The Many Faces of Christianism -- Part 1

 I tend to think of "Christianism" as a neologism, and a term that few people have heard of or use, but then saw that I had blogged about it when I first came across it twenty years ago. It struck me then (and I still believe now) that Christianism is to Christianity what Islamism is to Islam, as Zionism is to Judaism, and as Hindutva is to Hinduism -- a militant use of religion as a kind of cultural identify for distinguishing "us" from "them". 

Then I read about a new book, The Many Faces of Christianism: The ‘Russian World’ in Europe, edited by Marietta van der Tol, Sophia R.C. Johnson, Petr Kratochvíl and/ Zoran Grozdanov. It sounded as though the term had gone mainstream, well, at least in academia. I saw several mentions of the book, and thought it might be worth reading and discussion, since it seemed to be one of the areas and one of the issues over which World War 3 might break out.  So a year ago I put it on my "to read" list, and this week I discovered that the publishers are distributing the ebook copies free, so I got a copy and have started to read it.

But it seems that I am the only person on the GoodReads site who is actually reading it. I asked on various online forums dealing with theology and missiology if anyone was interested in discussing it, but there were no takers, so I've decided to write my thoughts as I read it in my blog here as I go along.

This isn't a review, though the notes I make might be useful for writing a review later on but is rather my conversation with the authors and editors of the book, though no doubt they will never read it. If anyone does read this, and is open to discussing it, well then I'd love to hear from you. There are things that puzzle me about the book, and other people may be able to throw some light on them.

One reason for my interest in it is that Christianism is the militant and extremist wing of Christian Nationalism, and Christian Nationalism was the ruling ideology of the National Party government of South Africa during the apartheid years, from 1948 to 1994. With the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994 we thought that Christian Nationalism was a discredited ideology. Many of those who had supported it in the past abandoned it when they saw that the sky didn't fall, and it was something of a surprise when it began to be adopted in parts of Europe and the USA. 

To give an idea of where it is going, then, here is the Table of Contents.

    1 The Many Faces of Christianism: The 'Russian World' in Europe 1
    Marietta van der Tol, Petr Kratochvíl, Sophia Johnson, and Zoran
    Grozdanov


    2 Populism and Religion: Why the Twain Will Always Meet 17 Petr
    Kratochvíl

    3 When a Light Cloak Turns into a Pious Cage: Thinking National
    Identity with Karl Barth and John Paul II 41 Zoran Grozdanov

    4 Fratelli Tutti: A Failed Battle against Christian Nationalism?
    60 Anne Guillard

    5 The Russian World, The Hungarian World, and Make America Great
    Again: Political Imaginaries and Their Spaces 80 Marietta van der
    Tol

    6 Russian World, Holy Russia: Towards a New Ideology? 107 Veronica
    Cibotaru

    7 Putinism and Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Religious Motifs 125
    Dmytro Bintsarovskyi

    8 From St. Paul and Carl Schmitt to Alexander Dugin: The Katechon
    as a Political Category in Empire Building 143 Dustin J. Byrd

    9 Between Religious Nationalism and Universal Familism:
    Anti-Gender Movement Values in Croatia and Serbia 169 Ivan Tranfic

    10 The Orthodox Church and the Greek Solution Party: A Stunted
    Political Relation between Adjacent Ideological Platforms 194
    Konstantinos Papastathis and Anastasia Litina

    11 Belonging without Attending? National Identity and Contemporary
    Religious Patterns in Serbia 210 Marko Vekovic

    12 The Danish People's Party and the Heritage of Tidehverv: A
    National Example of a European Tendency 230 Erik Sporon Fiedler

    13 Christianity, Religion and Christian Democracy 250 Katharina
    Kunter and Leon van den Broeke

    14 The European Union as a Space of (In)Securities: Analysing
    Political Reasoning by Lithuanian Catholics 273 Rosita
    Garskaite-Antonowicz

    15 Theopolitical Visions of National Belonging: Resisting the
    Totalising Tendencies of Inclusion 290 Jenny Leith

    16 The Contested Meanings of the Anglican Parish in Multireligious
    England 308 Lauren Morry

    17 Concluding Reflection: The Call for Political Theologies after
    Christendom 325 Marietta van der Tol, Petr Kratochv¡l, Sophia
    Johnson, and Zoran Grozdanov Appendix 1: A Declaration on the
    "Russian World" (Russkii Mir) Teaching 336

    Appendix 2: A statement of solidarity with the Orthodox
    Declaration on the "Russian World" (Russkii Mir) Teaching, and
    against Christian Nationalism and New Totalitarianism 342

 

Continued in Part 2 

 

Father Seraphim Rose and 20th-Century Orthodoxy

Father Seraphim Rose

The decision of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) to consider the late Father Seraphim Rose as a candidate for canonisation as a saint has sparked off a great deal of controversy online, with some saying what a great saint he was, and some saying that such a great sinner could never be a saint.

I don't want to join that argument; it's not for me to decide, and I know I won't be called upon to make that kind of judgement. But as a missiologist and church historian it think it could be interesting to reflect on his place in mission and church history.

Before the 1960s Orthodoxy was little known among English-speaking people. Orthodox people living in countries where English was widely spoken might build churches, but the services were usually in Greek, Russian, Bulgarian or other non-English languages. After the Russian Revolution some Russian refugees lived in exile in Western Europe and through the ecumenical contacts they made began to make Orthodoxy better-known to a select few in Western denominations, often in academic circles.

One of these exiles was Nicolas Zernov, who influenced an Anglican student, Timothy Ware, who became Orthodox in 1954, and eventually succeeded his mentor as Spalding Professor of Eastern Orthodox Theology at Oxford University. Zernov had already been instrumental in founding the Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius, which encouraged ecumenical contact between Orthodox and Anglicans.

In the early 1960s both Zernov and Ware wrote books on the Orthodox Christian faith in English. Ware's book The Orthodox Church has been reprinted several times as has Zernov's The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century. Timothy Ware became a monk, taking the monastic name of Kallistos, and later served as a bishop. Through his writings he influenced a growing number of English-speaking people, both in Britain itself and in the Commonwealth.

On the other side of the world, in California, USA, Eugene Rose, who was brought up as a Methodist, later became an atheist and then a student of Chinese religions, became interested in Orthodoxy. His spiritual father was Bishop John (Maximovich) of San Francisco (now better known as St John of Shanghai and San Francisco), who was, like Nicolas Zernov, an exile from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Eugene Rose became Orthodox, and felt called to the monastic life, and with a friend, Gleb Podmoshensky, formed a monastery in Northern California, where Rose, when tonsured, took the monastic name of Seraphim, after St Seraphim of Sarov. There they began publishing a magazine, The Orthodox Word, and also translated and published several Orthodox books in English.

To these two sources of Orthodox literature in English may be added a third. Another group of Russian exiles had set up an Orthodox seminary in Paris for training clergy, mainly for the Russian diaspora. Some of them crossed the Atlantic and set up St Vladimir's Seminary in New York, and St Vladimir's Seminary Press also began publish Orthodox works in English.

From these three, and other sources, flowed an increasing volume of Orthodox literature in English.

In 1966 I went to England to study theology at the University of Durham as an Anglican. Some of the staff and fellow students at St Chad's College were interested in Orthodoxy to some extent, and in 1968 I went on a two week course on Orthodox theology for non-Orthodox theological students, sponsored by the World Council of Churches. It consisted of a week of lectures at Bossey in Switzerland, and Holy Week and Pascha at St Sergius Institute in Paris.

