We've Erased History Enough

Just one of many reasons calling slaves, workers, migrants or immigrants angers me. We've erased history enough in America. Slaves were completely stripped of native land, dignity, family names, language, culture and family. We must remember black slaves were the only oppressed group that were completely denied education and the ability to read. This didn't take place for a few years but for generations and centuries. Their blood and stories run through my veins. I'm here today because of someone's resilience, faith and survival. I don't ever want to forget that and neither should you. So I have problem when we don't name the oppression, gloss over it, misinterpret, and erase American history related to slavery. Denial serves no one, there is liberty and freedom in truth. The truth makes us free, lies perpetuate bondage. How many of you have heard of this story? How many learned of the murders of 20,000 blacks in Mississippi in school? I didn't. This isn't about shame and guilt but conviction that leads us toward redeeming justice. May we lament. LORD have Mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have Mercy.

Source: Latasha Morrison  -  Facebook post on 8 Mar 2017, with link to https://blackmainstreet.net/never-forget-devils-punchbowl-20000-freed-slaves-died-forced-post-slavery-concentration-camp/

How Important Are The Differences?

The divisions that exist now are very different than the divisions that existed when I became a Catholic about fifty years ago.  The divisions between Catholics and Protestants are far less important to both sides now, even though they still exist, than they were fifty years ago, because we are facing a common enemy, a culture of death, a society that is becoming increasingly anti-Christian.  When a common enemy threatens, then warring brothers put their civil wars on hold for a while, important as they are.  Like the Irish and the English, who've had a lot of troubles, but fought together and died for each other in the trenches in World War I and again in World War II.

Source: Peter Kreeft  -  Conversion to Catholicism, Catholic Education Resource Center, http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/apologetics/dr-peter-kreeft-s-conversion-to-catholicism-part-2.html

Willing to Die for the Sake of ... Peace

To many people, the death of de Chergé and his fellow monks proves the worst stereotypes of Islam.  But to him it was the expected cost of being a peacemaker.  To me, it is a stark reminder of the work that must be done world-wide to spread the healing message of forgiveness.  In a time when so many people are willing to die in ongoing armed conflicts between the "Christian" West and the supposed "menace" of Islam - whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, or anywhere else - where are there men and women who are willing to die for the sake of peace?

Source: Johann Christoph Arnold  -  Why Forgive?, pp.60

The Date of Easter

Take the issue of the date of Easter, for example. This year, westerners celebrated this festival a week earlier than the Eastern and Oriental Churches. Which westerner could say why? Easterners know very well. It has to do with history, about which we in the west don’t really care very much. We’re not really so interested in the past as we are in starting with a clean slate to shape our own futures. Yet we have little understanding how much our past has already shaped who we are and why we do things in certain ways.

Briefly, then: at the Council of Nicaea in 325AD, leaders from across the then-Christian world agreed on a formula to celebrate Easter on the same date: the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox (March 21); but always after Jewish Passover, as Jesus and his disciples had celebrated Passover the night before he was crucified.

However, the Julian calendar, which had been in use since 45BC, was a solar calendar. The Catholic Church adopted the Gregorian lunar calendar in 1582 in order to compensate for the loss of days which built up over a long period. Most countries have since followed suit, but the Eastern churches have held to the Nicene Council formula, when Easter falls anywhere between April 4 and May 8. For Catholics, and for the West with them, Easter falls between March 22 and April 25. Sometimes the two Easters fall on the same dates, as in 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2017. But this won’t happen again until 2034!

Source: Jeff Fountain  -  Weekly Word eNewsletter, 1 May 2019, "Vibrant Celebration"
https://us9.campaign-archive.com/?e=0b86898e11&u=65605d9dbab0a19355284d8df&id=c06ec3e640

Ferguson

Several Sundays ago, my family and I visited Concord Church where Pastor Bryan L. Carter spoke powerfully about the turmoil and discord surrounding this issue. He focused our attention on Jesus as the only One who has and can ever bring complete peace in situations like this one that have roots too deep for human solutions to reach. It was beautiful and challenging.


Source: Priscilla Shirer  -  "#FERGUSON" blog post on Going Beyond, 26 August 2014, http://www.goingbeyond.com/blog/ferguson/

Alexander Dietze

Alex Dietze, 39, grew up in a Christian home in Germany where no one mentioned the Second World War, let alone the Holocaust. Alex mainly knew of the war from history classes at school, books and films. But on his 28th birthday something changed.

