At Last, the Mystery of “A City Set Upon a Hill Cannot Be Hid” is Revealed

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Back in 2011 I posted (or more accurately reposted) the unique “Jesus Music” album A City Set Upon a Hill Cannot Be Hid.  At the time I characterised it as “the mystery album of 1970′s Christian music”.

That mystery is now at an end, thanks to Paul Griffo, who was a member of the group.  He has given a detailed history of the album and the people who were involved in its making, and I urge you to read his extensive comments on the subject.

Those comments lead me to a few of my own:

  1. Although both Paul Griffo and I agree that the concept of “the music came directly from God” is a stretch, it comes closer to making that claim than a good deal of Christian music that came out at the time, and certainly most of what has come out since.
  2. Even though the composition and performance was very much a composite business, the basic unity of the album is amazing.  Even more amazing, especially in view of the current concept of everything being done by a “specialist”, is that the composition and performance of the album was largely done by people who were not professional musicians and did not pursue a career/ministry in same.  For someone like myself who has laboured to promote and guide lay ministries for most of his ministry career, this is extremely gratifying.
  3. It’s interesting to muse what would have become of the album’s later reputation if Maranatha had released it.  Maranatha certainly could have used a work like this; even with strong groups like Parable and Daniel Amos, the label struggled to keep up with the rapidly expanding and changing field of contemporary Christian music, which is one reason it went to praise and worship music before the end of the 1970′s.
  4. I still think this deserves a revival as a church production.  I’ve needled my church people along these lines for a long time; perhaps these revelations will be the first step towards making that possible.

In any case it is a magnificent album, and I am grateful to Paul Griffo for his help in telling its back story.

Note on the Filioque Clause: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Procession of the Holy Spirit From the Son

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Since the ACNA is dickering with the Creed re the “filioque” clause, it’s informative to look at Thomas Aquinas’ analysis of the problem.  I reproduce same below, but the upshot of his argument is that, if the Holy Spirit does not proceed through the Son from the Father, it would be impossible to differentiate the Son and the Spirit.  He also has his own view of the origin of the denial of filioque and its conciliar history as well.

My guess is that ACNA is looking towards unity with the Orthodox, but as long as WO is out there this isn’t going to do it.

From Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars, q. 36 Art. 2:

Article 2. Whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son?

Objection 1. It would seem that the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son. For as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. i): “We must not dare to say anything concerning the substantial Divinity except what has been divinely expressed to us by the sacred oracles.” But in the Sacred Scripture we are not told that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son; but only that He proceeds from the Father, as appears from John 15:26: “The Spirit of truth, Who proceeds from the Father.” Therefore the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son.

Objection 2. Further, In the creed of the council of Constantinople (Can. vii) we read: “We believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds from the Father; with the Father and the Son to be adored and glorified.” Therefore it should not be added in our Creed that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son; and those who added such a thing appear to be worthy of anathema.

Objection 3. Further, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i): “We say that the Holy Ghost is from the Father, and we name Him the spirit of the Father; but we do not say that the Holy Ghost is from the Son, yet we name Him the Spirit of the Son.” Therefore the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son.

Objection 4. Further, Nothing proceeds from that wherein it rests. But the Holy Ghost rests in the Son; for it is said in the legend of St. Andrew: “Peace be to you and to all who believe in the one God the Father, and in His only Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the one Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father, and abiding in the Son.” Therefore the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son.

Objection 5. Further, the Son proceeds as the Word. But our breath [spiritus] does not seem to proceed in ourselves from our word. Therefore the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son.

Objection 6. Further, the Holy Ghost proceeds perfectly from the Father. Therefore it is superfluous to say that He proceeds from the Son.

Objection 7. Further “the actual and the possible do not differ in things perpetual” (Phys. iii, text 32), and much less so in God. But it is possible for the Holy Ghost to be distinguished from the Son, even if He did not proceed from Him. For Anselm says (De Process. Spir. Sancti, ii): “The Son and the Holy Ghost have their Being from the Father; but each in a different way; one by Birth, the other by Procession, so that they are thus distinct from one another.” And further on he says: “For even if for no other reason were the Son and the Holy Ghost distinct, this alone would suffice.” Therefore the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Son, without proceeding from Him.

