The PC Police Will Come for the Orthodox!

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Liberal Christianity will not survive for a long time
From here: http://orthodoxeurope.org/#19-2-445

Intervention at the opening session of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, 13 February 2008

I would like to draw your attention to the danger of liberal Christianity. The liberalization of moral standards, initiated by some Protestant and Anglican communities several decades ago and developing with ever-increasing speed, has now brought us to a situation where we can no longer preach one and the same code of moral conduct. We can no longer speak about Christian morality, because moral standards promoted by 'traditional' and 'liberal' Christians are markedly different, and the abyss between these two wings of contemporary Christianity is rapidly growing.

We are being told by some allegedly Christian leaders, who still bear the titles of Reverends and Most Reverends, that marriage between a woman and a man is no longer the only option for creating a Christian family, that there are other patterns, and that the church must be 'inclusive' enough to recognize alternative lifestyles and give them official and solemn blessing. We are being told that human life is no longer an unquestionable value, that it can be summarily aborted in the womb, or that one may have the right to interrupt it voluntarily, and that Christian 'traditionalists' should reconsider their standpoints in order to be in tune with modern developments. We are being told that abortion is acceptable, contraception is agreeable, and euthanasia is better still, and that the church must accommodate all these 'values' in the name of human rights.

What, then, is left of Christianity? In the confusing and disoriented world in which we live, where is the prophetic voice of Christians? What can we offer, or can we offer anything at all to the secular world, apart from what the secular world will offer to itself as a value system on which society should be built? Do we have our own value system which we should preach, or should we simply applaud every novelty in public morality which becomes fashionable in the secular society?

I would also like to draw your attention to the danger of a 'politically correct' Christianity, of a Christianity which not only so easily and readily surrenders itself to secular moral standards, but also participates in promoting value systems alien to Christian tradition.

We are facing a paradoxical situation. British secular politicians who share Christian convictions are concerned about the rising Christianophobia in the UK and initiate a debate on this issue in Parliament, calling for recognition of the country's Christian identity. At the same time the primate of the Church of England calls for 'a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law.'

I am sure I will be told that Christianity must become more tolerant and all-inclusive, that we Christians should no longer insist on our religion as being the only true faith, that we should learn how to adopt other value systems and standards. My question, however, is: when are we going to stop making Christianity politically correct and all-inclusive; why do we insist on accommodating every possible alternative to the centuries-old Christian tradition? Where is the limit, or is there no limit at all?

Many Christians worldwide look to Christian leaders in the hope that they will defend Christianity against the challenges that it faces. It is not our task to defend Sharia law, or to commend alternative lifestyles or to promote secular values. Our holy mission is to preach what Christ preached, to teach what the apostles taught and to propagate what the holy Fathers propagated. It is this witness which people are expecting of us.

I am convinced that liberal Christianity will not survive for a long time. A politically correct Christianity will die. We see already how liberal Christianity is falling apart and how the introduction of new moral norms leads to division, discord and confusion in some Christian communities. This process will continue, while traditional Christians, I believe, will consolidate their forces in order to protect the faith and moral teaching which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached and the Fathers preserved.

Surrender
by Peter Ould

You won
but I didn’t lose
You gave your all
and now you want
everything.
So I’m waving
my white flag
and I can’t tell
if the blood smears
on it
are mine
or
yours.


Peter Ould is the Curate at Christ Church Ware, an Evangelical Anglican church in the Diocese of St Albans, UK. He became a Christian in 1994. He began by worshipping in house churches (Vineyard and New Frontiers) and eventually settled in the Church of England. He attended Vicar Factory in Oxford where he helped to setup the international networking group Anglican Mainstream http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/ with which he is still involved.

Peter, who self-identifies as "post-gay", speaks and writes on issues of sexuality and identity. He works with groups like Living Waters UK and TFT to bring the message of restoration and wholeness for all of God’s people. He is currently the chair of Redeemed Lives UK. Peter is also a member of New Wine Leaders Network and Forward in Faith UK.

He is married to Gayle and they are expecting their first child in May.

Do You Know What is Good for You?

Father Stephen at Glory to God For All Things addresses the question of what is truely "good" for us.

"We live in a culture that has a fairly clear idea of what is good for a human being. We have notions of the “American Dream” and other ideals. Self-help books abound, each with its own understanding of what it means to be healthy, successful, well-balanced, etc. Frequently these cultural norms run counter to the writings of the Church Fathers - sometimes scandalously so. Consider the following excerpt from the Desert Fathers:

Euprepius blessed us with this benediction: May fear, humility, lack of food and Godly sorrow be with you.

I am certain that were I to end a meeting in my parish with such a blessing many people would be either confused, maybe even outraged. There are things in our culture that treat fear as always a bad thing; almost nothing in our culture promotes humility (consider things like “American Idol”), lack of food is a curse and Godly sorrow is just the opposite of the spiritual life marketed through most of our culture.

But the writings of the desert fathers have a different point of view. Their goal is the salvation of the human person. There is a recognition that hardship, whether in the form of fear, humiliation, famine or sorrow are frequent tools in the hand of God to bring about the sanctification of our lives and to re-create us a holy beings.

