The Dignity of Domesticity or Wouldn't It Be Great To Be a Mom!

Feminism was just beginning its meteoric rise in Chesterton's day. He showed how it was possible and necessary to believe in and honor the feminine without being a feminist:

It is not difficult to see ... why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior.... The same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment ... is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then, as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell to other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness (What's Wrong with the World, 1910).

Spiritual Machines Meet Mr. Bultitude

We just returned from vacationing in Florida, and on the way down I heard renowned physicist Michio Kaku interview of Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is an inventor and futurist who believes he can live long enough to live forever. This is immortality via technology as opposed to theology. Seriously!?! Yes, he's serious (click on the title if you doubt).

Kurzweil's name can be seen in huge letters across the front of the synthesizer's in your church, and he is the guy responsible for voice recognition systems now available to consumers. To support his wild extrapolations, he points to nanotechnology and its capacity to merge with biological systems in the human body and control such things as spasms and seizures. He believes that there is no limit to this merger, and that he'll be able to download his consciousness into a computer before his body wears out (He just turned 61). Kurzweil believes he will then be able to control an everlasting synthetic body and soon models will be available to us all. So, in the very near future, instead of pulling up google on your laptop you will be able to pull it up in your mind's eye and thus command knowledge beyond that of Spock. Thus Homo-laptopicus, our present evolutionary model, will evolve into something along the lines of Data.

"What about the soul," you ask? Well the soul is nothing more than a word for the complex computing of our brains that seemed to point to a mystical, spiritual side that we could not fully comprehend. But now that we have taken the reductionist step of reducing the mind to the brain, we realize that we can and soon will transcend our brains with computer brains. In other words, what we call spirituality will soon be possible in the machines that will eventually replace our bodies. Kurzweil believes in what he calls the "age of spiritual machines," when the organic world is replaced by chips and plastic and heaven and earth passes away and becomes a computer. We will communicate inaudibly, mind-to-mind, via something like omnipresent wi-fi. Sound scary? Well not for Kurzweil. He can't wait and neither can Kaku it seems.

This is exactly the path predicted by Lewis in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength. Kurzeil's humanoid-of-the-future does not live off the land but in space, where he has solved the problem of space travel and can traverse the universe and the multiverse and date extra-terrestrials. He is literally trillions of times smarter. His is a synthetic world where man no longer eats, grows, or reproduces through sex. I guess the orgasm is purely intellectual.

I've seen Kurzweil on TV too and his mannerisms eerily resemble the scientists in That Hideous Strength. Perhaps I don't know him well enough, but he seems to have already merged and the soul was left holding the door. I pray that he'll soon run into Mr. Bultitude, who might scare it back into him. Lord save us from our vain technological imaginations.

Confronting an Obamanation

The Pope just met with President Obama and challenged him on his abortion and stem-cell research positions. Obama promised to read the Vatican's statement on bioethics. Click on the title to see an article. Please join me in praying that Obama would rethink his views on abortion and stem cell research, repent, and that we would follow him in that repentance. A Damascus Road experience wouldn't hurt either Lord.

The Strangeness & Familiarity of History

John Arnold, in his History: A very Short Introduction, writes:

It has been suggested (by the writer L. P. Hartley) that "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there". Douglas Adams, the science-fiction author, posits an opposite case: the past is truly a foreign country, they do things just like us. Somewhere between these two is the elusive element that attracts us to the past, and prompts us to study history.

Since they do things differently, we learn to question why we do things the way we do. Because they act nobly and mess up just like us, we can learn from them. Arnold also quotes Jean Bodin's Method for the Easy Comprehension of History (1566):

Although history has many eulogists ... yet among them no one has commended her more truthfully and appropriately than the man who called her the "master of life."

Mattress Gravity and the Multiverse

Physicist Michio Kaku explains black holes as the vacuum cleaners of the universe. Like dark matter and dark energy, we cannot see them but we can see them sucking things into the void, even light, and throwing nearby planets and stars off course.

Theoretical physics views the space-time continuum like a fabric stretched over space. The heavy things in space rest on this fabric and sink into it, like I sink into my mattress. Now imagine that a golf goes rolling by while I'm sitting on my mattress. The dent in the mattress created by my weight makes the golf ball roll in or change its course as it goes by. That's gravity. OK, so my mattress gravity wouldn't allow the golfball to escape.

Now a black hole is a rip right through the mattress or in this case the space-time fabric of our universe. Black hole gravity is so strong that it spaghettifies everything that passes through the it. Kaku speculates that if you could survive a black hole, you might come out the other side into a parallel universe . This leads me to discuss the recent theory that our universe is only one universe of many that make up the multiverse.