On the contrary, Athanasius says: “The Holy Ghost is from the Father and the Son; not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.”

I answer that, It must be said that the Holy Ghost is from the Son. For if He were not from Him, He could in no wise be personally distinguished from Him; as appears from what has been said above (28, 3; 30, 2). For it cannot be said that the divine Persons are distinguished from each other in any absolute sense; for it would follow that there would not be one essence of the three persons: since everything that is spoken of God in an absolute sense, belongs to the unity of essence. Therefore it must be said that the divine persons are distinguished from each other only by the relations. Now the relations cannot distinguish the persons except forasmuch as they are opposite relations; which appears from the fact that the Father has two relations, by one of which He is related to the Son, and by the other to the Holy Ghost; but these are not opposite relations, and therefore they do not make two persons, but belong only to the one person of the Father. If therefore in the Son and the Holy Ghost there were two relations only, whereby each of them were related to the Father, these relations would not be opposite to each other, as neither would be the two relations whereby the Father is related to them. Hence, as the person of the Father is one, it would follow that the person of the Son and of the Holy Ghost would be one, having two relations opposed to the two relations of the Father. But this is heretical since it destroys the Faith in the Trinity. Therefore the Son and the Holy Ghost must be related to each other by opposite relations. Now there cannot be in God any relations opposed to each other, except relations of origin, as proved above (Question 28, Article 44). And opposite relations of origin are to be understood as of a “principle,” and of what is “from the principle.” Therefore we must conclude that it is necessary to say that either the Son is from the Holy Ghost; which no one says; or that the Holy Ghost is from the Son, as we confess.

Furthermore, the order of the procession of each one agrees with this conclusion. For it was said above (27, 2,4; 28, 4), that the Son proceeds by the way of the intellect as Word, and the Holy Ghost by way of the will as Love. Now love must proceed from a word. For we do not love anything unless we apprehend it by a mental conception. Hence also in this way it is manifest that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son.

We derive a knowledge of the same truth from the very order of nature itself. For we nowhere find that several things proceed from one without order except in those which differ only by their matter; as for instance one smith produces many knives distinct from each other materially, with no order to each other; whereas in things in which there is not only a material distinction we always find that some order exists in the multitude produced. Hence also in the order of creatures produced, the beauty of the divine wisdom is displayed. So if from the one Person of the Father, two persons proceed, the Son and the Holy Ghost, there must be some order between them. Nor can any other be assigned except the order of their nature, whereby one is from the other. Therefore it cannot be said that the Son and the Holy Ghost proceed from the Father in such a way as that neither of them proceeds from the other, unless we admit in them a material distinction; which is impossible.

Hence also the Greeks themselves recognize that the procession of the Holy Ghost has some order to the Son. For they grant that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit “of the Son”; and that He is from the Father “through the Son.” Some of them are said also to concede that “He is from the Son”; or that “He flows from the Son,” but not that He proceeds; which seems to come from ignorance or obstinacy. For a just consideration of the truth will convince anyone that the word procession is the one most commonly applied to all that denotes origin of any kind. For we use the term to describe any kind of origin; as when we say that a line proceeds from a point, a ray from the sun, a stream from a source, and likewise in everything else. Hence, granted that the Holy Ghost originates in any way from the Son, we can conclude that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son.

Reply to Objection 1. We ought not to say about God anything which is not found in Holy Scripture either explicitly or implicitly. But although we do not find it verbally expressed in Holy Scripture that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son, still we do find it in the sense of Scripture, especially where the Son says, speaking of the Holy Ghost, “He will glorify Me, because He shall receive of Mine” (John 16:14). It is also a rule of Holy Scripture that whatever is said of the Father, applies to the Son, although there be added an exclusive term; except only as regards what belongs to the opposite relations, whereby the Father and the Son are distinguished from each other. For when the Lord says, “No one knoweth the Son, but the Father,” the idea of the Son knowing Himself is not excluded. So therefore when we say that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, even though it be added that He proceeds from the Father alone, the Son would not thereby be at all excluded; because as regards being the principle of the Holy Ghost, the Father and the Son are not opposed to each other, but only as regards the fact that one is the Father, and the other is the Son.