In July 1968 I returned to South Africa, having passed the Diploma in Theology course at Durham, and spent a term at St Paul's College, Grahamstown, where all the other students were busy preparing for their final exams, while I was free to read whatever I liked, and discovered some Orthodox books in the library, including one by Fr Alexander Schmemann of St Vladimir's in New York, called The World as Sacrament, later published in an expanded versions as For the Life of the World. It impressed me a great deal and seemed to provide the answer to some of the biggest problems I found with Western theology. At that stage I hoped that the Anglican Church would grow closer to Orthodoxy, and when, some years later I found that it wasn't, but was actually moving further away, I became Orthodox. The point of this personal excursus is that my movement to Orthodoxy was shaped mostly by the Paris/New York stream, rather than the California and Oxford streams.

It was when our family became Orthodox in 1987 that we were part of a move to start an Orthodox mission society, the Society of St Nicholas of Japan, that I became aware of Father Seraphim Rose. Among the activities of the Society of St Nicholas, was the selling of Orthodox books, mostly in English. We also appealed for literature to give away free and some people sent us back issues of The Orthodox Word. Some asked for his books, which we ordered. We also had some copies of his biography, Not of this World, one copy of which was damaged, so we could not sell it, and I kept it and read it, and was interested to discover that he was in San Francisco at about the time the Beat Generation authors were active there.

From the biography I gathered that Fr Seraphim Rose was critical of the St Vladimir's school that produced Orthodox literature in English in New York. The criticisms weren't very specific, There were some things that he wrote in his books that I was critical of too -- I'll return to those later. But the main point here is that during the 1960s there was a greatly increased production of Orthodox literature in English from three main sources -- Oxford, England; New York, USA; and California, USA,

It seems that the time was ripe for it.

And the timing seems remarkably exact. Bishop Kallistos Ware and Father Seraphim Rose were contemporaries, born within a month of each other in 1934.

What is more, those who were major influences at the time they were becoming Orthodox, Bishop John of San Francisco and Nicolas Zernov, were also close contemporaries, born within two years of each other. Both were exiles from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and both, in their journeys into exile, arrived in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1921, and studied there between 1921 and 1925. Both were part of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, and so must have known each other during that time.

These three streams of Orthodox literature in English had different emphases, which may have had the effect of appealing to a range of different temperaments. The result was, in most English-speaking countries, an increased interest in Orthodoxy, and a growing use of English in Orthodox services.

The "Oxford stream", if I may call it that, appealed especially to academic and ecumenical circles. Zernov began with ecumenical outreach, forming the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius to make contact with Anglicans.

The St Vladimir's/New York stream was mainly concerned earlier immigrant groups who had come from Orthodox countries in Europe and Asia to the USA before the Bolshevik revolution, which had cut off financial support from Moscow, and so was concerned with becoming an American Orthodox Church. The children and grandchildren of the original immigrants were becoming increasingly English speaking. It was concerned to provide clergy for parishes, and was therefore more focused on parish ministry. It was also to some extent academic and ecumenical.

Father Seraphim Rose, once he had become Orthodox, wanted to be a monk, and, with a friend, started a monastery, and so the vision of Orthodoxy that he promoted was largely monastic.

At the risk of over-simplification, then, one could say that the Oxford stream was academic, the New York stream was parochial, and the California stream monastic.

Father Seraphim Rose, or Eugene Rose, as he then was, had a vision of being a missionary, and, with the blessing of Bishop John of San Francisco, formed a missionary brotherhood of St Herman of Alaska with his friend Gleb Podmoshensky and a couple of others. The first thing they did was to open an Orthodox Bookshop. They were offered space on the cathedral premises, but they preferred to have it on a public street nearby. It became a kind of Orthodox information centre. One family that came to them, the Andersons, had been Roman Catholics, and involved with the Catholic Worker movement of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, and they became Orthodox.

Their next project was to start a magazine, The Orthodox Word, and Bishop John chose the title. The aim was to provide English-speaking people sources of the Orthodox Faith, which they did, mainly from monastic sources, interspersed with notes and other articles they themselves wrote.

After the death of Bishop John they felt the call not merely to read about the monastic life, but to live it, so they bought a piece of lonely isolated land near the small village of Platina in northern California, and moved themselves and their printing press to it. A few years later they were tonsured as monks, and Eugene Rose became Seraphim, and he was later ordained as a priest. Fifteen years after moving to Platina, in 1982, Father Seraphim died. By then thousands of people had been influenced by him, either personally, or through publications of the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood.

After Father Seraphim's death things tended to fall apart, and some of the pieces fell into dubious places. I will not say much about that here, as there is information on it from other sources. The main point here is that Father Seraphim Rose was influential in spreading Orthodoxy among English-speaking people at a time when few of them knew much about it.

Much of the material came from traditional Orthodox sources, and so passed on some important aspects of Orthodox tradition. I have been one of its beneficiaries, and so have several other people I have known.

But there is another side to it as well.

Before he became Orthodox, Eugene Rose came under the influence of several other schools of thought, both religious and secular. Among other things he studied Eastern Religions at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. Among his teachers were Alan Watts, a renegade Anglican priest who had become a Zen Buddhist, and Gi-ming Shien, a teacher of Chinese philosophy. He also became particularly interested in the writings of René Guénon, a French philosopher. As his biographer puts it, "For Eugene, he became... a single vantage point from which he could view the myriad fruits of man's immorial search for meaning." And Father Seraphim later wrote, "Guénon was the chief influence on the formation of my own intelectual outlook."

René Guénon (1886-1951) was a French philosopher who developed an ideology of Traditionalism as an antidote to modernity. He was antimodern, and believed that traditional forms of religion, any religion, were better than non-traditional forms. Eventually be became a Muslim.

Orthodoxy regards Holy Tradition as very important, so when Eugene Rose discovered Orthodox Christianity, it appealed to him because it seemed to be the most traditional form of Christianity. But there is a difference between tradition and Traditionalism.

In the modern age, conservatives tend to value tradition, and seek to balance the notion of progress with the value of what has been inherited from the past. Conservatives like to change things slowly and carefully. But to the right of conservatives are Reactionaries, who want to restore the past, the status quo ante, whether that past was real or imagined. Such people are not merely traditional, they are traditionalist. They value tradition for its own sake, and develop traditionalism into an ideology.

Traditions can be good or bad. The English word "tradition" comes from the Latin traditio, meaning to hand over, to deliver. The New Testament Greek word is paradosis. Whether traditions are good or bad depends on what is handed over, to whom, and why. It is good to hand over, or pass on, the gospel of Christ to those who have not heard it. St Paul urges the Thessalonian Christians to "stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thess 2:15).

But handing over Jesus to be crucified was not a good tradition. A person who hands over their country to an enemy is called a "traitor", which also comes from the Latin traditio. During times of persecution Christians who handed over holy things to the police were called traditores.

So "tradition" is not good per se, it is good when something good is handed over to the right people for a good purpose. For the Orthodox, not all tradition is holy tradition. Some traditions are distinctly unholy.

But for traditionalists tradition is something good in itself, and can easily become an idol, and traditionalism becomes an ideology and a form of idolatry.

Other traditionalist philosophers have followed Guénon. Among them are Julius Evola (1890-1974) of Italy and Alexandr Dugin of Russia.

Evola advocated that "differentiated individuals" following the left-hand path use dark violent sexual powers against the modern world. For Evola, these "virile heroes" are both generous and cruel, possess the ability to rule, and commit "Dionysian" acts that might be seen as conventionally immoral. For Evola, the left-hand path embraces violence as a means of transgression (Wikipedia).

Dugin valued the esoteric forms of religion rather than the exoteric. In his youth be belonged to the Yuzhinsky circle, which was part of the Soviet "occult underground" an esoteric counterculture preoccupied with reading and experimenting with Western esoteric and occult literature in conjunction with Eastern religious texts.

