Holy Moses

A Catholic church in my neighborhood used to have a big statue of the Virgin Mary on a pedestal at the entrance to its main driveway, with a smaller statue of the church's patron saint kneeling in prayer in front of it. For the last few years the pedestal has been empty, I don't know why. Recently the little statue pictured above (it's no more than two feet high) appeared there.

It's obviously Moses -- note the tablets. But I've never seen a statue of an Old Testament figure in front of a Catholic church before; and it seems kind of wrong to have the saint praying to him. I guess it's a mystery, as the nuns in the movies say.

And anyway, to me that statue looks more like a fantasy-game wizard . . .

. . . than one of the Hebrew prophets.

St John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was a contemporary of Christ who was known for evangelization and his baptizing of Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist was born through the intercession of God to Zachariah and Elizabeth, who was otherwise too old to bear children. According to scriptures, the Angel Gabriel visited Elizabeth and Zachariah to tell them they would have a son and that they should name him John. Zachariah was skeptical and for this he was rendered mute until the time his son was born and named John, in fulfillment of God's will.

When Elizabeth was pregnant with John, she was visited by Mary, and John leapt in her womb. This revealed to Elizabeth that the child Mary carried was to be the Son of God.

John began public ministry around 30 AD, and was known for attracting large crowds across the province of Judaea and around the Jordan River. When Jesus came to him to be baptized, John recognized him and said, "It is I who need baptism from you."

Jesus told John to baptize Him anyway, which he did, whereupon the heavens opened, and the Spirit of God was seen like a dove. The voice of God spoke, saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

John instructed his followers to turn to Christ, calling Him the "Lamb of God" and these people were among the first Christians.

Meaningful

I'm old enough to remember when football players kneeling on the sidelines made people upset. pic.twitter.com/9b5waLxkR3

— neontaster (@neontaster) September 9, 2016

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Is It Always Discriminatory to Reject Religious Beliefs?

"Trump Calls for ‘Study’ of Mosques After Paris Terror Attacks"

“You’re going to have to watch and study the mosques because a lot of talk is going on at the mosques,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says on MSNBC when asked what should be done to protect U.S. citizens.

“From what I heard, in the old days, meaning a while ago, we had great surveillance going on in and around mosques in New York City and I understand our mayor totally cut that out”

Asked about possibility of France shutting mosques with radical ties and whether he’d do same as U.S. president, Trump says, “I would hate to do it, but it’s something that you’re going to have to strongly consider because some of the ideas and some of the hatred, the absolute hatred, is coming from these areas”

Agree or disagree, at least Trump is willing to discuss things that no insider politician would.

The One True Holy Church

Overheard at Lem's:

That's because chick was not raised in "the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the one true church." I had a nun teacher who would use that entire quote every time she mentioned the church. She would bow her head when she said, "the one true church." Nuns are the original Moonies.

link to original

The Worst Person in America

Kim Davis is the worst person in America.

According to Social Justice Warriors, the main stream media, bloggers, catamites and the grifters who have to sit at the Thanksgiving Table with them. She is the worst because she refused to participate in same sex marriage. Now how was she forced to participate you might ask? As county clerk her name would be on every document validating the celebration of sodomy that defiles the sanctity of marriage that has existed for all of recorded human history. Just like the baker and the photographer who did not want to affirmatively participate in what she regards as sin she is being forced to conform at the price of incarceration. An unelected judge has incarcerated an elected official for not complying with the latest version of socially acceptable perversion.

Kim Davis is being mocked for her personal history. She has been married several times. She has made mistakes in her life. I mean she didn’t have meaningless sex in men’s rooms or molested young boys who were trying to break into the movies but she was married a couple or three times. She found Jesus a few years ago and was born again. She sought forgiveness and redemption and is trying to live a righteous life. For that she is being ceaselessly mocked, derided and in fact incarcerated. She is trying to live up to her religious beliefs. She is bearing witness. She is willing to go to jail for it. I admire her. I don’t know if I would be courageous enough to do that. I do know that I do not see any Catholic prelates or Orthodox Rabbi’s or Mormon Bishops speaking out in her defense. But then that is not how it works. They are interested in their power and their perks and not the basic bulwark of their beliefs. Not surprising in the least. It is endemic to the human condition. Your leaders “out grow” the beliefs that put them there in the first place. Rhinos in the face of God.

