" It is perfectly possible to be kind to the alien when the home culture is robust, for that kindness flows from an abundance." - I feel on the evangelical side of the church in (and of) England that this sentiment is not understood well enough. Within the established church the HTB network has tremendous energy and deep resources to replant and revitalise BUT since they lead from people from very privileged backgrounds and set up in a way that feels 'culturally Blairite' I don't know that they are well equipped for the England that is emerging.
If a CofE Bishop can't even affirm that Christ is Lord in public, then what are the chances of them talking about any of this?
Indeed, what is actually the point of the CofE at all? I don't mean to offend. But if the church 'of England' has nothing to say about England, what precisely is the point of it? It was always a religious compromise. The one thing it was supposed to do to justify that compromise - unite the nation - now seems entirely beyond it.
I wonder if there is a tension in what you write too, though. It's one I also feel. You say you are opposed to ethnic nationalism, and for justifiable reasons which I also share. And yet you want a common people, nation, language, God. Which really amounts to an ethnicity. What do you think?
I'm trying in my own small way to get them to talk about this! Your concerns are my concerns, I just want to go down swinging (go down with the ship), although I'm also persuaded that no church is without serious flaws. I will write further on the ethnic question as it certainly needs more work. In part I'm trying to persuade myself on that question, I feel that there is a very worldly temptation there. Certainly, coming from the other end, there needs to be an ethnically informed awareness in order to resist the extinction of an indigenous culture (applies everywhere - and therefore it also applies in England). How far does race/ethnicity shape or inform a culture... IQ and the Hajnal line beckon for consideration!
I don't think we should confuse race and ethnicity. If the former exists in any meaningful sense it doesn't define culture, and any attempt to make it do so usually leads to horror. I see an 'ethnic group' as a cultural phenomenon: it's a group of people with shared culture, stories, homeland, etc. That means that new people can come and join it, if they are prepared to make the effort to do so. It will always ebb and flow, and will never be 'pure', but it will have meaning. My best attempt to try and pin it down was the 'Four Ps' - people, place, prayer and the past. These four elements seem to make up all cultures, but they also subtly differ everywhere.
I'm very excited to hear your thoughts on race/people.
I think there is something here- a knife's edge- and I hope you find it!
A couple considerations off the top of my useless head: It's what makes a people a people which is both blood and not just blood. There can only be entry into a people through "Giving up of her father's house and ways, and uniting herself to her husband and his people, his gods."
I think of the Greeks: They should be blond haired and blue eyed of course... so what makes them Greek anymore, after centuries of unwilled mingling with their Muslim overlords? Yet assuredly, they are Greek and not Arab!
I'm interested in all of this. (I even feel personally invested in it, ha!)
He hinted on race as ethnicity there. I think he makes a similar mistake by calling for a multi racial ethnicity when gal 3:28 already covers it (meaning you only need to, and should, to avoid ambiguity, say Christian). The development of a nation is a group of sinners in a relation with God, sanctifying towards him. For any nation (not nation-state), that's how it's always worked.
Discriminating between nation, state, race, ethnicity and culture - and recognising that the boundaries are grey (family resemblance concepts) is important. I shall try to be clear in my next article.
Just to be clear, "race" is an abstract concept. It was imported into positivism which tried to measure social constructs meaning it never changed into a biological concept (much like genius became iq, which, as it's considered and measured, is just test taking (it hasn't succeeded into a biological framing, if it can be)). The measures for "race" are based on relative genetic distance which can't ever speak about anything but relative distance. That and there's usually a temporal assumption of which race genetic aspects are important. Saying there's some genetic aspect that a categorization has does not make the categorization itself biological (edit: much less genetic).
I think your last paragraph is the key. I've been ruminating on something JD Vance said - that to be Christian is to love people in a certain order (family, nation, then others), which, on the face of it, seems patently false. But what I’ve observed is that the church has become so focused on the “exotic stranger” that we’ve neglected the work of building strong communities and families, places where the stranger might actually want to stay. Instead of stretching the table endlessly to accommodate people who may not even want to sit with us, we need to focus on bringing people to the table we already have, the communion table.
There's so much in here so refreshing; and a mini-bright-week banquet of hyperlinks for this reader. :)
I'll be reading up thereby on the centre, the meat of your theses. But my nature is always to ask about the edges...
Before I get to it though let me offer one anecdotal 'sensation' that for me is actually a powerful indication "the church of England" is a real, ensouled entity created by God:
having travel to/through England only twice in my life (en route elsewhere)- a cumulative couple days in London only- I developed quite a distaste for it. Enough I felt a little ashamed that I'm 3/4 English by ancestry (and a famous old family at that).
