Saturday, July 31, A.D. 2010

And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time

Today is the feast of Saint Joseph of Arimathea on the new calendar. For those of you so ordered, have a blessed feast.

Below is William Blake’s poetic preface to Milton, which refers to the legend of Joseph’s having brought the Christ Child to the lovely island of Albion:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

The poem has been popularized as the patriotic song “Jerusalem.”

It hearkens back to England’s better days . . .

Posted by Joseph on Saturday, July 31, A.D. 2010
Orthodoxy • Saints • Protestantism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Monday, July 26, A.D. 2010

Patriarch Kirill Plants a Tree

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church has been on the job for a year and a half. I was initially worried about his elevation to the patriarchate, but he has been doing a pretty good job on the spiritual, ecclesial, cultural, political, and diplomatic fronts. I am relieved to have been wrong. The patriarch is currently visiting the Ukraine; I hope that he can help to end the schism there and to regularize its ecclesial life.

OBL News has a pleasant story with charming pictures about the patriarch’s planting a birch tree (of course) at a monastery in Odessa: “Patriarch Kirill Plants Tree.”

We should not put our trust in princes, in the sons of men. However, Russia gives me hope for the near future of Christendom.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, July 26, A.D. 2010
Orthodoxy • (0) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, June 29, A.D. 2010

Civic Songs for Nurturing Jihad

The Middle East Media Research Institute has many hours of Middle Eastern craziness that you can watch, and I highly recommend it as a window through which we can readily see that they are not like us—quite a difficult realization for Americans nursed on the ideals of tolerance, multiculturalism, and pacifism. However, I found the following relatively mild music video on YouTube through a link from another site—perhaps N.R.O. It is relatively mild because it does not call outright for the slaughter of Jews, unlike much children’s programming in the Arab world.

As a side note, the first little girl who prays (at 2:09) looks like my mother when she was a child. I do not know if my mother ever prayed, “O Allah, take revenge for us.” I would not put it past her, but I still doubt it.

Also, the man looks like Teddy from The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Did Theodore L. Forzman grow up to sing jihadist children’s songs? If it happened to honey tongued Cat Stevens (apostate Steven Demetre Georgiou), it could happen to anyone.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, June 29, A.D. 2010
Muhammadanism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Monday, June 28, A.D. 2010

Bad Vestments

Last week, I discovered a funny site that showcases absurd vestment choices, primarily in the Anglican communion. Laugh, cry, and indulge in sectarian pride and bigotry with Bad Vestments.

Some of the vestment styles that the blogger finds egregious are not too bad, but most are horrible. In viewing them, one wonders who thought that such was a good idea. Remember that a chain of bad decisions had to have existed, from the tailor to the parish purchaser to the person wearing the vestments. However, it is not that surprising in the case of the Anglicans. If your religion has lost its collective mind, then appropriate liturgical fashion sense ought to deteriorate soon, as well.

Also, I find many Anglican “clerics” to look rather creepy. This may not be fair, but on looks alone would you trust this man with your children?

It seems as if this fellow, Mr. Duncan, is one of the decent Episcopalian leaders who wishes for his sect to remain Christian, more or less. Yet, I find the look a bit pervy. Perhaps, my Eastern bias is too strong; I prefer bishops to look like Santa Claus or wizards. For instance, compare this Anglican “bishop,”

to one of our own, the late Archbishop Micah of Yaroslavl,

Who looks more like an heir to the apostles?

Getting back to Bad Vestments, you will enjoy the site, with its amazingly atrocious finds and its irreverent commentary. I particularly like this stole story:

This is an example of a good vestment idea that wasn’t brought off particularly well. The dove and the fire are perfectly fine representations of the Holy Spirit. Just don’t have the dove flying toward the fire on one side and absent in the other.

It reminds me of one of my favorite t shirt designs:

Perhaps, the E.C.U.S.A. could incorporate the design into vestments and thereby raise awareness of roadway duckling fatalities.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, June 28, A.D. 2010
Liturgy • Protestantism • Roman Catholicism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Wednesday, June 23, A.D. 2010

Boozette the Anglican Priestess

What else could the Episcopal “Church” U.S.A. do to make themselves more bizarre and repellent? After their rejection of Christian morality, after their communion services for dogs, and after their transformation into the religious version of the Bravo channel, what else might we expect of the spiritual descendents of Cranmer, Whitefield, and Mackonochie?

