Evangelical Downgrade

The Evangelical Education Society - a once respectable group in TEC says this in its latest newsletter.  

"As the term 'evangelical' evolved to connote first 'Low Church' and later the fundamentalism of biblical inerrancy, (my emphasis) the Board maintained advocacy of Anglican Evangelicalism of the English Reformation through publication of the Evangelical Outlook and the administration of a merit scholarship program.

By the late 20th century, however, this message was ineffective. (my emphasis) The EES Board seized the opportunity (to) adapt by launching the Evangelism For the 21st Century grants program in 1995.  The move was an abandonment of partisanship and advocacy and a commitment to follow the Spirit in innovative Gospel proclamation...."

So, apparently the message of the gospel (what else could they mean) was ineffective and they gave it up to follow the "Spirit in innovative Gospel proclamation..." i.e. another gospel which Paul has some harsh words about in Gal 1.

ps David Booth Beers is a Board Member

What Ails the Episcopal Church

Read this article from the Wall Street Journal.

Does God Speak Today Apart From the Bible

This is a very troubling assertion.  R. Fowler White has written very clearly on this subject.  To summarize his    writing:


"The living and true God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is supreme head of a living church, is not mute.  He speaks - and He speaks clearly - by His Spirit and through His written word, the Bible.  Therefore, as the author of Hebrews aptly puts it, we must see to it that we do not disregard 'him who is speaking' (Heb 12.25).

The Reformation is Not Over

For Roman Catholics, Scripture and Tradition are two distinct but equal modes of revealed authority which the magisterium of the Roman Church has sole responsibility to transmit and interpret.

For the early Protestant reformers, the holy Scripture provides final normative authority for Christian doctrine and practice, standing as judge above all institutions and ecclesial traditions.

For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified because of inherent righteousness.

For the mainstream Protestant reformers, sinners are accepted on the basis of the righteousness of another—namely, the alien righteousness of Christ imputed to them.

For Roman Catholics, sinners are both justified by unmerited grace at baptism and (subsequently) justified by those infused graces merited by cooperating with divine grace.

For the magisterial reformers, sinners are justified before God by grace alone.

For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified by faith (in baptism), but not by faith alone.

For the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, sinners are justified by faith alone.

For Roman Catholics, justification is a process of renewal that affords no solid basis for Christian assurance in this life.

For reformers such as Luther and Calvin, justification is God’s decisive verdict of forgiveness and righteousness that assures Christian believers of the acceptance and love of their heavenly Father.

Will Christianity Survive

Another great quote from G. Gresham Machen from the Presbyterian Guardian in 1936.

"Some weeks ago I was asked by the religious editor of the Boston Evening Transcript to contribute to a symposium on the question whether Christianity is facing extinction in the Western world.

I said that question can be answered only if we first answer the more fundamental question whether the preservation of Christianity depends upon man or upon God.

If its preservation depends upon man or upon any natural resources, the chances are overwhelmingly againist its being preserved."

The 'Assumed' Gospel

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1

You may have heard the story of the Mennonite Brethren movement. One particular analysis goes like this: the first generation believed and proclaimed the gospel and thought that there were certain social entailments. The next generation assumed the gospel and advocated the entailments. The third generation denied the gospel and all that were left were the entailmentsl

Please read more here

A Gem From J. Gresham Machen

From J. Gresham Machen on the eve of his deposition from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. "The whole program of the General Assembly is carefully planned in such a way as to conceal the real issues and give a false impression of faithfulness to the Word of God. I do not mean that the deceit is necessarily intentional. The men conducting the ecclesiastical machine are no doubt in many instances living in a region of thought and feeling so utterly remote from the great verities of the Christian Faith that they have no notion how completely they are diverting attention from those verities in their conduct of the Assembly. But the fact remains that the whole program, from whatever motives, is so constructed as to conceal the real condition of the Church.

Science supports the Cosmological Argument

From Be Thinking Web

One of the premises in the Cosmological Argument is: The universe began to exist. This event was mockingly called the 'big bang' by Fred Hoyle, but the name, and the concept, stuck. But, as an editorial in New Scientist says: "Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don't you have a creator?" ('In the beginning…', New Scientist, 14 January 2012, page 3) The editorial in New Scientist concludes: "physicists and philosophers must finally answer a problem that has been nagging at them for the best part of 50 years: how do you get a universe, complete with the laws of physics, out of nothing?"

The article in the same issue ('Death of the eternal cosmos', pages 6-7) goes on to explain how cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin's work demonstrates that "every model of the universe has a beginning". Ironically this came from a symposium to celebrate Professor Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday. The article continues: "…the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator." Professor Hawking gave a pre-recorded speech to the symposium, in which he stated: "A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God."

On Praise Bands

1. If we, the congregation, can’t hear ourselves, it’s not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular “form of performance”), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there’s nothing wrong with concerts! It’s just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice–and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of “performing” the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can’t hear ourselves sing–so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become “private,” passive worshipers.

2. If we, the congregation, can’t sing along, it’s not worship. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and “be creative,” offering new renditions and exhibiting their virtuosity with all sorts of different trills and pauses and improvisations on the received tune. Again, that can be a delightful aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship it just means that we, the congregation, can’t sing along. And so your virtuosity gives rise to our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And while you may be worshiping with your creativity, the same creativity actually shuts down congregational song.

3. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it’s not worship. I know it’s generally not your fault that we’ve put you at the front of the church. And I know you want to model worship for us to imitate. But because we’ve encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary, we might not realize that we’ve also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity–even with the best of intentions–it’s difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as “offerings to God,” we the congregation become utterly passive, and because we’ve adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. I wonder if there might be some intentional reflection on placement (to the side? leading from behind?) and performance that might help us counter these habits we bring with us to worship.