But then reading Paul Kingsnorth's pilgrimages through his homeland I have had the most striking experience: like a vivifying wind passing through my own soul or a stiff tall draught of cool clear living water... I felt something in my bones like Home.
Most curious; it evoked in me a sense of, well, wanting to defend England as my beloved land!
And the English church- well this sensation gave me a very different 'feel' for her. Suddenly I felt I wanted her back in the fold of our communion (I'll get to this below). That she is not dead only astray; she is to be loved and not forgotten about as superfluous.
Never before my 'curious sensation' had I felt or thought any of these sorts of things.
A couple questions now:
1) what do you think about an idea I first heard Charles Taylor express while guest lecturing at UBC some 25 years ago: That Christian ethics, aesthetics, etc. has now already permeated all other religious/philosophies sufficiently (i.e. they all have to answer to and be in dialogue with the "christ truth"), that there is really no need to worry about converting, formally. Or reforming them, externally/structurally.
That is to say for example... As early Judaism lost it's distinctiveness (say, Temple and sacrifice), in converse with Christianity, so too all other philosophies get "christ-o-fied" simply in their need to produce fruit equally good and beautiful once they encounter the "Christ story".
2) what do you think of your strong declaration of Christ's supremacy, in the light of say my own communion Orthodoxy, declaring the supremacy of our *Church* (over and against, to put the stinging point on it, the church of England, et. al.)?
And that in its strongest sense when we dont mince our words, we would say, "there is no salvation outside the Church."
(I do- in love and truth- hasten to add that the *way* Orthodox understand this theologically, paradoxically allows for the salvation not only of other Christians but even of Muslims and Atheists... but it is of course only through their baptism into Christ as He is known in His fullness in the Orthodox Church, that they are so saved (How this is coherent I first learned from Fr Tom Hopko of blessed memory in a lecture at TWU in Langley, B.C, Canada... the lecture that began my own journey out of Anabaptism into Orthodoxy).
Hi good read thanks. I'm new to all this but... The Church clearly still has many who care about scripture and want to stay aligned. Im a long-ish follower of Irreverand who make similar points in some areas. In terms of church internal politics, where does the problem originate? Are bishops being drawn into a.secular mindset, maybe trying to triangulate to keep too wide a range of stakeholders happy?
Is that the church has diplomats and the politically cautious leading it at a time when it needs a bald statement of faith?
Fr. Sam, As an American and practicing Catholic of English heritage, I greatly enjoy your work. It seems we both find ourselves entangled with the same progressive weeds which are choking the authenticity, and indeed the life out of our Churches. Growing up evangelical the Catholic Church got on my radar after seeing the movie Beckett in High School. I started doing research into Church History and converted four years later. I wonder what Beckett would think of the sate of our Churches today?
I think it would help if, rather than saying ‘This is a Christian country’, we just said ‘Christianity created this country’. Then it is easy for everyone to realise what must follow – Christianity can re-create this country’. The country can be recreated and restored by the same force that created it in the first place. Then we can conclude that a nation declines when it becomes separated from its source, and it revives as it returns to that source and is refreshed from it.
Christianity is the source of human sovereignty; individual sovereignty is the source of our universal political participation. The English nation is the source of the rule of law and constitutionality that spread around the world, and has been copied by every people who want to consider themselves a political nation. A nation is also a particular people, brought into being by a long history: the incarnation establishes that particulars are fundamental, so this specific people is not to be turned into a set of abstractions.
Those liberals-become-totalitarians who do not like England want to take our constitutionality and political nationhood away from us. They denigrate Christianity because it is the source of our individual dignity and sovereignty, and the basis on which a people can be self-ruling. We need to say this in order to fight off all globalist attempts to take our nationhood away from them. Christianity is the source of nationhood. I think that this is the line we should take
but I dont like hyperlinks from someone so shrouded. Mind giving me/us say, 3 key thesis points from this substantial list? I'll listen, and interact if you like.
" It is perfectly possible to be kind to the alien when the home culture is robust, for that kindness flows from an abundance." - I feel on the evangelical side of the church in (and of) England that this sentiment is not understood well enough. Within the established church the HTB network has tremendous energy and deep resources to replant and revitalise BUT since they lead from people from very privileged backgrounds and set up in a way that feels 'culturally Blairite' I don't know that they are well equipped for the England that is emerging.
If a CofE Bishop can't even affirm that Christ is Lord in public, then what are the chances of them talking about any of this?
