The Psalm for this morning's prayer is Psalm 74, wherein we read: 6: But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers. 7: They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground. 8: They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land. If you have not seen the Kosovo church-burning video, you ought to see it. Go here. After you watch it, pray for our brethren who suffer under Islamic persecution. And pray for the nations of the West, especially our own, whose past and present decisions contribute to the occasion for such things. Let us pray that God will rise up and grant the lands of historic Christendom the repentance and faith they so desperately need. Let us add to our prayers, the thanksgiving that God deserves for what liberties we still have left in our land.

The Prophet Habbakuk, by Donatello Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicmaestro/11768926/ The wisest man that ever lived once wrote: "There is nothing new under the sun" (nihil sub sole novum). We live in troubled times, but so has every generation in this fallen world. When I think back to the peaceful days of the 1950’s living in the rural South, I remember that I had a sense of our country being good and wholesome. Those were days when no one locked their doors, kids romped through the neighbourhood at will with no one worrying about them, and divorce was rare. Schools were safe, everyone went to Church, and people got along. Yet, there were people alive at that time whose parents had told them awful stories about Sherman ’s march through our country. Those people themselves had lived through World War One, and, of course, all the adults had lived through World War Two. And even though we felt basically secure and prosperous, the Cold War was...

I finally realized that I needed to label all the previous posts on Bishop Meade's booklet, so I have done so. You will now find all the posts with links to the .pdf files in the Index under "Meade." Sorry to have not done that sooner.

This is a great article surveying the history of Evangelicalism over the last 50 years or so, with insights as to why Anglicanism is becoming more popular with young people. Give it a read - it's good. Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanillooo/472724649/

If you've not seen the video interview that Ruth Gledhill recently had with Bishop Wright, you should; it's quite interesting. See her site - link is below.

I want to voice my concern for how American Anglicans are promoting “church growth movement” ideas at their regional conferences by inviting such speakers as Rick Warren to their events. Mr. Warren may not say a word about church planting methods while he is with them, but the association surely encourages people to emulate his book Purpose-Driven Churches and the like. The “seeker-friendly” approach is inherently contrary to the traditional liturgy. Yet it is the traditional Anglican liturgy which is one of the greatest contributions we Anglicans have to make to the Church and her mission to this world. Are we to give it up for the sake of a particular - and arguably faddish - method of outreach? There is nothing wrong with holding a meeting to attract the unchurched and to evangelise them. There would be nothing wrong with canvassing the local community to see what kinds of events would attract them. These are the things that Warren did out in California . ...

Bishop N. T. Wright once said at a conference I attended: "Your body is where you start ruling to prepare for ruling the world."

An address to the recent Mere Anglicanism conference in Charleston . Compliments of David Virtue - thank you, brother! From the address: "Finally, the preachers among us do need to learn to expound the scriptures. I have found almost nobody in Episcopal circles doing this during my two and a half years in the country. Our job is not to use a text of scripture as a springboard for our own ideas, but to allow the text to impact the hearers with the greatest clarity and force. We are to be servants of the Word, breaking it up into bite-sized portions so that people can understand its meaning and context and can apply it to their own lives. Some of the Baptists are good at this, but few Episcopalians. It is an area we need to work at if we really believe that scripture is God's revelation, not mere human speculation." This is so true!!!

Durham Cathedral Cloister Image: http://www.flickr.com/groups/durham/ Conclusion of Chapter ix. iii. Now for a few moments let us pass on to the Temple cloister, to the Lord’s utterance on the great day of the feast. Here is the living water again, and the coming, and the receiving. And here is this development of the promise; there shall be an overflow. I say nothing on the place of the quotation; “as the Scripture hath said.” Enough for us now that Christ, in this Scripture, hath said it. What does it mean? It means that the man who really drinks of Christ, drinking of the Spirit, shall assuredly be a conveyer, a conductor, for the Spirit, for Christ, to others. It means that the really and livingly spiritual man shall be a spiritual blessing, a spiritual power. The thought requires, of course, a reverent caution. It cannot mean that he shall be an origin of grace; and indeed this is guarded by the special imagery, in which the thought is fixed on the drinking...

Chapter ix, Continued ii. Now turn to the promise of the Well. Its main concern is with the personal possession of this Gift; not yet with its liberation, so to speak, and distribution through the possessor. The Lord undertakes that the man who drinks that water shall never thirst; obviously in the sense of never needing to complain of an intermittent supply from this well. He shall find that he has received the ultimate answer to his entire end. He shall find that he has so received it that he may, if he will, be always enjoying it, always resting in it, always living in it. To follow the precise words further, the water which Christ shall give him, the water which he shall owe to the work and love of Christ, “shall become (so literally) in him a spring of water, of water leaping up, unto eternal life.” I do not examine minutely those last three words. It is interesting to ask whether they mean, “until the arrival of the state of glory, the ultimate phase of eternal...

If you can't get to the Mere Anglicanism conference this week, you can still hear Dr. Jerry Root talk about C. S. Lewis on the Kindlings Muse website. The interview is in three segments, on two separate pages of the blog (a little inconvenient). You can find segment one here.