Steven P. Meyer, author of the newly released Signature in the Cell (click on my blog title), writes that cosmologists have posited the multiverse in order to overcome the odds against evolution. Many Christians do not realize that the big bang has made atheists more than a little uncomfortable. This is because the big bang implies that our universe had a beginning. Atheists realized that something has to be eternal in order for us to exist, since nothing could only produce nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit). They correctly reasoned that if they reject God, then matter itself has to be eternal and thus uncreated. So they came up with the steady state theory of the universe, which says that matter and the universe are steady and timeless. But alas, the evidence for the big bang blew the steady state theory away! This is because the big bang did not explode in space and time, it was the explosion of space and time, and the stuff that would condense into atoms and form matter after 300,000 years. Thus matter too had a beginning at the moment of the bang and could not be timeless. That leaves God as the only other option.

Now if the universe had a beginning, like Scripture teaches, it is also going to have an end, like Scripture teaches. The big bang is either going to go on expanding and die of heat loss, as entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches, or it is going to collapse and implode. So we had a beginning and we will have an end. This presents a second difficulty for atheists. Probability calculations say the chances for the exact alignment of raw materials (like amino acids) required for the evolution of life in our universe are insurmountable. But that's only true, say some physicists, if you only have one universe. Say there is an infinite number of universes like the bubbles in a bubble bath. These bubble universes are eternally bumping into each other and exploding, merging, and splitting into new universes. It's only a matter of time (pun not intended) before one of these universes overcomes the odds and life evolves.

Steven Meyer points out however, that the cell itself presents further problems for atheists. Darwin thought the cell was about as complex as a piece of jelly, but molecular biologists have discovered that its more complex that a Saturn Five rocket. In other words, it requires an engineering degree to comprehend the genetic information and processes within a cell . Since you have to be a rocket scientist to understand what's going on in a cell, it was probably designed by a higher intelligence.

It's amazing that we are only just know approaching an understanding of the cell by using models from complex technology systems. If it takes one to know one, and we like to think of ourselves as intelligent beings, then perhaps the cell had an intelligent designer. But wait! If there's an eternal multiverse then it could happen by chance, right? But Meyer argues that we have no no evidence that a multiverse exists, so our theories must operate within the known limits of the known universe. (Anyone want a shave with Ockham's razor?) This means that the design and information that we find in a cell still requires an intelligent designer. Even if all of the amino acids and raw materials beat the odds and align, they do not produce life by themselves. The law of biogenesis says that life cannot come from non-living matter.

Now on an imaginative level, I kind of like the idea of the multiverse, like C. S. Lewis' wood between the worlds in The Magician's Newphew. Just don't try to use the multiverse to make the impossible possible. God must live from all eternity in order for biological life to exist in this temporal universe or anywhere else. Only Life can beget life. With that established, I find it fascinating that there might be worlds within worlds or parallel universes that we could travel to via black-holes, worm-holes, teleporting, light speed, ridiculous speed, or ludicrous speed (Space Balls anyone?). But I guess the speed of my imagination will have to do for now. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were something like Lewis' "wood between the worlds?"

Through a Glass Really Darkly!

I recently saw a documentary about the universe with physicist Michio Kaku (his day job is string theory). It turns out that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. Cosmologists know this because the universe is cooling down. Through satellite technology they have mapped the microwaves of the universe and if they crank up the contrast they can see what it looked like when it was a baby. By mapping the cooling microwaves, they can calculate that 13.7 billion years ago time and space erupted in the big bang.

How do they know this? Well they know that the universe is expanding because Hubble looked through his telescope in the 1920s and discovered that galaxies are moving away from us and we are moving away from them. Well if everything is expanding, then it must have been much closer together at one time. That original density was more compact than an atom because an atom is mostly space. Imagine an atom where the electrons aren't orbiting a nucleus but are packed into it, and we have an idea of how dense we once were. Since I find this difficult to understand, I must still be pretty dense! Hee, hee, hee! Anyway, this density, called the singularity, suddenly expanded or banged, and space has been getting spacier ever since. Now that's definitely true, especially for blondes (Wow, my first blonde joke!).

Moving on, our solar system began when a star exploded in what they call a supernova. How do they know that? Evidently, a supernova is the only thing that's hot enough to cook the elements that make up our bodies. So our universe began with a big bang and our solar system began in a supernova.

Another interesting fact about our universe is that galaxies aren't behaving according to the laws of gravity. There is not enough known mass in the galaxies of our universe to hold them together in a gravitational field. It also turns out that the distant parts are orbiting at the same speeds as the nearer planets and stars. If Newton's laws are correct they should be orbiting slower and spinning out of the gravitational pull. Either we chuck gravity and falling apples or we come up with something else that's holding things together.

Ever since John Mayer's latest album, we don't want to question "Gravity," so there must be some mass that astronomers can't see. This mass has been nicknamed "dark matter." Evidently atoms make up only about 5% of the universe, so how much dark matter is there? According to calculations based on observations, they can only come up with a little over 20% dark matter. So 75% of the universe was still missing and that was a problem. But there's no problem that can't be solved by bringing in another problem.

