'Now', OS asks as he scratches his greying head, 'Why is proposing that all voters present valid photo ID in order to enter the voting booth an evidence of raaaaaacism, when our dear friends SouthOfTheRioGrande insist upon it?'
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Monday, October 23, 2017
Former NP(holy-cow!)R Ken Stern--Epiphany About America Away From The Liberal Bubble
It's a great read, this account of the most protected of the liberals coming face-to-face with a nation he lives in but is only recently getting to know.
He writes frankly about discovering the America that he and his have spent their careers despising; and his friends in the GreatLiberalEchoChamber are stunned that the rest of us despise them back.
A couple of pithy quotes--
I spent many Sundays in evangelical churches and hung out with 15,000 evangelical youth at the Urbana conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect among thousands of college-age evangelicals, but I certainly didn’t expect the intense discussion of racial equity and refugee issues — how to help them, not how to keep them out — but that is what I got.
Hmmm...
He writes frankly about discovering the America that he and his have spent their careers despising; and his friends in the GreatLiberalEchoChamber are stunned that the rest of us despise them back.
A couple of pithy quotes--
I spent many Sundays in evangelical churches and hung out with 15,000 evangelical youth at the Urbana conference. I wasn’t sure what to expect among thousands of college-age evangelicals, but I certainly didn’t expect the intense discussion of racial equity and refugee issues — how to help them, not how to keep them out — but that is what I got.
Hmmm...
At one point during my research, I discovered a video of a would-be robber entering a Houston smoke shop, his purpose conveyed by the pistol that he leveled at the store clerk. But the robber was not the only armed person in the store. The security cameras show Raleigh, the store clerk, walking out from behind the counter, calmly raising his own gun and firing an accurate stream of bullets at the hapless robber. The wounded robber stumbles out, falls over the curb and eventually ends up under arrest.
It is not just the defensive gun use that makes the video remarkable — it is Raleigh himself who evidences such a nonchalance that he never bothers to put down the cigarette that he is smoking. At the end, Raleigh, having protected his store, enthuses “Castle Doctrine, baby” — citing a law that allows a person to use force to defend a legally occupied place.
It is an amazing story, though far from unique, but you simply won’t find many like it in mainstream media (I found it on Reddit).
Well, yes. The media ignore defensive gun use, because it doesn't fit The Narrative--you know, The Narrative: All white Protestants keep sheets in their closets for the Saturday night rallies, they own guns and their knuckles drag the ground, anything they think or might say isn't worth noting....
Except, they can't account for The Cajun Navy loading up their boats onto their trailers, hitching them to their pickups full of chain saws and emergency gear and heading to Texas to rescue strangers trapped by the hurricane. They didn't need direction from duh gubbermint--they saw needs and met them. And, yes, most of them were packing; and no, they didn't shoot anyone. How could that be?
OS is looking forward to reading Mr. Stern's book, Republican Like Me and predicts that Mr. Stern will become an Official Non-Person amongst the Swamp-Dwellers.
He should consider it a badge of honor.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
When General Kelly's Son Died In Action, President Obama Didn't Bother To Call. When President Trump Called A Widow, A Democrat Member of Congress Was Eavesdropping
There is no floor beneath human depravity, as once again we learn from this latest shameful episode.
Listen to General Kelly as he mourns the loss of the sacred in our country. Will his words sink in, anywhere?
Sadly, not with the depraved, such as Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. Perhaps, perhaps, with her constituents, but OS holds out little hope.
Listen to General Kelly as he mourns the loss of the sacred in our country. Will his words sink in, anywhere?
Sadly, not with the depraved, such as Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. Perhaps, perhaps, with her constituents, but OS holds out little hope.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Fentanyl: From China To Mexico to Baltimore
We need that wall on the southern border, like yesterday.
A feckless Congress, and amoral executive and judicial officials have made this misery possible.
A feckless Congress, and amoral executive and judicial officials have made this misery possible.