Reply to Objection 2. In every council of the Church a symbol of faith has been drawn up to meet some prevalent error condemned in the council at that time. Hence subsequent councils are not to be described as making a new symbol of faith; but what was implicitly contained in the first symbol was explained by some addition directed against rising heresies. Hence in the decision of the council of Chalcedon it is declared that those who were congregated together in the council of Constantinople, handed down the doctrine about the Holy Ghost, not implying that there was anything wanting in the doctrine of their predecessors who had gathered together at Nicaea, but explaining what those fathers had understood of the matter. Therefore, because at the time of the ancient councils the error of those who said that the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son had not arisen, it was not necessary to make any explicit declaration on that point; whereas, later on, when certain errors rose up, another council [Council of Rome, under Pope Damasus] assembled in the west, the matter was explicitly defined by the authority of the Roman Pontiff, by whose authority also the ancient councils were summoned and confirmed. Nevertheless the truth was contained implicitly in the belief that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father.

Reply to Objection 3. The Nestorians were the first to introduce the error that the Holy Ghost did not proceed from the Son, as appears in a Nestorian creed condemned in the council of Ephesus. This error was embraced by Theodoric the Nestorian, and several others after him, among whom was also Damascene. Hence, in that point his opinion is not to be held. Although, too, it has been asserted by some that while Damascene did not confess that the Holy Ghost was from the Son, neither do those words of his express a denial thereof.

Reply to Objection 4. When the Holy Ghost is said to rest or abide in the Son, it does not mean that He does not proceed from Him; for the Son also is said to abide in the Father, although He proceeds from the Father. Also the Holy Ghost is said to rest in the Son as the love of the lover abides in the beloved; or in reference to the human nature of Christ, by reason of what is written: “On whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, He it is who baptizes” (John 1:33).

Reply to Objection 5. The Word in God is not taken after the similitude of the vocal word, whence the breath [spiritus] does not proceed; for it would then be only metaphorical; but after the similitude of the mental word, whence proceeds love.

Reply to Objection 6. For the reason that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father perfectly, not only is it not superfluous to say He proceeds from the Son, but rather it is absolutely necessary. Forasmuch as one power belongs to the Father and the Son; and because whatever is from the Father, must be from the Son unless it be opposed to the property of filiation; for the Son is not from Himself, although He is from the Father.

Reply to Objection 7. The Holy Ghost is distinguished from the Son, inasmuch as the origin of one is distinguished from the origin of the other; but the difference itself of origin comes from the fact that the Son is only from the Father, whereas the Holy Ghost is from the Father and the Son; for otherwise the processions would not be distinguished from each other, as explained above, and in 27.

The New Daniel Ellsberg Will Have It Much Rougher Than The Old One

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Now that we know that Edward Snowden has blown the NSA’s cover on its secret operations, the thoughts of some of us turn back to the days of Daniel Ellsberg, the victim of some of Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks after he outed the Pentagon Papers over the Vietnam War.

Like our current security apparatus isn’t the current Occupant’s creation, the Vietnam War wasn’t of Nixon’s making, but he was determined to keep the government’s secrets secret.  On this site is the part of the Watergate hearings (forty years ago this summer) where John Erlichmann attempted to fend off accusations (and perjured himself in the process) that he attempted to throw Ellsberg’s trial by offering Judge Byrne the FBI directorship.

Snowden is aware that Barack Obama and his minions are rougher players than Nixon:

“All my options are bad,” he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.

“Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets,” he said.

And don’t forget that the current Occupant has the habit of picking off American citizens with drone strikes…getting whisked away by the Chinese might be his most life-extending option.