“My grandfather came to me and wanted to give me as a gift the Nazi war medal he earned for his contribution to the war effort,” Dietze told Ynet. “I was in shock. Previously for me, the Holocaust was a matter of general history and not something personal. I could not believe that my grandfather was among those who took part in the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. My world turned upside down.”
...
“I became interested in the Holocaust and subsequently the State of Israel, and to my astonishment I discovered that hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors live there,” he continued. “My wife Cecilia and I became curious to meet these people. As Germans, we understood that we need to make amends and go to Israel. We had our honeymoon there and we fell in love with the country.”
...
Sofia, 78, is one of the survivors with whom Alex and Cecilia volunteer. She was born in Ukraine and as a baby and a little girl during the Holocaust, she survived by being smuggled from place to place. She immigrated to Israel from Latvia in 1991, and says the German volunteers make her very happy. "They give me health and beauty, when I'm told they're coming, I feel 25 years younger. It's like it's cold and suddenly it's warm, it's so good. The older the person is, the more vulnerable they are and can use a good word. Their good warms us; they are surely messengers of God. Their children see the good that they do and perhaps they will carry on this good, not towards Holocaust survivors but to other people who will need it."

Source: Ynet News  -  "Nazis' descendants delight in volunteering with Holocaust survivors"
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5453594,00.html

Protestants & Catholics Teaching Each Other

Perhaps, I thought, these good Protestant people could worship like angels, but I could not. Then I realized that they couldn't either. Their ears were using crutches but not their eyes. They used beautiful hymns, for which I would gladly exchange the new, flat, unmusical, wimpy "liturgical responses" no one sings in our masses—their audible imagery is their crutch. I think that in Heaven, Protestants will teach Catholics to sing and Catholics will teach Protestants to dance and sculpt.

Source: Peter Kreeft  -  Hauled aboard the Ark, http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/hauled-aboard.htm

Herrnhut!!

By now everyone was sensing God was doing something new.  Pastor Rothe invited the whole community to the Lord's Table on Wednesday, August 13.  Zinzendorf visited each member of the community to prepare their hearts for the first time of communion since the months of discord.

Even as Pastor Rothe began the service, some started praising and weeping.  God the Holy Spirit was clearly present in a deep and special way.  Confession and forgiveness flowed.  And when the service officially ended, clusters of communicants continued to fellowship together, savoring God's presence.  'From this day on', wrote one historian, 'Herrnhut became a living congregation of Jesus Christ.'

The new unity was expressed in a community lifestyle of worship, servanthood, love feasts, foot-washing ceremonies, and a 24-hour prayer chain began and was unbroken for over one hundred years!  The Herrnhut residents began to receive in prayer a big vision of God's heart for the unreached peoples of the world.

Five years later, this small community of refugees began to send out missionaries to the Caribbean and Surinam, to Lapland and Greenland, to Morocco and South Africa, to Russia and Turkey, to Georgia and Pennsylvania.  By the time [their leader] Zinzendorf died in 1760, it is said that this revived Moravian Church had done more for world missions than all the other protestant churches combined.

Source: Jeff Fountain  -  From "The Little Town That Blessed The World", pp. 39-40

Pray for Other Churches ... by Name

I heard another great prayer idea by Southern Baptist Pastor Dean Anderson from Trenton, KY.  He offers this advice:  "Pray by name for the other churches in town."  Here is an example of how he does this:  "I pray that the Father will bless them, use them and grow them to build His Kingdom."  This can be added to your individual and community prayer intentions.

Source: Dean Anderson  -  Southern Baptist Pastor from Trenton, KY, as quoted by Frank Lesko, "The Traveling Ecumenist", in his blog post "Lenten Practices for Christian Unity", 17 February 2015, http://travelingecumenist.blogspot.com/2015/02/lenten-practices-for-christian-unity.html

An 104-year-old Repents

There was a touching moment with my 104-year-old mother the day before she died, when she asked my forgiveness for something.  We had found it necessary to put her in respite care over the Christmas holidays  For some time she had been having brief spells of dementia, probably linked to an earlier stroke.  Now she imagined me to be the enemy, since I was the one who made the decision.  But the Spirit of the Lord and of the deep places of her life showed her that she was being harsh in her judgment of me.  One of her final acts at the end of a loving life was this:  to reach out and ask forgiveness for judging me harshly.  She simply said, several times over and over, "I've been wrong; I've been wrong."  Would I have had that kind of grace in a moment of such extremity?  Could I turn, and ask forgiveness?  I hope so.  She was still learning to love - right to the end of her remarkable life.