Mass Graves For ISIS Murderers. Thank You, Mr. Trump
From the Jakarta Post:
The Islamic State group once drew recruits from near and far with promises of paradise but now bodies of jihadists lie in mass graves or at the mercy of wild dogs as its "caliphate" collapses.
Flies buzz around human remains poking through the dusty earth in the Iraqi town of Dhuluiyah, 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Baghdad, at a hastily-dug pit containing the bodies of dozens of IS fighters killed in 2015.
"They should have ended up in the stomachs of stray dogs," local police officer Mohammed al-Juburi told AFP.
"We buried them here not out of love but because we wanted to avoid diseases."
At one stage, IS ruthlessly wielded power over a vast swathe of territory straddling Iraq and Syria, but a military onslaught on multiple fronts has seen its fiefdom shrink to a last few pockets.
Since the launch in 2014 of air strikes in Iraq and Syria against the group, a US-led coalition says around 80,000 jihadists have been killed.
The overall number of dead is higher if you include those targeted by Russian and Syrian strikes.
Three observations:
- Indonesia, capital Jakarta, is a huge nation, with an enormous Muslim presence. Some editor there felt safe enough to run this story.
- Yes, the efforts to curtail ISIS began in 2014, after they raped and pillaged mercilessly, while President Obama dismissed them as 'junior varsity', not really worth worrying about.
- His successor has taken them very seriously. Every stump speech spoke of 'Radical Islamic Terrorism' and contained the phrase 'Kick the hell out of ISIS'. The Donald, the world is beginning to discover, is a man of his word.
Dead jihadis can't plant car bombs, rape women and children, kidnap innocents, burn prisoners alive, behead victims on camera, run trucks through crowds. The Donald understands something his predecessor never could wrap his head around: The jihadis crossed over into a moral Point of No Return, a place past re-integration into the civilized world. The only sane and moral course of action is to run them to ground, and bury them into the unmarked graves they earned.
It is a horrible thing to have to say this, but this is the path they chose. May Providence grant success to those tasked with hunting the monsters down.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Pastor Peters Asks: When Was This Written?
Truth is truth, regardless of year of publication...
Pastor Peters--ya'll really should check him out--shares along these cogent words, which could have been written this week, but in actuality date from the early 1940's, by Episcopal Bishop Bernard Iddings Bell.
Bell is just getting warmed up with these opening paragraphs--
If man, as envisioned by democrats and totalitarians alike, is for himself a determining end; if he may safely do as he pleases, in such fashion as may from time to time seem to him expedient; if he is able to handle his affairs without redemption from an ingrained folly; if in his own power he can rise above self-seeking and live in a voluntary sociality; if he is able to get along quite nicely without contact with any power not of himself which makes for righteousness—then Christianity is irrelevant to life. In that case the Church is at worst an incubus which ought to be destroyed and from which innocent children should be protected, at best an ivory tower in which peculiar and incompetent people may from time to time be permitted to take refuge from reality—an institution insignificant but relatively harmless.
But wait! There's more!! But you'll need to read for yourself.
One immediate observation: Is there an Episcopal bishop living in the US who would think or dare to write such words? OS has met and known a few of these types, and they are, as Bell predicted 'peculiar and incompetent people', definitely taking refuge from reality. Hey! The music is wonderful, the buildings are old and pretty, the atmosphere is quiet and calm, and the guy (or lady) in the pulpit won't dare say a word that might ruffle your feathers, much less make you quake in your boots.
God is a good idea, Jesus was a nice moral teacher, If we'll be nice to one another and vote the Democrat ticket, all will be well with the world, Please do remember to give generously, There is sherry available in the meeting hall following the service, We'll see you next week.
It is clear, from reading now, that the US and UK assumed they would win the war in the 1940's, and the GreatAndGood were hard at work thinking through what they wished the world to look like in the aftermath of the conflagration. This was before Dresden, Hiroshima, and the freeing of the Nazi and Japanese concentration camps, the Nuremburg trials. The full extent and wickedness of the evil had not yet been revealed, nor the dangers that lay ahead.