Response to Tom Engelhardt and the Class of ’66: Just Retire, Please

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Tom Engelhardt has obviously been reading this blog, as he too is composing graduation speeches he won’t deliver in person.  In his case, it isn’t just popularity lack: he addressed his own Class of 1966:

The answer, class of 1966, is: just begin. Just believe that for every measure, there is still a potential countermeasure. That you matter. That we matter. That we’re not too old. That it’s not too late. That it truly isn’t right, even now, to leave all this to our children. That the future by definition isn’t and can never be known, which means it’s no more Rex Tillerson’s than it’s ours.

So, class of 1966, potential graduates of life-thus-far, prepare yourselves. You may not move as fast as you once did, but that’s okay. When you’re ready, just head for the entrances, not the exits. It’s time to begin.

I think the rest of us have had enough.

Engelhardt, the slightly pre-Boomer (technically the first Boomer college class was ’67) is calling his classmates, brain cells reduced in number by recreational drugs, to “arms” once again to make the world a better place.  He’d like to think that they can solve the problems in the world; what he doesn’t realise is that they’ve largely created them.

Let me make one clarification: when I speak of the Class of ’66 and those immediately following, in many ways I’m speaking of two classes.  I tend to lump Boomers into one group, and in some ways that’s justified, but in others it isn’t.  This generation is bifurcated in many ways; one went the William Ayers route, and the other went towards a more conventional, traditionally American way of life.  That bifurcation has defined just about everything this past half century; our politics, our culture, you name it.

Engelhardt’s place in this fork in the road is obvious when he spent his last night before graduation (he’s an Ivy Leaguer, what else?) with his girlfriend and stuck his parents with the bill.  He tries to deflect the natural reaction by explaining that “Despite what you’ve heard about the 1960s, this wasn’t acceptable behavior.”  Acceptable to whom?  One of the things the 1960′s is “about” is that some behaviour that was not acceptable became such and vice versa, especially when you could stick someone else with the tab.  Without meaning to, his blasé act of pleasure is emblematic of what his generation really wanted to do with themselves and everyone else.

Engelhardt’s prose is strange; he informs us that, unlike today’s planet with global warming and what not “we had one lucky thing going for us which you, the class of 2013, don’t and won’t have going for you: the illusion that we couldn’t and wouldn’t destroy our own planet.”  But then he reminds us that destruction of our own planet hung over us like the Sword of Damocles via the nuclear arms race and (I should add) the budding environmental movement.  So which is it?  In any case such an environment was the fuel for the apocalyptic thinking that dominates our national discourse to this day, and this in a country whose elites love to parade how “rational” they are.

It didn’t take long for his class to start leading everyone else astray and ultimately making their life miserable, as I document in The Geniuses Commit Suicide.  Some plotted and marched and murdered to stop wars (Engelhardt’s favourite cause) and others simply peddled their unworkable ethos to captive audiences in classrooms around the country, brutally suppressing dissent with an absolutist view of life worthy of any totalitarian state, which is the genesis of the speech codes we see on college campuses today.

Engelhardt would probably say that the wrong side of his generation won, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following.  But I think that, after breaking American society in profound ways during the 1960′s and 1970′s and having the largesse of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson behind them, if the left could not clinch the deal then, it was and is their own fault.  The core problem was that Americans were more aspirational economically and theistic in their world view to supinely accept what the left had to offer.  After all, there was an atheistic society out there with ostensibly egalitarian way and active in the world peace movement, and that was the Soviet Union.  The threat of extinction via nuclear weapons was the result of fending that off, but it’s too easy for Engelhardt to forget that, had the Soviets triumphed, his ability to speak his peace (which he has made a career out of) would have ended.

Today we live in a country which has turned civil rights upside down for the benefit of economically prosperous groups who are useful to those at the top of society; which keeps promising to end wars but drags it out while sons and daughters, who have little in common with their ultimate superiors, die and are wounded; which keeps telling people to achieve and yet rigs the system in innumerable ways not to make it worth the bother; whose debt will eventually sink the benefits (good and bad) of dollar hegemony; and which has now created a security apparatus for a populace scared of its own shadow which would make “Uncle Joe” Stalin proud, this in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”.

