Christianity (Episcopal Church), and later to Roman Catholicism, whose writings focused mainly on immigration and the heresy of multiculturalism. 

Yes, I say the "heresy" of multiculturalism, because as Auster shows in this article, and as these writers have opined, multiculturalism stands in opposition to the biblical doctrine of nations, the center of which is arguably the Genesis text cited above.  God means to keep nations separate.  In the Genesis text, the borders are linguistic;  in other biblical texts, the borders are physical, and nothing about the New Covenant or the catholicity of the Church changes any of this.

As indicated by the title of his article, Auster's focus is on liberal Christianity, which of course is a fellow traveler with New Age liberals, modern humanists, and the political elite.  But Auster turns his sights on the Church of Rome as well, because of its irresponsible -- and yes, heretical -- multiculturalism. Here is the salient section of the article about the Babylonian Impulse:

The above thoughts lead to a surprising conclusion. Most liberal Christians today affirm that creating culturally diverse societies is the moral, Godly, and just thing to do—the more diverse, the more just and Godly. But if it is our purpose to discern God's purpose, doesn't it seem far more likely that God would oppose the creation of multicultural, majority-less societies? He would oppose them, first, because they rob human beings of the stable cultural environments and the concrete networks of belonging that are essential conditions of personal and social flourishing; and, second, he would oppose them because they lead to unresolvable conflict and disorder. In opening America's borders to the world, our political leaders are not following any divine scheme, but are indulging an all‑too‑human conceit: "We can create a totally just society," they tell themselves. "We can stamp out cultural particularities and commonalities that have taken centuries or millennia to develop. We can erect a new form of society based on nothing but an idea. We can ignore racial and cultural differences and the propensity to inter‑group conflict that has ruled all of human history. We can create an earthly utopia, a universal nation."

All of which brings us to the biblical account of Babel. The comparison of multicultural America to the Tower of Babel has become such a cliché in the hands of conservative columnists over the last 20 years that a true understanding of this parable has been lost. Indeed, as I will show, the conservative, or rather the neoconservative, understanding of this parable is the exact opposite of its true meaning.

As told in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the human race, in a burst of arrogant pride, attempts to construct a perfect human society purely by their own will—a tower "with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Mankind hopes that this one‑world society will prevent them from being divided into separate societies. But this is not what God wants. "The Lord came down to look at the city and tower which man had built, and the Lord said, 'If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.'" God does not want man to build a universal city, because that would lead man to worship himself instead of God. So God confuses—that is, he diversifies—men's language so that they cannot understand one another, and then he "scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth."

It becomes clear that the Tower of Babel is not, as neoconservatives have often said, a multicultural society which breaks down because it lacks a common culture based on universalist ideals. On the contrary, the Tower of Babel represents the neoconservatives' own political ideal—the Universal Nation. And the moral of the story is that God does not want men to have a single Universal Nation, he wants them to have distinct nations. "That is why it was called Babel," Genesis continues, "because there the Lord confounded the speech of the whole earth." But that's not all. Having divided men's language into many different languages, God does not want these many languages to co‑exist in the same society: "And from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

Thus God rejects the universal society, where the whole human race lives together speaking the same language, and he also (implicitly) rejects the multicultural society, where the whole human race lives together speaking different languages. God wants the human race to belong to a plurality of separate and finite societies, each with its own culture and language. This providential system for the organization of human life allows for the appropriate expression of cultural variety, even as, by demonstrating that human things are not absolute, it restrains and channels man's self-aggrandizing instincts.

And this view of mankind is not limited to the Book of Genesis, as a supposedly primitive account of an early, tribal period of history when mankind presumably needed a more rudimentary form of social organization. If we go from the first book of the Bible to its last book, The Revelation of John, we find, to our astonishment, that God's plan still includes separate nations. In Chapter 21, after the final judgment on sinful humanity has occurred, after the first heaven and the first earth have passed away and a new heaven and a new earth have appeared, after the holy city, New Jerusalem, has come down out of heaven, a dwelling for God himself on earth, and after the total transformation of the world, when even the sun and moon are no longer needed to light the city because the glory of God is the light of it, and the Lamb is the lamp of it, even then

... the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it....

And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.

In the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, there are still distinct nations, and kings of nations, and these are the glories of humanity which are brought before the throne of God, and there transfigured in the light of Christ. Mankind, following the end of the world, is still providentially constituted of separate nations, which give it its character and distinctiveness, even as, for example, our earth is constituted of separate continents, islands, mountain ranges, and valleys, which give it its shape and its meaning. The physical earth is not a homogenous mass consisting of nothing but "equal" individual particles, and neither, in the biblical view, is mankind.