Kim Davis was incarcerated because the Judge refused to fine her. He has said that he didn’t want people to step up to pay her fine. He didn’t want to use the legally mandated option of impeachment and removal from office. He wanted to impose his will at all costs. At the cost of putting same sex marriage over the conscience of an elected official who serves the people who elected her. They are the ones who should seek her dismissal. But they won’t. I bet if she runs again she will be reelected overwhelmingly. That will not stand in the face of judicially mandated coercion. The judge would brook no compromise. They wouldn’t take her name off of the documents. It is not enough for the forces at work here. It will never be enough. They are demanding that she resign. That religious people be precluded from being elected and serving while following their religious principles. Of course this only applies to observant Christians. You can demand to wear a Hajib at Abercrombie and Fitch and the courts will fall over themselves to demand that you have that right. You can shelter illegal immigrant murderers and refuse to deport them and the courts won’t touch you. But same sex marriage is different.

Expect to see more people go to jail. More Christians to be incarcerated. It is coming to a church near you sooner rather than later. Get used to it.

Winter is here.

Simon Says...

Overheard at Althouse:

There are no valid new ideas in Christianity lurking, waiting to be excavated. 

Link for context

Simon sounds downright Ratzingerian there. What do you think?
_____________________

There may be nothing new in Christianity, but Christianity is always in the new:


But God's own descent 
Into flesh was meant
As a demonstration
That the supreme merit
Lay in risking spirit
In substantiation.
Spirit enters flesh
And for all it's worth
Charges into earth
In birth after birth
Ever fresh and fresh.
We may take the view
That its derring-do
Thought of in the large
Is one mighty charge
On our human part
Of the soul's ethereal
Into the material.

~Robert Frost

Obama Condemns the Middle Ages

"We are summoned to push back against those who would distort our religion for their nihilistic ends," Obama said during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. He singled out the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, calling the militants a "death cult," as well as those responsible for last month's terror attacks in Paris and deadly assault on a school in Pakistan."

Obama had a more non-denominational message for the audience that also included prominent leaders of non-Christian faiths. The president said that while religion is a source for good around the world, people of all faiths have been willing to "hijack religion for their own murderous ends."

"Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

"So it is not unique to one group or one religion," Obama said. "There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith."

Only two or three days after ISIS released a gruesome video of the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot, in the name of Islam, the president of the US looks back... way back. Bizarre?  

Is this exorcism racist?

Charles Murray's List... (yes that Charles Murray)

It's more than kind of refreshing to come across a couple of big thinkers, respected, who show some interest, at least in writing, about religion. Even if, as I suspect with Malcolm Gladwell, it might only be as a ripe source material.

The other is Charles Murray, who has written a book called "The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead", from which he plums a Wall Street Journal piece, giving me an opportunity to partake ;)

I particularly liked #4 in a list of "Advice for a Happy Life".

4. Take Religion Seriously

Don't bother to read this one if you're already satisfyingly engaged with a religious tradition.

Now that we're alone, here's where a lot of you stand when it comes to religion: It isn't for you. You don't mind if other people are devout, but you don't get it. Smart people don't believe that stuff anymore.

I can be sure that is what many of you think because your generation of high-IQ, college-educated young people, like mine 50 years ago, has been as thoroughly socialized to be secular as your counterparts in preceding generations were socialized to be devout. Some of you grew up with parents who weren't religious, and you've never given religion a thought. Others of you followed the religion of your parents as children but left religion behind as you were socialized by college.

By socialized, I don't mean that you studied theology under professors who persuaded you that Thomas Aquinas was wrong. You didn't study theology at all. None of the professors you admired were religious. When the topic of religion came up, they treated it dismissively or as a subject of humor. You went along with the zeitgeist.

I am describing my own religious life from the time I went to Harvard until my late 40s. At that point, my wife, prompted by the birth of our first child, had found a religious tradition in which she was comfortable, Quakerism, and had been attending Quaker meetings for several years. I began keeping her company and started reading on religion. I still describe myself as an agnostic, but my unbelief is getting shaky.

“What do I love when I love my God?”

The last two interview questions posed to John D. Caputo, a professor of religion and humanities at Syracuse University. The interview was conducted via e-mail, by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and published by the New York Times.

G.G.: "If Derrida doubts or denies that there’s someone who guarantees such things, isn’t it only honest to say that he is an agnostic or an atheist? For most people, God is precisely the one who guarantees that the things we most fear won’t happen. You’ve mentioned Derrida’s interest in Augustine. Wouldn’t Augustine — and virtually all the Christian tradition — denounce any suggestion that God’s promises might not be utterly reliable?"