Still, unfazed, on they went, forming a new order as described above, adhering to it faithfully, oblivious to its consequences. William Buckley, as a young man, described its institutionalization at Yale University in his classic slim volume God and Man at Yale.
(The link takes you to the Amazon listing--a few bucks well spent.) As OS read it a few months ago, it dawned upon him: 'Damn, the culture was screwed to the wall by 1950! The GreatAndGood set about to disassemble our lives, our homes, our mores, our economy, our churches and synagogues, our faith itself. And we paid them to do it!'
It's well worth reading--Buckley shines as a writer, never a wasted word.
Another good, pithy, short read: Solzhenitsyn's Address At Harvard Yard, in which he traveled the journey from cultural icon to non-person in the space of about one hour. It was a record at the time, back in 1978. Any mention of the man's name now is met with a blank stare (Who?), or blocking by moderators in most comment threads. Read his words, and it won't be hard to understand why.
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
For those of OS's vast legion of readers (myriads of readers!!) who are in shock about Donald Trump, bear this in mind: He never got the memo from Yale, and he spends every day pushing back against those GreatAndGoods who have so systematically and coldly savaged this country. He's a flawed messenger, to be sure, but he's the guy with the resources and will to lead the push-back. And push back he does, in ways great and small, some unexpected--like the whole NFL player/National Anthem dustup. But he seems to have an instinct for the push-back, and his followers sense it as they push back with him. He's a boxer--he punches back, and sometimes punches first. Thus the drop in NFL viewership, and certainly Major League Baseball owners are holding their breaths this post season. It will only take one wing-nut player at a World Series game to cause America's TV screens to go dark, and sports bars to empty early.
Other push-backs are going on more quietly, especially the one that sees ISIS being driven from the battlefield, with apparently few prisoners taken. Not much publicity, mind you, just a lot of pushback of the lethal variety. And it seems there are fewer car-bombs going off in the markets of Baghdad, Damascus, Tripoli, Beirut, Amman, and Jerusalem. Dead men can't build bombs, it turns out. Push-back works, at least some of the time.
So, back to the original question--Bell penned these words in 1942, when a bishop could still write them, and Atlantic Magazine would deign to publish them.
We are living now in the world created then, and hopefully we will find the courage to continue to push back.
Pastor Peters--ya'll really should check him out--shares along these cogent words, which could have been written this week, but in actuality date from the early 1940's, by Episcopal Bishop Bernard Iddings Bell.
When one examines the blueprints of a post-war Paradise offered for our encouragement or enticement by the spokesmen of the contending nations, one perceives a common denominator in their various plans: a unanimous assumption that the new order is to be an affair of this world only; a taking it for granted that all that men need for security and happiness and peace is an industrial and political setup well conceived; a postulation that man, when he regards himself as an end to be served, is morally competent, of sufficient natural good-will to make his system—whatever it may be—minister to something more satisfactory than a frequently renewed fratricidal conflict.
Against this common assumption which characterizes all the popular post-war hopes—British, American, Russian, German, Japanese, Italian—the teaching of Jesus Christ stands in unqualified opposition; nor can the Christian Church compromise in respect to that opposition without ceasing to be Christian. In that simple fact is the essence of the Church's problem.
Bell is just getting warmed up with these opening paragraphs--
If man, as envisioned by democrats and totalitarians alike, is for himself a determining end; if he may safely do as he pleases, in such fashion as may from time to time seem to him expedient; if he is able to handle his affairs without redemption from an ingrained folly; if in his own power he can rise above self-seeking and live in a voluntary sociality; if he is able to get along quite nicely without contact with any power not of himself which makes for righteousness—then Christianity is irrelevant to life. In that case the Church is at worst an incubus which ought to be destroyed and from which innocent children should be protected, at best an ivory tower in which peculiar and incompetent people may from time to time be permitted to take refuge from reality—an institution insignificant but relatively harmless.