Very sound ethno-theology, this.  We need to stop shying away from it for fear of being called "racists."  The Church is to evince more courage than that.

For the full article:

How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism (Part I)

How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism (Part II)

On Anglican Catholicity

To that heaven which belongs to the catholic church, I shall never come, except I go by the way of the catholic church, by former Ideas, former examples, former patterns, to believe according to ancient beliefs, to pray according to ancient forms, to preach according to former meditations.  - John Donne, The Works of John Donne, Vol.3, Sermon LXVI

Amen

The pacifists are wrong, and that's all there is to it.

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections - those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be "meek in hall", and those who are "meek in hall" but useless in battle - for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed.  When this dissociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair. . . .  The man who combines both characters - the knight - is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.

In the world today there is a "liberal" or "enlightened" tradition which regards the combative side of man's nature as a pure, atavistic evil, and scouts the chivalrous sentiment as part of the "false glamour" of war.  And there is also a neo-heroic tradition which scouts the chivalrous sentiment as a weak sentimentality, which would raise from its grave (its shallow and unquiet grave!) the pre-Christian ferocity of Achilles by a "modern invocation". . . .

(However), there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated.  But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature - something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen.  And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic.  In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion.  Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. . . . The ideal embodied in Launcelot is "escapism" is a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. . . .  (C.S. Lewis, "The Necessity of Chivalry".)

Fear and Trembling: My First Foray Into "Ethno-theology"

Fear and trembling because of the very real prospect of being misunderstood.  But a foray it must be, since present realities in Western Europe and the Anglosphere will eventually compel the Church to open up a frank and serious, which is to say platitude-free, discussion about it.

First, from an Orthodox perspective, and as Anglicanism like Orthodoxy is organized along national lines, of special interest to us:  Orthodox Ethno-Theology and the Forced Demographic Replacement of Eastern Europe;

Next, a better-quality article written from a Reformed perspective: A Biblical Defense of Ethno-Nationalism;

Lastly, an excellent cautionary article from Aaron Wolf at Chronicles magazine: Incidentally White.

Is there a "biblical doctrine of nations"?  The platitudinous, politically correct answer is "no".  Since I've so described the "no" answer, you'll know what my answer is.  If I'm right, it's time we start talking about it.  By my lights, it is eminently possible to answer "yes" and not commit oneself to a racist position.

A Blessed Candelmas to All

Music video courtesy of Fr. Jonathan Munn.

Two Related Articles

Women Clergy Will Be the Death of the Church of England

Baptizing “Masculinity”: The Real Reason Men are Leaving the Church

The Early Church on War and Killing

Another nail in the coffin of Christian pacifism.

There Seems to Be Some Sort of Disagreement

Dueling Anglican Identitarians.  Count me among the latter.

John Owen Was An Anglican

John Owen Was Not An Anglican

Evangelical Pietists and Informal Fallacies

This is a video clip from Evangelical Phillip McCart, pastor of an outfit called Grace Collective Church (Baptist), waxing eloquent on Hebrews 12:1, with all the latest AV media, as only an Evangelical personality cult homilist can do.  Sadly, it was brought to my attention with approbation by an Anglican friend:

I'm just gonna leave this here. #ToughAsNails

Posted by Phillip McCart on Monday, January 25, 2016

I attended an Evangelical church service several years ago where the same message came across from the pulpit:  If you're making preparations for yourself and your family, you are most likely betraying the subchristian essence of your purported life in Christ.

Bollocks, I say.  And to my Anglican friend, if he's looking in,  this stuff isn't Anglican.

I find it intriguing that McCart mentions the plight of Syrian Christians.  Unmentioned by Pastor McCart is that the suffering Syrian Christians are fighting back with force of arms.  That, at a minimum, means the strategic stockpiling of weapons, ammo, and the material necessities of life.  I wonder if Pastor McCart would cast similar aspersions at these two Syrian soldiers bearing AK-47s and accoutrements:

Or this Pakistani Anglican guarding his church with force of arms and being saluted by Bishop Brian Iverach.

Or this Christian man from the United States who has gone to the Middle East to fight ISIS:

I grow so weary of these pietist preachers spouting what is in essence dispensationalist theology, most of whom in all likelihood have never served in the Armed Forces and who have probably never read a lick about Christian resistance theory or D.A. Carson's indispensable book Exegetical Fallacies. If they had read that book and taken its content seriously, they would never engage in the either/or fallacy (we either submit to martyrdom or take up arms) and the non sequitur fallacy (biblical verses about the inevitability of persecution commit us to Christian pacifism). 

"Embarrassing" indeed.

Here endeth the rant.