If the Anglicans had anything going for them, they had good taste and discretion. The Episcopalian sect in America has lost its good manners and mongrelized into a prayer gathering for self congratulatory leftists who think highly of their brave transgressiveness of traditional forms. Their Protestantization has become complete, and with that, the good humored, open minded, and beautiful W.A.S.P.‘s that made America have at last become ugly and ridiculous. As in an old fairy tale, there is a painful twist of justice in the story.

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, June 23, A.D. 2010
Protestantism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, May 4, A.D. 2010

Ann and the Jews

I have just come across the two and a half year old story about Ann Coulter’s so called “faux pas” in a Donny Deutsch interview. Given that I do not regularly read outlets for leftist outrage like the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos (I just do not have the stomach for it), I am often unaware of the other side’s faddish annoyances. Yesterday, however, I watched Coulter’s Canadian trip interview by Michael Coren, wherein she talks about a being labelled an anti-Semite due to a previous interview where she said that conversion to Christianity was a perfection of rabbinical Judaism. Coulter refused to mention the interviewer’s name because she felt betrayed by him, thinking that he interviewed her in bad faith (pardon the pun) as a way to gain publicity for himself.

Naturally, the critics of Lady Ann would accuse her of publicity whoredom, too, but I believe that her engagement of the issues has always been sincere. I have been reading her and about her for the past twelve years. Her particular style gets attention, but I am convinced that she plays her part because she sincerely is invested in the theater of public affairs. The world is a stage, and she is not on it merely for fame or money. Time magazine’s “Ms. Right” is an interesting read for those skeptically interested in Lady Ann.

Moreover, it is a testament to the Left’s success over the last century that Coulter’s views can elicit the response by leftists that she must say what she says to be controversial for controversy’s sake. To paraphrase the United Methodist Church’s bizarre advertisement campaign, these leftists just cannot believe that there is a person who believes these things. Generally speaking, Coulter is a rather moderate conservative. She seemingly professes contemporary Protestantism, remains unwilling, publically, at least, to consider race realism (though she has defended Charles Murray and she occasionally links to Steve Sailer on her web site), professes a certain type of feminism, accepts popular, trashy, mass culture, and holds political positions well within the current mainstream of American conservatives. Nonetheless, she is one of the few public figures on the American Right who do not cower to leftists and who do not accept to work within the leftist framework that has come to monopolize the public sphere. For this, she is called an extremist, even by people whom I otherwise find thoughtful. When you let the enemy dictate how battles will be fought, you know that your side will always be marginalized. The honest common sense of our grandparents’ generation is now seen as extremist? Ponder that a second. Be mindful of the relentless leftward push that has occurred during the last century. Does fashion dictate the mean by which we label folks extreme? Evidently, it is so.

I was curious about the “anti-Semitic” interview, and I found that it was the following segment of The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch:

Evidently, Coulter’s comments “shocked” and “outraged” the public. You may read the dialogue on a fascinatingly titled Fox News article, “Columnist Ann Coulter Shocks Cable TV Show, Declaring ‘Jews Need to Be Perfected by Becoming Christians.’” After reading the melodramatic article, I indulged in my perverse Socratic interest in the opinion of the masses by reading other articles and comments sections on various online media sites and blogs. Surprisingly (or, perhaps, not—in this day and age), the vast majority of commentary was extremely hostile to Coulter, stating that, at best, she was insensitive to Jews and that, at worst, she was a combination of Satan and Hitler in Siamese sister drag.

The only somewhat sensible commentary that I found online was that of the late Michael Bell (Internet Monk): “Ten Big Ideas for Donny Deutsch,” wherein Bell notes that Coulter’s general opinion is simply a statement of the fundamental Christian belief—that Jesus Christ is the savior of all mankind. As the Lord says in the gospel of Saint Matthew, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Christianity perfects Jews as it perfects pagans. An aspect of Christians that makes them Christians, as opposed to Hindus or animists, is that they believe Christ in his statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” Coulter simply echoed this basic Christian doctrine, and in this, she was condemned by her pal Deutsch and then by the world.