Much of this is the result of a generation whose lack of introspection is only matched by their hypermoralism, moralism proven unjustified by acts like Engelhardt himself did before he took the Ivy League sheepskin.  The rest of us have had enough.  Social Security isn’t what I would call a “golden parachute” but it’s the best we can afford, and it isn’t our fault if thrift wasn’t your strong suit.  I agree it isn’t much to “tell our children and grandchildren, you, the graduates of 2013, that we failed you, that we left the world in worse shape, and that now — thank you very much — we’re dumping it into your laps to deal with”.  But it beats more of the same from Engelhardt’s colleagues.  Please retire before it’s too late for everyone, you’ve done enough damage and then some for one lifetime.

Barack Obama: Finding His Inner Lenin, Finding His Inner Dzerzhinskii

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I’ve run a good number of “I told you so” pieces on this blog.  This time, however, it’s more like “It used to be this way, but…” and the subject is national security.  Barack Obama has, at least, cut the left’s Gordian Knot on the issue.

Let me go back to 2006 with this pre-election bloviation:

So the Democrats are stuck. They simply cannot bring themselves to allow our military and intelligence services to do what they have to do. So the vote to keep them weak in the face of public opinion to the contrary. The Democrat Party and the American left is trapped in Dzershinskii’s Dilemma, where if they neglect national security we lose and if they beef it up they get wiped out. They never will find a way out. We vote for such people at our own peril.

Well, as we see these days, they’ve found their (or more accurately Obama has found his) way out of the conundrum that has buffaloed them from Vietnam on.  They’ve done this in three steps:

  1. They’ve “sanitised” the “war on terror” using technology such as drone strikes.  The one exception to this was the killing of Osama bin Laden, and that was because they needed serious proof of the deed.  (By the time we got around to doing that, bin Laden was no longer really leading al-Qaeda, as we learned the hard way in Benghazi).
  2. They redefined the real enemy.  Although they’re content with picking off Islāmic careerists, their real enemy is their domestic political opposition, whom they’ve pursued via the IRS and other national security and police agencies.  This has worked because…
  3. …the left sees its political opposition as an existential threat.  As such they are ready, to varying degrees, to abrogate constitutional protections to insure their own survival and prosperity.  This is buttressed electorally by the immense patronage via various programs handed out by the government.  This isn’t new–FDR and his successors benefited from Social Security in this way–but the scale is unprecedented.

The upshot of all of this is that the left (or at least part of it) is ready to move the revolution forward in the way most revolutions move “forward”, i.e., towards an absolute state.  This is a major shift and should be noted.  Conservatives can appeal to principles all they want, but until we get people–and especially people who don’t agree with them–to understand that they’re next in this process, success will elude them.

There are signs, even before the present scandals broke, that some are starting to figure it out.  But we need to see more.  In the meanwhile we need to get out of the “Pickett’s Charge” mentality and realise this is a long-haul process.

Series on the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem

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Every now and then I will do a series about a theological topic or work.  One of those series was on the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.  It turned into an interesting exploration of Patristic doctrine and practice as opposed to what we have today in all parts of Christianity.  Following are the topics and links to them:

  1. Is It Proper to Refer to Christians as Enlightened?
  2. Catechises and Baptismal Regeneration
  3. Catechises, the Preparation for Baptism and Discipleship
  4. Confirmation or Chrismation?
  5. Touch not God’s Anointed
  6. The Difference Between Image and Likeness in Genesis
  7. Every King is Proclaimed by Soldiers
  8. Is God’s Omnipotence Dependent Upon the Existence of His Creation?
  9. The Holy Spirit and Miracles, Then and Now
  10. The End Times Without Revelation
  11. Mystagogy, Sacramental Theology and the Poker Playing Dog
  12. Some Closing Thoughts on Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures

Although not a formal part of the series, the article The Gift of Faith: Cyril of Jerusalem relates to the same work.

