Some unusual insight from Huff Post on Jesus & the Gospel of John

I'm usually not a big fan of the theological articles that appear in the Huffington Post, but I'll make an exception for this fine article from Robert J Morgan...

Recently The Huffington Post and other publications have explored two new books relating to the person of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of John. Both books dismiss the possibility that the Apostle John actually wrote the Fourth Gospel or that Jesus of Nazareth is accurately portrayed in its contents. These are not innovative assertions. Both new books follow old lines of scholarship and skepticism that reject the divine claims of Christ, the historicity of his miracles, and the active theism that permeates the New Testament record. But many others scholars -- the ones less often interviewed in the media -- hold a valid countering view: Both internally and externally there is strong evidence the Apostle John was behind the writing of the Fourth Gospel and that he composed his account with the accuracy of an eyewitness and the pen of a brilliant thinker.

Read the rest here.

Trinity Seminary to Partner with the North American Lutheran Church

The North American Lutheran Church (NALC) has chosen to partner with Trinity School for Ministry to create a “Seminary Center” for the training of future NALC pastors. In a nearly unanimous vote on August 8, 2013, the Convocation of the NALC took action to establish a new North American Lutheran Seminary (NALS). This seminary will not be a degree granting institution, rather, it will partner with existing accredited seminaries to provide sound theological education for NALC students. Trinity will soon welcome a new NALS Seminary Director to its Ambridge, PA campus to oversee the formation of NALC students, whether at Trinity or at one of the Houses of Study that will be developed throughout North America.

Lutheran students will earn a degree from Trinity School for Ministry, taking the core courses required in the Master of Divinity (MDiv) curriculum. For some courses they will take Lutheran alternatives taught by NALC professors to ensure a solid foundation in confessional Lutheranism.

“We're very excited about this new partnership as the Seminary Center for the NALC” remarked the Very Rev. Dr. Justyn Terry, Dean/President of Trinity School for Ministry. “One of the great excitements about Trinity is that we believe we are forming Christian leaders for mission. Wherever they are, they will be on the mission of God. The way in which we have been able to come together [with the NALC] around the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a great encouragement to me. It does seem that once again in this new reformation era that we are being called together to contend for the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the faith once delivered to the Church.”

Read it all here.

From PEARUSA... new liturgical music from Drew Collins

Songs for the Liturgy by Drew Collins

7/24/13BY LWATTS

I discovered Anglicanism four years ago. Having led worship since high school, I found myself leading for the first time at Wellspring Church in Englewood, CO, on a Sunday in October 2009. The next morning my wife Sarah jokingly said, “We went to bed last night as regular Christians and woke up this morning as Anglicans!”

As long as I’ve led worship I’ve been interested in learning about my vocational roots. The Anglican tradition offers such a beautiful opportunity to explore worship because of the rhythms of the church year, the richness of the liturgical texts, and the connectedness to the historic Church. While we’ve come to love the tradition, our feeling at home in Anglicanism is largely due to the local community that we’re part of at Wellspring. We deeply appreciate being part of a church family that cares about the neighborhood, that gives sacrificially, and that loves one another so well. In the midst of this body I have found the inspiration to write and arrange songs for the Church.  Read it all here.

Vanderbilt’s Right to Despise Christianity

by Michael Stokes Paulsen

March 14, 2012

Vanderbilt University has decided that campus student religious groups may not require that their leaders accept the core beliefs of the religious group they would lead. Ironically, Vanderbilt’s right to do so rests on the same freedom it denies to these groups—a group’s freedom to define what it stands for and the views it expresses.

Vanderbilt University has decided that Christian student groups that hold traditional Christian religious views are not welcome on campus. They will no longer be recognized as valid student organizations. Vanderbilt’s reason is that such groups require that their leaders be Christian—that is, that their leaders embrace certain core principles of Christianity and try to live according to these principles. In Vanderbilt’s view, religious beliefs and standards “discriminate” against those students who do not subscribe to them. Therefore, student religious groups with religious beliefs and standards are banned.

The situation would be unbelievable—were it not true. The issue came to a head this year when a student group at Vanderbilt Law School, the Christian Legal Society, submitted its “constitution” to the university. The constitution provided that the group’s leaders should believe in the Bible and in Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior; that they should be willing to lead members in worship, prayer, and Bible study; and that they should “strive to exemplify Christ-like qualities.” Vanderbilt’s Director of Religious Life, Reverend Gretchen Person, replied that such views were forbidden. Vanderbilt’s policies “do not allow” religious groups to have such an “expectation/qualification of officers,” she wrote. Last week, the administration officially declared the policy that Vanderbilt will exclude student religious groups that “impose faith-based or belief-based requirements for membership or leadership.”

As weird as it may sound—and as ridiculous as Vanderbilt’s actions may be—this is entirely within Vanderbilt’s constitutional rights: Vanderbilt has the right to be as hostile to orthodox Christianity and to suppress its faithful exercise on its campus as it wishes. Vanderbilt’s status as a private university gives it the First Amendment right to take whatever position it wants on the exercise of religion within its university community. Vanderbilt University has the right to despise Christianity (and other faiths, too) if it so chooses.