J.C.: "Maybe it disturbs what “most people” think religion is — assuming they are thinking about it — but maybe a lot of these people wake up in the middle of the night feeling the same disturbance, disturbed by a more religionless religion going on in the religion meant to give them comfort. Even for people who are content with the contents of the traditions they inherit, deconstruction is a life-giving force, forcing them to reinvent what has been inherited and to give it a future. But religion for Derrida is not a way to link up with saving supernatural powers; it is a mode of being-in-the-world, of being faithful to the promise of the world."

"The comparison with Augustine is telling. Unlike Augustine, he does not think a thing has to last forever to be worthy of our unconditional love. Still, he says he has been asking himself all his life Augustine’s question, “What do I love when I love my God?” But where Augustine thinks that there is a supernaturally revealed answer to this question, Derrida does not. He describes himself as a man of prayer, but where Augustine thinks he knows to whom he is praying, Derrida does not. When I asked him this question once he responded, “If I knew that, I would know everything” — he would be omniscient, God!"

"This not-knowing does not defeat his religion or his prayer. It is constitutive of them, constituting a faith that cannot be kept safe from doubt, a hope that cannot be kept safe from despair. We live in the distance between these pairs."

G.G.: "But if deconstruction leads us to give up Augustine’s way of thinking about God and even his belief in revealed truth, shouldn’t we admit that it has seriously watered down the content of Christianity, reduced the distance between it and agnosticism or atheism? Faith that is not confident and hope that is not sure are not what the martyrs died for."

J.C.: "In this view, what martyrs die for is an underlying faith, which is why, by an accident of birth or a conversion, they could have been martyrs for the other side. Mother Teresa expressed some doubts about her beliefs, but not about an underlying faith in her work. Deconstruction is a plea to rethink what we mean by religion and to locate a more unnerving religion going on in our more comforting religion."

"Deconstruction is faith and hope. In what? In the promises that are harbored in inherited names like “justice” and “democracy” — or “God.” Human history is full of such names and they all have their martyrs. That is why the difference between Derrida and Augustine cannot be squashed into the distinction between “theism” and “atheism” or — deciding to call it a draw — “agnosticism.” It operates on a fundamentally different level. Deconstruction dares to think “religion” in a new way, in what Derrida calls a “new Enlightenment,” daring to rethink what the Enlightenment boxed off as “faith” and “reason.”"

"But deconstruction is not destruction. After all, the bottom line of deconstruction, “yes, come,” is pretty much the last line of the New Testament: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”"

Germans look to Islam in hopes of saving themselves.

"For the first time, German public schools are offering classes in Islam to primary school students using state-trained teachers and specially written textbooks, as officials try to better integrate the nation’s large Muslim minority and counter the growing influence of radical religious thinking."

For German authorities, countering the expansion of more radical religious thinking has presented a vexing problem. For now, the domestic intelligence service keeps close watch on a growing number, with 4,500 Salafists under observation in 2011 and 5,500 in 2012, according to an annual government report.

Increasingly, attention has turned to education and ways to nurture greater inclusion for Germany’s approximately four million Muslims, a number that has steadily increased since German industry recruited the first Turks as “guest workers” in the 1960s.

One answer, officials in Hesse hope, is being put in effect in classes where young children are guided by a state-trained teacher working from a state-approved curriculum.

In one class, Timur Kumlu recently asked his 19 6-year-old students each to take a strand from a large wool ball. He then instructed the children — whose parents hailed from Muslim countries as varied as Afghanistan, Albania, Morocco and Turkey — to examine how, like the threads, they, too, were woven together.

It was a simple lesson containing a gentle message filled with symbolism — that they were linked by their Islamic faith and practices of prayer.

“We are now all bound together — you come from different countries, and so do your parents,” said Mr. Kumlu, who reminded the children that while their parents came from Afghanistan or Albania, they were born in Germany. 

“I think it’s clear now that for years we made the mistake of alienating people,” said Nicola Beer, who as education minister in Hesse was one of several politicians, professors and teachers who pushed for the Islamic instruction. Now, she said, Germans recognize that “we are here together, we work together, and we educate our children together.”

It will be interesting to see how this experiment works out. Does prayer in schools lead to children growing up terrorist? Our own US constitution precludes that kind of experimentation here in the US. So, we just get to watch, from afar, hopefully in safety.

NYT

"Anonymous 'TipsforJesus'"

"An anonymous person or persons armed with an AMEX Centurion card, a love for college football and an Instagram account is setting out to "do the Lord's work, one tip at a time," leaving thousands of dollars in tips to unsuspecting servers."