An Insane Rant Gets to the Bottom of Gun Control

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I think we’ve finally pulled one liberal’s chain hard enough so he screams:

Here it is. The NRA advocates armed rebellion against the duly elected government of the United States of America. That’s treason, and it’s worthy of the firing squad. The B.S. needs a serious gut check. We are not a tin pot banana republic where machine gun toting rebel groups storm the palace and depose the dictator.

We put the president in the White House. To support the new NRA president’s agenda of arming the populace for confrontation with the government is bloody treason. And many invite it gladly as if the African-American president we voted for is somehow infringing on their Constitutional rights.

Americans hate more than anything to get to the bottom of an issue.  I think that this is an insane rant, but sometimes insanity results when one gets to the truth, and in his irrational way he’s done just that.

Getting past issues such as self-defence and hunting, the bottom line issue for the left is that having widespread firearms ownership makes it possible (in principle at least) for the populace to resist the actions of their government in an effective way.  The inchoate fear of the left has been that, sooner or later, they will get an armed pushback that will stick.  (Kinda like we did in 1776…)

I addressed this issue in a (hopefully) more reasoned manner at the first of the year:

That, in a sense, leads to the second problem: how do we know that, at some point, our military, police, or whatever is in between would not fire on us in peaceful protest?  That’s an act that, in many countries, is unthinkable.  It’s the act that generally pushes how a regime is perceived from good to bad.  But what happens when that country is ours?  Who will come to our rescue?  Who will defend our human rights?  And is the moral climate in this country such that, if something like that happened (think Kent State) there would be an outcry, given the antipathy of much of our media towards such a large part of our population?  (There’s that “selective enforcement” again, in another form).

I’m not one of those people who think that widespread gun ownership will lead to the overthrow of the Republic.  To do that takes not only weaponry but organisation and effective leadership, and both are lacking in this country.  What will bring down the Republic will be a) its bankruptcy, b) a government “inside job” and/or c) external assistance (think that “sealed train” which Lenin took from Germany to Russia during World War I).

I should add that Dr. Swindell (I guess he has his PhD) doesn’t see much threat of an overthrew either.  But that hinges on the willingness of our military to kill its own citizens.  In addition to drone technology (which “sanitises” the process) it depends upon the willingness of a decidedly “red state” military to act against people with whom they have more in common than those who lead them.  That problem, in turn, leads to Mikey Weinstein’s insane rant on Evangelicals in the military, where he too calls people traitors for their convictions.  (My response to that is here.)

Here, then, is the leitmotif in this opera: in the opinion of those on the left who are willing to be honest about it, anyone who isn’t “all in” with the secularist idea and the expansive government that goes with it is a traitor and should be dealt with accordingly.  The left has come a long way from Vietnam days, when patriotism was a dirty word, to today, when they define agreement with themselves as true patriotism.  If that’s true, then this country isn’t worth defending, because we have, in fact, turned into the “banana republic” that Swindell denies that we are.

With all due respect to my Central American readers–whose countries have come a long way–the only reason we aren’t a banana republic is because we don’t grow bananas.  But wait: back in Palm Beach Public School we had bananas growing in the inner courtyard…sigh.

HT StandFirm.

Keeping the Riff-Raff Out by Keeping Churches Out

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New concept?  Hardly, New York City allowed it in the late 1940′s:

Many objected to the rich subsidies offered Metropolitan Life, then the largest private corporation in the nation, as well as the firm’s refusal to rent to minorities. Others criticized the complex’s design and layout. Metropolitan Life wouldn’t allow schools, churches, libraries, or other public facilities within the project’s boundaries out of concern that they might attract undesirable elements. Urbanist Lewis Mumford discerned “the architecture of the Police State” in Stuyvesant Town’s dozens of featureless redbrick buildings, arrayed in rows across 80 acres.

Today Christian churches, and especially Evangelical ones, do two things: tout the social values of church and the ethic that goes with it, and contend that, until recent times, everyone else acknowledged it.  The former is certainly so, but the latter has never been a given, and certainly was not in the last century.  Obviously MetLife was more worried about keeping the riff-raff out than edifying the (presumably all-white) residents.

