Why the World Feels Dead

Here is an interesting video on the de-enchantment or de-sacralization that has taken place in Western Civilization and how to re-enchant or re-sacralize our collective imagination in order to save the soul of our Civilization.

Though an Anglican, he is perhaps a little too hard on the Reformation (it is worth noting that the collapse of religious observance has been quite profound in culturally Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries as well as Protestant ones), but I cannot deny that some of the factors he mentions (such as the dissolution, rather than the reform, of the British monasteries) probably did not help much.  

I do not see anything fundamentally contradictory between monasticism as a vocation and Protestantism's recovery of the great truths of grace and Biblical authority and "heart-religion," and I'm glad to see that today there are some Anglican, Lutheran, and ecumenical monasteries and convents and similar monastic communities devoted to prayer, study, and simple acts of service.

In any case, I share this video because I think he is quite right in describing some of the spiritual problems facing the West today, and some of the potential medicines, including the importance of recovering older and more nuanced approaches to Scripture, and to the importance of symbolic forms of communication, than what is often on offer among Protestants (conservative or revisionist) these days.  

Is Baptism Required for Holy Communion?

 This video is inviting Christians - especially Methodists and Episcopalians - to wrestle with that question and (I hope) see the value of the traditional requirement of baptism to receive the Eucharist.

Bishop Barron on "The Call of Beauty"

Something I've been talking about in recent months (as in THIS SERMON) is the importance of beauty in our own spiritual lives, and also beauty as a potent help to Christians wanting to stand out as winsome and attractive in a modernist world that has created so much ugly art, so many ugly buildings, and lost sight of the objective nature of Beauty as a glimpse of God's own nature.

One strong voice for what we might call a 'spirituality of beauty' or even using beauty as an evangelistic tool is the Roman Catholic Bishop, Robert Barron.  He ponders some of these topics while reflecting on the unspoiled traditional beauty of the city of Prague in Central Europe.

The Tabernacle, the Exodus, the Cross, and the Lord's Prayer

Here is a great video from Joe at the 'Young Anglican' channel in which he does a great job showing the symbolic and typological connections between the Story of Israel, the Architecture of the Tabernacle/Temple, salvation through Christ, and even the Lord's Prayer. 
 Very interesting stuff, some of which I had not even noticed before.  

"Re-enchantment" with Rod Dreher

The great New Testament Scholar and Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright uses a vivid image in one of his books about how the rationalism of post-Enlightenment Modernity has affected spirituality.  With its insistence on elevating empirical and scientific knowledge to the highest (or even the only) reliable form of knowledge, dispensing with folk wisdom, intuitive, or spiritual forms of knowledge, Modernity was (spiritually speaking) like paving over a green field with concrete.  But, over time, the concrete starts to crack.  A hodge-podge of wildflowers and grass and weeds start to pop through.  

Wright points to various movements - Romanticism, Spiritualism (with its seances), and New Age spiritualities - as reactions to the smothering rationalism.  The spiritual realities - because they really are part of our life and experience - have a way of popping through the concrete.  The Charismatic movement in the churches, the rediscovery of the Mystics through the Spiritual Formation movement, and the resurgence of Traditionalist forms of piety (as with the appeal of the Latin Mass among many younger Roman Catholics) are all Christian expressions of this same "popping through" of the super-natural.  What the Rationalists dismissed as 'irrational' may actually be 'trans-rational' and have an unexpected staying power.

So, in recent decades, as scholars have noted the "paradigm shift" from Modernity into Post-modernity there has been an openness to re-evaluating and even reclaiming the spiritual and purpose-filled dimension to life that goes beyond empirical knowledge.  Nowadays many people are talking - openly and excitedly - about the "Re-enchantment" or "Re-sacralization" of our lives in this world. 

Here is one such conversation between news commentator Emily Jashinsky (of the 'Undercurrents' and 'Breaking Points' web-shows) and Eastern Orthodox Christian author and cultural critic (and personal friend) Rod Dreher about "Re-enchantment."  It is very much worth the watch.

The union of Creator and Creature

 This is a truly fascinating discussion with Jonathan Pageau about the way Christ means that God has taken the Creature into his own life in eternity - outside of time.  This is worth chewing on: 

Holdsworth: It's not about Relationship, It's about Religion

 Here is a provocative video from Roman Catholic lay apologist Brian Holdsworth.  While I don't usually see things 100% the same way he does, he makes some excellent points in a compelling way here. 
I have a video on YouTube called "Consumeristic Christianity" that offers my "take" on these ideas.  Here is a glimpse: it is, as he says, not simply about "relationship," but rather "right relationship;" and in the Bible that always means "covenant relationship."