Curiously, the universe isn't slowing down as expected but expanding faster and faster. Now if the gravity brakes aren't working, maybe its time to question gravity. But alas, John Mayer is too entrenched in popular culture, and we can't discredit Newton's falling apple (much less his work on figs), so there has to be an energy we can see that's causing the universe to accelerate. Enter dark energy and presto, there's the other 75% of universe!

The only remaining problem is that we cannot detect dark matter or energy, but we are trying. There's an underground lab in England trying to pick up the matter as it passes through the earth. Now that's a good use of someone's taxpayer dollars or science funding! And people think theology is an esoteric waste of time. There was a time, I think it was called the Enlightenment, when if you brought up theories about invisible things you got laughed out of universities, but now you can make a career out it! The Lord has a sense of humor, doesn't he?

Proverbs 25:2

It is the glory of God to conceal things,
but the glory of kings is to search things out.

Psalm 59:7-9

⁷There they are, bellowing with their mouths
with swords in their lips—
for "Who," they think, "will hear us?"

⁸But you, O LORD, laugh at them;
you hold all the nations in derision.

⁹O my Strength, I will watch for you,
for you, O God, are my fortress.

Hebrews 1:3

³He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Colossians 1:16-18

¹⁶For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.¹⁷And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

God is not Male but Masculine

Lewis rebukes feminism, not the feminine, in That Hideous Strength. The Director is counseling Jane, who resents her husbands' invasion of her being.

"Yes," said the director. "There is no escape. If it were a virginal rejection of the male, He would allow it. Such souls can bypass the male and go on to meet something far more masculine, higher up, to which they must make yet deeper surrender. But your trouble has been what the old poets call Daugnier. We call it pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud, irruptive, possessive thing--the gold lion, the bearded bull--which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness as the dwarfs scattered the carefully made bed. The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it. You had better agree with your adversary quickly."

"You mean I shall have to become a Christian?" said Jane.

"It looks like it," said the Director.

This is why the church is called the "bride of Christ." We are all feminine in relation to Him. This is also why men were given the unenviable office of headship in all spheres: the family, the church, and should we even say the state?

The White Flag

In That Hideous Strength Lewis writes:

Yet, the very first moment you tried to be good, the universe let you down. It revealed gaps you had never dreamed of. It invented new laws for the express purpose of letting you down. That was what you got for your pains.

The cynics, then, were right. But at this thought, he stopped sharply. Some flavor that came with it had given him pause. Was this the other mood beginning again? Oh not that, at any price. He clenched his hands. No, no, no. He could not stand this much longer. He wanted Jane; he wanted Mrs. Dimble; he wanted Denniston. He wanted somebody or something. "Oh don't don't let me go back into it," he said; and then louder, "don't, don't." All that could in any sense be called himself went into that cry.... Tired like a child after weeping. A dim consciousness that the night must be nearly ended stole over him, and he fell asleep.

If we believe in the Good, the will universe will begin to disappoint and disenchant us. So do we give up like the cynics? No! This is why Jesus said we must become like children, if we are to enter the kingdom of God. We must be humble enough to live by faith and not by sight. We must exercise a simple faith that admits that we can't figure it all out. We can't live by reason alone. We have to put our faith in a God whom we cannot even begin to figure out. We must simply wave the white flag before the Hound of Heaven.

Plato on His Head

Colossians 3:2 says: "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth." By setting our minds on things above we will also be able to see the things above in the things below. Hebrews 922-23:

²³Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. ²⁴For Christ has entered, not into holy places^" made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

The hymn says "turn your eyes upon Jesus and the things of earth will go strangely dim." But as a friend of mine says: "turn your eyes upon Jesus and the things of earth will grow strangely alive!" Take Plato and turn him on his head!

Give Me Scotland or I'll Die

On the way to Edinburgh we saw the most picturesque scenery of the Highlands and Loch Lomond. Loch Lomond is a freshwater Loch, the biggest lake in Great Britain, and the Scottish paradise of the song "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond," whose chorus runs:

Oh, ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road,

And I'll be in Scotland afore ye;

But me and my true love will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.

The next day in Edinburgh we toured the Edinburgh Castle, which was once destroyed under order from Robert the Bruce after he retook it from the English. He couldn't spare enough men to defend it, so he had it burned except for St. Margaret's Chapel. Now that's cutting your losses!

St. Margaret is the only Sottish royal to be sainted. Her chapel still stands and holds about twenty at maximum capacity. Donnie was married there, a privilege given to soldiers, and I'm sure this delighted his father-in-law for obvious reasons. The chapel has small but gorgeous stained glass of St. Margaret and William Wallace.