As a Palm Beacher, however, such problems have a solution.  Had MetLife had the likes of Bethesda’s vestry at the time, they certainly could have found a way to have a church within the complex and keep the riff-raff out.  Whether the church would have had much of a Biblical basis is another problem altogether; the vestry showed its ability to mishandle the Word when the situation called for it.

Sigh…

What Anglicans Should Call Their Gatherings

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One thing I have discovered in being both a follower and a participant of the church world is that there are many meetings.  This isn’t to say that the church world has a corner on meetings (yes, I’m aware of Hebrews 10:25) but I’m specifically thinking on those gatherings beyond the parish setting.  I’m coming to realise that a) there are many ways to name such meetings and b) most of them really don’t work for the Anglican/Episcopal world.  So let’s get started.

In this country the Episcopal Church has its General Convention. We have our nifty system of numbering this too, thus the last one in 2012 was “GC 77″ (the seventy-seventh time this event has taken place). The last one sorely tested the ability of the orthodox to observe Our Lord’s injunction to Peter:

Then Peter came up, and said to Jesus: “Master, how often am I to forgive my Brother when he wrongs me? As many as seven times?” But Jesus answered: “Not seven times, but ‘seventy times seven.’  (Matthew 18:21-22)

A more fundamental problem with the term “convention” is that it comes from the Latin “to come together”.  The blunt truth is that Anglicans haven’t come together on much of anything in a long time; attempting to paper this over with the designation “convention” hasn’t helped.

One serious question is whether the Episcopalians need to even hold such a gathering, what with the Presiding Bishop’s autocratic method.  Why bother to call for a vote when you have the show in your back pocket, especially since you’ve inhibited, deposed and excommunicated your opposition?  (My late father-in-law, badly wounded at Normandy, referred to the last as “dismembered”, and that’s pretty much what she’s done).

Thinking about the Presiding Bishop and the egg she recently laid in the West Indies about the evils of Paul casting out demons leads to an alternative: the pandemonium.  We normally don’t consider this a meeting, but the word means “all the demons” or the general assembly of Satan’s minions.  (Fans of Gounoud’s Faust will recognise this).  The original pandemonium took place on or around 1 May, but the trade union she recently broke at 815 might have a different opinion of the date.  (That leads to another question: are demons organised?  When things go well, could it be because they’re taking an industrial action?)

Across the pond we have the Synod, that venerable body of the Church of England now under attack by another gathering, namely Parliament.  (I tried to warn you…)  For some reason, “synod” has always struck me as an odd term for gatherings of anyone outside of the Orthodox.  (Yes, I’m aware of the Synod of Dort/Dork, but…)  More seriously, however, the word “synod” has the same root as the word Sanhedrin (yes, that venerable Jewish word has Greek origins) so I’m not sure whether we want our gatherings to be seen in that light or not.

Bringing the Brits into the discussion brings back memories of the time when Rowan Williams was Archbishop of Canterbury, and of his introduction of the “indaba” at Lambeth 2008.  Probably no attempt at designating Anglican gatherings has fallen flatter.  It represents Williams’ attempt to bring in an African concept to a Western spirituality, but had one major snag: most of the Africans in the Anglican Communion didn’t send representation because of decidedly “Western” concepts of doctrinal and moral orthodoxy, which the Africans had a better grasp of than Williams.

On a more personal note, the idea of the Africans preferring meetings as “indaba” strikes me as odd.  As I’ve said before, most of the Civil Engineering faculty where I teach is African, and our Kenyan department head isn’t much about having meetings of any kind.  Yes, Africans hold a very high value on being a team player, but our leader is aware of the fact that the state isn’t paying us to meet but to teach and do research.

It was in that backdrop that we were called to a rare faculty meeting last year.  It was during a time when our institution was being harassed by a rash of bomb threats, which continued until the Feds were called in and the threat of punishment had teeth.  We had just started our meeting when the fire alarm went off.  We began to rouse ourselves when we saw real smoke in the hallway, which added a lilt to our steps.  (It turned out to be a toilet paper fire set in the stairwell).

