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All Along the Watchtower

~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

All Along the Watchtower

Tag Archives: Old Testament

Four Years, with Love

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Neo in Blogging, Faith, St. Isaac

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Anglicanism, Bible, Christ, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament

Desert_Monast-SM-682400381Three years ago, today, Jessica said this.

Across this year my life has changed beyond all recognition, but what has remained constant and grown are the good things, and the bad ones have been burned away, not without some pain, but decisively. Amongst the good things is this place and your companionship. So thank you, all of you.

But since then we’ve found she was just getting warmed up. Across that time she has had a number of jobs, a divorce, an engagement, a serious illness and has moved to Scotland – oh, and kept writing here when she could. Jess and I continue dearest friends, but some days, I wake up wondering what she got up to while I slept. But through all that she remains the same fine, helpful, Christian girl, who mostly desires to be useful, that I met almost 4 years ago, and fell in love with on the road to Walsingham. And Walsingham has continued to provide breakpoints in our friendship, and indeed on Jess’ journey.

When Jess came down with that cancer I mentioned above, it fell on Chalcedon to take over this blog, which he did in an exemplary manner, not only providing continuity of operation, in a very difficult time (on several fronts) but maintaining Jessica’s mission, as well. A very good man, who has worked supremely well for us, and the blog, and his faith. I outlined the history last year, no need to repeat, it is here. I quoted post No. 2 last year to illustrate it.

Polemicists will be polemicists, but the enquirer should not log off the Internet, which has a wealth of resources of interest to those whose minds are open. Like many in the CofE my own catechesis did not exist. I never got round to an Alpha course, and sermons apart, my religious education took place via books and the Web. Sites such as those of Tom Wright, BJ Stockman and Fr. Hunwicke and Fr. Longenecker have been invaluable- and you can always avoid the com-boxes.

There’s an Anglican irenic quality there – an Anglican bishop, an Evangelical Protestant, a high Church (now convert) Anglican and a Catholic convert from Anglicanism. My debt is repaid in part by trying to take an attitude free from confessional bias in what I write. That brings some scorn (rightly from their point of view) from those in all denominations who insist dogma and doctrine matter; I don’t disagree entirely, and I understand where they are coming from. Doctrine and dogma-free Christianity is no Christianity at all. But the Church Fathers hammered all this out a long time ago, and perhaps we’d be wise to settle, as they did, on the Nicene Creed as our benchmark for orthodox belief?

Our Lord Jesus Christ (OLJC) told the Apostles that men would know His followers by their love for each other, and He counselled them to be united; knowing us as He does, He can’t have been all that surprised that we’ve fallen away from those ideals. Perhaps if we were better at them there would be less for the polemicists to reproach us with? Great crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity, that is true, as it is of any great cause entrusted to fallen mankind. It is in our fallen nature to pervert whatever good things we have from God. In our folly we use the consequences of our own sinful state to reject the opportunity to reach out for God’s love; and in our pride erect a superstructure of Pharisaism on OLJC’s words, before proceeding to live in it rather than the love of Christ.

It is foolish to think we can prove or disprove the existence of God. If He exists He is Infinite, we are not; He is the Creator, we the created; if we think we have grasped the fullness of the Infinite then, by that mark, we have not grasped God. OLJC reveals what we need to know, and unless we read the Old Testament through the lessons of the New, we shall go astray. God is love. He came to redeem the world not in the expected form of a Messiah who would bring fire and sword to the heathen, but in the form of a slave, a suffering servant. OLJC redeems us through love and through suffering, not through smiting His enemies. A thought to bear in mind when blogging on religion.

The mission undertaken then, it the one pursued to this day. AATW has become a reasonably large and influential blog (although many are bigger) but on that day, she could have had no idea of what the future would hold. She was willing to share her vision with us. Blogs come and blogs go and sometimes return, but few manage to make it to four years.

And now we’ve made it to that anniversary, with the same mission, and with Jessica herself back in fine voice and full of fire. What the future will bring, we can’t know, but I think, she has rejuvenated the mission that she set for us all.

Perhaps Geoffrey said it best for us all, here.