But wait! There's more!! But you'll need to read for yourself.
One immediate observation: Is there an Episcopal bishop living in the US who would think or dare to write such words? OS has met and known a few of these types, and they are, as Bell predicted 'peculiar and incompetent people', definitely taking refuge from reality. Hey! The music is wonderful, the buildings are old and pretty, the atmosphere is quiet and calm, and the guy (or lady) in the pulpit won't dare say a word that might ruffle your feathers, much less make you quake in your boots.
God is a good idea, Jesus was a nice moral teacher, If we'll be nice to one another and vote the Democrat ticket, all will be well with the world, Please do remember to give generously, There is sherry available in the meeting hall following the service, We'll see you next week.
It is clear, from reading now, that the US and UK assumed they would win the war in the 1940's, and the GreatAndGood were hard at work thinking through what they wished the world to look like in the aftermath of the conflagration. This was before Dresden, Hiroshima, and the freeing of the Nazi and Japanese concentration camps, the Nuremburg trials. The full extent and wickedness of the evil had not yet been revealed, nor the dangers that lay ahead.
Still, unfazed, on they went, forming a new order as described above, adhering to it faithfully, oblivious to its consequences. William Buckley, as a young man, described its institutionalization at Yale University in his classic slim volume God and Man at Yale.
(The link takes you to the Amazon listing--a few bucks well spent.) As OS read it a few months ago, it dawned upon him: 'Damn, the culture was screwed to the wall by 1950! The GreatAndGood set about to disassemble our lives, our homes, our mores, our economy, our churches and synagogues, our faith itself. And we paid them to do it!'
It's well worth reading--Buckley shines as a writer, never a wasted word.
Another good, pithy, short read: Solzhenitsyn's Address At Harvard Yard, in which he traveled the journey from cultural icon to non-person in the space of about one hour. It was a record at the time, back in 1978. Any mention of the man's name now is met with a blank stare (Who?), or blocking by moderators in most comment threads. Read his words, and it won't be hard to understand why.
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
For those of OS's vast legion of readers (myriads of readers!!) who are in shock about Donald Trump, bear this in mind: He never got the memo from Yale, and he spends every day pushing back against those GreatAndGoods who have so systematically and coldly savaged this country. He's a flawed messenger, to be sure, but he's the guy with the resources and will to lead the push-back. And push back he does, in ways great and small, some unexpected--like the whole NFL player/National Anthem dustup. But he seems to have an instinct for the push-back, and his followers sense it as they push back with him. He's a boxer--he punches back, and sometimes punches first. Thus the drop in NFL viewership, and certainly Major League Baseball owners are holding their breaths this post season. It will only take one wing-nut player at a World Series game to cause America's TV screens to go dark, and sports bars to empty early.
Other push-backs are going on more quietly, especially the one that sees ISIS being driven from the battlefield, with apparently few prisoners taken. Not much publicity, mind you, just a lot of pushback of the lethal variety. And it seems there are fewer car-bombs going off in the markets of Baghdad, Damascus, Tripoli, Beirut, Amman, and Jerusalem. Dead men can't build bombs, it turns out. Push-back works, at least some of the time.
So, back to the original question--Bell penned these words in 1942, when a bishop could still write them, and Atlantic Magazine would deign to publish them.
We are living now in the world created then, and hopefully we will find the courage to continue to push back.
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Dear Senator Limpenquack--aka Lame Duck Corker--Resign, Now. Time For Tennessee To Have A Grownup In That Seat
It's time, long overdue.
Having seen no way to retain your seat running in a primary against voters who are fed up with you, after jumping on the Left's bandwagon following the events of Charlottsville (characterizing POTUS as unfit to serve, in effect calling for his resignation), you announce that you will not run for re-election.
This announcement following a one-on-one with the President, who, unsurprisingly, declined to endorse you.
He's too busy cleaning up the Iran Mess you worked so hard to create.