Indeed, what is actually the point of the CofE at all? I don't mean to offend. But if the church 'of England' has nothing to say about England, what precisely is the point of it? It was always a religious compromise. The one thing it was supposed to do to justify that compromise - unite the nation - now seems entirely beyond it.
I wonder if there is a tension in what you write too, though. It's one I also feel. You say you are opposed to ethnic nationalism, and for justifiable reasons which I also share. And yet you want a common people, nation, language, God. Which really amounts to an ethnicity. What do you think?
I'm trying in my own small way to get them to talk about this! Your concerns are my concerns, I just want to go down swinging (go down with the ship), although I'm also persuaded that no church is without serious flaws. I will write further on the ethnic question as it certainly needs more work. In part I'm trying to persuade myself on that question, I feel that there is a very worldly temptation there. Certainly, coming from the other end, there needs to be an ethnically informed awareness in order to resist the extinction of an indigenous culture (applies everywhere - and therefore it also applies in England). How far does race/ethnicity shape or inform a culture... IQ and the Hajnal line beckon for consideration!
I don't think we should confuse race and ethnicity. If the former exists in any meaningful sense it doesn't define culture, and any attempt to make it do so usually leads to horror. I see an 'ethnic group' as a cultural phenomenon: it's a group of people with shared culture, stories, homeland, etc. That means that new people can come and join it, if they are prepared to make the effort to do so. It will always ebb and flow, and will never be 'pure', but it will have meaning. My best attempt to try and pin it down was the 'Four Ps' - people, place, prayer and the past. These four elements seem to make up all cultures, but they also subtly differ everywhere.
I'm very excited to hear your thoughts on race/people.
I think there is something here- a knife's edge- and I hope you find it!
A couple considerations off the top of my useless head: It's what makes a people a people which is both blood and not just blood. There can only be entry into a people through "Giving up of her father's house and ways, and uniting herself to her husband and his people, his gods."
I think of the Greeks: They should be blond haired and blue eyed of course... so what makes them Greek anymore, after centuries of unwilled mingling with their Muslim overlords? Yet assuredly, they are Greek and not Arab!
I'm interested in all of this. (I even feel personally invested in it, ha!)
-mb
He hinted on race as ethnicity there. I think he makes a similar mistake by calling for a multi racial ethnicity when gal 3:28 already covers it (meaning you only need to, and should, to avoid ambiguity, say Christian). The development of a nation is a group of sinners in a relation with God, sanctifying towards him. For any nation (not nation-state), that's how it's always worked.
Is the 'He' me?
It is you. It seemed like you placed them together, at least for the article, and your reply to them, consistently.
Discriminating between nation, state, race, ethnicity and culture - and recognising that the boundaries are grey (family resemblance concepts) is important. I shall try to be clear in my next article.
Just to be clear, "race" is an abstract concept. It was imported into positivism which tried to measure social constructs meaning it never changed into a biological concept (much like genius became iq, which, as it's considered and measured, is just test taking (it hasn't succeeded into a biological framing, if it can be)). The measures for "race" are based on relative genetic distance which can't ever speak about anything but relative distance. That and there's usually a temporal assumption of which race genetic aspects are important. Saying there's some genetic aspect that a categorization has does not make the categorization itself biological (edit: much less genetic).
Hmmm.... there's quite a lot of science justifying the idea of 'human population sub-groups' but I'll touch on that in my next post. Same with IQ.
I think your last paragraph is the key. I've been ruminating on something JD Vance said - that to be Christian is to love people in a certain order (family, nation, then others), which, on the face of it, seems patently false. But what I’ve observed is that the church has become so focused on the “exotic stranger” that we’ve neglected the work of building strong communities and families, places where the stranger might actually want to stay. Instead of stretching the table endlessly to accommodate people who may not even want to sit with us, we need to focus on bringing people to the table we already have, the communion table.
Father Sam for bishop! Axios!
There's so much in here so refreshing; and a mini-bright-week banquet of hyperlinks for this reader. :)
I'll be reading up thereby on the centre, the meat of your theses. But my nature is always to ask about the edges...
Before I get to it though let me offer one anecdotal 'sensation' that for me is actually a powerful indication "the church of England" is a real, ensouled entity created by God:
having travel to/through England only twice in my life (en route elsewhere)- a cumulative couple days in London only- I developed quite a distaste for it. Enough I felt a little ashamed that I'm 3/4 English by ancestry (and a famous old family at that).
But then reading Paul Kingsnorth's pilgrimages through his homeland I have had the most striking experience: like a vivifying wind passing through my own soul or a stiff tall draught of cool clear living water... I felt something in my bones like Home.
Most curious; it evoked in me a sense of, well, wanting to defend England as my beloved land!
