A Living Text.

In a commentary piece for the TLS on the Venerable Bede, Archbishop Rowan Williams says: A great deal of nonsense has been written about “Celtic Christianity”, as if this were an intelligent designation for some self-contained variant of Catholic orthodoxy in the early Middle Ages, a variant more attuned to the sacredness of nature and…

I just came across a paper by Dr. Andrea Purdekova called  Even if I am not here, there are so many eyes’: surveillance and state reach in Rwanda.’ You can read the paper here. In it she describes the information gathering apparatus of the Rwandan state, for example: Informers are indeed believed to be everywhere, and…

If Anglicanism is to have a lasting and ongoing impact globally, it surely must move beyond a grateful embrace of the past and engage the Scriptures and the modern world in innovative ways. We rightly venerate Hooker, Donne, Herbert, Cranmer, Jewel and many others, but we need new theologians who do more than simply unpack…

In the 1977 book The Nazis and the Occult, Dusty Sklar mentioned a bizarre practice that she maintained the Nazi SS practiced. Sklar said that the SS beheaded young Aryans and used their heads to communicate to the spirit realm (this reminds me of an incident in the C.S. Lewis Space trilogy). Sklar wrote: A…

What was Israel’s worship like outside the Temple? Some intriguing clues are seen in the bands of prophets and their ecstatic worship. I wish we knew more about it. I read a bit on the subject lately, as follows: In the Westminster Theological Journal, 56:2, John W. Hilber writes: The function of prophetic bands is also unclear.…

Ties to the African Anglican churches have by and large been positive for American Anglicans. Their orthodoxy, fervency for Jesus, and love of Scripture have been a glass of water in a thirsty land of apostasy. With that in mind, it seems to me that we are aligning ourselves with political situations we have little…

This is an interesting addition to the Joseph Smith file: a bit of background on John Dee: In the early 1580s the English scholar and magus John Dee undertook an experiment with his “scryer,” who went by the name of Edward Kelley, to try to acquire otherwise inaccessible knowledge by means of invoking and interrogating…

And of course the crusades, particularly the fourth, introduced such a flood of relics of all sorts throughout Europe that the Apostles and the early martyrs could be almost omnipresent through their relics duplicated and scattered all over the West. Patrick J. Geary, Furta Sacra, page 24.

An email revealed today from the co-founder of Sovereign Grace Ministries minced no words with the attempt at whitewashing the behavior of C.J. Mahaney. Tomczak says in part: Addressing the illegal, immoral and documented blackmail plus the reprehensible conduct that shattered our reputation, relationships and family ties (plus our livelihood) was afforded a dismissive SIX…

Some unrelated quotes from the book by James Jordan: …the reasons for denominational diversity are deep-seated, complex, and cannot be removed by a wave of a magic wand or anathema. The problem can only be effectively resolved by local communication, cooperation, and prayer. It must be recognized by all parties that there are legitimate strengths…