Resign. Now. Go home. Get a head start on appointments to all those corporate boards, university boards, real estate deals, etc etc etc. Take time to work on your golf game.
Let someone serve who won't do bonehead deals like the Iran Mess you helped broker. Remember those pallets of cash that were shipped to the mullahs? You may as well have been piloting the plane.
Do you doubt, once the Mullahs have a nuke on a missile, that they won't threaten Israel and the remainder of the Middle East? These are the folks that keep sending boatloads of materiel to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Really?
Go home. Now. Before you endanger all of us all the more.
Having seen no way to retain your seat running in a primary against voters who are fed up with you, after jumping on the Left's bandwagon following the events of Charlottsville (characterizing POTUS as unfit to serve, in effect calling for his resignation), you announce that you will not run for re-election.
This announcement following a one-on-one with the President, who, unsurprisingly, declined to endorse you.
He's too busy cleaning up the Iran Mess you worked so hard to create.
Resign. Now. Go home. Get a head start on appointments to all those corporate boards, university boards, real estate deals, etc etc etc. Take time to work on your golf game.
Let someone serve who won't do bonehead deals like the Iran Mess you helped broker. Remember those pallets of cash that were shipped to the mullahs? You may as well have been piloting the plane.
Do you doubt, once the Mullahs have a nuke on a missile, that they won't threaten Israel and the remainder of the Middle East? These are the folks that keep sending boatloads of materiel to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Really?
Go home. Now. Before you endanger all of us all the more.
Monday, October 9, 2017
Why, Meryl Streep, Naomi Judd And Hundreds Of Others In Hollywood And The Left Are Just Shocked (Yea, Stunned!!) To Learn About Harvey Weinstein...
Really, they are!
All that righteous chest-pounding about The Donald's (undeniably rude) locker room talk from over a decade ago, and stone silence about this gent's well-known perverse proclivities and abuse of multiple women in his world.
Hmmm...add in Miz Hillary's silence (Well, she's had a lot of practice), Huma's hubby Anthony's Twitter habits and laptop full of confidential emails, stir gently...
Ends up smelling like a week-old fish left in the trash in a sunny location.
Folks, this is not a call for a boycott of Hollywood. It is a suggestion that we simply rethink where we generally spend time, money and attention. How about books, learning to play a musical instrument, or golf, or museum visits, or attending the symphony (or all those free recitals at your local university), or joining a softball team, or finding a good church to support, or singing in the local choral society, or volunteering for a local charity, or, or, or...
People like Streep, Weinstein, Clooney, Miz Hillary, Oprah, NBA and NFL players, corrupt college coaches, et al, all operate from the assumption that they are indispensable parts of our lives.
They aren't.
We don't need them. They, in the end, do need us. We get to walk away from them, and they will never be missed by those who replace them with their own list of alternatives.
All that righteous chest-pounding about The Donald's (undeniably rude) locker room talk from over a decade ago, and stone silence about this gent's well-known perverse proclivities and abuse of multiple women in his world.
Hmmm...add in Miz Hillary's silence (Well, she's had a lot of practice), Huma's hubby Anthony's Twitter habits and laptop full of confidential emails, stir gently...
Ends up smelling like a week-old fish left in the trash in a sunny location.
Folks, this is not a call for a boycott of Hollywood. It is a suggestion that we simply rethink where we generally spend time, money and attention. How about books, learning to play a musical instrument, or golf, or museum visits, or attending the symphony (or all those free recitals at your local university), or joining a softball team, or finding a good church to support, or singing in the local choral society, or volunteering for a local charity, or, or, or...
People like Streep, Weinstein, Clooney, Miz Hillary, Oprah, NBA and NFL players, corrupt college coaches, et al, all operate from the assumption that they are indispensable parts of our lives.
They aren't.
We don't need them. They, in the end, do need us. We get to walk away from them, and they will never be missed by those who replace them with their own list of alternatives.
Monday, September 18, 2017
We Have Arrived At The Future...And Need A Map To Retrace Our Steps
To the point that the Prayer Book Society has taken publishing a glossary for C of E ordinands, who cannot comprehend the language of the Book Of Common Prayer.