Dugin declared that "Traditionalism is not a history of religions, not a philosophy, not a structural sociological analysis. It is more of an ideology or meta-ideology that is totalitarian to a considerable extent and places rather harsh demands before those who accept and profess it".

Father Seraphim Rose did good work in publishing and distributing the works of Orthodox monastic fathers, but in his own writings we should perhaps be careful to see what sort of spectacles he is looking through. It is better to look at traditionalism through Orthodox spectacles than to look at Orthodoxy through traditionalist spectacles.

Bright Saturday: a chaotic, exhausting, exhiliarating holy day

Yesterday was Bright Saturday, probably better known to Western Christians as Easter Saturday, and it was the day we had arranged to have a farewell service for Fr Athanasius Akunda, who was returning to Kenya after 13 years in South Africa, and a kind of mission rally at the same time, at the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Gerhardsville, west of Pretoria.

We had arranged to take Grace and Hellen Malahlela, from our Mamelodi congregation, out to the monastery on Friday evening, to prepare to feed the masses. We had no idea how many people might be coming, so we estimated about 100, and hoped that if 5000 turned up, we'd be able to feed them. So on Friday afternoon we set out shopping. Five bags of potatoes, 2 boxes of tomatoes, one box of beans, carrots and spinach for Africa, etc etc. How would we get it all in the car?

We looked at gas plates, knowing there was only a small electric stove at the monastery, but in the shop we went to, all the ones displayed were ones that had been returned as defective. We were on our way to another shop when Hellen suggested that they cook it at home, where they had all the equipment and knew what they were doing. We still had no idea of how many pots and pans and serving dishes were at the monastery. So we took Grace and Helen home. They'd had their load shedding in the afternoon, so hoped to be able to cook all night.

At 5:50 am we set off to Mamelodi to fetch them, and there were rows of plastic serving dishes, with rice, potato salad, macaroni and tuna salad, spinach and all other kinds of good things. No meat, because though it was Bright Week, when there was no fasting, it was also a monastery, and monks don't eat meat. There were no monks, but Fr Elias had urged that we respect the nature of the once and future monastery by observing the monastic fast.

Then the chaos began. We were trying to get the church ready for the Divine Liturgy while all the time there were frantic phone calls from people who were coming and had got lost. I had just returned to the vestry from dealing with one of those calls and getting vested when Fr Elias started the Liturgy, and it also became apparent that half the St Nicholas Choir, who were supposed to lead the singing, were lost too. Val had been asked to read the Hours and was about to start when the Liturgy started. So I took off my vestments and went out to join the few who were singing, and trying to negotiate their way to the right places in the service books.

Fr Athanasius, the guest of honour, was also not there. His car had broken down, and he had been up half the night repairing it, and it had broken down again in the morning. He was also binging Deacon Pascal Luse, so in the end the service had about five priests, and no deacons. The bishop phoned to say there was an accident on the road and he was delayed, so start without him. Georgia and Azar Jammine arrived in time for the Epistle, which Azar read, and Georgia was able to lead the singing, which immediately improved.

But the lost were found, and the church was filled, and we made a joyful noise to the Lord. I hope he forgave our imperfections.

Brunch followed. It went quite slowly, in a tent that Fr Elias had hired, and those who had eaten were milling around and thinking of leaving while others were still queuing for food,.We decided to split the speechifying, so Fr Elias spoke first to those who had already eaten, and explained the grand vision for the monastery.

The church where we had had the Divine Liturgy, dedicated to St Demetrius, was just the first of many. It had been built in 2003, and was a kind of parish church, where ordinary people would come. The monastic church would be over the wall to the south, where, for the moment, the donkey Mussolini was making his presence heard by occasional braying. There would be a coenobitic monastery, and a number of small sketes, which could represent different Orthodox traditions -- Russian, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, African etc. Over to the west would be a mission, training and retreat centre. And a women's monastery. And somewhere near that would be a seminary.

His Eminence Archbishop Damaskinos added a few words, saying that he was already familiar with the vision, and that things were moving forward to achieve it.

The thing most urgently needed to fulfil this vision is some actual monks. And a kitchen. Start with a properly-equipped kitchen, to feed the 100 before they grow to 5000.

As Fr Elias began to repeat this inside the tent to the second lot of people who by then had just finished eating, I managed to grab some of the delicious food that Grace and Hellen had been up all night cooking. They had truly worked a miracle.

Father Athanasius then gave his farewell address, which reminded me of St Paul's exhortation to the elders of Ephesus at Miletus (Acts 20:15-38).

I think, like St Paul, that he could fairly say that he had been among us for 13 years, and had held nothing back, declaring to us the whole counsel of God, that he served us in humility of mind and taught everything that was profitable. We hope that a better fate awaits him in Nairobi than that which awaited St Paul in Jerusalem, and that those he teaches at the seminary there, as well as those he taught here in South Africa, will heed the advice that St Paul gave to Timothy: And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also (2 Tim 2:2).

Fr Athanasius characteristically exhorted us to love one another, and be caring Christian communities who would see that no child was left without education, that we should care for one another and so show the love of God.

Father Athanasius was asked to come and help when Archbishop August Thamaga of the African Orthodox Episcopal Church, an uncanonical African independent church, asked to be received into canonical Orthodoxy in the Patriarchate of Alexandria. There were no clergy in the Archdiocese of Johannesburg and Pretoria who could teach them in English, so the then bishop, Metropolitan Seraphim, asked Fr Athanasius, then a deacon, who had just completed his studies at Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA, to come and help. He arrived arrived in May 2002, and was ordained priest a couple of months later.


Fr Athanasius worked first in Soshanguve, where Archbishop Thamaga became first a Reader, and later was ordaned, as Fr Simon Thamaga. Archbishop Seraphim then asked Fr Athanasius to set up a Catechetical School, to train leaders, and two of the students, Simon Shabangu and Deacon Pascal Luse, also attended the farewell service. The Catechetical School closed in 2009, and after that Fr Athanasius was priest in charge of St Nicholas of Japan Church in Brixton, Johannesburg.

South Africa has been in the news laterly in connection with xenophobia, but the turnout at the farewell service shows that a lot of South Africans, from various communities, loved their Kenyan priest, and Deaconb Pascal Luse came as a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo. By no means all South Africans are xenophobic and the majority are kind and welcoming.

On the way home we discovered why so many had got lost. There are road works along the M26 from Laudium to Gerhardsville, and for the first time the new section through Erasmia was open to traffic. After that we went on detours and sections of the old road to the Gerhardsville turn-off, and one landmark was a narrow bridge with a stop sign, which we had crossed in the morning. But by the time we returned in the afternoon the new section of the road had been opened, and the narrow bridge had been closed off, so those who came after us might never have seen it, and we were referring them to a non-existent landmark.

Belarus: Zimbabwe in Europe or socialist paradise?

I've just read two contradictory accounts of Belarus in blogs that I read. I've never been to Belarus, so have no firsthand experience of the place.

Neil Clark: Letter from Minsk: Belarus- a country unspoilt by capitalism:

This is a capital city where the streets are safe and clean, where ordinary people can still afford to buy medicine and basic foodstuffs and where the unemployment rate is less than 1 per cent. It’s the side of Belarus you won’t read much about.