Of course, having a right to do something does not make it the right thing to do. And Vanderbilt’s policy is, undeniably, an embarrassing example of political correctness run horribly amok, of intellectually incompetent administrators, and of institutional hypocrisy. But in Vanderbilt’s bad example lies a parable rich in irony about constitutional freedom under the First Amendment.
Start with first principles. Groups, as well as individuals, possess the “freedom of speech.” Just as individuals get to control the content of their own expression, groups of individuals, joining their voices together in some common association, have the right to control their collective message.

Thus, a vital principle of the First Amendment as it applies to private groups, associations, and institutions—including private universities—is that such groups have nearly absolute freedom to create and maintain their own distinctive group expressive identities: to decide what they stand for and what views they will express.

Read it all here...

Archbishop Duncan's Ash Wednesday Message

So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled with God. [I Cor.5:20]

22nd February, A.D.2012
Ash Wednesday

Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. [Joel 2:13]
So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled with God. [I Cor.5:20]
TO ALL WHO SHARE IN THE LIFE OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA:
Beloved in the Lord,
We have come again to the awesome season of Lent. The name of the season comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning spring. Our English word lengthen comes from the same root, for this is the season when days lengthen in the Northern Hemisphere. This is the season when we, too, are lengthened or stretched because we are invited to get our relationship with our God and our relationships with each other restored and renewed. Getting things right is hard work, often painful work, but from the effort comes the immense fruitfulness of an Easter and Pentecost – a summertime, if you will – of our souls. Lent is when I must prune my roses – and when I need to allow my Lord to prune me – so that a riot of color and beauty and fragrance can occur in a couple months’ time.

Read the entire message here

Ordinal Approved for Use by the College of Bishops

Text Describes the Form and Manner of Ordaining Bishops, Priests and DeaconsThe Anglican Church in North America is pleased to announce the Ordinal has been approved for use by the College of Bishops. The Ordinal text was approved on June 24, 2011. To view the PDF document, please click here.

“One of the major things that we sought to do was to craft an Ordinal that was written in contemporary English, but also was clearly in the Prayer Book tradition. Of particular focus was the strengthening of the vows that those who are ordained ascribe to,” said Bishop Bill Thompson, Chair of Prayer Book and Common Liturgy task force.

“We were very deliberate about the tone and content of the Ordinal and the fact that it is clearly connected to our Anglican roots. Our intention is for the other liturgies that we put forth to have that same quality,” Bishop Thompson said.

The language and doctrine of the new Ordinal is descended from the historic Anglican Ordinals of 1549, 1662, and the American 1928 and Canadian 1962. The primary source was the American book of 1928 because it has removed references to the English Monarch and Government, which makes more sense in our North American context. The other editions are used in places where there has been a variance between the various editions.

The structure of this edition, however, does look to ecumenical and more recent Anglican Ordinals, especially the American BCP of 1979, the Church of England “Common Worship: Ordination Services,” Study Edition of 2007, and the Province of Southern Africa “An Anglican Prayer Book” of 1989. Where appropriate, this edition seeks to reconcile the text of the Ordinal with the English Standard Version of the Bible.

As we celebrate the work the Lord is doing in our body through His faithful servants, please join us in saying the Veni, Creator Spiritus as a prayer for the renewal of the Church.

Veni, Creator Spiritus

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire.
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
Who dost Thy sevenfold gifts impart.

Thy blessed unction from above,
Is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Enable with perpetual light
The dullness of our blinded sight.

Anoint and cheer our soiled face
With the abundance of Thy grace.
Keep far our foes, give peace at home;
Where Thou art guide, no ill can come.

Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And Thee, of both, to be but One;
That, through the ages all along,
This may be our endless song:

Praise to Thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Photo captions: Website homepage - Archbishop Robert Duncan lays hands on The Rev. Mike McGhee during an ordination service on June 13, 2009. Story photo - Archbishop Robert Duncan presided at the consecration of The Rt. Rev. Bill Ilgenfritz to the office of bishop on August 22, 2009. Photo credit: Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh

God's English

The Making & Endurance of the King James Bible, 1611–2011

by Barton Swaim   (Touchstone Magazine)

The King James Version of the Bible (KJV) is fast becoming one of the great unread books of Western civilization—remembered and admired but not used. True, there is still a small band of believers in the fundamentalist tradition whose loyalty to the KJV remains uncompromised. But the vast majority of Christians in the English-speaking world think of the King James Bible as a hindrance rather than a help: an interesting document but, in the twenty-first century, pointlessly difficult to understand; an artifact prized by one’s grandparents because it reminded them of another time.
It’s the sad but inevitable end to the greatest of all biblical translations—sad because the translators’ goal was to make the Scriptures more, not less, accessible: a goal they achieved on a worldwide scale. Miles Smith’s preface to the first edition explains that goal beautifully.

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most Holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered. Indeed without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deep) without a bucket or something to draw with; or as that person mentioned by Isaiah, to whom when a sealed book was delivered, with this motion, Read this, I pray thee, he was fain to make this answer, I cannot, for it is sealed.

For well over three centuries in Britain and North America, the King James Bible was the Bible. Its language permeates our literature. In twenty-first-century Britain, where biblical illiteracy is almost total, phrases from the King James Bible still echo across the cultural landscape—a fact attributable to the nation’s Christian past, but also to the biblical translation that defined that past.


Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=24-03-023-f#ixzz1Ruw9ADL1