A Living Text

A Living Text.

  • Church of the Redeemer (St. Paul) Departs UMD

    Yesterday I wrote about Restoration Anglican leaving the Upper Midwest Diocese (UMD), but they were not alone in doing so. Church of the Redeemer, pastored by Paul Calvin, also left, but for a different diocese. They are going to the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh (ADP) after investigating the Diocese of the Living Word.  On June…

  • Restoration Anglican (Minneapolis) Departs UMD

    Restoration Anglican (ACNA) in Minneapolis, pastored by Rick Stawarz, has departed the troubled Upper Midwest Diocese for the Diocese of the Rocky Mountains. I would speculate that this is all about Bishop Stewart Ruch’s disastrous mismanagement of past situations, including the Josh Moon debacle. The news as shared follows: Dear Restoration,I am happy to share…

  • ACNA Bishop Todd Atkinson Gone?

    The word is that Bishop Todd Atkinson walked away from the ACNA rather than face an investigation and trial. Where is the press release about this? Is it true? Recall that Bishop Ruch was a primary backer for Atkinson and Via Apostolica to enter the ACNA, a move which was a disaster. It is another…

  • Rubber stamp vestries

    Anglicans like to claim that bishops and vestries are checks against clergy who abuse their authority. In reality, people selected for these roles are filtered out before election and are almost always good “company men” (and women) who will seldom, if ever, stand up to the rector. Add to that the fear of being seen…

  • Statues as channels of divine presence

    Alain Besancon writes: The biblical texts directly targeted popular idolatry, which confused God and the idol. For example, images were taken to the sites of battles and shared the arm’s fate. Pausanias reports the case of images that were chained to restrain the god, and of images that were mistreated when it was necessary to…

  • Icons: St. Irenaeus discusses the Gnostic leader Carpocrates

    St. Irenaeus discusses the Gnostic leader Carpocrates and his followers, and in so doing, hints at the origin of icons. He says of these heretics: They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made…

  • Icons: veneration of pagan images

    One fundamental justification for “venerating” images as opposed to worshipping them (as if this is different) is that we are not really doing anything to the icon, but to the saint or God behind the icon. And yet, that is exactly what an ancient worshiper of Zeus would have said. Alain Besancon writes: The biblical…

  • Icons: cutting out the church

    In her book The Formation of Christendom, Judith Herrin writes: It was in their role as intercessors between man and God that the icons commanded particular devotion. Numerous legends of women, whose inability to conceive a child (or sometimes, more particularly, a son) was removed by prayers directed to icons, reflect an anxiety common to…

  • Icons: Jupiter to Christ

    Thomas F. Mathews says that Christian icons “…grew out of a strong tradition of pagan panel paintings of the ancient gods…” (p. 179) Mathews points to some glaring examples of this transfer from paganism to eastern Christianity. …a fresco painted directly on a house wall in Karanis to serve as a permanent icon shows the…

  • What Hemingway said to read

    Arnold Samuelson was a young man who met Hemingway and ended up working on his boat for a year. Hemingway told him to read these books in order to be a writer: “Here’s a list of books any writer should have read as a part of his education,” he said, handing me the following list:Stephen…