And then there is this:

Clarissa's Blog: American Writers and Actors Helping Belarus:

As if that weren't enough suffering, since 1994 Belarus has been ruled by a fascist dictator Alexander Lukashenko. He has been condemned by the EU for horrible human rights violations on a variety of occasions and has been made notorious by his anti-semitic statements. Lukashenko can afford not to care about that, though, since his regime is supported by Russia. Russia isn't interested in being surrounded by strong nation-states and has been punishing its neighbors for daring to seek independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And then in Russia last year renowned TV anchor Vladimir Pozner declared that that Orthodoxy is a reason for economic failures and the low living standards of Russians. Partiarch Kirill disagrees: Interfax-Religion:

'Today our life is worse not because we are Orthodox, but because we ruined our country and spiritual foundation of our life two times during one century. Protestant countries live better not because they are Protestant, but because these countries have not been at war, they developed their economy staying in rather favorable conditions,' the Patriarch summed up and wished so that God 'gives us reason to save our political, social stability and develop ourselves both spiritually and economically.'

My own observation is that in the early 1990s Russia was overrun by snake oil salesmen from the West, evangelising for the Western religion of the free market system, which had become the established church in the USA and UK under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. A lot of Russians bought this lie, and the new god didn't live up to the claims made for it.

Perhaps Belarus didn't buy into that to quite the same extent. but it also seems to have retained an authoritarian government.

In the 1990s both Russia and South Africa moved away from authoritarian government, and this was accompanied by a huge increase in the crime rate. A Russian geologist living in Johannesburg at the time told me, when I was about to visit Moscow, that the crime was far worse in Moscow than in Johannesburg. But it makes me wonder: is the Mafia the necessary price we have to pay for freedom? In Russia the Mafia operated in the private sector. In Zimbabwe for the last 20 years it has been the government. I can't make up my mind about Belarus.

And whatever the case may be, it seems to be a highly disingenuous effort of misdirection to try to blame it on Orthodoxy.

Happy Spring Day! Happy New Year!

Today, we are told, is officially the start of Spring, and it is also New Year's Day -- welcome to the year 7519 (I think).

Of course to those on the old calendar, the new year won't begin for another 13 days (14 September Gregorian), and for those who paid attention in geography lessons at school spring won't begin until the equinox on 21 September, or thereabouts.

But according to our mulberry trea, it's already been spring for a couple of weeks. It seems to sprout its new leaves on about 19/20 August every year. And that's just about when the jacarandas finish losing their leaves -- they always seem to be the last.

It's been a warm winter. It was cold for a couple of weeks during the world cup, but it's felt like spring for well over a month now.

Twenty-one years ago the Patriarch of Constantinople, Dimitrios, urged Orthodox Christians to make 1 September a day of prayer for God's creation and for the environment. You can read his message here. His successor as Patriarch, Bartholomew, has continued to encourage the practice, and as a result has been named the first among the top 15 "green" religious leaders. The day has since been adopted by other Christian bodies as well, and the first day of spring seems like an appropriate time for it.

Wednesday 1st September 2010

* Tone 5 - Week after PENTECOST 14

CHURCH NEW YEAR - DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

• St Simeon Stylites (the Elder) (459)
• St Martha mother of St Simeon Stylites (the elder) (c 428)
• Martyr Aithalas the Persian (380)
• Holy Forty Women Martyrs and Martyr Ammon the Deacon their teacher, at Heraclea (4th)
• Righteous Joshua the Son of Nun (16th BC)
• St Fiacre, Hermit of Meaux (670)
• St Giles the Greek, Hermit and Abbot (8th)
• St Drithelm of Melrose, Monk (c 700)

Revised Julian (New Style) Calendar

The Pope in Gauteng

Yesterday I had to take my son Simon to work in Johannesburg, and went to St Thomas's Church in Sunninghill where the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa was paying a visit. After a service in the church, the Patriarch had lunch with some of the parishioners.

One of the contrasts between Orthodoxy in America and Orthodoxy in South Africa is that in South Africa there is not the same ecclesiastical apartheid that one finds in America. St Thomas's is largely a Serbian parish. The parishioners are, for the most part, Serbian immigrants and their descendants, and they use the Serbian language in their services. But the Antimension on the Altar is signed by His Beatitude Theodoros, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa. People of all races and ethnic groups are welcome at St Thomas's, and one of the gifts presented to the Pope by Archimandrite Pantelejon was a picture drawn by his 7-year-old niece in Serbia, showing her uncle baptising black children in Johannesburg. Some of those who regularly attend St Thomas's are black South Africans from Klipfontein View, who used to belong to Tembisa, but find it easier to get to St Thomas's.

The picture shows Pope Theodoros II with Archimandrite Pantelejmon, the Rector of St Thomas's Church.



The Archbishop of Johannesburg and Pretoria, Metropolitan Seraphim, says that we should not refer to the "Greek Orthodox Church", but rather "The Orthodox Church of South Africa", or the "African Orthodox Church" because though there are Greek, Russian and Serbian parishes in the archdiocese, which maintain ethnic traditions and have services in those languages, the Orthodox Church is one church. So while the Patriarch visited St Thomas's, he was shown a classroom attached to the church hall, which is a Serbian School, and children are taught the Serbian language and history, and he approved of it. But in spite of the variety of ethnic groups and traditions, we are still one Orthodox Church, under one bishop and one Pope and Patriarch, and nobody asks the question, so common among Americans "What juridiction are you?" In South Africa, thank God, that question is meaningless.

Every year a different bishop from Serbia visits St Thomas's for their patronal feast in October, but the visiting bishops are always given a formal reception by Metropolitan Seraphim at the Metropolis as well, and Metropolitan Seraphim makes a point of atending at least part of the celebrations of the patronal feast (panigyri).

Among the guests at lunch yesterday were Father Daniel, the new priest of the Church of St Sergius of Radonezh in Midrand, and Fr Seraphim (in the world Matthew van Niekerk), the first South African to be tonsured as a monk in South Africa, who is at the moment caring for the Greek parish in Klerksdorp.



Fimi of the Patriarch of Alexandria: Tone 4

His Beatitude Theodoros
Most Divine and Most Holy
Our Father and Shepherd, Pope and Patriarch
Of the Great City of Alexandria
Of Libya, Pentapolis and Ethiopia
Of all the land of Egypt and All Africa
Father of fathers, Shepherd of shepherds
Bishop of bishops, thirteenth in line of the Apostles
And Judge of the Universe, Many Years!

Haiti: earthquakes, democracy and imperialism

The media and the blogosphere have been buzzing with reports of some American politico saying that Haitians deserved to die in an earthquake because there was a rumour that some of their ancestors may possibly have made a pact with the devil. But it seems that the ancestors of the US population are just as open to the accusation.

Morehead's Musings: Interview at Sacred Tribes Journal: Miguel De La Torre on Haiti, It's People and Religion:

We need to be aware that America from very early on never really wanted to see Haiti succeed. When the Haitian slaves overthrew their slave owner masters, this was really the first democracy in the Caribbean that was established. The democracy in the United States was leery of having a Haitian democracy. People like Thomas Jefferson were very concerned that a nation of free black people, run by free black people might be a bad inspiration for his personal black slaves and those in the South. There has always been this desire to make sure the Haitian people did not succeed because if they were to succeed as a country then that would begin to undermine the mythology of white supremacy. This was active in the time of Jefferson, up to the Civil War, and after the Civil War. So there has always been this relationship with Haiti where we did not want to see it be successful.

Interesting stuff there, in John Morehead's blog.

And US and Canadian opposition to Haitian democracy continues into the 21st century. As Fr Michael Graves, an Orthodox missionary in Haiti (since reposed in the Lord), wrote five years ago

Greetings from Haiti, where we experience FIRST-HAND the terrible results of the Feb. 2004 intervention and toppling of the Aristide government. The following is one of the best articles describing our situation. Since the majority of the public media all over this area appears to be controlled by the imperialist powers that be, I am circulating this article which tells the truth about our situation. Please circulate it far-and-wide if you are able.

