While I'm not really blogging, I am still reading blogs and online magazines/newspapers. Here are some interesting bits I've come across this week...
Has the American church - specifically Protestantism been sold a "bill of goods" in the form of theological support for contraception? Have we unwittingly ushered in a culture that is hostile to marriage and children? Have we erred by giving in to zeitgeist rather than holding the line on traditional morals? Since I was a young girl, the only position on contraception that seemed true and rational to me was the Roman Catholic one - it only took me over 30 years to accept it. I do believe they have bravely held the line that the Protestantism should never have crossed.
I love reading the StandFirm blog. It is mostly concerned with issues concerning the Anglican Church in America, but often there are great essays about Anglicanism in general and Christianity in general. Earlier this week, Matt Kennedy posted a wonderful "apology" (as in apologetics) for the use of incense in the liturgical service...but he goes on to examine the use of beauty in the church also. Not beauty for beauty's sake, but beauty to draw us into the beauty of God. It's a really good and quick read.
From the article, Technology, Culture, and Virtue:
"By disconnecting culture from nature and regarding nature as an enemy to be conquered, we have, above all, disconnected ourselves from the most important aspect of culture: the inexorable lessons of the limits of human power and the pitfalls of human efforts at mastery. Every culture in some way teaches this same fundamental lesson: to respect what we did not create, to revere the mysterious and unknown, to be bound by the limits of nature and to be cognizant of the perpetual flaws of the human creature."
Life in the Not-So-Big-House.
So, are we in for a more humorless White House? Would you believe that conservatives tend to be more jovial than liberals? George Bush certainly knew how to laugh, especially at himself.
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2 comments:
Hey Kerry --
We missed you guys this morning! And I would love to get access to your "Field" site if it's ok...
--Amy
I am with you about artificial contraception. It was a huge eye opener to me to find that there was not a single church in Christendom which permitted it until Lambeth 1930. It was more horrifying to read Sanger's progress in dividing Protestants from Catholics on this subject and the inroads she made, talking specifically about how it was difficult to convince faithful Protestants to change their minds, since contraception was universally equated with abortion.
From the earliest Christian teaching (the Didache, from the 1st century, written in part by the Apostle Barnabus, I may have the wrong apostle), contraception was forbidden. I think many of the problems we are seeing in Christian marriage, in marriage in general, in family life, can be traced to this.
The reformers themselves had quite harsh words for those who would contracept, yet this is ignored in much of the modern church. Tragic.
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