Here, thanks to you all, I have found a home where I can have my own views challenged, my own knowledge increased, and where there is much food for spiritual nourishment. For all that, I am grateful. I have also found, as I always will, those who want to argue for the sectarian narrowness with which II was brought up, and, rescued from it myself by the Grace of God, I shall ever take my sword and strike it down; a combative Yorkshireman I was born, and I daresay I shall go to meet my Maker as one. I am glad He is all-knowing, because to know all is to understand all. At that last I can only hope that He won’t be altogether displeased with what I’ve done with the talents he gave me.

I also note that today is Pentecost, which is consonant with the mission of this blog. In the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel for today is Acts 2:1-21, and seems appropriate to our mission today

But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words:

15 For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.

16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;

17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:

18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:

19 And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke:

20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come:

21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Last year, I ended with a quote from St. Isaac the Syrian, that Jess used on day one. I still think it summarizes the Chatelaine, and the mission of All along the Watchtower better than anything else I could say.

In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

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“Go ye!” – Patriarchs and Pioneers: Part 3

19 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Neo in Bible, Faith, Politics

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Joseph, Kenneth L. Hanson, Old Testament, Patriarchs, Pioneer

This is the third and final part of a series here on the biblical origins of the American character. it definitely builds on the parts preceding it, so if you haven’t read part one, do so, here, and part 2 here. Today we pick up where we left off, with the patriarchs portrayed as the American archetypes.

We all know, or should, that the early settlers, especially the ones we call the Pilgrims,  felt a close affinity with the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. But why? I’ve always felt it was a disenchantment with the King of England, not least because of their sympathy for Oliver Cromwell. Turns out that I was fairly close to right. Kenneth Hanson has studied in far greater depth than I have ever seen, this paper was published in the New English Review. It’s a fascinating story as well, which sheds light not only on American History but on early Jewish history.

Here you will find the biblical basis of what we as Americans hold sacred.

English: Joseph made ruler in Egypt

English: Joseph made ruler in Egypt (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Go ye!” – Patriarchs and Pioneers

by Kenneth Hanson (July 2012)

“Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime… In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.” – Lord Acton[1]
Joseph the Bureaucrat

Jacob, who is now officially “Israel,” has twelve sons, who become the progenitors of twelve tribes. The trouble starts, however, when one of sons, a precocious and ingenuous lad named Yosef (whom westerners call Joseph), has some dreams, depicting him as the greatest of the bunch, and his brothers as subservient. This, understandably, doesn’t strike his eleven siblings well, and they plot to be rid of Joseph and his arrogance. They seize him, through him into a pit, grab his cloak (an exquisite garment bestowed on him by Jacob, who favored him over the others) smear it with goat’s blood, and subsequently return it to his grief-stricken father, explaining that Joseph was killed by a wild animal.

Continue reading →

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Three Years of “Blogging on Religion”

15 Friday May 2015

Posted by Neo in Blogging, Faith, St. Isaac

≈ 35 Comments

Tags

Christianity, God, Jesus, New Testament, Nicene Creed, Old Testament

Three years ago today, posts numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 were made by Jessica on All along the Watchtower.

In the second of those posts, titled Blogging on Religion, Jessica said this:

Polemicists will be polemicists, but the enquirer should not log off the Internet, which has a wealth of resources of interest to those whose minds are open. Like many in the CofE my own catechesis did not exist. I never got round to an Alpha course, and sermons apart, my religious education took place via books and the Web. Sites such as those of Tom Wright, BJ Stockman and Fr. Hunwicke and Fr. Longenecker have been invaluable- and you can always avoid the com-boxes.

There’s an Anglican irenic quality there – an Anglican bishop, an Evangelical Protestant, a high Church (now convert) Anglican and a Catholic convert from Anglicanism. My debt is repaid in part by trying to take an attitude free from confessional bias in what I write. That brings some scorn (rightly from their point of view) from those in all denominations who insist dogma and doctrine matter; I don’t disagree entirely, and I understand where they are coming from. Doctrine and dogma-free Christianity is no Christianity at all. But the Church Fathers hammered all this out a long time ago, and perhaps we’d be wise to settle, as they did, on the Nicene Creed as our benchmark for orthodox belief?

