If you find yourself in danger of obsessing over the contre temps in the church be sure to check out the soul music of Dry Branch Fire Squad.
Their webpage is here Scroll down to the album called “Memories That Bless And Burn” This is the best traditional acapella bluegrass Gospel singing I have ever heard. The songs with instrumentals are good also. They live up to their name.
LSH+
The whole thing is here. [Editor’s note: this link broken. We apologize for the inconvenience.]
The Primates have endorsed the Windsor Report including the call for stregthening the instruments of unity and the establsihment of an Anglican Covenant which they advise will be take a process of its own. They have pretty clearly opted for N.T. Wright’s fireproofing of the house. This is a very hopeful sign.
This is the third in the series of meditations given to the clergy of the Diocese of Albany.
Doctrine
In many of our churches there are more people in the basement attending 12 Step meetings during the week than there are attending the worship of the church on Sunday. If you attend these meetings you discern a feeling, a sense of things that is absent from many of our churches. People come to the 12 Step meetings because they are in a life or death struggle with what they call “a crippling disease.” Sometimes this disease is given a personality. It is referred to as a “canny disease.” “You can’t outsmart it.” Hope lies in attending the meetings and sharing in the faith, hope and encouragement that is there. Hope lies in attending to a teaching, a doctrine, the 12 Steps which are a matter of life and death and the only practical means of salvation from certain, sure and complete destruction. (The seriousness with which this teaching is taken is shown in the prohibition against the discussion of literature which is not “conference approved.”) But if destruction apart from the “program” is sure, inevitable and complete, with the “program” there is a confident promise of recovery, healing and new life. Meetings regularly include testimonies by people who have been saved by following the Steps and returned to sobriety and sanity. The contrast between the old life and the new life is dramatic and affecting. Often people express their gratitude for the disease which propelled them on a search which has led to a far better life than they would have otherwise had.
This is the second in a series of meditations given to the clergy of the Diocese of Albany. As I read these over I am aware of how easily some of things I say about the priesthood could be misinterpreted. I use words like mediator and intercessor but I mean these things in what I would call a John The Baptist sense, that is that there is a legitmate ministry which must proclaim His coming and then must disappear. This is a work in progress.
The Glory Of The Lord
Glory, kabod in Hebrew, doxa in Greek, here is one of the most important words in all of scripture. The lexicons tell us that the word has to do with weight, heft and also with shimmering light. The word has the sense of power and majesty and even danger and threat. When the lookout put his hand over his forehead and searched the horizon and there saw the shimmering reflection of the desert sun on the spear points and chariot wheels of an approaching army, he would say that he had seen the glory of an army. If it were an enemy army it meant threat and danger, if it were an ally, it meant rescue and salvation. When the people of Israel were encamped before the Red Sea, the lookouts sounded the alarm, “Behold, here comes Pharaoh and all his glory.” Moses stretched out his hand and said, “Behold, the glory of the Lord.”
This started out as one of a series of meditations on the priesthood given to the clergy of the Diocese Of Albany. I am rewriting and collecting them as a little book tenatively entitled “To Persevere In Love.” I just gave this as a lecture at Trinity Episcopal School For Ministry. Thanks to the dean, faculty and students for the chance to speak with them about a topic that is important to me.
To Persevere In Love
Meditations On the Priesthood
Our talk about ministry and priesthood is oddly imageless, abstract and generic. We speak of ministry, the ministering community, of facilitating gifts, of empowerment, of spirituality for ministry, of the baptismal covenant, of circles rather than pyramids, of mutuality and mutual ministry, of the Roland Allen model, of mission and the missionary church, of reconciliation, inclusion, justice and peace. Less often we talk about the Body of Christ and very seldom or so it seems to me do we hear of Jesus hanging on the cross, appearing after the Resurrection, breathing upon the disciples, Ascending into heaven and there interceding for us as the Great High Priest. What could it mean for the church and all its ministers, lay and ordained, if this image of the Jesus, The Great High Priest were more clearly before us and more carefully developed in our imaginations. So I invite you in what follows to an exercise in imagination.
BISHOP SPONG: RESURRECTION AND MIRACLES
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
In this last of our series on John Spong’s critique of credal Christianity we are taking up thesis number 5 and thesis number 7 in the Spong manifesto. Thesis 5 is:The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity. Thesis 7 is: Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
BISHOP SPONG AND THE ATONEMENT’
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
Thesis number 6 in Spong’s manifesto is :The view of the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive ideas about God and must be dismissed.
BISHOP SPONG AND THE INCARNATION
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The third of Bishop Spong’s theses that we are taking up in this series includes number 2 and number 4 in his manifesto. His second thesis is:Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt. Thesis number 4 is: The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditional understood, impossible.
Happy Fat Tuesday,
To get ready for Lent you should treat yourself to some good Louisiana Music, like Zydeco.
BISHOP SPONG AND THE FALL
BY
THE REV. LEANDER S. HARDING, PH.D.
The second thesis of John Spong we are taking up in this series is the third in his manifesto: The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
Spong treats the concept of the fall and the story of Adam and Eve in a chapter in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, entitled, “Jesus As Rescuer: An Image That Has To Go.” He quite accurately outlines the traditional story of salvation history which begins with a good and loving God freely creating a good creation and as the pinnacle of that creation God creates the man and the woman in his image and likeness. God places the man and the woman in the garden and gives them dominion over the earth. Then the snake appears on the scene and tempts Adam and Eve to break the one commandment that God has given them. Sin enters in and the original relationship with God is broken. From this original sin evil spreads. Traditional theology says that we are all affected by Original Sin and stand in need of an antidote for this sin. God deals with sin and evil by calling Abraham and by giving the law through Moses, by sending the prophets and in the fullness of time, Christ to be the sacrifice for sin. By his death and resurrection Jesus Christ restores our fellowship with God and gives us the gift of eternal life. This basic narrative of salvation Spong calls “Jesus the divine rescuer” which is “dead wood of the past” which “must be cleared out so that new life has a chance to grow.”