OS remembers clearly when our betters imposed their bright/shiny new modern language liturgies upon all congregations and denominations. They were 'inclusive' of everything and everybody, save the majesty, beauty and transcendence of the Almighty...Himself. The hymnals were sanitized, the great poems of the Wesleys, Cowper, Newton, and Crosby (to name just a few) were gutted, to keep the sensitive souls who-just-had-to-be-catered-to...comfortable. Offenses like 'Time, like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away' were just toooooo offensive! So, over time, 'Oh, God Our Help In Ages Past' simply fades from memories and hymbooks. In many cases, the hymnbooks themselves have disappeared, replaced by screens, and the voice of the congregation has been silenced by bands and performers singing to them--endless reptitions of 'I just wanna....' (repeat four times) modulate up one-half step and play louder 'I just wanna...' Rinse and repeat four more times.
So, now, we have an illiterate clergy and silent and diminishing congregations. Wow!! Great Job, you guys!! Between the clerical elites, the press and the 'Christian Music Business' and 'Christian Publishing Business', ya'll have damn near killed off any voice the Church had in the culture.
So, the Prayer Book Society is publishing a glossary for the illiterate clergy, and LifeWay Christian Resources of Nashville TN (formerly the Baptist Sunday School Board) is hosting themselves a conference dedicated to reteaching congregations how to sing. What. A. Concept.
Here's the 'vision' (don'tcha just love that word 'Vision', so under-used in our day...)
It begins as a book and a conference in September, launching a two-year focus on congregational singing. We are hoping and praying that the conference is the most significant event our organization has ever had the privilege to initiate.
The project also ties in with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation set in motion by Martin Luther whose vision for congregational singing, theology and music and the arts was utterly revolutionary in church history and more needed today than any time since.
There are five urgent goals with the project:
It amazes OS that, after thirty years dedicated to turning church congregations into passive consumers of whatever crap they think up to dish to them, LifeWay has experienced its own epiphany--Let's return to hymnody!! Theology matters!!
They even offer a pdf download of the hymns they are now peddling to the newly-revived faithful--in lead sheet form, since who can read four parts anymore? Hell, who can read music anymore? An entire generation, deprived of hymnbooks, can't make their way through even basic music notation.
The 'epiphany' was born of necessity--the firm, once taken over by the pedders of crap, has continued to shrink, and shrink, and shrink. They ended up selling off all their prime downtown Nashville real-estate, after decades of capital investment into office and warehouse facilities, since the land was worth much more than any multiple of earnings they could otherwise generate. They sold a huge conference center near Santa Fe (Santa-byGod-Fe, the refuge of the moneyed) for one American dollar. One dollar, because it had become such a money pit, because their customers realized that they were being peddled crap, and stopped attending conferences. Amazing what happens to a firm that chases off at least half of its customer base, yelling 'Good riddance!' at them as they depart...
In all this, OS is reminded of an old Appalachian Presbyterian preacher who spoke to a small gathering of church refugees, huddled at a state park for a weekend of respite and encouragement. Seeing their demoralization (and this twenty-something years ago) he reminded them of three basic ideas:
And, sure enough, #3 on the list comes strolling up: The evensong services in the UK are filling up again, with many of the congregants being young people. Young people, hungry for authenticity, beauty, transcendence--hungry for Christ Himself, if truth be told.
Those things--beauty, authenticity, transcedence--require a deep attachment to the long rich history of Christendom, which attachment the GreatAndGood of all stripes in the leadership of church life in America have spent their careers denigrating and destroying. Now, finally, watching their worlds come unwound, they begin checking the map for the road back home.
OS wishes them every success in that journey. And if they can't read the map, they just need to go away, and leave the job to those who can.