What does this tell us? It suggests that the world, including many who claim Christianity as their faith, no longer know the central tenets of Christianity. As Bell notes, it also tells us that logical thinking and the ability to process truth claims are not widespread.

Now, clearly, Coulter is not a theologian. She is a Protestant, and in this particular segment she offers Falwell as a religious authority. She also provides a strange soteriological opinion. So, I do not expect her to make much sense in matters of religion. However, in this instance, Coulter merely mentions something so basic—so common to all of Christendom—that what she says is fundamental Christian doctrine. She did not misspeak. She did not obscure. She simply stated that Christianity perfects Jews and that she would like all Jews to convert to Christianity. Any Christian who believes in Christianity would say the same. To say otherwise is to say that one does not wish the fulfillment of the human heart to be available to non-Christian Jews. It is to wish rabbinical Jews to remain forever in anticipation of what the ancient prophets foretold. It is to disobey Christ’s explicit command, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

For voicing a basic Christian belief in good faith to someone with whom she had had cordial relations in the past (according to Coulter’s description of her relationship with Deutsch) as a side note in answering a socio-political question about the common good, Coulter was condemned as an anti-Semite. Even the conservatives and Christians who defended her somewhat apologized for having done so. They are so unwilling to be tainted by the “religious Right” stigma that they defend Coulter like the A.C.L.U. defends the Ku Klux Klan. As I stated above, Coulter is no theologian. She is not a scientist. She is not a philosopher. Rather, she is a lawyer and a polemicist concerning politics and public policy. Yet, she spoke earnestly about the core belief of Christianity and was branded a hate monger for doing so.

The entire episode reminds me of the tensions between Christians and rabbinical Jews in America, about which I have written before (for instance, in “Those Jews.”) Is it any wonder that the Old Right—with those curmudgeonly paleoconservatives like Buchanan—has such wariness and distrust of rabbinical Jews? I make no excuses for anti-Semitism, but from an anthropological perspective, I can see the causes for such lack of love, and the same goes for Hebrew paranoia. Men are such fools.

After having written the above, I wondered what Auster had to say about this affair: “Coulter con and pro, and the question of religious tolerance” and “The anti-Coulter campaign, and the place of Jews in America.” Even Auster finds it difficult to defend her, repulsed as he is by “her egotistical trashy persona.” I was pleased, however, to see that he also thought about the same words of Christ. It is obvious that Deutsch—and evidently the public voices of the Jewish establishment in the United States of America—find Christianity per se anti-Semitical. They rarely state this openly, but it underlies their objections not only to Coulter but, in recent years, to public celebrations of Christian holidays, to traditional American practices with Christian religious and cultural connections, and to Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Do these rabbinical Jews hate Christianity because they are leftists or because they are rabbinical Jews? That is the question, and I do not know the answer.

Concerning matters more universally, it troubles me immensely how difficult people find it to make basic distinctions. My friend Andrew always excuses the masses by stating that they have not benefited from the same philosophical training as some of us have and thus are disadvantaged in drawing the lines to make sense of reality. I do not accept such. Every person of average or higher intelligence, with some basic education, should be able to distinguish between universal truth claims and calls for genocide. A normal, modern American adult ought to be able to understand that Christians’ desire for the whole world to be Christian does not imply forced conversions or massacres of pagans and infidels, especially when Christians themselves endlessly trumpet their religion’s commitment to free choice and to the virtue of a willfully accepting God’s grace. (It is curious that Mohammedanism in its holy texts does command such forced conversion, worldwide conquest, and merciless massacres—repeatedly, in not ambiguous terms, though the Left continues to call it a tolerant religion of peace.) Instead, we endlessly hear muddled confusion about history (e.g. “the crusades!”). It is as if, by repetition, falsehoods and misunderstandings become the truth accepted by the tribe. Yet, again, the problem is the same inability to make distinctions, as with political versus religious or selfish versus religious motivations in history. Sigh . . .