But our department head, having thought it important enough to have the meeting, wasn’t going to have such an interruption end it.  So we, with our administrative assistant taking minutes, reconvened in the parking lot, where we completed our business around the trunk of our superior’s car.

That commitment to action would transform much of what we do in the church world, and not just with meetings.  The current occupant of the See of Canterbury would do well to emulate that and to do so in an effective Christian way, otherwise a car park will be more than enough for the next Lambeth gathering.

The proliferation of Anglican bodies has produced a similar proliferation of meeting designations.  PEAR had a “sacred assembly” which strikes an Old Testament note of repentance (and we all know that someone needs to repent in this fiasco).  We’ve also had the usual conferences, summits, and the like.  But none of these has a distinctively Anglican flavour.

However, there is one term, IMHO, that captures the Anglican way (at least as it’s been practised up until now): the symposium.

The word “symposium” means to drink together. I wasn’t aware of this until I attended, of all things, a seminar on hydraulic systems (like you see in cranes, excavators and the brake system in your car).  The presenter, a leading expert in the field, explained the meaning of the word and illustrated it by imitating Archimedes, three sheets to the wind and staggering, raising his cup and proclaiming, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth!”  (Hydraulic systems often use a fulcrum principle to do their work, the topic wasn’t incidental).

Especially in North America, Episcopal churches have long been known for their penchant for the hard stuff.  Particularly in the South, one of the Episcopal Church’s appeals was that it was not only the Church Where You Could Drink, but the Church Where You Should Drink, as opposed to the Churches Where You Couldn’t Drink.  (My analysis of this situation, albeit controversial, is here).  I have no doubt that this helped people to convert, but has anyone given any thought to the quality of the converts on this basis?

Once in, no one was under any illusions about the situation.  My second year Latin teacher, a fine Episcopal minister named Raymond O’Brien, was the first to tell me what I already know: that when four Wiskeypalians get together, you always have a fifth.  Not even the Knights of Columbus can rival the spiritual sons and daughters of Albion in this regard.

So Episcopalians and Anglicans can call their gatherings symposiums and be confident that there’s at least one thing they can agree on.  But be careful: as my old Russian representative told me a long time ago, in Russia there is a saying: “Without vodka, there is no agreement”.  He paused for a second and then added, “And that’s why there are some really stupid agreements”.

Which may, in fact, explain why some of the stuff in the Anglican Communion is enough to drive anyone to drink.

A Long Way From “A Pig a Rig”

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That’s an understatement, as China’s Shuanghui acquires Smithfield Foods:

Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest pork producer, agreed to acquire Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD) for about $4.72 billion to boost supplies for the nation that’s the biggest consumer of the meat.

Closely held Shuanghui, parent of Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Co. (000895), will pay $34 a share for the Smithfield, Virginia-based producer, both companies said today in a statement. The offer is 31 percent more than yesterday’s closing share price.

When I was doing business in China in the early 1980′s, one of the many things I discovered about the place was that the drilling rigs in the BoHai (the sea east of Beijing) were also places where the Chinese raised pigs.  One American associate quipped that the Chinese had “a pig a rig”.  Not to be outdone, when I visited the Soviet Union later in the decade I was taken to a scientific and engineering research institute where they too raised pigs on the side.

Except in Jewish and Muslim places, pork has been a staple meat for millennia, because pigs are efficient (if not particularly graceful) converters of what they eat into what they become ,i.e. meat.  Both the Russian and Chinese revolutions took places in largely rural countries where people thought nothing about resuming their food raising wherever they were at, and that included drilling rigs (and I presume production platforms were not immune to this) and research institutes.  Marxist-Leninist economies were (and are in the case of places like North Korea and Cuba) notoriously poor distributors of goods and services, really by design, so economic activity on the side is a must in places like this.

This move shows how far the Chinese have come in a short period (in their terms).  Let’s hope that their commitment to quality (something they surely expected from us in the day) is commensurate with their business acumen.