Our Lord Jesus Christ (OLJC) told the Apostles that men would know His followers by their love for each other, and He counselled them to be united; knowing us as He does, He can’t have been all that surprised that we’ve fallen away from those ideals. Perhaps if we were better at them there would be less for the polemicists to reproach us with? Great crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity, that is true, as it is of any great cause entrusted to fallen mankind. It is in our fallen nature to pervert whatever good things we have from God. In our folly we use the consequences of our own sinful state to reject the opportunity to reach out for God’s love; and in our pride erect a superstructure of Pharisaism on OLJC’s words, before proceeding to live in it rather than the love of Christ.

It is foolish to think we can prove or disprove the existence of God. If He exists He is Infinite, we are not; He is the Creator, we the created; if we think we have grasped the fullness of the Infinite then, by that mark, we have not grasped God. OLJC reveals what we need to know, and unless we read the Old Testament through the lessons of the New, we shall go astray. God is love. He came to redeem the world not in the expected form of a Messiah who would bring fire and sword to the heathen, but in the form of a slave, a suffering servant. OLJC redeems us through love and through suffering, not through smiting His enemies. A thought to bear in mind when blogging on religion.

That was the mission she embraced then, and it is the mission we embrace today. AATW has become a reasonably large and influential blog (although many are bigger) but on that day, she could have had no idea of what the future would hold. She was willing to share her vision with us. Blogs come and blogs go, and sometimes return, but few manage to make it to three years

Last summer on NEO’s third anniversary one of my commenters said this:

They say it takes a year or two to get traction in the blogging business and 90% won’t last that long. I have seen some popular ones come and go when the blogger begins to realize just what a commitment it is to keep one going. Three years puts you among the veterans. Keep up the good work.

And, for the most part, I think that is so, and most of us have changed direction several times in that time period. But not here, Jess set the standard on the very first day, and we are still trying to live up to it.

But Jess’ job began taking more of her time and energy, and her marriage was killed by her ex-husband’s betrayal and she began to flag a bit. But even as she was a refugee from the Telegraph blog, in one of its more stupid moves it banned most of its religious commenters, and suddenly we turned into a group blog with most of the contributors in the sidebar, including the indefatigable Geoffrey Sales, and they breathed new life into the blog. And so it went.

Then last summer in a horrendous one-two punch one of our contributors had his career threatened because of his contributions here, which caused Jess to take the blog private, where we were till the end of last year.

And then in what was a body blow to many of us Jess herself was diagnosed with what appeared to be terminal cancer. And so it would have been, save for the intervention of God Himself. And now she is recovering slowly but surely, at the convent in Walsingham, which has become very special to so many of us through her devotion to Our Lady.

That of course, left Chalcedon with grave responsibilities, both as the point of contact for Jessica’s doctors, and family and friends, but also for the blog, which has always been important to Jess but also to him and to many of the rest of us. He discharged all those duties admirably (as he still does) even though right in the middle of the crisis, he also had to deal with the start of a new term at work. A veritable iron man, and a worthy partner for Jessica.

And so this post marks the beginning of the fourth year of All along the Watchtower, and our mission remains unchanged. Also known from day one is Jess’ love for St Isaac the Syrian and on that first day she gave us a quote from him as well:

In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.

But my dearest friend would also want us to remember the good times and all the fun we’ve had, so let’s do that in comments, after we raise a glass to the woman who made it all possible, after all, as she is wont to say, “It’s five o’clock somewhere!”

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God is Reason: Part Three

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by Neo in Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

Age of Enlightenment, Behavior, Bible, Old Testament, Western world

confessio-augustana-webOur last post, here, brought us up through the Reformation and the Enlightenment to roughly the beginning of the twentieth century, and this is where the damage has started to really show. Although as our own Chalcedon has noted in his post Post Christian, it was visible much earlier to those with eyes to see.

Many years ago, C.S. Lewis commented that the great change in the modern world was the shift from a culture where belief was intelligible, to one where it was not. The process of the Christianisation of Europe (and thus the Americas) has turned out to be reversible. The ideas about man’s nature and his destiny (I use the word in the traditional, ungendered sense) which have formed so great a part of our history are now all but unintelligible to many of our fellow citizens. Without them, the reductionist assaults from economics (which sees man’s destiny in utilitarian terms as producer and consumer), psychology (which sees man as the sum of his neuroses) and science (which sees man purely in terms of his existence in this one realm) are hard to resist. Everything is material and everything is now, so, coming as we do from nowhere, for nothing, we go on to nothing, and so we must eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Indeed, even the injunction to be kind to each other is tempered, for if we can gain more for ourselves by being unkind, why not?