The Castle dominates the skyline from below and overlooks Edinburgh from above. Castle Rock, the volcanic foundation, was incorportated into the buildings and juts up into the stonework. It was the Queen Elizabeth II's birthday when we were there, so we witnessed a twenty-one gun salute and a bagpiper and the military band played in her honor. Quite regal!

Then it was off to St. Giles Cathedral, the high kirk of Edinburgh, which is known for its hollow crown tower. It also sports a great statue of John Knox, which is ironic, because Knox removed all statues from the churches of Scotland for fear of idolatry. I wonder if he has a sense of humor about now.

In the spirit of the Scottish Reformation we moved on to the oldest house on the royal mile, which is believed by some to be Knox's last home. We found there a great presentation of the Scottish Reformation, complete with honors for Luther and Calvin, and other Scottish reformers.

Knox studied under John Major, who belonged the medieval school of nominalism in which Luther was trained. Major was one of the best scholars of his day who famously said:

It is more moment to understand aright, and clearly to lay down the truth of any matter than to use eloquent language.

This attitude toward Renaissance eloquence did not recommend him to the humanist scholars of the times, but his view of truth certainly influenced reformers like Knox.

Another of Knox's influences, George Wishart was a priest who preached for reform of the Roman church and died a martyr's death for his convictions. According to one story, Wishart's executioner asked forgiveness before the act, and Wishart kissed him saying, "Do thy duty." It is also reported that Wishart's former body guard, watching at a distance, prayed, "Lord, make me like that man." The claymore wielding guard was none other than Knox, who was later captured by Mary de Guise and sentenced to row as a galley slave aboard a British ship. Knox rowed for nineteen months praying: "God give me Scotland or I'll die." Knox wrote that their captors mocked them by shoving a likeness of the Virgin Mary in their faces, commanding them to give devotion. One of the Protestants, perhaps Knox himself, grasped the picture and threw it into the sea saying, "Let our Lady now save herself: she is light enough: let her learn to swim." Knox said that the sailors never bullied them like that again.

After Know escaped, he made it to London where he served a congregation under the Protestant King Edward VI. After the ascension of Edward's Catholic sister Mary Tudor, nicknamed bloody Mary for her burning of Protestants, Knox fled to Geneva. In Geneva, Knox preached for an English speaking congregation and learned Reformed theology and church government under Calvin. Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, but the trip took him four months because of passport problems with Elizabeth, the new Queen of England, who did not care for his latest publication: The First Blast Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. Knox's book had been aimed at the previous queen of England, the Catholic Mary Tudor and her Scottish counterpart Mary Stuart. Knox had written: "How abominable before God is the Empire or Rule of a wicked woman, yea, of a traiteresse and bastard." While Queen Elizabeth was Protestant and not a "wicked traiteresse," you can see why she didn't think much of Knox, being an illegitimate female heir herself. Knox did not even tell Calvin about the treatise and Calvin denied knowledge of it until a year after publication. Perhaps Knox was not the most tactful reformer.

When Knox finally arrived in Scotland, he spearheaded the Protestant movement that established the Presbyterian church as the Church of Scotland. His confrontations with the Catholic Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (not Bloody Mary Tudor of England) supposedly reduced her to tears (probably another blast but in person this time). The Scottish Reformation was unique among reform movements, in that it was established from below by the people rather than from above by the ruler. Knox's views were put into practice by educators who passed them on to the next generation, who would be oppressed, I mean ruled, by Mary Stuart's Catholic son James I. Getting dizzy yet?

Once we were done with our tour of Scottish Reformation history, Andrew Waller and I took the 287 step journey to the top of the magnificent Sir Walter Scott Tower. It was at times so narrow that my muscular frame ;-) had to squeeze through; especially on the way down when I ran into a group going up. Can you say claustrophobia? We snapped some great pics of Castle Rock and the city, and I finished up with a great plate of Haddock fish and chips and wine that night.

When we first met Donnie he informed me that we had been greatly amiss for not having been to Scotland before. I hope we made up for it a little, and laid the foundation for future more extensive travels.

Columba vs. Nessy, Wee Frees, Donnie vs. Me

After Stirling, Donnie drove us to Oban, which is a gorgeous town on the Western Coast of Scotland. We woke bright and early for a ferry ride to Mull, and then we drove across the island for another ferry to Iona. On the way I saw two red deer. The weather was sunny, mid-seventies, and calm. Donnie said he had never seen Iona Bay so calm. We were blessed!

The Irish St. Columba founded Iona in 563 A. D. in order to evangelize the Picts who were living in what would become Scotland. The landscape is windswept and beautiful beyond imagination. Because of the climate, the original buildings lay in ruins of four corners, but a restoration of the Abbey began in mid-twentieth century presents a stunning picture of the original Abbey. The Nunnery is still in ruins, but it is a glorious ruin!