Christ immediately sets out to fast for 40 days following His Baptism. He does not begin His ministry without such hunger. He did not make Himself a stranger to sorrow, but purposefully delayed His travel to help his dying friend Lazarus. There He encounters weeping and anger, questioning and heartache. And there He raised the dead.

I cannot think of a single saint in the Church, from St. Paul and the Apostles forward who were stranger to any of the benedictions offered by Abba Euprepius. But modernized Christianity has made itself a stranger to these things. Theologians of various stripes go so far as to abandon the faith in the face of suffering and sorrow and discover they have no root in themselves. (A recent interview on NPR offers a very thin reason by the scholar Bart Ehrman, of the University of North Carolina, of why he no longer believes in God. Of course, he never knew or was a part of Orthodox Christianity and has simply reached a trajectory set by the modern academy).

The quote from Abba Euprepius is a demonstration of the Tradition - one that not only knew and understood the meaning of suffering and did not fear to offer such a blessing. But such knowledge can only be known in the heart. It is not a syllogism that satisfies the mind. Thus, we are forced to remember that the great and only battleground of the Christian faith is the human heart. Someone’s unbelief only tells me something of their heart at a particular moment. Unbelief does not tell us of the ultimate end of a person, for only the God who know the human heart can know such a thing. But only the human heart can truly know God. For in the heart all things dwell: heaven, hell, God, the demons. Everything is there.

It is little wonder that we seek to live somewhere else. But every other world is but a false or poor construct of the human heart. We must make that difficult journey and enter through the narrow gate if we are to find the wideness of God’s mercy and the infinity that is the fullness of the human person."

For Those Recovering From Divorce

The Single Sign
Hope Rapson


First one, then another, locusts came
Slowly chewing in small bite size pieces
Then with larger jaws, ripping chunks.
A roar of blackness filling the sky
Making one run for cover sensing all is lost.
The inner drumming of anxious thoughts
Hears a frenzied decrescendo
Ending in deathlike rest
Fear rises to look…hope pushes to the window.
Midday dawns again… a landscape wiped clean...

A dry dusty mouth sighs at sightlessness-
Seeds sown, seedlings grown, now gone.
Stumbling, searching for a single sign,
The wounded draws to slake the thirst of loss.
The dipper serves a single mustard seed.
Deep within the walking earth
Vision forms, a blooming possibility.
A stirring in miniature beholds horizon-
A hill where three lone trunks stand
Mark the place to draw the line.

Days of undetermined length and focus pass.
Dreams shared severed, goals given way to getting,
Hopes hurt beyond helping
Surprise the heart with storms and calms
Walled up, but waiting to be healed.

Beyond the boundaries…a shoot, a stem
A leaf above, some shade below…
Go unnoticed in the gray dawns.
But shine in the noonday,
Glisten in the evening’s gentle rain.
Within, warm wind comforts the sorrowing
Strengthens to search above and without
The heart’s door opens; the will walks out.
Stepping off the porch and onto the path,
Wondering wanders to the stand of stumps.

First one, then another, sparrows come
Collecting living bits and pieces,
Building nests in feathered heights,
Singing songs of first flights,
Multiplying seeds in yellow sprinklings about barren barns…
That simple sign…the seed sown silently
By the survivor, surges into a soaring swarm.
Abundance swallows the locust’s leavings,
Within swirling shine and sweet scents
Of a life more blessed than lost.

BabyBlueOnline: Meanwhile, back at the Palace ...

BabyBlueOnline: Meanwhile, back at the Palace ...

Truth Inhabits Fiction

The Algerian Jew, Jacques Derrida, wrote that "Truth inhabits fiction as the master of the house." Such is the case with Mary A's short piece, found at BabyBlue, here:
http://babybluecafe.blogspot.com/2008/02/meanwhile-back-at-palace.html

It is worth reading for the entertainment and because it poses the question "What is true?", a question every thoughtful Anglican is presently asking.

Response to Sayers’ “Lost Tools of Learning”

Alice C. Linsley


I have been fond of Dorothy Sayers’ writing for over twenty years. It was while reading her Lord Peter Whimsey novels that I came to appreciate the power of literary fiction and I began to write fiction. I consider Sayers’ Nine Tailors and Gaudy Night to be the most finely crafted English mystery novels ever written. They reveal her exceptional eye for detail in story telling, her remarkable vocabulary and grasp of syntax, and her spiritual insights.

Sayers' facility with the English language rests on her exceptionally good classical training. In “The Lost Tools of Learning” Sayers begins by criticizing the modern tendency to regard specialized talking heads as “authorities” on everything from morals to DNA. She opines that the greatest authorities on the failure of modern education are those who learned nothing. We can imagine chuckles coming from some in her audience and frowns on the faces of self-important academics.