OS remembers clearly when our betters imposed their bright/shiny new modern language liturgies upon all congregations and denominations. They were 'inclusive' of everything and everybody, save the majesty, beauty and transcendence of the Almighty...Himself. The hymnals were sanitized, the great poems of the Wesleys, Cowper, Newton, and Crosby (to name just a few) were gutted, to keep the sensitive souls who-just-had-to-be-catered-to...comfortable. Offenses like 'Time, like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away' were just toooooo offensive! So, over time, 'Oh, God Our Help In Ages Past' simply fades from memories and hymbooks. In many cases, the hymnbooks themselves have disappeared, replaced by screens, and the voice of the congregation has been silenced by bands and performers singing to them--endless reptitions of 'I just wanna....' (repeat four times) modulate up one-half step and play louder 'I just wanna...' Rinse and repeat four more times.
So, now, we have an illiterate clergy and silent and diminishing congregations. Wow!! Great Job, you guys!! Between the clerical elites, the press and the 'Christian Music Business' and 'Christian Publishing Business', ya'll have damn near killed off any voice the Church had in the culture.
So, the Prayer Book Society is publishing a glossary for the illiterate clergy, and LifeWay Christian Resources of Nashville TN (formerly the Baptist Sunday School Board) is hosting themselves a conference dedicated to reteaching congregations how to sing. What. A. Concept.
Here's the 'vision' (don'tcha just love that word 'Vision', so under-used in our day...)
It begins as a book and a conference in September, launching a two-year focus on congregational singing. We are hoping and praying that the conference is the most significant event our organization has ever had the privilege to initiate.
The project also ties in with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation set in motion by Martin Luther whose vision for congregational singing, theology and music and the arts was utterly revolutionary in church history and more needed today than any time since.
There are five urgent goals with the project:
- Teach everyone why and how we sing.
- Build deep believers through what we sing.
- Strengthen and encourage families to sing together.
- Build churches by singing together and to each other.
- Witness to our wider communities by our singing.
It amazes OS that, after thirty years dedicated to turning church congregations into passive consumers of whatever crap they think up to dish to them, LifeWay has experienced its own epiphany--Let's return to hymnody!! Theology matters!!
They even offer a pdf download of the hymns they are now peddling to the newly-revived faithful--in lead sheet form, since who can read four parts anymore? Hell, who can read music anymore? An entire generation, deprived of hymnbooks, can't make their way through even basic music notation.
The 'epiphany' was born of necessity--the firm, once taken over by the pedders of crap, has continued to shrink, and shrink, and shrink. They ended up selling off all their prime downtown Nashville real-estate, after decades of capital investment into office and warehouse facilities, since the land was worth much more than any multiple of earnings they could otherwise generate. They sold a huge conference center near Santa Fe (Santa-byGod-Fe, the refuge of the moneyed) for one American dollar. One dollar, because it had become such a money pit, because their customers realized that they were being peddled crap, and stopped attending conferences. Amazing what happens to a firm that chases off at least half of its customer base, yelling 'Good riddance!' at them as they depart...
In all this, OS is reminded of an old Appalachian Presbyterian preacher who spoke to a small gathering of church refugees, huddled at a state park for a weekend of respite and encouragement. Seeing their demoralization (and this twenty-something years ago) he reminded them of three basic ideas:
- God's in charge.
- He always finishes what be begins.
- He never leaves himself without a witness.
And, sure enough, #3 on the list comes strolling up: The evensong services in the UK are filling up again, with many of the congregants being young people. Young people, hungry for authenticity, beauty, transcendence--hungry for Christ Himself, if truth be told.
Those things--beauty, authenticity, transcedence--require a deep attachment to the long rich history of Christendom, which attachment the GreatAndGood of all stripes in the leadership of church life in America have spent their careers denigrating and destroying. Now, finally, watching their worlds come unwound, they begin checking the map for the road back home.
OS wishes them every success in that journey. And if they can't read the map, they just need to go away, and leave the job to those who can.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Hitchens Nails It Again
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/09/our-drug-addled-louts-are-the-real-reason-we-need-migrants.html
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