Iona Abbey is known for its Irish crosses and as the likely place of composition for the Book of Kells, popularly known as the most beautiful book in the world. The Book of Kells is a collection from the gospels, and the artwork is so intricate it has been studied under a microscope to fully appreciate the detail.

The architecture of the abbey is humble but graceful. One of the crosses dates from the seventh century and one from the ninth was still standing. Replicas of the originals greet the eye with their elegant statement of faith. They proclaim belief in a God of beauty who redeems our fallen race through self-sacrifice. The Celts proclaimed the beauty of Christ crucified, which was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the philosophical Greeks.

Columba was a warrior monk whose descendants had to defend themselves against Viking Raids. Andrew Waller and I climbed up a stone staircase into a watchtower in the front of the church where there was only room for two very cramped watchmen. The door was all of three-feet high with the words "Stand Fast" engraved upon it. Sobering.

Columba also gives us the first historical sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. His boat almost capsized as a body surfaced alongside the small vessel. A head appeared and Columba hit it with his staff and it swam away. Donnie said that something is there and he thinks is a colony of giant eels that was trapped there in pre-historic times when Loch Ness was connected to the ocean. That's probably more likely though less sensational than the Plesiosaur theory. But I digress.

The arch in the transept of the abbey has a carved face of the tormented soul, which must have served as a constant reminder of what we deserve and thus the need to repent. Small stained glass of St. Patrick (the Patron St. of Ireland), Columba, St. Bridget, and Column Cille (Columba's successor) were also seen in the architecture, as well as ferns which grow out the walls.

Iona bay is blue and green and the clearest most unpolluted water I've ever seen. We met a kilted man who lamented with us that we could only be there for a few hours. He spent one week there every year and said the beaches on the other side of the island are the most beautiful in the world. You probably want to bring a thermal scuba suit however.

We said goodbye to Iona and started out on our journey to Edinburgh. Along the way Donnie explained to us that the Free Church of Scotland split from the Church of Scotland in 1843 and he referred the free churches as "wee frees." He then began to explain how nature was his church. I rejoined that God had authored two books--the book of Scripture and the Book of nature. I then explained that the book of nature was incomplete for life and godliness without the book of Scripture. We wouldn't know of Christ and his salvation without the church, whose God-given job was to proclaim Scripture as God's Word for all of life. I also tried to explain that we wouldn't be able to appreciate nature properly without Scripture. Donnie simply wanted to restate his position however, which, he admitted, was probably wrong. But he also went on to tell us that his Church (not a wee free) in Edinburgh had a new pastor whom everybody seemed to love because he was energetic, always smiling, and made his sermons relevant to the people. He said that he had met his new pastor and felt uplifted and would probably go the next time he had a Sunday off. I wish now that we had planned to stay another day, so we could attend with him. I pray our good man Donnie does attend and that he hears the gospel, so that faith will come by hearing.

Periods of American Church History

Noll identifies various periods of American Church History which I have adapted into the following seven:

1. Colonialization 1492-1776
2. Nationalization 1776-1800
3. Americanization 1800 - 1830
4. Protestant Ascendency 1830-1865
5. Denominationalism 1865 - 1906
6. Modernization 1906-60
7. Secularization 1960-present

What we are dealing with today is a far cry from the original Puritan vision of "a city on a hill" built upon the work of Luther and Calvin.

Church History Equations & American Denominationalism

I've begun reading Mark Noll's The Old Religion in the New World, and he gives four factors that have contributed to the American phenomenon of denominationalism.

1. Space across the Atlantic allowed for drift from the Old World and the massive space of the continent allowed for drift among religious bodies in the New World. Ecclesiastical territories were much harder to govern in the New World, and this led to greater diversity.
2. Race and ethnicity created diversity within Christian bodies as different European nations and African Americans mixed together in society. English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh intermingled in ways that they did not in Britain. English, French, Irish, German, Polish, Italian, Hispanic, and African Catholics have all intersected in the American Catholic Church. German and Scandinavian Lutherans the same way. Though they were victims of enslavement, African peoples have been a permanent part of the American experience from the beginning.
3. Pluralism in the cities and the nation as a whole, not necessarily in the rural parts, has led to schism, denominations, and ecclesiastical competition that is not known in Europe. This pluralism is primarily an extension of number two, and I think they could be considered as one factor for the sake of simplicity.
4. The Lack of Confessional Conservatism or ancient traditions of doctrine and practice made churches vulnerable to influences of democratic liberalism and innovation. George Parkin Grant noted that America is the only nation who has no traditions prior to the Age of Enlightenment and progress. Noll says that in America the only way for a church to be confessional is to be sectarian --

   "that is to actively oppose market-place reasoning; to refuse to abide by the democratic will of majorities; to insist upon higher authorities than the vox populi [voice of the people]; and to privilege ancestral, traditional, or hierarchical will over individual choice" (24).

   This has been difficult to maintain in the face of the American meta-narrative of personal choice, which proudly proclaims with an air of superiority: "I define myself by what I choose." We are Consumers, this is true.

