Reformed Churchmen: Midwest Conservative Journal: "Speaking Crap to Power"

Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Monday, April 1, 2013

Midwest Conservative Journal: "Speaking Crap to Power"

We understand TMJ's cynicism. TMJ has been around the block a few times. It's not his first rodeo with TECers. It's not our's either. TMJ puts the hand of justice to the TECers.

Remember when members of the American news media collapsed on their fainting couches when Dr. Ben Carson told Barack Obama some unpleasant truths during the National Prayer Breakfast? “Time and place!” they choked out when they regained consciousness.

Yesterday, during a service on the single most important day of the Christian year, a service attended by the President and his family, the Rev. Luis Leon of Washington’s St. John’s Episcopal church, said this during his sermon:

Quoting from John 20:1-18, Leon said in the same way that Jesus told Mary Magdalene not to hold on to him, it is time for conservatives to stop holding on to what he considers outdated stances in matters of race, gender equality, homosexuals and immigrants.

“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back . . . for blacks to be back in the back of the bus . . . for women to be back in the kitchen . . . for immigrants to be back on their side of the border,” Leon said.

Leon said that people instead should use “Easter vision” to allow them to see the world in a different, more “wonderful” way.

Here and there in the conservative media, people were actually stunned by these remarks. On her radio show today, Dana Loesch couldn’t believe them. Me, I just knowingly smiled as I drove around today, sipping my 7-11 Double Gulp (don’t tell Bloomberg) and listening to her.

Because anybody who has ever spent any time in an Episcopal outlet or has been curious enough to regularly visit sites like this doesn’t have the right to be even remotely surprised. To the Episcopalian, everything is political; terms like “God,” “Jesus,” “Holy Spirit” and “Resurrection” are nothing more than meaningless professional jargon.

Given Leon’s remarks and insofar as Katharine Jefferts Schori, the head of the Episcopal Organization, believes this.

Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?

We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.

I’d really rather not hear any complaints from Episcopalians the next time that someone claims that the Episcopal Organzation isn’t Christian in any meaningful sense of that term.

Reformed Churchmen