Within this society, the Church is even more of an oddity than it was in the one where it originally grew. The Romans and the Greeks had, after all, many gods, they acknowledged another realm, they saw the need to self-restraint, they saw the fragility of life in this world because they measured it against a world elsewhere: holiness, sacrifice and atonement were not concepts unknown to the pagan world: they are not ones to which our world is attuned.

That is indeed the world we live in, and why we must try to remember that while we are in the world, we are not the world, and we haven’t been for a very long time now.

Returning to Benedict

Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was an initial inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not simply false, but it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvellous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is – as you yourself mentioned, Magnificent Rector – the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which belongs to the essential decisions of the Christian spirit. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology. Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought – to philosophy and theology. For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: “It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss”. The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. “Not to act reasonably, not to act with logos, is contrary to the nature of God”, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

I strongly urge you to red and ponder the entire address: Faith, Reason and the University Memories and Reflections. It is a rare opportunity to see one of the best minds of our times in action.

Here, I simply quote the remainder of his address because I can’t see  anyway to excerpt it without destroying its logic.

I think we see here the outcome of present trends, and why it so important to our faith and the world it (and we) have built to remove this false dichotomy from our thinking and our faith. And as the illustration accompanying this article indicates; this not a problem for only the Roman Catholic Church. It is a major problem for us all.

And thanks for your patience, this subject grew which grew far beyond what I though would be one post. 🙂

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Lectionaries and Catechesis

20 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by Neo in Anglicanism, Bible, Faith, Homilies, Lutheranism

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Book of Common Prayer, Luther, Lutheran, Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Lutheranism, Martin Luther, Old Testament, Tridentine Mass, Valparaiso University

The Chancel of the Valparaiso University Chapel, including the Christus Rex

The Chancel of the Valparaiso University Chapel, including the Christus Rex

Doesn’t seem like a natural pairing does it? But maybe it is. Let’s look around a bit.

One of the things that came out of Vatican II was the vernacular Mass (personally, I think that was overdue but, don’t shoot me yet). Part of that was that the Lectionary was revised after something like a thousand years. The reading from the Old Testament came in after being gone for a very long time. In addition, a three year system was adopted to let each Gospel be taught, St. John being used during Eastertide, and for some fill-in during St. Mark’s year, his Gospel is somewhat shorter, of course.

Why am I, a Lutheran writing about this? There are a couple of reasons, the first is that this echoed around our liturgical churches (we have always paid much attention to what our Catholic brothers and sisters do!) and this was adopted in the Lutheran, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches, and probably others as well. That is why so often, if more than one of us write on the lesson of the day, it is usually the same lesson.

The other reason is that I am basing this off a paper written and delivered as a workshop at the Liturgical Institute, at Valpo this spring. If you don’t happen to know, Valpo is short for Valparaiso University which is affiliated with the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Parenthetically, both of my sisters were Valpo Alumni, and one of them worked for many years in Church Relations at Valpo.

Many years ago, I read somewhere about how a preacher set up his sermons, in my recollection it was a pre-civil war American preacher, although that is unimportant. His design was a five point plan:

  1. Tell ’em what the subject is
  2. Tell ’em what you’re going to tell them
  3. Tell ’em.
  4. Tell ’em what you told them
  5. Tell ’em again what you told them.

That tracks pretty well for me in learning from a lecture. I need repetition in comprehending the spoken word, visual aids do help. But I, like many in my generation, do my best comprehension in reading, and that is still true for me. I doubt I’m the only one.

What does that have to do with the Lectionary? This, the old Catholic form, still used with the Tridentine Mass, now often called an Extraordinary Rite, was based on a one year cycle. (so were the historic Lutheran ones). So instead of hearing the same thing every year, now we get it every four years. One of the problems we all have is that basic Bible literacy is down, in all our churches. How’s that work?

Maybe this: Non multa sed multum. Not many, but much

Funny though, just when we thought it was dead and buried, the old lectionary makes something of a comeback, although many thought it far from perfect. It had deficiencies, of course.

