Wretchard on fire: testament to the truth of faith

Moving on from his original post on Pope Benedict's recent entreaty to conservative Anglicans, Wretchard of Belmont Club has been leading a discussion with some excellent comments. I particularly like this last:

It is the side-effect of this “otherworldliness” that fuels many of the common notions of freedom. Every worldly religion tends toward a closed system. Part of the power of the Declaration, I think, stems from the idea that the world is even in principle never completely definable by a human agency. It leaves the door open to new information from outside the system, represented by the notation “the Creator”.

Winston Smith attempts to rebut O’brien’s assertion of the Party’s omnipotence by pointing out that O’brien himself was aging; that Party members died; that it could not control the natural laws. O’brien responded with the torture machine. He made the five fingers he held up seem as many as he claimed. O’brien argued that the Party did not seek dominion over nature. It sought dominion over man. The quotes supplied by Storm Rider and cited below are true, but not in the way they are commonly supposed. From a purely secular point of view, what they signify is that for a Kingdom of This World to be complete, it is first necessary that God should not exist. The Universe must be closed. The Party’s word must be final. It is imperative that the Last Prophet should have come. The book is ended and the ultimate words are written, not as an earnest of more to come, but as a grant of absolute power to those who rule on the earth.

“It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can only organize it against man.” Henri de Lubac

“If God does not exist, then everything is permitted” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What Dostoevsky might have said is that for everything to be permitted to the State, then God must not exist. If God does not exist, then the State is free to organize against man. The ideological imperative of global warmingism is this: even nature must be brought into the political system. There is no “out there” there. Not God, not Nature. Not anything you might want to call the Creator. Everything is subject to the political process. Man must control the climate. If the climate goes bad, it is because our politics is bad. Sacerdotal dictatorships have not advanced much beyond the shamans of millenia past. We still sacrifice for rain. Only we sacrifice jobs, abort children, extinguish our dreams. Nothing is beyond their purview. We should never be allowed to think something the state cannot give or approve of. Hence “hate speech”. More than that, we ought never to be able to even dream of what it cannot bestow. Unless the far green country under a swift sunrise is manufactured by the state, it should never be allowed to enter into our visions. “It’s for the children” refers to us.

All real totalitarianisms are ultimately intellectually sterile, not simply spiritually barren. That is why global warming is in many respects anti-science. Real science has never heard of truth by consensus. Science leaves the door of knowledge open. We continuously learn from what is “not of this world” — in the sense that which is not within our purview yet. We learn from what is over the next hill, across the wide ocean, beyond the gulfs of space; we learn from events that occured before we were born and perhaps of events after we die. The first thing that faith must preserve is wonder; and the second is a childlike curiosity. Freedom stems from the sense of the possible. It believes there’s always a door leading out of the building. A far green country under a swift sunrise.
Oct 23, 2009 - 10:18 am

Belmont Club » The lighting of the beacons

I would only add that given that this faith in open-endedness, in a further truth beyond our present and conceivable human systems, is indeed a real necessity for human freedom; and given that many people today just are not going to be capable of faith in some supernatural "God" as explanation for this reality of an inexhaustible truth (the inexhaustibilty of the ways in which the human might come to know itself in future), this is just the reason, as I was suggesting to Dag the other day, that we need to allow ourselves to explore the anthropology of the human concept of "God", not to diminish the basis for real faith by attempting to reduce what cannot be reduced to systematic knowledge, but to create a greater faith in the human ability and necessity ever to expand the degrees of freedom in our shared systems and forms of sacrality.

My Neyes Ni Seen

I was at a concert at an Anglican church once when in the pew ahead of me a little girl asked her mother during the course of the service, "Do they believe in the Pope?" Her mother said, "Yes, dear, but not as much as we do."

Matthew Drake, "Silenced Christian soldiers: Sandhurst chaplain bans Creed 'so services won't offend minority religions', " Daily Mail. 30 Jan. 2009.

Sandhurst military academy has dropped the Church of England Creed from services over fears that it may offend religious minorities.

The move has outraged worshippers who say centuries of religious tradition have been sacrificed for the sake of political correctness.

Senior chaplain Reverend Jonathan Gough dropped the Christian declaration of faith in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, when he took office earlier this month.

Mr Gough – nicknamed the 'Right On Rev' by some of his flock – says he wants avoid offending non-believers.

But Christian cadets and civilians were furious when the traditional Anglican service abruptly ended without the Creed being read last Sunday.

Although no official announcement was made, a fellow Chaplain said it had been removed 'to stop upsetting cadets who do not believe in God'.

[....]

This is despite the fact that it is not compulsory for any Sandhurst cadets to attend.

[....]

The Creed, found in the book of Common Prayer, begins: 'I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried'.

Theologian, Dr Richard Bell, from Nottingham University, said it was 'something that unites most Christians and for the vast majority it is the act of stating who you are'.