And please pray for us because we are living under an evil and frightening regime.

God bless,

Father Michael in Haiti

Seven Oaks Magazine August 24, 2004

Blood on the hands: A survey of Canada's role in Haiti

Roger Annis

Five hundred Canadian soldiers are returning from Haiti this month. Together with the armed forces of France and the United States, they took part in the violent overthrow of the elected government of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February/March of this year. Since then, occupying troops have provided backing for rightist gangs who will form the core of the police and government authority the occupying forces are cobbling together to replace the Aristide government.

Troops from the three countries began occupying Haiti on February 29, hours after the United Nations Security Council gave its blessing. Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. forces later that day and flown out of the country. He now lives in asylum.

The capitalist media in Canada presented the coup as a popular uprising against an unpopular regime. Since then, they have kept a discreet censure about conditions in Haiti under imperialist occupation. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton spoke not a word about the ongoing tragedy in Haiti during the federal election campaign in May and June. Trade union leaders have also been silent.

The truth urgently needs to be told about Ottawa's crime against the Haitian people.

A disaster for the Haitian people

Constitutional government in Haiti, won through many years of tenacious struggle, has been overthrown. Killings by rightist gangs were widespread leading up to the coup and they have continued during the occupation regime. Several thousand have died. The rightists target supporters of the Aristide government and anyone striving to improve social conditions in the country. Rightists convicted of crimes and human rights violations during previous regimes have been released from prison and are involved in the killings.

U.S. troops have taken part in the attacks on the Haitian people. An Associated Press reporter witnessed U.S. marines joining police in firing on a demonstration of tens of thousands of Haitians on May 18 in Port au Prince. A dozen people were killed and many more injured. Demonstrators were demanding the return of Aristide on the occasion of a holiday marking Haitian independence.

Following the coup, living conditions in Haiti have gone from bad to worse. Prices for basic foodstuffs have risen sharply, the minimum wage has been cut by the new governing authority, and civic services have declined. Flooding this past May on the east- ern part of the island devastated many villages and killed several thousand. In the countryside, drought conditions are devastating the livelihood of farmers and
threatening the vital food harvest. Precious little international aid is being delivered to meet emergency needs.

In a letter to the Toronto Star on July 30, a reader described her dismay with the head of the Canadian military in Haiti when he described the occupation as a "success." The letter recounted a recent telephone conversation with a Canadian aid worker living in Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti. "Things are so much worse than they were last October, prior to the revolt in February," reported the worker.

"Supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide are still being hunted down by those who support a new regime. Food supplies are low, electricity is only on for one to three hours daily, garbage is piled up along the roads, as there has been no collection for many months now, and people everywhere are sick."

Why imperialism opposed Aristide

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Average annual income is a few hundred dollars. Average life expectancy is 49 years for men and 50 for women. An AIDS epidemic is ravaging the country. Forty-seven percent of the adult population is illiterate and unemployment is 60% to 70%. The country is burdened by a crushing debt to imperialist governments and lending agencies. Gross domestic product in Haiti has declined from US$4 billion in 1999 to $2.9 billion in 2003.

Aristide rose to prominence in the 1980s during the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Duvalier dictatorship in 1990. He was first elected president that year with the overwhelming support of Haiti's working people on a platform of radical social reform. Nine months later he was overthrown by a military coup. He was elected again in May of 2000.

The masses in Haiti had big expectations in the governments headed by Aristide, and despite many disappointments with his performance, they continued to place enormous pressure on his government to stand up to the imperialists and improve their lot. Aristide established diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1996, and he welcomed hundreds of Cuban doctors and health workers to provide health care in remote parts of the country.

The post-2000 government built new schools and refused imperialist demands to privatize state-owned services such as electricity, telephones, and ports.

Aristide angered the French government in April 2003 when he demanded that it pay $21 billion in reparations to Haiti. France, the island's former colonial power, had extorted millions of dol- lars in payments from Haitian governments during the 19th and 20th centuries as punishment for the successful anti-slave revolt that led to Haiti's independence from France in 1804.

Aristide's governments brought few improvements in living conditions for the masses. It implemented measures demanded by the imperialists, including lowering of tariffs that protected local food production, emptying of the national treasury in order to pay off international lending institutions, and privatizing some state-owned industries.

Nevertheless, the imperialist powers feared a revival of the mass movement that had toppled the Duvalier dictatorship, and they were not confident that Aristide would keep the island safe for continued exploitation.

Canadian imperialists in Haiti

The imperialist intervention in Haiti was a joint venture with rightist forces that launched an armed rebellion in early February. The rightists were armed and financed by wealthy Haitians and their backers in the U.S., France, Canada, and neighbouring Dominican Republic. They were few in number and weak in the capital city Port au Prince. But pro-government defense forces were poorly organized and armed, and were politically disoriented by the record of the Aristide government in bowing to imperialist dictates.

In January 2003, Canada's foreign affairs department was one of the sponsors of an international conference in Ottawa that discussed and laid plans for the overthrow of Aristide's government. Thirteen months later, according to a report on the French-language television news network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the elite service of the Canadian armed forces was among the imperialist troops that helped capture and secure the airport in Port au Prince in the early hours of February 29.

On July 6, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced that Canada would send 100 RCMP to replace the returning soldiers. Police and soldiers from the U.S., France, Chile, Brazil, and other countries will remain in Haiti, under UN Security Council approval. A press release from the Canadian government described the role of the occupation as being a form of assistance to "the transitional Haitian government in establishing a secure and stable environment, restoring law and order, and reforming the Haitian National Police."

Canada's troops provide security for the post-coup regime, and the killings continue. One of the tasks the occupation forces have set for themselves is to disarm the civilian population.

The Canadian government has convinced many at home and abroad that it is a friend of peace and democracy and that its armed forces abroad are "peacekeepers." This is a lie. Indignation against the crimes of Washington in Iraq and elsewhere will ring hollow if not accompanied by equal indignation at Ottawa's participation in the pillage and oppression of the semi-colonial world.

Those concerned with human rights, poverty and the oppression of the Third World peoples have a responsibility to speak out about the situation in Haiti. We should demand of the Canadian government that it withdraw police and military forces from that country and halt any form of assistance to the post-coup authority. Working-class and progressive organizations in Canada need to support the people of Haiti in opposing the coup-imposed regime and fighting for the return of the democratically elected government.

Roger Annis is an editor of www.SocialistVoice.com , where this article
originally appeared.

I am not sure that Fr Michael would have sympathised with all the "Marxist perspectives" in Socialist Voice. What is clear is that from his perspective, inside Haiti at the time of the 2004 coup, is that that article was telling the truth about what was happening in Haiti.

As the Kingston Trio sang 50 years ago:

They're rioting in Africa
There's strikes in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man.

For more background information see In Case You Missed It: A Pact With Which Devil?

Turkey seeks return of Santa Claus' bones

"Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all an opportunity to reflect on what we most deeply and sincerely believe in. I refer, of course, to money."

So said the satirical song-writer Tom Lehrer, as a preface to his Christmas carol on how the feast is commonly celebrated nowadays. But I don't think even Tom Lehrer could have imagined just how far the money-grubbing greed exhibited in the commercialisation of Christmas could go. I think this one takes the cake (hat-tip to Ad Orientem: Turkey hints at calling for repatriation of the relics of St. Nicholas). You can't satirise and take the mickey by exaggeration any more, because no sooner do you do so than someone comes along whose behaviour in real life goes beyond the most exaggerated caricature you can think of.