On Sept. 8, an @tipsforjesus Instagram account posted the first photo verifying its mission, capturing the image of a receipt for Bar Louie in Ann Arbor, Mich., where they left a $3,000 tip for an $87.98 tab. The account posted two more receipt photos the next day, one featuring a $5,000 tip, the other showing a receipt with a $7,000 tip held by a grinning man, confirmed to be the co-owner of Alley Bar in Ann Arbor. Both of the receipts were signed, "@tipsforjesus."

That same day, tipsforjesus also posted a screenshot of an ABC 4 Utah article about a "mysterious" tipper who left thousands of dollars in tips in Ogden, Utah, this August, with the photo description "#tipsforjesus."

ABC News

Crowdsourced Solutions: What Should Be Forgiven?

Trespasses, sins, guilt, debts, shoulds?

Palladian's version of the Lord's Prayer (evolved from a machine) struck me because of how the words "trespasses" and "trespassed" survived wholly intact:

Or father

court in heaven

shall be dining biking them,

but I will be done

on corporate as it is in heaven

give us this day ordeal the bride

and for guests are trespasses

as a brief for give those who trespassed against its

and leave us not into temptation

to deliver us from evil

for design to step forward

and glory forever,

on and.

The Lord's Prayer has appeared in English since the earliest recorded times and the word "trespass" did not appear until the 16th century. Originally, we used the word gyltas which is cognate with modern English word "guilt":

Fæder ure (ca. 1000 AD)

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum

si þin nama gehalgod

tobecume þin rice

gewurþe þin willa

on eorðan swa swa on heofonum

urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us to dæg

and forgyf us ure gyltas

swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum

and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge

ac alys us of yfele soþlice.

By the 14th century, the word had evolved to a combination of dettis and synnys, which are cognate with modern English words "debts" and "sins;" Middle English had clearly felt the influence of the Norman Conquest (1066):

Oure fadir (1384)

Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;

þi reume or kyngdom come to be.

Be þi wille don in herþe as it is doun in heuene.

yeue to us today oure eche dayes bred.

And foryeue to us oure dettis þat is oure synnys
As we foryeuen to oure dettouris þat is to men þat han synned in us.

And lede us not into temptacion but delyuere us from euyl.

By the 16th century, "trespasses" had supplanted guilt, sin, and debt to give the verses we know by heart:

Our Father (1559)

Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.

Amen.

"Trespass" has an archaic meaning of sin or transgression but the word today largely means to stray into another's territory--like being "offsides" -- 5 yard penalty. The OED instructs on the origin of trespass; it is French in origin, meaning to transgress or literally to go beyond. It's odd that we use a word of French origin when the French themselves use the word debit or debt and apparently always have done so: link

The Italians use debito and the Latin Mass uses the identical concept: link

I once wrote a blog post on this topic (which originated in an Althouse comment). There is a curious convolution of monetary debt and sin in the German language (Nietzsche is involved) and I wrote about it here.

What I'm still curious about is what did the concept originally correspond to and what word(s) were used? Perhaps someone can use this resource (the Lord's Prayer in all languages) to resolve this question.

"I am a spiritual magpie"

Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury.

While I quibble with some of the detaiils (speaking in tongues isn't a general Protestant thing, it's a Pentecostal thing), this is a very interesting article that covers a wide array of topics, giving us a sense of the man pretty quickly.

What's interesting is how similar he seems to the new Pope. Not in life story certainly, but in their theological position.  Both can be considered theological conservatives, an interesting move for these global churches, and one that belays the expectations that churches need to be more progressive in their theology -- the argument that liberals have been making since Schleiermacher.  In order for people to respect us, and come to faith, we have to put aside the miraculous and more silly sounding doctrines like the resurrection.  Now we have an Archbishop who speaks in tongues?!  Moving the opposite direction.

Yet, both the Archbishop and the Pope have incorporated progressive values in their priorities. Both highlight the need to work with the poor, and the need for a holistic ministry of the church. Yet, both have shown distrust for the socialist approaches. Rather than rhetoric, rather than big sweeping policies, they both seem to looking for on the ground ways to actually help those in need. Very pragmatic.

Both also seem to illustrate a new kind of humility and approachability.  The last holders of these positions were first theologians, academics who had a lot of very influential writings  that other academics quoted well before their rise to power. But academia tends to enforce a waffling, a priority of nuance that sees everything as complex but has trouble when confronted with situations of clear controversy or decision.

Yet both stepped down having set a continued tone for their various churches, and now both churches have new kinds of church leaders, who are in power but don't see their power as something to exploit but are taking on the attitudes of servants -- asking, "how can we be voices of hope and peace? How can we be followers of Jesus in the midst of the trials of this world?"

Very interesting era for these churches indeed.  Gives me hope.