Faith: January 2020 Archives
How the Church lost its flock over Brexit - UnHerd
Anglican pastor Giles Fraser writes about "a gathering of 60 or so church leaders of various denominations... at Lambeth Palace to discuss the way forward for the churches after Brexit."
"The most interesting thing that I took away from the day, listening especially to German Christians, was how the EU became, for them, a sort of project of atonement for the consequences of German nationalism - that the shame of Nazism led them to reject any starry-eyed or romantic conception of the nation and to replace it by what Professor Heinrich Bedford-Strohm from the University of Bamberg called a 'nationalism of rules'.
"In other words, that a particular people might be united not by the dangerous emotionalism of flag waving but by a decidedly unemotional common bureaucracy that could be rolled out to embrace different nations, united under a set of administrative rules and procedures. One German academic there spoke of the need for the UK to be 'integrated into the European cultural synthesis'. I shuddered and thought of the Borg in Star Trek, a hive mind where all cultural distinctiveness will be assimilated. Forget subsidiarity. 'Resistance is futile,' say the Borg.
"As Brits, our reaction to the Second World War was inevitably entirely different from that of the Germans. We didn't experience the humiliation of our nationalism, but quite the opposite: its overwhelming endorsement. For it was precisely through the sort of communal solidarity and fellow feeling that nationalism provides that we summoned the strength to stand against Nazism and help defeat it.
"The massive outpouring of feeling and relief at the end of the war, the 'never surrender' attitude, the solidarity forged by the Blitz, those familiar images of thousands of demobilised soldiers waving the union flag in Piccadilly, all that and more is why it is inevitable that the Germans and the British are going to have entirely different approaches to the moral valence of the nation state....
"...the whole point of a family, a church and a nation is that they accept people uncritically - and not on the basis of how clever they are, how mobile, how rich or how solution focused. This is indeed the love that asks no question. You belong to the group and are valued by it simply because you are a member of it. The family, the church and the nation are spaces where all are welcomed and esteemed irrespective of class, talent or ethnicity. This is the moral case for the nation state."
BillHendricks.net: Is It a Calling Or a Whim?
Bill Hendricks of the Giftedness Center in Dallas lists and elaborates on five signs a path you're considering may be your calling:
"It fits your giftedness. ... You feel drawn to it again and again over time. ... It meets with encouragement and confirmation from those who know you well and who have your best interests at heart. ... You conclude you cannot do otherwise. ... You've made it a regular item in your prayers and you have received either (a) a strong indication from God that you should pursue it, and/or (b) no good indication that you should not pursue it. ... "
He also lists seven signs that it likely is more of a whim than a calling:
"Your envisioned future keeps changing. ... It's a recent idea and you have not given it much serious thought over time. ... You have not explored what it really entails, what it would really cost, and what you would really have to do to to make it happen. ... It involves grandiosity. ... It requires strengths and motivations you simply don't have. ... Those who know you well do not affirm it. ... It's a difficult path for which you are neither talented nor motivated. ..."
The Giftedness Center offers an online step-by-step guide to discovering your giftedness. I have some more links on giftedness and vocation on a blog entry from 2008.
Cardinal McCarrick: Frank Keating Blew the Whistle a Long Time Ago - Patheos - Rebecca Hamilton
Shortly after the McCarrick scandal broke in 2018, former Oklahoma legislator Rebecca Hamilton recalled former Gov. Frank Keating's righteous anger at the corrupt behavior of Catholic bishops when Keating served as the first director of the Church lay oversight committee on the clergy sex abuse scandal:
"Needless to say, the whole thing blew up. Before long, Governor Keating had resigned his position, declaring that the bishops behaved 'like Cosa Nostra.'
"Here is what he said in his resignation letter:
"'My remarks which some bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology. To resist grand jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization, not my church.'"
Ken Fuson Obituary - Des Moines Register
Reporter writes his own obituary.
"In his newspaper work, Ken won several national feature-writing awards, including the Ernie Pyle Award, ASNE Distinguished Writing Award, National Headliner Award, Missouri Award (twice) and Distinguished Writing Award in the Best of Gannett contest (five times, but who's counting?). No, he didn't win a Pulitzer Prize, but he's dead now, so get off his back. There are those who would suggest that becoming a free-lance writer in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression was not a wise choice, but Ken was never one to be guided by wisdom....
"For most of his life, Ken suffered from a compulsive gambling addiction that nearly destroyed him. But his church friends, and the loving people at Gamblers Anonymous, never gave up on him. Ken last placed a bet on Sept. 5, 2009. He died clean. He hopes that anyone who needs help will seek it, which is hard, and accept it, which is even harder. Miracles abound. Ken's pastor says God can work miracles for you and through you. Skepticism may be cool, and for too many years Ken embraced it, but it was faith in Jesus Christ that transformed his life. That was the one thing he never regretted. It changed everything."