Source: Betty Pulkingham  -  "This Is My Story, This Is My Song", Ch. 14, p. 131

One Vision of The Path to Unity

In the meantime, among the desert hills of Jericho, the Christians were devoting themselves to fasting and prayers. On the evening of the fourth day, Professor Pauli and nine companions, mounted on asses and taking with them a cart, stole into Jerusalem and, passing through side streets by Haram-esh-Sheriff to Haret-en-Nasara, came to the entrance to the Temple of the Resurrection, in front of which, on the pavement, the bodies of Pope Peter and Elder John were lying. The street was deserted at that time of night, as everyone had gone to Hasam-esh- Sheriff. The sentries were fast asleep.

The party that came for the bodies found them quite untouched by decomposition, not even stiff or heavy. They put them on stretchers and covered them with the cloaks they had brought with them. Then by the same circuitous route they returned to their followers. They had hardly lowered the stretcher to the ground when suddenly the spirit of life could be seen reentering the deceased bodies. The bodies moved slightly as if they were trying to throw off the cloaks in which they were wrapped. With shouts of joy, everyone lent them aid and soon both the revived men rose to their feet, safe and sound.

Then said Elder John: "Ah, my little children, we have not parted after all! I will tell you this: it is time that we carry out the last prayer of Christ for his disciples - that they should be all one, even as he himself is one with the Father. For this unity in Christ, let us honor our beloved brother Peter. Let him at last pasture the flocks of Christ. There it is, brother!" And he put his arms round Peter.

Then Professor Pauli came nearer. "Tu est Petrus!" ("You are Peter!") he said to the Pope, "Jetzt ist es ja grundlich erwiesen und ausser jedem Zweifel gesetzt." ("Now it has been thoroughly proven and put beyond any doubt"). And he shook Peter's hand firmly with his own right hand, while he stretched out his left hand to John saying: "So also Vaterchen nun sind wir ja Eins in Christo." ("Now, then, dear father, we are now one in Christ.").

In this manner, the unification of churches took place in the midst of a dark night on a high and deserted spot. But the nocturnal darkness was suddenly illuminated with brilliant light and a great sign appeared in the heavens; it was a woman, clothed in the sun with the moon beneath her feet and a wreath of twelve stars on her head. The apparition remained immovable for some time, and then began slowly to move in a southward direction. Pope Peter raised his staff and exclaimed: "Here is out banner! Let us follow it!" And he walked after that apparition, accompanied by both the old men and the whole crowd of Christians, to God's mountain, to Sinai ...


Source:  Vladimir Soloviev  -  A Short Tale of the Anti-Christ

Salzburg, Austria

In the 17th century Salzburg’s Archbishops drew out every Protestant believer; often they had to leave their children behind, who were brought up by Catholics then - imagine!

in 1956 their successor on the Salzburg seat wrote to the Lutherans to ask their forgiveness and they thanked for his letter;

Now 50 years later, in 2016, the Lutheran bishop of Austria accepted the bid! He took part in the journey by the way, as did high officials of the Catholics.



Source:  Personal (unofficial) report on the Reformation Commemoration Tour of Austria, August 16-26, 2016

From a Church of Christ Scholar

For all the good that the sixteenth-century Protestant movements may have brought to the Western Church in the way of doctrinal reforms, there was at least one outcome that wrought inestimable damage—namely, schism. It is not that there were no schisms before the sixteenth century. Neither is it the case that the early Protestants desired schism; in fact, they made a fairly strong case that it was the Roman Church’s doctrinal innovations and resistance to reform that caused and perpetuated the schism. It is also true, however, that Protestants, almost as soon as there were Protestants, exhibited a persistent inability to get along with one another.

From the 1520s on, Protestant history includes stories of disagreements over baptism, the Lord’s Supper, liturgy, free will and predestination, the relationship of the church with civil government, and biblical interpretation, which in many cases was the source of the disagreements. It did not take long for Protestants, as well as Roman Catholics, to draw up new confessions of faith that distinguished their own particular groups. Despite the occasional lone voices calling for unity, by the end of the sixteenth century, instead of one unified church in the West, there were now Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and a number of Anabaptist and “radical” churches, each with its own confessional standard. Thus began denominations in the West.

These initial breaks were only the beginning, though, as the disputes and divisions continued. Once Pandora’s box was opened, once the precedent was set that any doctrinal disagreement could justify starting a new church, the horrific possibility of schism that was realized in the sixteenth century evolved into the accepted habit of schism in the seventeenth and eighteenth. Debates ensued now over the interpretation of the new confessional standards—including what subscription meant and whether it was even necessary—all of which led to further contentions and divisions.