[....]

An Army said it was common practice to alter the service from time to time. 'The people who are angry should sit down with Reverend Gough for a cup of tea,' a spokesman said.

Thanks to Dhimmi Watch.

I dunno, buddy. Angry tea-drinkers bring images of horror to my mind. You know, one of them might say: "I say!" That'd be the end of all peace in the realm. Just start running and let the jihadis have the ruins. "My neyes ni seen nuttin'...."

Is this Christianity?

My interest in the church is presently that of an outsider who nonetheless has many reasons to believe the revival of Judeo-Christian ways of understanding the human are probably necessary to a revival of our shared Western freedom. One of the debates in today's church that interests me is whether a woman can properly play the role of priest. Of course a woman can be a priest or priestess, in general human terms - history has seen many - but can she be one in a specifically Christian context that will remain coherently and meaningfully Christian (not that I have any firm ideas about any necessary limits of Christianity in relation to any other possible religious positions)?

In other words, can a woman satisfactorily represent Jesus in relation to the church that has been traditionally figured as female (which, by the way, was a tradition continued when the at first Presbyterian and Anglican sons of a somewhat de-ritualized protestantism re-discovered their need for priestly ritual and created all-male priestly fraternities, starting in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. On the initial model of the Freemasons, the fraternal lodges that were, until the last few generations, ubiquitous in Anglo-American civil society were figured as feminine: e.g., one used turns of phrase like "our Mother lodge"; "our sister lodge" to refer to one's lodge's relationship to other lodges, though one's fellow priests were definitely fellows or brothers in the craft.)

While I believe we are primarily cultural beings, culture cannot eliminate or make insignificant certain underlying biological natures and these inevitably influence how we play any role, and how it was first "played" before it became the basis of a ritual. Anyway, this is just to explain why this story grabbed my interest:

Clergy Catwalk Show at Westpoint, showing off the cloths form the cloth is - Reverend Wiz Slater, curate at St Michael's CofE Stoke Gifford (Photo: SWNS)
The ecclesiastical event was a showcase of the latest designs of religious gowns in various colours, patterns, shapes and textures.

Several priests acted as 'models' to strut the cat walk in front of hundreds of clergy at the exhibition .

One model, The Rev James Hutchings, said: "I've done nothing like this before. It has certainly caused lots of laughs in the parish.

"My children thought it was hilarious. They probably won't ask me back. My pirouette was terrible."

Designers featured in the show including J Wippell Ltd, of Exeter, Juliet Hemingway and Shinglers of Sutton.

Ms Hemingway, who has designed vestments for George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, told the Express and Echo: "Women clergy have brought a fresh look to garments.

"They are not as willing to put up with dirty, worn-out robes. I think this has rubbed off on male clergy."

Reverend Hilary Dawson, Church of England curate in the Netherexe Mission Community, near Exeter, modelled various designs. She told the newspaper she had bought four stoles from Juliet Hemingway.

"My stoles say something about my faith, the place in which I am serving and, most of all, point to the gospel of Christ," she said. "My green stole, for example, reflects the water and hills of my new home and parishes."

WWJD?

Catholics Outnumber Anglicans in Anglican England

News of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism has made headlines around the world. In the shadow of that story we read of another angle to the growing decline of Anglicanism in England: for the first time since the 16th Century, there are now more practicing Catholics in England than Anglicans.

A survey by the group Christian Research published in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper showed that around 862,000 worshippers attended Catholic Mass each week in 2006, exceeding the 852,000 who went to Church of England services.

Attendance at Anglican services has almost halved over the past 40 years as the country has grown steadily more secular, the research showed, with only Pentecostalism showing any rise in popularity among Christian denominations.

While attendance figures for both Catholic and Anglican services are declining, Catholic numbers are slipping by a lesser degree as new migrants arrive from east Europe and parts of Africa, boosting Catholic congregations.

The Church of England is not taking the dip to second place lying down, the Telegraph article reveals:

In an attempt to combat the declining interest in traditional religion, the Anglican Church has launched radical new forms of evangelism that include nightclub chaplains, a floating church on a barge and internet congregations.

The French Christian site La Croix adds some details, from Peter Brierley, the former general director of Christian Research, who assisted in conducting the survey:

"A part of the reason for the increase [in the number of practicing Catholics] is that you have a large number of immigrants coming from Catholic countries, especially Poland." British authorities say that at least 300,000 Poles have come to Great Britain since joining the EU in 2004, while polish sources place the number at closer to one million, of which half have centered around London.

Unmentioned in the Sunday Telegraph's coverage of the story is what effect, if any, the ongoing schism within the Anglican communion may be having on Church attendance. Might British traditionalists be growing as disillusioned with their post-modern church, as many of their US counterparts are? Maybe, just maybe, it's not about where it is being taught, whether on land or on "floating barges", but simply what is being taught... or rather, what is no longer being taught.