Luther himself once complained that the epistles seemed to have been selected by a lover of works, and that all the good gospel sections in Paul’s writings had been given short shrift. It’s been famously noted that in the old series we never ever heard John 3:16, nor the account of the Prodigal Son.

There are voices, as we here all know that the Tridentine should be the standard again, and there are also those that want to go back to the experiments in the 50s on the Tridentine in the vernacular language.

The Anglicans have a continuing movement to return to earlier versions of The Book of Common Prayer. That version is very nearly a twin of the old Lutheran one.

The Orthodox have a Western Rite that is Liturgy of St. Gregory following the Tridentine mass with Orthodox adaptations, and using the one year lectionary.

And in the Lutheran church, especially the Missouri Synod, we are seeing a small movement to gently revise the one year  Lectionary, which the lectionary committee has made fully equal to the three year.

Early in the process the Lectionary Committee said

[…] the decision was made to recover and retain the “historic” lectionary, as used by Luther and subsequent generations of Lutherans and as included in The Lutheran Hymnal.

For these, and perhaps other reasons

  • We are an historic Church and acknowledge the value of what has been handed down to us.
  • It is important to recognize the value of repetition. Given the increasing lack of biblical literacy within our society and even within the Church, there may be a need in the future for a one-year lectionary, with its annual repetition of key biblical texts.
  • The one-year lectionary is unique in that there are a number of older resources that support it, including hymnody, sermons by Luther and others, etc.

The other thing that strikes me, is especially for Lutherans and Anglicans, it ties us back to our historic resources, both spoken, such as Luther’s sermons, but also musical, such as the Bach cantatas, and our great hymns which were written to fit that lectionary. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have this back on the First Sunday of Advent, where it belongs

But I think the greatest part would be if our congregations Biblical literacy could be improved.

 

More at Weedons Blog: Diachronic vs. Synchronic Unity and Lectionary.

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The Bell Society

Justice for Bishop George Bell of Chichester - Seeking Truth, Unity and Peace

ViaMedia.News

Rediscovering the Middle Ground

Sundry Times Too

a scrap book of words and pictures

grahart

reflections, links and stories.

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reflecting my eclectic (and sometimes erratic) life

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His Light Material

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A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you ... John 13:34

Classically Christian

ancient, medieval, byzantine, anglican

Norfolk Tales, Myths & More!

Stories From Norfolk and Beyond - Be They Past, Present, Fact, Fiction, Mythological, Legend or Folklore.

On The Ruin Of Britain

Miscellanies on Religion and Public life

The Beeton Ideal

Gender, Family and Religious History in the Modern Era

KungFuPreacherMan

Faith, life and kick-ass moves

Revd Alice Watson

More beautiful than the honey locust tree are the words of the Lord - Mary Oliver

All Things Lawful And Honest

A blog pertaining to the future of the Church

The Tory Socialist

Blue Labour meets Disraelite Tory meets High Church Socialist

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Poems from life and the church year

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Contmplations for beginners

Gavin Ashenden

Ahavaha

On This Rock Apologetics

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sheisredeemedblog

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Quodcumque - Serious Christianity

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Nick Cohen: Writing from London

Journalism from London.

Ratiocinativa

Mining the collective unconscious

Grace sent Justice bound

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou

Eccles is saved

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you ... John 13:34

Elizaphanian

“I come not from Heaven, but from Essex.”

News for Catholics

Annie

Blessed be God forever.

Dominus Mihi Adjutor

A Monk on the Mission

christeeleisonblog.wordpress.com/

“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few" Luke 10:2

Malcolm Guite

Blog for poet and singer-songwriter Malcolm Guite

Bishop's Encyclopedia of Religion, Society and Philosophy

The Site of James Bishop (CBC, TESOL, Psych., BTh, Hon., MA., PhD candidate)

LIVING GOD

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tiberjudy

Happy. Southern. Catholic.

maggi dawn

thoughtfullydetached

A Tribe Called Anglican

"...a fellowship, within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church..."

Living Eucharist

A daily blog to deepen our participation in Mass

The Liturgical Theologian

legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi

Tales from the Valley

"Not all those who wander are lost"- J.R.R. Tolkien

iconismus

Pictures by Catherine Young

Men Are Like Wine

Acts of the Apostasy

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