BBC News - Turkey seeks return of Santa Claus' bones:

A Turkish archaeologist has called on his government to demand that Italy return the bones of St Nicholas to their original resting place.

The 3rd Century saint - on whom Santa Claus was modelled - was buried in the modern-day town of Demre in Turkey.

But in the Middle Ages his bones were taken by Italian sailors and re-interred in the port of Bari.

The Turkish government said it was considering making a request to Rome for the return of the saint's remains.

While Christmas is by and large not celebrated in Muslim Turkey, the Christmas figure of Santa Claus certainly is, in the Mediterranean town of his birth...

Even without the bones, the town of Demre has not been shy about cashing in on its most famous native son - today visitors to the Byzantine church there are greeted by a large, plastic Santa statue, complete with beard and red snow-suit.

It appears, however, that the church in question is in ruins, and its congregation long dispersed (hat-tip to RORATE CAELI).

France24 - Turkey wants the remains of old St Nick:

'These bones should be exposed here and not in a town of pirates' in Bari, said Culture Minister Ertugrul Gunay, quoted in the newspaper Milliyet.

'If we build a museum in this town (Demre), naturally the first thing we will ask for are the remains of Father Christmas'.

The minister gave no schedule for the museum construction, which would exhibit relics of ancient civilisations, but said that after a study by experts, Turkey would request that Italy return the remains of Saint Nicholas.

Someone should point out to the Minister that if the bones are returned, they should not be in a museum, but in a church where they can be venerated by the faithful. The Turkish government might not like that, howeever, because it would mean that the church should be rebuilt and a Christian community allowed to live and worship there. The bishop should not return unless his flock is also allowed to return. If it is not, it is cynical money-grubbing at its very worst, and an insult to Christians far worse than any Danish cartoons could have offered to Mohammed (pbuh) or any Swiss ban on the building of minarets.

So if the Turkish Minister of Culture doesn't want to look like a cynical and greedy money-grubber, interested in nothing but tourist Euros, let him forget about his idea of a museum. Let him rather rebuild the church, and allow its congregation to worship there, so that they can welcome their bishop back home.

On making poverty history

Tales of the desert fathers, as told by ORTHODIXIE ... Southern, Orthodox, Convert, Etc.:

A very rich man who lived in Alexandria prayed to God every day that the lives of the indigent be made easier. On hearing about this, Abba Makarios sent him a message: 'I would like to own all your estate.'

The man was puzzled, and sent one of his servants to ask what [Abba Makarios] would do with all that wealth.

Abba Makarios said: 'Tell your master that I would immediately answer his prayer.'

Communication without community

In a recent post Bishop Alan’s Blog: Why ordination? Why today? Bishop Alan quotes an author, Eugene H. Peterson as saying:

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shop-keepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shop-keepers’ concerns — how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shop-keeping; religious shop-keeping, to be sure, but shop-keeping all the same... “A walloping great congregation is fine, and fun,” says Martin Thornton, “but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre.”

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them.

And one of Bishop Alan's blogging friends, Simple Massing Priest, responded to this thus:

I've said before that statistics only tell you what they tell you and that's all they tell you. Thus statistics about average Sunday attendance or giving by members do tell you something about the vitality of a congregation. But what they're telling isn't always clear. And even when it's clear, it may not be important.

If only we could find some discrete statistical way to quantify the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a community and in the lives of individuals.

He goes on, however, in another post Simple Massing Priest: The Great Heresy(ies) to say:

Historically, Catholic Christianity has always seen the collective expression of the Body of Christ - that is to say the Church - as important. While never denying the importance of individual faith, individual devotion and individual piety, a Christian is properly a Christian because they are part of Christ's Body, the Church. To treat Christian faith as being an entirely individual undertaking - as seems altogether too common in some circles - is manifestly heretical. The Ethiopian eunuch came to believe as an individual, but it was baptism by Philip which grafted him into the Church. The lot fell on Matthias as an individual, but his Apostolic authority came from being 'added to the eleven Apostles.'

Now, I agree that there is, as always, a polar opposite heresy - the heresy that would emphasize the collective to the exclusion, diminution and discarding of the individual. That heresy might take many forms, but it would certainly be a heresy.

Individualism and collectivism are both Western heresies, or perhaps I should say heresies of Western modernity. And they are both related to (and are perhaps the root of) the obsession with counting, and the idea that if things are not numerically quantifiable, they aren't worth bothering with. Things must be "measurable", and this is often used as a kind of label of approval. "Measurable" is an epithet tagged on to things to make us think that they must be good.

The Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras has a different take on it

In everyday speech we tend to distort the meaning of the word 'person'. What we call 'person' or 'personal' designates rather more the individual. We have grown accustomed to regarding the terms 'person' and 'individual' as virtually synonymous, and we use the two indifferently to express the same thing. From one point of view, however, 'person' and 'individual' are opposite in meaning. The individual is the
denial or neglect of the distinctiveness of the person, the attempt to define human existence using the objective properties of man's common nature, and quantitative
comparisons and analogies. Chiefly in the field of sociology and politics the human being is frequently identified with the idea of numerical individuality. Sometimes this rationalistic process of leveling out is considered progress, since it helps
to make the organization of society more efficient.

One manifestation of this, especially in America, is the failure to understand objections to attempts to expunge the inclusive use of the word "man" from our vocabulary. Some people insist that "man" must refer exclusively to males, and ought not, indeed cannot, include females.

They would demand that the word "man" be removed from a phrase like "reconciliation between God and man, and man and man" and replaced with some impersonal abstract collective term like "humanity", and fail to see that this changes the meaning, and the reason they fail to see this is because they cannot see the distinction between individuals and persons.

In part this is because a a deficiency in the English language. Other languages have different terms for a person of either sex and a male person. Greek has anthropos and aner, Latin has homo and vir, Zulu has umuntu and indoda, but English has to make do with "man" and "man". Zulu even has a saying umuntu ungumuntu ngabantu -- "a person is a person because of people". But because Western modernity prefers to see things that are quantifiable and countable, the idea that persons need communities in order to be persons at all seems quite alien. The Orthodox anthropology that Yannaras describes is communitarian rather than aligned with Western individualism or collectivism -- and I've discussed the economic ramifications of that in another post.

However, another blogging friend, Dion's random ramblings, writes about using social media:

Build a wide range of relationships. This is where twitter and facebook come in. The intention of these relationships is the create opportunities to interact around common interests and concerns, and particularly to drive traffic to my content! I cannot emphasize this last point strongly enough!

As should be apparent from my previous post, I have grave reservations about simply "driving traffic" without being concerned with the quality of the traffic. For example, on Blog Catalog I have 8 friends. They are people I have interacted with, either face-to-face or online. There are many more who have said that they want to be my "friend", but they haven't bothered to read any of my blogs. What kind of idea of friendship is this?

As one writer put it, we live in an age of communication without community. People say that they want to be our "friends", but they don't want to talk to us, or exchange ideas. A person is a person because of people, but in individual is an individual in isolation from other people. Occasionally feral children have been found, children that were lost and brought up by animals, and they find it very difficult to interact with other people. They may be individuals, but they find it very difficult to become persons till they have faces, and some people don't seem to want to have faces. Faces have been replaced by "avatars" and "personas".

Glocal Christianity: Rapture Ready? Questioning the Celestial Panic Room

Glocal Christianity: Rapture Ready? Questioning the Celestial Panic Room:

For those of you not familiar with the jargon the rapture is not the same as the second coming of Jesus which we all look forward to. Instead the rapture is said to be a precursor to it sort of a factional coming between the first and second coming of Jesus from what I can gather which I suppose makes it the one and a halfth coming . It is said that to protect his people during the last days Jesus will come and snatch them away to keep them safe before he returns. It is a prominant feature of the premillenial dispensationalism to be found in books like Tim LaHay's 'Left Behind'.