If one's faith teaches that anything goes, then why need a God at all to help us live that kind of life? If every behavior is equally healthy and helpful to the community at large, then why even have faith to begin with, since there would exist no better version of ourselves to imagine aiming ourselves to become?

Religion: whatever I say it is!

Perplexing many, Episcopal priest announces she’s a Muslim, too. This craziness has been all over the internet and I really probably should just ignore it. I mean, it's not as if anyone is still under the impression that North American Anglicans, or Episcopalians, are Christians anymore, right? Well, not quite. It remains important to ask how we have gotten to a state in which supposedly educated people, people who are paid to teach theology at our universities, don't know what a Christian or Muslim is.

[Ann Holmes] Redding, who will begin teaching the New Testament as a visiting assistant professor at Seattle University this fall, has a different analogy: “I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I’m both an American of African descent and a woman. I’m 100 percent both.”

Redding doesn’t feel she has to resolve all the contradictions. People within one religion can’t even agree on all the details, she said. “So why would I spend time to try to reconcile all of Christian belief with all of Islam?

She says she felt an inexplicable call to become Muslim, and to surrender to God – the meaning of the word “Islam.”

“It wasn’t about intellect,” she said. “All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much something about my identity and who I am supposed to be.

Redding’s situation is highly unusual. Officials at the national Episcopal Church headquarters said they are not aware of any other instance in which a priest has also been a believer in another faith. They said it’s up to the local bishop to decide if a priest could continue in that role.

Redding’s bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, says he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting. Her announcement, made through a story in her diocese’s newspaper, hasn’t caused much controversy yet.

Some Muslim leaders are perplexed.

[...]But Redding, 55, has been embraced by leaders at the Al-Islam Center of Seattle, the Muslim group she prays with.

“Islam doesn’t say if you’re a Christian, you’re not a Muslim,” said programming director Ayesha Anderson. “Islam doesn’t lay it out like that.”

(Gee Whiz, I wonder what all that infidel bashing in the Koran is about? the Jooos? )

Aside from the established sets of prayers she recites in Arabic five times each day, Redding says her prayers are neither uniquely Islamic nor Christian. They’re simply her private talks with God or Allah – she uses both names interchangeably. “It’s the same person, praying to the same God.”

Some scholars are skeptical.

“The theological beliefs are irreconcilable,” said Mahmoud Ayoub, professor of Islamic studies and comparative religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. Islam holds that God is one, unique, indivisible. “For Muslims to say Jesus is God would be blasphemy.”

Redding knows there are many Christians and Muslims who will not accept her as both.

“I don’t care,” she says. “They can’t take away my baptism.” And as she understands it, once she’s made her profession of faith to become a Muslim, no one can say she isn’t that, either.

While she doesn’t rule out that one day she may choose one or the other, it’s more likely “that I’m going to be 100 percent Christian and 100 percent Muslim when I die.”

I don't care what anyone else thinks: the religion of the brave new generation! Talk about playing God. How can such an autistic performance of an inherently collective phenomenon (is it a real revelation if I can't convince others to share it and hold on to it across generations?) get past the national church and the local Bishop who is excited about the interfaith possibilities? Well, the greater religion at play here is obviously neither Christianity nor Islam, but postmodern liberalism or White Guilt, the great destroyers of anything reeking of Western "privilege".

While we might think that Redding's claim, that praying to the personal God of Christianity and to the unknowably Other Allah is all praying to the same thing, might require a multiple personality, perhaps she is really just a confused Jew... But there is nonetheless a serious point to be made here. The more that Eastern and Western peoples and cultures interact through global migrations, there will be an inevitable mimetic interaction and rivalry between religions leading all kinds of people to attempt greater syntheses of West and East to transcend the rivalry. To the extent this can be achieved, which would likely entail the greater truth of one historically particular faith subsuming the truths of a less successful competitor, we might welcome it. But to the extent that mixing oil and water is impossible, as Kipling said, the attempt will render both constituents corrupted, confused, and unable to perform essential human tasks. And if a nihilist all things to all people liberalism can't pick up the pieces, it will likely get ever more tyrannical before collapsing into the new global Balkans where today's inherited wealth and institutional presence of the Episcopalians and universities will no longer be able to feed and protect the Reddings of this world.

"Multiculturalism" in the form of the Anglican war against the Jews, and the perhaps not un-related dispute over homosexual clergy and "marriage", have grabbed the centre of attention in stories about the corroding integrity of the North American Episcopalian church. But there is a deeper unease with Christianity and its traditional theologies behind it all. How long before we allow this undisciplined rejection of Western particularity, in a vain desire to embrace the universal without going through any particular discipline (which is the only way we can ever know universal truths - we must be embodied in a particular culture or religion to access them) to destroy our particular nations too? The destruction won't be warm and welcoming to all; it will likely entail a return to some vicious neo-tribalism and paganism.