But, when you think of it, personal choice doesn't play a very big role in the things that define us. We don't choose to be born or our parents, language, home, geography, government, country, and, baring suicide, how we die. In our early formative years we also don't choose our school and teachers, wallpaper, cuisine, church, clothes, and an infinite number of other influences. Thus, most of us live in de-nile, which, as we know, is not just a river in Egypt. We think we are individuals, but for all that, we are all individualistic Americans who Europeans think are all the same.

Fredrick Jackson Turner has also argued that since the frontier wasn't closed until the early twentieth century, rugged individualism has constantly been invoked by Americans as our defining characteristic. Thus I would add to Noll's equation:

space + pluralism - confessional conservatism + radical individualism = American denominationalism.

Now to apply. Doug Wilson has said that we need to repent of democracy. Have our democratic institutions led us to believe that we are masters of our destiny, the architects of our own lives? If so, we need to repent, don't we? Alexis DeToqueville, author of the classic Democracy in America, warned of the "tyranny of the Majority" and coined the term "individualism" after studying the American experiment firsthand. We need to repent, don't we? We need to bow the knee to Him as individual Christians, church members, and citizens who submit to him and the authorities he has put over us. Do I hear an Amen?

A Prayer for Fathers

We thank you O' Lord for your fatherhood, and that you have created fathers to model your ways. Give us grace that we may not exasperate our children but bring them up in the fear and admonition of you. 

Father, we know that you were always there to listen to your Son. Your relationship with him broke your heart when he suffered and died for us. I pray that we might invest ourselves entirely in our children. I ask that we would be able to risk everything for them and be vulnerable to their pain and heartache. As you sent him to the cross when he asked if there would be another way, I pray that we might discipline our children in love. 

I ask that as you revealed yourself to your Son Jesus, we would reveal you to our children. May they see your fatherhood in us. May they also see in us fathers who love you, their heavenly Father, with all their strength. May they see fathers who confess their sins, repent, and seek first your kingdom and your righteousness. May our children also see in us men who love their mother and lay down their lives for her. 

Lord, we thank you for our fathers. We thank you for the ways that they pointed us to you, and when they failed us, we thank you that you did not. AMEN.

A Claymore or a Horse!

And suddenly all that Britain which had been so long familiar to him as a scholar rose up like a solid thing. C. S. Lewis  That Hideous Strength

Our group of fifteen dwindled down to five as some headed back to the good ol' US of A, and the rest of us flew into Glasgow. The city is famous for its University, Industry, and its Enlightenment or should I say Endarkenment scholars like David Hume. As we walked out of the terminal we saw a spry little man wearing a kilt and green socks up to the knee. He was holding a sign that said Reformation Tours, and I smiled. We had the right guy! Donnie was a fiery Scott full of patriotic pride and a veritable font of Scottish history! 

He drove us to the church of the Holy Rude (Scottish for Holy Cross) in Stirling. John Knox preached here at the coronation of the young James VI of Scotland, who would become James I of England. James' mother, Mary Queen of Scots, couldn't make the ceremony however, as she was sitting in prison for opposing reform. Interestingly enough, James would later side with his mum, and rebuff the puritans. 

In 1651 guns were installed in the church tower for an assault on Stirling castle. What a picture of the separation of church and state! The church is also famous or should I say infamous for its in-house wars as well. During the 17th century the Presbyterians couldn't agree over a point of theology (imagine that!) and a partition was erected for two rival ministers and their congregations. Now that's what I call a church split! Thank the Lord that today its the Church not the Churches of the Holy Rude. 

From there we proceeded to my favorite castle -- Stirling Castle. This one was not so much for show as for defense. James V was known to descend from the heights of the castle into the town dressed as a commoner. He knew that his court would only tell him what he wanted to hear so he decided to get the news from the horse's mouth. Kind of like meeting Bill at a McDonalds in his jogging suit but different. But I digress. I ran along run along castle walls and took in the stunning vistas, which included the huge William Wallace monument across the way. The castle reminded me of a cross between Rohan and Minis Tirith, as it was built on a huge volcanic rock which overlooked the valley all around and jutted out from it in the back.

Then it was on to Bannockburn where Robert the Bruce, whose family I married into, retook Stirling Castle from the English in the famous battle of 1314. The Bruce was a great strategist and warrior and can be seen in the statues to the right (thanks to Andrew Waller's photography). "Bannockburn" means fair little river, and the Bruce used it to his advantage. He intercepted Edward II and his soldiers who were on their way to resupply Stirling castle. The Bruce's army knelt in the field to receive a blessing from the Abbot and rose to fight for their freedom. One of Edward's men ran out to meet the Bruce in single combat. The Bruce simply waited for the charge, stepped aside at the last second, and brought his axe down on the helmet so hard that the handle broke off leaving the axe head in his adversary's skull. That means that the axe clove the helmet with enough force left over to also cleave the skull! Ouch! 