While Sayers is correct that we can’t “turn back the wheel” to the late Middle Ages when metaphysical exploration was still regarded as an objective of education, she nevertheless urges that we consider patterning education along those lines in order to restore the lost tools of learning. Sayers draws on her extensive knowledge of the medieval period to help us understand which tools are essential if students are to be life-long learners. She lays the groundwork by asking her audience to consider some “disquieting thoughts” about the direction of English society in the mid-twentieth century and identifies the following concerns:

Irresponsible prolongation of intellectual childhood to justify teaching less in more subjects

Confusion of fact and opinion, or the proven and the plausible, in the media.

Sophistry in public debate, rather than logical rhetoric.

Committees addressing mostly irrelevant matters expected to form public policy.

Failure to define terms and intentional abuse of language, making words mean whatever one wants them to mean.

A society of adults who don’t know how to discern legitimate expertise from popular pulp and who can’t use the library.

The tendency of some people to become so specialized that they can’t make connections between the disciplines.

Scientists who fail to adhere to the basic principles of Aristotelian logic, thus presenting speculation as facts.

Sayers’ critique of the society in which she lived is relevant today, as these problems have become more pronounced in our time. In 35 years of teaching I have seen the materialist worldview come to dominate public education and inch by inch erode the more balanced offering of private schools, parochial schools and even Christian schools. This is the disastrous outcome of Pragmatism's hold on American public education. Once metaphysics is excised from education, we are left with a mechanistic, materialistic, and blatantly false view of reality. And we wonder why our students are not learning? Why they seem unmotivated, and lack skills for intelligent living?

What does Dorothy Sayers recommend? She suggests restoration of the two part syllabus of the Trivium and the Quadrivium, which together provide “one coherent scheme of mental training.” Sayers illustrates how modern intellectuals misrepresent medieval metaphysical education by pointing to how one such intellectual confuses location and extension, something that a classically trained high school sophomore would hardly stumble over, having learned the principles of Aristotelian logic.

Sayers provides quotations from the Times Literary Supplement to demonstrate the widespread ignorance of good reasoning. I’d like to provide an illustration from contemporary life. I teach a college class on Philosophical Ethics. Students were asked to read Jonathan Rauch’s “Case for Gay Marriage” in the required text. They were to assess his argument using syllogistic reasoning. Out of 18 adult students, not one was able to identify Rauch’s premises or identify his conclusion. Finally, I had to do the assessment for them. Here is what I showed them:

J. Rauch’s Fallacious Argument

First Premise:
Marriage is necessary to providing reliable caregivers. (This assumption is not true. It is, in fact, verifiable false since we are able to observe that reliable caregivers exist who are not married to the people to whom they provide care. In fact, some paid caregivers are superior in their reliability than some spouses.)

Second Premise:
Marriage is necessary to tame men. (This assumption is hypothetical and unverifiable. Who says that men need “taming”? What does “taming” mean? Does it mean to make men more effeminate or to teach them to cook and clean? Are all unmarried men untamed? Are all married men tamed?)

Conclusion:
Therefore, marriage is equally necessary for heterosexual and homosexual couples. (His conclusion is not valid as it does not necessarily follow from the premises.)

Rauch’s premises are not verifiably true, so this is not a sound argument. Further, his conclusion does not logically follow from his premises, so this argument is not valid. Lacking true premises and a valid conclusion, Rauch’s argument is said to be “fallacious” or logically false.

It is indeed “disquieting” that an entire class of students, mostly already in the work force, was unable to logically assess Rauch’s argument. American students are unprepared to defend truth and are therefore prey to panderers and false authorities. Without the classical methodology, modern education is proving to be a futile enterprise. The “intellectual capital” of past ages is entirely spent.

Sayers is spot on in suggesting that the time to tackle such argumentation is when students are at their most argumentative, that is, during the first 3 years of high school. This is the perfect time to teach them to identify invalid inference and to debate the merits of an argument. As she reminds us, children are “born casuists” and can be taught to appreciate a “well-turned argument.”

When students begin to recognize the limitations of logic and human reason, it is time to turn to Rhetoric, which “will tend to show them that all knowledge is one.” Here we find ourselves on solid metaphysical ground where we quickly discover that there is absolute truth or there is nothing, and it is impossible to be a nihilist and be well-educated.


Related reading:  Pragmatism and American Education; The Lost Tools of Learning; Dorothy Sayers: A Mind of Her Own; The Wisdom of Dorothy Sayers; D. Sayers' Last Morning in Oxford

A New Link and What's Coming

Readers will note a new link at Students Publish Here! This is the blog of my friend Ed Pacht, a wonderful writer, poet and literary critic. Please take a moment to visit his blog and read some of his thoughtful work. http://poetreaderpacht.blogspot.com


What's Coming Next?

Very soon I will post my response to Dorothy Sayers' "The Lost Tools of Learning" and a poem written by my sister, Hope Rapson, celebrating God's grace in her life as she has recovered from divorce. Then comes a poem by Peter Ould, a priest in the Church of England, who left the gay lifestyle. Both Hope and Peter can speak to the power of God to change lives and transform hearts.

In February I'll post some suggestions for Creative Writing teachers on how to get your students' work published.

I'm interested in hearing about topics that might be of interest to you, and will consider them as I plan ahead. The year 2008 promises to be a good one for Students Publish Here!