5 Proofs of the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in Communion

Here is another video from the Rev. Dr. Jordan Cooper, of the Lutheran tradition.  Though the Anglicans and Methodists share in common a view of Christ's Real Presence in Communion that is not 100% identical with the Lutheran view, they are in fact pretty close (close enough that some Lutheran bodies are now in "full communion" agreements with both Methodist and Anglican churches).

What all these traditions do agree on (over against some Baptist and non-denomination traditions) is that, as Scripture clearly affirms, when we receive the consecrated elements of the Lord's Supper by faith, we truly receive the Body and Blood and Presence and Grace of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and renewal of our souls.  

How this works is understood in different ways, I am comfortable leaving it under the heading of "holy mystery".  I'm also comfortable with members within the same church holding (with humility) different understandings of how it works, so long as we strive not to contradict the teachings of Scripture.  

So, while not a Lutheran myself, I would actually concur with the arguments that Cooper makes in this video to demonstrate that the Real Presence in the Eucharist is, on a careful read of the text, a thoroughly Biblical teaching, and ought to be believed.  And that is to say nothing of this also being the undisputed teaching of the Ancient Church for many centuries after the age of the Apostles.  Who are we - separated by language, culture, and centuries - to know better than the early Church who shared the same language and culture as the New Testament writers themselves?

  

Jordan Cooper on the "Filioque"

 Here is a great video from Lutheran pastor and theologian Rev. Dr. Jordan Cooper defending the Western view of the "filioque."

'What in the world is that?', you may be asking.  In the Nicene Creed (which churches I pastor recite occasionally) we affirm that "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son..."  

 That phrase "and the Son" is, in Latin, "Filioque" and it was not included in the original form of the Creed that was approved by ecumenical councils representing the whole of the Early Church.  It was added later by the Western Church to emphasize the divinity of the Son.  What is being affirmed is that, from all eternity, the Holy Spirit is proceeding both from the Father and from the Son within the Life of the Holy Trinity forever.

Eastern Orthodox Churches and other Eastern Rites have tended to reject this understanding of the relationship of the Spirit and the Son within the life of the Holy Trinity, and have vociferously rejected the addition of this phrase to the Creed.  

I believe that the "filioque" actually is good theology: it is consistent with the Biblical witness and makes sense of the nature of God, as Cooper explains in the video below.  However, I also agree that an ecumenical creed, authorized by an Ecumenical Council and shared in common by the whole universal/catholic Church of Jesus, ought not be unilaterally changed by only one part of that church without an Ecumenical Council authorizing the change.  

I'm glad to see that, beginning with the Lambeth Conference of 1978, churches of the Anglican Communion have begun to allow the original form of the Creed to be used - but without denying the truth that the "filioque" teaches.  Thus the 2019 Book of Common Prayer allows the phrase "and the Son" to be omitted with the Nicene Creed is recited (see page 768).  The brand new Methodist hymnal, Our Great Redeemer's Praise, follows the 2019 BCP and puts this phrase in [brackets] to indicate that it may be omitted.  Perhaps this approach will become more widespread within the Western Church and may contribute to warmer relations with the Eastern Church as well.

Patterns of Symbolism to understand the Bible

 Here is a great video from Jonathan Pageau "doing his thing" and discussing patterns of symbols in Scripture, and in the ways that we actually perceive reality, and how recognizing these patterns helps us understand the Bible more deeply. 

Practices of the early Methodists

 

The Jesus Prayer

 

Lift Thine Eyes by Mendelssohn

 "Lift Thine Eyes" is a great example of Protestant sacred and choral music.  The image set to this recording is a chapel in an Anglican Cathedral.  This is the kind of beauty that a religious culture creates when it has a vision of the Transcendent Artist as the Source of all things.

The words are from Psalm 121.

Grace, "Means of Grace," and Sacrament in Wesleyanism

 

Rule Of Life in Wesleyan Practice

 

Morning Prayer for Anglicans and Methodists

A detailed look at the Daily Office of Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer, John Wesley's revision of the Prayerbook, and how it continues to influence United Methodist liturgy.

Resurrection Sunday Changes Everything

The message and worship service for Easter of 2021 at the Saint Francisville Methodist Church.

 (Also, a rare opportunity to see me in a surplice).

The Daily Office & John Wesley's Common Prayer Book Revision

 This video is an introduction to the spiritual discipline of "The Daily Office" or "The Divine Hours", with a focus on the Biblical foundations of the practice, the practice of the Church of England in Wesley's day, and how the Daily Office was revised and passed along to the Methodists by John Wesley.

Liturgical Colors and the Christian Year

 

Palm Sunday - Reading of the Passion of Christ & Sermon