The next morning the Scott's had an early breakfast, got into formation, and began marching on the English army that outnumbered the it two to one. The unprepared English backed up to reform and suddenly realized that they were trapped in the bend of that Fair-little-river. With water to the left and right and behind and the Scottish army in front, Edward sent his cavalry into the long spears where they were impaled. The English archers got off one volley before they were taken out and the hand-to-hand combat began. When the battle was over, the Scots could cross the river without getting their feet wet. I'm sure you can guess why. 

Medieval battle was gruesome, but it was actually more rare and far less destructive of human life and the environment than modern warfare and this is probably why: You had to face your opponents, look them in the eye, and be willing to die in a very personal way. It better be worth fighting over because there was no such thing as a fly over. There was no targeting non-combatants like women and children either. On the good-guys side, it was usually for self-defense of life and property or for one's neighbor. All the makings of just war, instead the total and even preemptive wars we've seen since WWI. Am I sounding nostalgic? Well if I have to fight let it be for true freedom and give me a claymore or a horse! 

Luther on Schools

"When schools flourish, things go well and the church is secure . . . God has preserved the church through the schools. They are the preservers of the church. Schools don't have a beautiful appearance, and yet they are very useful" -- Martin Luther

Stomping Grounds

To wrap up London, we were also guests at the Tower of London where we saw the royal crown jewels, which sports the biggest cut diamond in the world and looked about the size of a lemon. The outer walls looked to be well-over ten feet thick and then you had another wall around the tower itself. The tower could only be entered by steps leading about thirty feet up the side. In an emergency the steps could be set on fire, leaving the enemy on the outside looking up. The walls also concealed perriers, which were small catapults, that launched massive projectiles that could take out three enemy soldiers at time. It turns out that only two prisoners have ever escape, and one was a priest who received a rope in a bottle of alcoholic beverage. I'll drink to that. Cheers!

In Westminster Abbey we saw Darwin's tomb in the floor of the church. At the top of the archway into the chancel there is a protruding face with tongue sticking out right above Darwin's final resting place. It turns out that the architect didn't care too much for Darwin's theory of unintelligent design! Pun intended.

On our last day in England, we spent the whole day stomping around the royal palace of Hampton Court, where Henry VIII liked to pass his time in luxurious country living. He was buff in his younger years but wasn't much for roughing it. I believe it was here or at Windsor, where Henry hosted emperor Maximillian and got into a fighting match with the young ruler. Report has it that Max knocked Henry on his bum, and Henry found it difficult to turn the other cheek. Wink, wink ....

It was hear that I had my first scone with jam and clotted creme. What a delicacy! Clotted creme is like the creamiest ice cream or frozen custard you've ever tasted, but it's served warm and doesn't melt, except in your mouth. Needless to say, it was delicious beyond belief, and I spent the rest of the day working off the calories in Henry's  sixty acres of gardens.  The gardens contained some of the most beautiful sights and smells on the trip, especially a huge walled rose garden almost the size of a football field!  

There are also over 170 chimneys of red brick and each one is of a unique and usually elaborate design. The small Tudor chapel was one of the most ornate spaces I've ever seen, and I've been in the Vatican! The whole interior reminded me of the Renaissance interiors of Italy. Henry VIII certainly set out to impress. There was also a huge maze of hedgerows where we took many wrong turns until finally popping out. 

Stay tuned for Scotland ....

Londonium

Before I speak of Scotland, there was a few more things to do in London. But before I speak of that Julius Caesar deserves an honorable mention.

He was brought back to life by the Royal Shakespeare Co. in Stratford with Hollywood special affects and sound (probably not what Shakespeare had in mind but give it a chance). The play was good but Mark Anthony was overplayed. The actor had recently done Alien vs. Predator and it seems he was still in that mode. There was no character development, as he played at the same level of emotional intensity for the whole play. This is one of my favs, and I saw the Skakespeare Co. of St.L performance a couple of years ago, where Anthony was more subtle and complex.

We also saw Romeo and Juliet at the Globe which, which by comparison, was stripped down and authentic. No elaborate stage, no mics, just say it and play it. One of my students noted that Romeo was a genetic miracle, as he was black with white parents. Then she commented that maybe he was adopted. Multicultural diversity (which is good) at the expense of realism (which is bad). What's a playgoer to do? Overall, the play was a much better performance than JC and, apart from some unnecessary bawdiness added by crass minds, was excellent.

I also forgot to mention that we toured Tolkein sites through Birmingham with a published Tolkein expert. We saw the inspiration for the two towers which was a massive clock tower whose face glows like an evil eye in the dark and a huge industrial smoke-stake further down. We had lunch with our author who wanted to know if we were creationists after he noticed us looking at the image of Darwin on a pound note. When I told him we believed in Intelligent Design he suggested we better not go there. Good, I really just wanted to hear what he had to say about Tolkien.