And the English church- well this sensation gave me a very different 'feel' for her. Suddenly I felt I wanted her back in the fold of our communion (I'll get to this below). That she is not dead only astray; she is to be loved and not forgotten about as superfluous.
Never before my 'curious sensation' had I felt or thought any of these sorts of things.
A couple questions now:
1) what do you think about an idea I first heard Charles Taylor express while guest lecturing at UBC some 25 years ago: That Christian ethics, aesthetics, etc. has now already permeated all other religious/philosophies sufficiently (i.e. they all have to answer to and be in dialogue with the "christ truth"), that there is really no need to worry about converting, formally. Or reforming them, externally/structurally.
That is to say for example... As early Judaism lost it's distinctiveness (say, Temple and sacrifice), in converse with Christianity, so too all other philosophies get "christ-o-fied" simply in their need to produce fruit equally good and beautiful once they encounter the "Christ story".
2) what do you think of your strong declaration of Christ's supremacy, in the light of say my own communion Orthodoxy, declaring the supremacy of our *Church* (over and against, to put the stinging point on it, the church of England, et. al.)?
And that in its strongest sense when we dont mince our words, we would say, "there is no salvation outside the Church."
(I do- in love and truth- hasten to add that the *way* Orthodox understand this theologically, paradoxically allows for the salvation not only of other Christians but even of Muslims and Atheists... but it is of course only through their baptism into Christ as He is known in His fullness in the Orthodox Church, that they are so saved (How this is coherent I first learned from Fr Tom Hopko of blessed memory in a lecture at TWU in Langley, B.C, Canada... the lecture that began my own journey out of Anabaptism into Orthodoxy).
Okay!
But to return to where I began....
Father Sam for bishop! Axios, Axios, Axios!
warmly;
-mark basil
Hi good read thanks. I'm new to all this but... The Church clearly still has many who care about scripture and want to stay aligned. Im a long-ish follower of Irreverand who make similar points in some areas. In terms of church internal politics, where does the problem originate? Are bishops being drawn into a.secular mindset, maybe trying to triangulate to keep too wide a range of stakeholders happy?
Is that the church has diplomats and the politically cautious leading it at a time when it needs a bald statement of faith?
Fr. Sam, As an American and practicing Catholic of English heritage, I greatly enjoy your work. It seems we both find ourselves entangled with the same progressive weeds which are choking the authenticity, and indeed the life out of our Churches. Growing up evangelical the Catholic Church got on my radar after seeing the movie Beckett in High School. I started doing research into Church History and converted four years later. I wonder what Beckett would think of the sate of our Churches today?
Lots here Sam.
I think it would help if, rather than saying ‘This is a Christian country’, we just said ‘Christianity created this country’. Then it is easy for everyone to realise what must follow – Christianity can re-create this country’. The country can be recreated and restored by the same force that created it in the first place. Then we can conclude that a nation declines when it becomes separated from its source, and it revives as it returns to that source and is refreshed from it.
Christianity is the source of human sovereignty; individual sovereignty is the source of our universal political participation. The English nation is the source of the rule of law and constitutionality that spread around the world, and has been copied by every people who want to consider themselves a political nation. A nation is also a particular people, brought into being by a long history: the incarnation establishes that particulars are fundamental, so this specific people is not to be turned into a set of abstractions.
Those liberals-become-totalitarians who do not like England want to take our constitutionality and political nationhood away from us. They denigrate Christianity because it is the source of our individual dignity and sovereignty, and the basis on which a people can be self-ruling. We need to say this in order to fight off all globalist attempts to take our nationhood away from them. Christianity is the source of nationhood. I think that this is the line we should take
It certainly does appear to be an unresolvable crisis.
But what if the "authority" of the so called Great Religions is past their useful use by date.
http://beezone.com/current/chap_1_the_new_reformation.html
http://beezone.com/current/theurgencyoftheteaching.html
http://www.dabase.org/up-5-2.htm
http://www.dabase.org/up-6.htm section 17 contains a scathing critique of our dreadful sanity - the last 8 paragraphs are extraordinary
http://beezone.com/current/stresschemistry.html
Jesus of course never ever claimed to be Lord or King
http://beezone.com/current/christ_equals_emsquared.html
http://dabase.org/up-5-2.htm
http://beezone.com/current/ewb_pp436-459.html
Are you a bot?
you know I'm a curious cat...
but I dont like hyperlinks from someone so shrouded. Mind giving me/us say, 3 key thesis points from this substantial list? I'll listen, and interact if you like.
warmly (well if you're human ;)
-mb
2 S zzz