Thanks to Matt Stone for posting that, and with it a warning -- this post is an exercise in theological archaeology, so anyone who finds that sort of stuff boring should skip to the next one.

Also a disclaimer: the Orthodox Church regards chiliasm as a heresy. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church defines chiliasm thus:

CHILIASM (Gk. chilii 'a thousand'). Another name for Millenarianism, the theory that Christ will return to earth and reign here for a thousand years before the final consummation of all things. The belief is based on an interpretation of Rev 20:1-5.

And under the entry for Millenarianism in the same source we learn that

...its advocates fall into two groups, pre- and post-millenialists. The former maintain that the Millennium will forllow the Second Coming of Christ, but are divided as to whether it will be spent by the saints in heaven or upon earth: the latter believe that it precedes the Advent and, indeed, prepares the way for it by the spread of righteousness over the earth, a view which, in its modern form, owes owes much to Daniel Whitby (1638-1726).

In the early Church, Millennarianism was found among the Gnostics and Montanists, but was also accepted by more orthodox writers such as St Justin Martyr, St Irenaeus, and St Hippolytus of Rome, all of whom were pre-millennialists. Millennarianism came, however, increasingly to stress the carnal plasures to be enjoyed during the thousand years of the saints' earthly reign and eventually a revulsion against the whole concept set in, initiated by Origen and completed by St Augustine. For the next thousand years millenarian expectations were rarely met with, except among the Joachimates and other sectarians of the 13th cent.

The article goes on to describe how the doctrine was revived by the Anabaptists and Pietists in Germany, and in the English-speaking world by the Irvingites, Plymouth Brethren and the Adventists.

It was the Plymouth Brethren who added to it the refinement of Dispensationalism -- the belief that history was divided into periods called "dispensations", and that the Bible can similarly be divided into sections that are only relevant to certain of these periods. Dispensationalism was propagated by the Scofield Reference Bible, through which it spread far beyond the Plymouth Brethren to other branches of Protestantism, especially in the English-speaking world.

The terminology of dispensationalism may be familiar to those whose theology has been shaped by the Scofield Reference Bible, but is quite likely to be puzzling to anyone else, and this includes the term "rapture" itself.

I first heard of "rapture" in the dispensationalists' sense of the word on a radio programme called "The world tomorrow" by Herbert W. Armstrong. A friend of mine insisted that I listen to the programme, and Herbert W. Armstrong went on and on about "rapture", but did not say what he meant by it. I gathered that he was against it, and took it to mean that he thought that Christians ought to be miserable, and should exclude all joy from their lives.

My understanding of "rapture" was shaped by English poets who associated it with birdsong:

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture (Browning)

or Shelley's Ode to a skylark

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

I'd read the Bible a couple of times, but had never encountered the term "rapture" in the sense used by Herbert W. Armstrong.

My ignorance persisted for several years, until I picked up a pamphlet attacking dispensationalism, when some of the terminology became clear.

"Rapture", it appeared, was based on an an interpretation of Matthew 24:40-41, and to the dispensationalists it meant being literally carried away bodily, and not being metaphorically carried away by joy.

That discovery led me to ponder something else. At my Methodist school we had sung a hymn, which I quite liked, one verse of which was:

Great things he hath taught us, great things he hath done
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son
But purer and higher and greater will be
Our wonder, our rapture, when Jesus we see.

I had always understood that as a similar kind of rapture to that attributed by the poets to the thrush and the skylark.

But having discovered what dispensationalism was I began to have second thoughts, and this is where we get into theological archaeology, deconstruction and textual criticism.

In the Methodist Hymnbook that hymn (No 313) was listed as written by W.H. Doane and Frances Jane van Alstyne. But there were other hymn collections where it was shown as written by Fanny J. Crosby. Well, that could be explained by one being her married name and the other being her maiden name, and nowadays Google makes it easy to check on such things.

But there were other differences too. In some of the Fanny J. Crosby versions the last line was changed to

Our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.

So which was the original, and who changed it, and why?

Could it have been changed by someone who objected to dispensationalism, or by someone who favoured dispensationalism? Now that I knew about dispensationalism, the word became loaded with ideological implications. I still favoured the poets' ornithological sense, but what if it meant something else?

"Transport of delight" is a metaphor that means exactly the same as "rapture" in the poetical sense, and is also used as a pun on the literal meaning of "transport" (see here, for example), though speakers of American English might know that better as transportation. For speakers of other than American English, however, "transportation" is anything but delightful, being associated with penal servitude.

But without "of delight" transport suggests the literal meaning even more strongly.

So that little question of the substitution of a word bothers me. Can anyone tell me the answer?

I don't suppose it bothers dispensationalists though (unless it was a dispensationalist who made the change in the wording of the hymn). Dispensationalists are far more worried about being rapture ready, but that doesn't bother me at all.

For Orthodox Christians there is a somewhat different concern, which we focus on at the beginning of Holy Week. Here's the Troparion for Bridegroom Matins:

Behold the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed be the servant whom He shall find watching: and again, unworthy is the servant whom he shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy art Thou, O our God. Through the blessed Theotokos, have mercy on us.

You don't have to be a dispensationalist or any other kind of chiliast for that.

And for those who are worried about not being able to find "troparion" in the Bible, you won't find "rapture" in the Bible either, just like Herbert W. Armstrong said. But here's a hint.

Gossiping the gospel, AIC mission to the West, Baptists in boots

Notes from a Common-place Book: On Pork-pie Hats, Nigerian Evangelists and Baptists in Boots - an interesting post on a variety of topics. A chance encounter while buying Sunday newspapers after church leads to "gossiping the gospel":

As I walked out, only one of the young people was still hanging about, a man/boy wearing a yellow pork-pie hat. We spoke in passing, the typical “how’s it going,” and I walked on towards my truck. He called out to me as I passed, saying “so you didn’t go to church today, either?” I stopped and turned around, because I understood what he meant, and took it as a high compliment. I was in faded jeans, although my shirt was tucked-in, which is not always the case. I gather that he assumed that I had not done the “Easter-thing” because I was not suited-up.

And on reading the papers he finds a couple of articles on what missiologists are pleased to call "contextualisation" -- an African independent church evangelising the West, and cowboy churches in Texas. The last reminds me of a song sung many years ago by Liberace, the King of Kitsch, about a Rhinestone cowboy.

I found it well worth a read, so go over to Notes from a Common-place Book: On Pork-pie Hats, Nigerian Evangelists and Baptists in Boots and read the full story.

See also Neopentecostalism in Africa, and abroad: Khanya for more on the African independent churches aspect of it.

Antioch Abouna: Oh to Work for the Inland Revenue / IRS!

Oh, how tempted I am to nick this for my sermon today!

Antioch Abouna: Oh to Work for the Inland Revenue / IRS!:

Christianity is not for 'good' people. Good people crucified Jesus. Good people defend God's honour by force. Good people kill the souls others with their oppressive religious duties and expectations. Good people fast twice a week and give tithes of all that they possess …. and then look down on those who don't.

Read the whole thing -- it's better than most sermons you will hear.