He was great on the influence of local geography, Oxford, and Tolkien's bio but clueless about his Christianity. All he could say was that the Lord of the Rings was pagan and that Tolkien was a complex fellow. Many intelligent pagans don't understand that there is not one inch of this world that we Christians don't reclaim for our Lord. Redeem the mythology that points to Christ and some people will still look the other way!

Later we went to St. Paul's Cathedral which is baroque. It has the second largest dome next to St. Peter's in Vatican City and we got to go up this time! The view inside and out was breathtaking. We also saw the tombs of Admiral Lord Nelson who died defeating Napoleon at Trafalgar and the Duke of Wellington who ended Napoleon's career at Waterloo. We also visited Covent Gardens, Cheapside, and went up in the London Eye and looked Big Ben in the eye!

Two Blokes and a Birdie

Since the last post we've been to the tomb of Beren and Luthien (Tolkien and his wife Edith) and Stratford upon Avon. The Cotswalds were gorgeous on the way and the mortarless stone walls were quite a curiosity. 

I bought a briar at Stratford and had my first pasty. Yum! Then for an adventure at the King Edward School. After being turned away at the locked 16th century door, I proceeded with a partner in crime to ask students to let us in. They were more than happy to oblige but the fascists in school office were not about to let in a Reformation scholar writing an article on the Reformation and Education. In their defense, I guess I forgot to mention that. Oh well!

We then went to Cambridge where we saw the pulpit where Robert Barnes preached the opening sermon of the English Reformation. We also stood outside St. Mary's where Luther's books were burned and Martin Bucer, John Calvin's mentor, later preached under King Edward VI. He was buried in the church, but when the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor came to power, she exhumed poor Bucer's bones and had them burned. Not to be outdone, the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, Mary's successor and cousin, gathered his ashes and had then re-interred. Let's hear it for the Elizabethan Settlement!  

Let's also hear it for Cambridge, who recognized C.S. Lewis' contribution to Medieval and Renaissance literature and brought him over from Oxford at the end of his career. It seems the Magdalen snobs at Oxford resented the fact that Lewis wrote for the common man as well as the literary and was an unapologetic apologist for the Christian faith. They decided to punish him by withholding the chair that was his due, so Tolkien helped convince his friend that a prophet could find honor at the bridge on the river Cam. 

From there we went to our hostel which was emitting horrible fumes and black smoke. So we proceeded to a nearby bed and breakfast and bangers and mash with a best bitter at Prince Albert's pub. Who said the English can't cook? We all agree they can brew! We woke up to ham and eggs and I made it to two services. King's College Cambridge had an astonishing ceiling of laced stone and twelve beautiful stained glass windows and a full grown male choir that filled our ears with glorious song. The sermon at St. Mary's expounded the Trinity. Did you know that God is what happens when the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a loving personal relationship from all eternity? It's not just two bloke's and a birdie. Now that's theological nourishment for the soul!  

Now we are in London where we have toured the Abbey at Westminster, the British Museum and its incredible holdings which include the Parthenon Frieze. By the time we were done we felt like we had not only been to Greece but Rome and the Viking Burial at Sutton Hoo. Hoplites, Emperors, and Viking Warriors? I think my spinning head broke the sound barrier! Just to cool our brains we went back to that Abbey I mentioned earlier for an Evensong service. More Later. Now it's off to bed and on to Glasgow airport for more research tomorrow.

The Bird and the O' Baby!

I am currently leading a tour in the UK and we are on our second day. The first found us in Beaconsfield worshiping at GK Chesterton's church, his grave, and top meadow. Then we were on to explore the wilderness that is the back yard of the Kilns and then the house, which led us all the way to C. S. Lewis's attic where we found a copy of Boxen (his childhood fantasy).  

Today we journeyed through Oxford. We did a walking tour de force and went to the top of St. Mary the Virgin where our breath was stolen by the view of the gothic city! We also stood in martyr's corner where Thomas Cranmer was condemned to the stake by Mary Tudor. Later, I saw the spot of his burning. Sobering.

Then it was on to the Eagle and Child Pub (aka the Bird and the Baby by Lewis and the Inklings), where we raised a bitter to the Inklings and our headmaster Chris Baker, who so wanted to be there. 

Later we visited Merton and Magdalen Colleges where Tolkein and Lewis taught, respectively. After punting the Cherwell (and Evan Johnson and I did the punting ourselves!) we attended Evensong services at the gorgeous Magdalen chapel, where the boys choir filled the angelic architecture with their voices. Then Addison's walk where I thought I overheard Tolkein explaining to Lewis how Christ was the myth made fact.

Then dinner and the long walk home and a glass of red wine before retiring which I'm about to do right .......