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, May 4, A.D. 2010
Ecumenism • Protestantism • Rabbinical Judaism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Monday, May 3, A.D. 2010

Income by Religion

I found a fascinating graph that maps the average income of various religions’ adherents in America. See “The Almighty Dollar” from Good.

Predictably, a larger percentage of Jews (46%) make six digit incomes than other groups, though our Hindus (43%) are doing well, too. If only all our immigrants were upper caste types! Arizonans would not fret about Mexico’s exporting its best and brightest to us. On the poorer side, black Protestant sects and Jehovah’s Witnesses have the largest percentages of people who make under $30,000 a year (47% and 42%, respectively). The Mohammedans surprisingly show as the third poorest. I would like to see a distinction between immigrants and the Nation of Islam types. I imagine that the latter drag the former’s statistics down.

Interstingly, the Orthodox come in third behind the Jews and the Hindus in the six digit category. Greek businessmen and Russian scientists have done well in this land of mammon. Moreover, there is not really a lower class drag for the Orthodox. The laboring classes among Orthodox immigrant populations from the industrial age have, like Italians, moved firmly into the middle and upper classes. Among the recent immigrant waves, we find new Russians, Arabs, Indians, and Ethiopians doing very well materially. In D.C., the Ethiopian community has become the “new Greeks.” They are the omnipresent merchant class, who reportedly are buying many of the city’s groceries, restaurants, and night clubs.

Roman Catholics expectedly follow the national average. Their size and class diversity render them statistically normal. I would assume that the same would be true of the Orthodox if they were far more numerous. For these groups are largely the religions of entire peoples, while most Protestant sects in America have come to be associated with a certain class. While there are rich Pentecostals and poor Episcopalians (well, I suppose that there are poor Episcopalians, though I have never met one), Protestant identification tends to differentiate based on class. How many of you grew up with a Baptist who went to college, moved up the social ladder, and then started attending a “higher class” church?

The mainline churches have mostly all become upper class, leftwing S.W.P.L. social and political clubs that preach inclusion but do not offer much for the poorer, dumber, and less educated except a form of patronizing charity, bundled together with celebrating diversity rhetoric. However, the figures shown on Good’s graph do not show a large difference between the mainline churches and the national average. Perhaps, their staying power in poorer, rural, white communities along with their charitable urban missions account for this normalcy. Moreover, the ethnic Lutheran communities and the rural W.A.S.P. country folk in the Midwest likely approach the traditional Christian “whole people of God” inclusion of all the classes. Yet, the mainliest of the mainlines appear class based in most of the country.

I wonder if the current “evangelical movement” will curtail the tendency toward class differentiation among American Protestants. The evangelicals have a lower class background along with a few generations of vibrant intellectual life (those “Wheaton evangelicals”). I think that it is possible for American evangelicals to create a class diverse population. I expect their wealthier numbers to increase as they grow in numbers overall due to the hemorrhaging of mainline Protestants and white Roman Catholics. Soon, they may match up with the national average, too.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, May 3, A.D. 2010
Orthodoxy • Atheism and its allies • Muhammadanism • Non-Chalcedonianism • Paganism • Protestantism • Rabbinical Judaism • Roman Catholicism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Sunday, April 11, A.D. 2010

Episcopalian Priestess Barbie?

The Anglicans make for an interesting lot. On the whole, they are my favorite Protestants—they have good manners, they are open minded to a fault, and they have maintained a sense of taste among their philistine religious brethren. I suspect that more than a few sincerely try to uphold the apostolic faith, but the Church of England and her denominational children have largely traded the Christianity of yore for a traditional liturgy divorced from traditional theology and practice.