St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality at The Land of Unlikeness

St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality at The Land of Unlikeness:

St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662 A.D.) understands the cosmos through a theological ontology of Love. All creatures in creation are unified through participation in the ecstatic Love that is the life of the Trinity. Participation in this Love unifies the difference of creatures into a harmony. As such this love is the “reason” or “logos” of creatures. With the fall of humanity this love is disrupted cosmically. The fall of humanity is key in this “cosmic tragedy” for humanity is the microcosm (micros-kosmos or “little cosmos”), which participates in the sensuous creaturely dimension of being and the rational-spiritual dimension of the hierarchy of being. Humanity, the microcosm, is the center or crux of the hierarchy of being as it co-inheres in the second person of the Trinity, the Logos. It is the crossing of the divine and the sensuous dimensions of the hierarchy of being. Consequently, when humanity falls the harmony of creation is disrupted.

This interesting article not only illuminates the practice of Christian hospitality, but also the Orthodox understanding of original sin, and how it differs from that of the West.

New Testament Reading Plan

Father Gregory has posted an interesting New Testament reading plan. Unlike most such plans it doesn't begin on a fixed date, but can be started any time.

Koinonia: Eastern Orthodox New Testament Reading Plan:

This plan was prepared by Esteban V�zquez and is based on the rule for reading the New Testament in the kellia at the Optina Monastery, which prescribed a chapter of the Holy Gospel (89 in all) and two from the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation for every day, with only one chapter from Revelation on the last seven days in order to make up 89 readings.

Christ and culture

A very interesting post by Fr Gregory Jensen Koinonia: Orthodox Christian Faith in the Public Square:

Having spent more than a little time with the recent sociological studies that examine the attitudes of Orthodox Christians, I can confirm that for a significant percentage—and in some cases, a majority—of Orthodox Christians draw their understanding of morality not from Holy Tradition but popular American culture.

As with our brothers and sisters in western Christian traditions, many, even most, Orthodox Christians too 'have uncritically accepted the dichotomy between public and private, between fact and value, between knowledge and meaning.' For all that we might imagine that we are preserving Hellenism or the 'other worldliness' of monastic life, we live lives structured on the same 'dichotomies [that] are deeply entrenched in American religion and culture and are closely associated with what is often described, and frequently decried, as American individualism.'

More on child witches in Africa

The UK Channel 4 programme on child "witches" in Africa broadcast last week has reignited debate on the topic. I keep a database of African independent churches and church leaders, to try to build up a coherent picture of African Christianity, but the media reports on this phenomenon, which has been reported mainly from Nigeria, the DRC and Angola, usually raise more questions than they answer.

According to Tracy McVeigh of "The Guardian" (9-Dec-2007) "it is American and Scottish Pentecostal and evangelical missionaries of the past 50 years who have shaped these fanatical beliefs".

What I would like to know is which American and Scottish missionaries these were. What are their names, their background? Who sent them to Nigeria, and when? Which denominaations and mission agencies sponsored them? What was the source of their teaching, and how did they influence those who are propagating these beliefs in Nigeria today?

These seem to me to be very important questions for missiologists and church historians to be asking. We have international academic discussion forums for researchers on African Independent Churches and New Religious Movements, but if anyone is doing research into those topics they aren't saying. Possibly some sociologists have been doing research into it, but if they have, I haven't heard of it. An interdisciplinary study would be useful.

In the absence of such studies, all one can do is try to read between the lines of the newspaper reports and try to guess what is going on.

According to some reports this phenomenon -- accusing children of being witches -- did not exist in Congo (DRC) in 1994, but it was common in 1999.

One of the denominations reported to be most active in witch hunting is the Liberty Gospel Church, founded in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria in 1992 by Helen Ukpabio, a former nurse.

She has apparently said that if children cry a lot and are fretful it is a sign that they are witches. Now I'm not a fundi on Nigerian witchcraft beliefs, but I do know that in most parts of Africa if a child is ill and feverish and cries a lot people may suspect that the child has been bewitched. Witchcraft has often been seen as a cause of illness. But it seems that Ukpabio has reversed this, and instead of seeing these as symptoms that a child is a victim, she teaches that it a sign that the child is a perpetator of witchcraft.

Maybe there is some precedent for this kind of thing in Nigerian culture -- if there is, I hope someone will enlighten me. But it seems to me like a new twist on the "blame the victim" game.

And if Helen Ukpabio and others like her really got their theology from American and Scottish pentecostal and evangelical missionaries, it might be quite important to know which ones. I think it may, however, be a bit more complex than this.

In Central and West Africa there seems to be a growing interest in exorcism; though such beliefs may have been around for a long time they seem to be growing stronger. Many clergy seem to have specialised in it. I met a student at the Orthodox seminary in Nairobi who had been a Roman Catholic and gathered a congregation of about 500 people in Douala, Cameroun, who had mainly been attracted by his ministry of exorcism. He became Orthodox when the Roman Catholic bishop sought to inhibit his ministry of exorcism, which he continued with the blessing of the local Orthodox bishop.

Another student at the seminary, who was from the English-speaking northern part of Cameroun, had become a Rosicrucian at the age of 16, and had tried an amazing number of religions, including Wicca and Ekankar, before settling on Hinduism, which he studied for some time under a guru in India. On returning to Cameroun he was told by his spirit guides to worship the Triune God, and walked into town and the first Christian Church he came across was the Orthodox Cathedral, so he decided to join the Orthodox Church. But at the seminary he believed that the teaching staff were withholding important information from the students, such as which variety of incense was best for driving out which kinds of demons.

But there is also the possibility that the excesses of people like Helen Ukpabio could actually kill off African witchcraft beliefs altogether.

Something similar happened in the great European witch craze in the 16th and 17th centuries. In early modern Europe there was, in some places, a great increase in witchhunting and witchcraft accusations. As time passed, however, the accusations and the beliefs about witchcraft became more and more bizarre and over-the-top, until people could simply no longer believe them, and eventually the entire belief system crumbled under its own weight. Perhaps Ukpabio's teachings are a sign that this is beginning to happen in Africa.

Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria on ecumenism

There's an interesting and wide-ranging interview of the Orthodox Bishop of Vienna and Austria by Peter Bouteneff. I think that the whole interview is worth reading, but what the bishop said about ecumenism certainly rang bells for me.

Dr. Peter C. Bouteneff -- An Interview with His Grace, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria:

After more than thirteen years of intensive ecumenical involvement I can declare my profound disappointment with the existing forms of “official” ecumenism as represented by the World Council of Churches, the Conference of European Churches and other similar organizations. My impression is that they have exhausted their initial potential. Theologically they lead us nowhere. They produce texts that, for the most part, are pale and uninspiring. The reason for this is that these organizations include representatives of a wide variety of churches, from the most “conservative” to the most “liberal.” And the diversity of views is so great that they cannot say much in common except for a polite and politically correct talk about “common call to unity,” “mutual commitment” and “shared responsibility.”

I see that there is now a deep-seated discrepancy between those churches which strive to preserve the Holy Tradition and those that constantly revise it to fit modern standards. This divergence is as evident at the level of religious teaching, including doctrine and ecclesiology, as it is at the level of church practice, such as worship and morality.

Hat-tip to Ad Orientem: Bp. Hilarion (Alfeeyev) Speaks

I have plenty of pale and uninspiring texts mouldering in files and on shelves, produced by ecumenical gatherings, and the only thing that stops me throwing them out is the thought that I might need to quote something from one the following day. And I've been to plenty of ecumenical gatherings where talk is cheap and action non-existent. A few have been worth attending, not for what they achieved, but for the insight they gave into the reasons for non-achievement.

One of the latter class was a meeting of the South African Council of Churches a few years ago on Zimbabwe, where members of the South African observer team of the Zimbabwean elections confessed that they had been persuaded to sign a statement declaring the elections free and fair when it was pretty evident that they were not, and at the meeting they spoke of their remorse at having thereby exacerbated the problems in that unhappy country instead of helping to solve them.