This habit of schism, transferred from the Old World, became compulsive in the New World. In American soil, nourished by autonomous freedom from old traditions and by optimistic visions of finally making the church what it was supposed to be, the seeds of schism proliferated, grew, and flourished. Implicated in this guilt were, among many others, the Presbyterians, whose Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechism served as confessional standards. Throughout the eighteenth century, a significant number of Presbyterians had various reservations about signing on to these standards, and many simply refused to subscribe at all. Aside from the doctrinal teaching of the Westminster standards, in the wake of the evangelical revivals in England and especially the Second Great Awakening in North America, Presbyterians further divided over their openness to the revivals (so-called “Old Lights” versus “New Lights”).


Source: Keith D. Stanglin  -  "The Restoration Movement, the Habit of Schism, and a Proposal for Unity", by Dr. Keith D. Stanglin, in Christian Studies, Volume 28, August 2016, http://austingrad.edu/Christian%20Studies/CS%2028/Proposal%20for%20Unity.pdf

A Quiet Peacemaker

Bishop Daly had discerned that a qualification in ecumenism was “more relevant to the situation” that Martin would be facing back as a newly-ordained priest in divided Belfast than the two year licence in Biblical theology that he had set his heart on, partly because he had grown to love Rome and the Irish College.

Source: Martin O'Brien  -  "A Quiet Peacemaker", The Irish Catholic, 11 Dec 2014, http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/quiet-peacemaker

Austin Callaway's Lynching, Part 2

Thursday's event marks the start of the healing process, Hart said. What's next? The need to save troubled African-American men in today's communities, she said.

Topics such as poverty, incarceration and equal access to education bubbled up at various points in the ceremony, with less fanfare. It's easier, perhaps, to build consensus around reconciliation and healing than it is for systemic issues.

"I believe the will is there," she said, "We need to keep working together."


Source: Emanuella Grinberg, CNN  -  "'Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching", Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, 28 Jan 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/index.html

Austin Callaway's Lynching, Part 1

"Some would like to see us bury the past and move on," Thornton said. "Until we have a full and complete acknowledgment of the past we can never heal."

As one elected official after another took the pulpit, delivering moving apologies to the African-American community and pledges to do better, the tone evolved from somber to reverent to hopeful.

As Troup County State Court Judge Jeannette Little proclaimed to applause and cheers, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."


Source: Mayor Jim Thornton  -  Jim Thornton, Mayor of LaGrange Georgia, as quoted in "'Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching", Emanuella Grinberg, CNN, 28 Jan 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/index.html

Somewhere in the Middle East

… She and I went to the first day of ecumenical prayer week for Christian Unity together. It was my first experience of a Greek Orthodox service. It was such a joy to be invited into another expression of the church. The week continues and I hope to get to one more service. ...

Source: <Name withheld>  -  As quoted in a ministry eNewsletter from the Middle East in 2017 (name withheld due to sensitivity)

9 Dead Children

In spring 1998, Carroll and Doris King - old family friends - traveled to Iraq with a human rights delegation to examine the effects of UN sanctions there.  While in Baghdad they met Ghaidaa, a woman who had suffered more than any mother I had ever heard of, but was still ready to forgive.

Ghaidaa lost nine children in the destruction of Al Amariyah, a massive, reinforced concrete shelter in Baghdad that was penetrated by American "smart bombs" during the Gulf War.  More than one thousand Iraqi civilians were incinerated in the bombing, most of them women and children.

Today, Ghaidaa leads tourists among the shelter ruins, hoping that those who see its horrors - among other things, ghostly silhouettes were left wherever human bodies shielded the walls from the extreme heat - will speak out against future bombings.  After taking one of Ghaidaa's tours, Carroll and Doris, stunned, asked her to forgive them for what America had done to her family and people.  A former Air Force officer who had flown bombing sorties over Europe in World War II, Carroll especially felt he bore a share of the guilt.  Shaking his hand, then hugging Doris and bursting into tears, Ghaidaa cried, "I forgive you."

Ghaidaa will never find "justice" on human terms. How can one ever replace nine dead children?  She will certainly never be able to forget them.  But in finding the hearts of two people who asked her to forgive them, she has found peace - something that no one can put a price on.


Source: Johann Christoph Arnold  -  Why Forgive?, pp.30-31