After the liturgy today, I spent some time next to the National Cathedral. The grounds of this monument to American Anglicanism are lovely; the bishop’s garden complements well the noble edifice that testifies of Americans’ W.A.S.P. inheritance. It is one of my favorite spots in Washington, but I cannot help but think how the “Republican Party in prayer” has become the hallowed sanctuary of diverse lifestyle choice non-judgmentalism. They have fine music, the moon rock stained glass window (which commemorates the Apollo missions), and tea and cakes in the tower, but what theosis occurs in those grand halls? No doubt, one must hear the typical social justice shtick of the religious Left, probably laced with genuinely good talk and deeds of loving one’s neighbor. Yet, what is the transcendent vision that illuminates the meaning of such matters? That God is love? The merciful and inexhaustible divine love informs everything about the Christian religion, but when I listen to “progressive” Protestants, their message at its worst sounds as if God’s love were similar to that of an indulgent mother who spoils her unruly children. At its best, this “theology” of love is a political exhortation to communal sharing. The divine love—the heart of the gospel—seems reduced either to sentimental spiritual sop or to horizontal, moral cheerleading. What is divine love separated from divine wisdom, divine justice, or the divine order? What is the source of our being our brothers’ keepers? Why should we love one another? The Christian faith has much to offer concerning these issues, but do such questions arise in the Anglican communion, where people are focused on affirming homosexuality, feminist trends, and the latest fashionable “social justice” causes?

Regardless, they remain likable folks on the whole, if not a bit absurd. The Religion News Service posted last week, “Barbie gets ordained, and has the smells-and-bells wardrobe to match.” Evidently, an Ohio priestess made the doll’s wardrobe and portable sacristy as a gift for her friend, another priestess who was just assigned to an Anglican parish in New York. The Vicarette Barbie has a public Facebook page, where you can see her in various outfits.

It seems that Episcopalian Barbie even participates in ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox:

Episcopalian Barbie is, expectedly, quite the broad minded broad.

Posted by Joseph on Sunday, April 11, A.D. 2010
Protestantism • (0) Comments • Permalink

Sunday, April 4, A.D. 2010

Pascha A.D. 2010

Christ is risen!

I would like to wish all Christians a happy Pascha. Enjoy the feast of feasts.

Russia Today has a segment on Paschal traditions:

I like the ostriches in the snow. How bizarre.

Posted by Joseph on Sunday, April 4, A.D. 2010
Orthodoxy • (0) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, March 2, A.D. 2010

Coexist?

Jake from Wiser Time has a funny take on the “Coexist” bumper sticker of which self avowed tolerant and enlightened Americans are so fond. Here is the bumper sticker, the proceeds of which go to “help fight hunger, fascism, and social injustice.”

Jake observes:

You’ve seen these, right? They make me mad. Why? Because they don’t really mean what they say.

Let’s break it down. We’ll call each worldview by the letter it’s supposed to represent. So:

» C = Islam
» O = Pacifism
» E = “Gender equality” (=the LGBT agenda)
» X = Judaism
» I = Wicca / Pagan / Bah’ai
» S =Taoism / Confucianism
» T = Christianity

And let’s assume a very broad definition of “coexist”: living together without calling for the destruction of each other. Here are the problems with that:

» C wants to kill E, X, T, and (by implication) O. If they achieved the world they wanted, I and S would also no longer exist.

» O doesn’t allow for effective resistance or defeat of C.

» E stands in direct opposition to C, X, and T, and accuses those who speak against them of hate speech. Also, they’re trying to edge X and T out of public schools in favor of their own agenda. (They’re afraid C will be offended, so they get less trouble.) E is actually very, very intolerant.

» X’s existence is threatened not only by C but also by O, who invariably supports C over X.

» I and S are statistically insignificant and are mainly on there to complete the bumper sticker.

» T is who the bumper sticker is really arguing against, but poses no physical threat to any of the others.

Historically, T has brought about more tolerance– “coexistence” if you will– than any other movement. But the kind of “coexistence” the people who make this sticker envision is one where at least X and T are completely marginalized.

Do Leftists really find the courteous manners taught by school marms in elementary school the veritable apex of morality and insight into the human condition—facts and good sense be damned? Is it really true that they learnt all that they really know in Kindergarten?

They are either fools, cowards, or traitorous misanthropes—or at least the vast majority of them deserve such categorization.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, March 2, A.D. 2010
Orthodoxy • Ecumenism • Muhammadanism • Non-Chalcedonianism • Paganism • Protestantism • Rabbinical Judaism • Roman Catholicism • (1) Comments • Permalink