Friends...I do not always send you every update from our work, but this one seemed very important, and also it shows the heart of one of our leaders in one of the countries that our ministry works in. We can't say the country, but God knows! I hope it encourages you in your spiritual life, too.
Brother Kevin
(I have modified the language somewhat, but only in a few places)
Dear Brothers,
I am sitting and praying for all of you, as soon I push the send button of my Prayer request to you all.
Thank you brother and sisters for your prayers for my trip to _______ (another Asian city), with your prayers the Immigration of _________ released my Passport with the necessary Visa on January 30th. There were300 People who submitted their Passports for the visa at the same time, but they held all of us.
On the night of January 29th of this year, I heard a voice from the Spirit, urging me to read Mark 14:36. Obeying the Spirit, I took my Furkan, and began to read (NOTE from Kevin: Furkan is one of the names we use in our ministry for the Bible. The term comes from the Quran, and it means The Criterion...the revelation Allah gave for deciding what is true and not true....it is mentioned in the Quran but without naming which book it is specifically).
I starting reading it, and during the reading time I was crying, and with a big voice (Kevin: that is, he began to read it out loud) I read it again. My wife and children got up and asked what happened, and my brother from the building started asking me, "What happen?"
I told all of them that I was praying, reading the Furkan and doing "Tahjud" (Kevin: this term means calling on the Lord in the middle of the night). My family went back to bed, but I felt that God was taking some burden, of what sort I do not know, off of me.
The next day, at 10 AM, my visa agent called and said that my passport had arrived, with the Visa and ticket that I had so urgently needed were ready for someone to pick up.
I flew to __________. Now I am in _________________, spending time with our mbbs and other friends.
Pleas pray for me:
1) That I will be good teacher with these friends from _____________ (another Muslim area) in ___________, to teach them about how to help the Muslims in these areas to be open and receptive to our ministry, and to our Lord.
2) Pray for __________ (one of our partners). He is having health problems. His kidneys are getting weaker.
3) Pray for me, as I prepare to travel, both my journeys away from and towards home, that God will keep me safe, and bless my efforts to spread the Good News.
4) Pray for my sister ________. She is having a difficult time with college, as it is somewhat of a cultural shock. Pray that God will give her the strength to persevere and succeed, as she endeavors to learn how to help those in medical needs.
Thank you for your prayers, to God be all glory, power and praise, now and for ever, Amen.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Bringing Hope To The Helpless In Haiti
The Province of St. Peter has been able to raise support for the crisis in Haiti to provide over 100,000 meals for those in need. The CEEC is in direct contact with long term friends Bobby and Sherry Burnette (founders of Love A Child, a non-profit organiation specializing in reaching out to others) who have 2 orphanages, a medical clinic and have started numerous churches and feeding programs in Haiti. They currently are feeding over 27,000 meals per day. They are commended by the Evangelical Council of Financial Accountability (ECFA) which is the same agency that recommends support for World Vision, The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, etc. This is an organization with a long and prestigious history and we are delighted to partner with them. Those who may wish to support the Haitian crisis may contact Archbishop McClanahan at DrRussMac@aol.com. Alternatively, you can donate online at www.sainthad.ning.com, by clicking on the PayPal link.
Friday, January 8, 2010
If You Can Find a Better Deal, Take It!
Don Allen forwarded me this article by Ann Coulter. While I don't agree with all of Ms. Coulter's opinions, I found the article to be rather interesting, and believe that you will, as well.
Someone mentioned Christianity on television recently and liberals reacted with their usual howls of rage and blinking incomprehension.
On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately:
"The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."
Hume's words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals' copious ignorance of Christianity. (Also illustrating the words of the Bible: "How is it you do not understand me when I speak? It is because you cannot bear to listen to my words." John 8:43.)
In The Washington Post , Tom Shales demanded that Hume apologize, saying he had "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."
Is Buddhism about forgiveness? Because, if so, Buddhists had better start demanding corrections from every book, magazine article and blog posting ever written on the subject, which claims Buddhists don't believe in God, but try to become their own gods.
I can't imagine that anyone thinks Tiger's problem was that he didn't sufficiently think of himself as a god, especially after that final putt in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year.
In light of Shales' warning Hume about "what people are saying" about him, I hope Hume's a Christian, but that's not apparent from his inarguable description of Christianity. Of course, given the reaction to his remarks, apparently one has to be a regular New Testament scholar to have so much as a passing familiarity with the basic concept of Christianity.
On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the "separation of church and television" (a phrase that also doesn't appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity "out-of-the-blue" on "a political talk show."
Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!
What religion -- what topic -- induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)
Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage's indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity "offers the best deal -- it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can't."
In fact, that's exactly what Christianity does. It's the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and "radical sex advice columnist f*****" like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)
God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you're in. Your sins are washed away from you -- sins even worse than adultery! -- because of the cross.
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." Colossians 2:14.
Surely you remember the cross, liberals -- the symbol banned by ACLU lawsuits from public property throughout the land?
Christianity is simultaneously the easiest religion in the world and the hardest religion in the world.
In the no-frills, economy-class version, you don't need a church, a teacher, candles, incense, special food or clothing; you don't need to pass a test or prove yourself in any way. All you'll need is a Bible (in order to grasp the amazing deal you're getting) and probably a water baptism, though even that's disputed.
You can be washing the dishes or walking your dog or just sitting there minding your business hating Susan Sarandon and accept that God sent his only son to die for your sins and rise from the dead ... and you're in!
"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9.
If you do that, every rotten, sinful thing you've ever done is gone from you. You're every bit as much a Christian as the pope or Billy Graham.
No fine print, no "your mileage may vary," no blackout dates. God ought to do a TV spot: "I'm God Almighty, and if you can find a better deal than the one I'm offering, take it."
The Gospel makes this point approximately 1,000 times. Here are a few examples at random:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:8.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23.
In a boiling rage, liberals constantly accuse Christians of being "judgmental." No, we're relieved.
Christianity is also the hardest religion in the world because, if you believe Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead, you have no choice but to give your life entirely over to Him. No more sexual promiscuity, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no killing inconvenient old people or unborn babies -- no doing what all the other kids do.
And no more caring what the world thinks of you -- because, as Jesus warned in a prophecy constantly fulfilled by liberals: The world will hate you.
With Christianity, your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don't deserve it. It's the best deal in the universe.
Someone mentioned Christianity on television recently and liberals reacted with their usual howls of rage and blinking incomprehension.
On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately:
"The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."
Hume's words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals' copious ignorance of Christianity. (Also illustrating the words of the Bible: "How is it you do not understand me when I speak? It is because you cannot bear to listen to my words." John 8:43.)
In The Washington Post , Tom Shales demanded that Hume apologize, saying he had "dissed about half a billion Buddhists on the planet."
Is Buddhism about forgiveness? Because, if so, Buddhists had better start demanding corrections from every book, magazine article and blog posting ever written on the subject, which claims Buddhists don't believe in God, but try to become their own gods.
I can't imagine that anyone thinks Tiger's problem was that he didn't sufficiently think of himself as a god, especially after that final putt in the Arnold Palmer Invitational last year.
In light of Shales' warning Hume about "what people are saying" about him, I hope Hume's a Christian, but that's not apparent from his inarguable description of Christianity. Of course, given the reaction to his remarks, apparently one has to be a regular New Testament scholar to have so much as a passing familiarity with the basic concept of Christianity.
On MSNBC, David Shuster invoked the "separation of church and television" (a phrase that also doesn't appear in the Constitution), bitterly complaining that Hume had brought up Christianity "out-of-the-blue" on "a political talk show."
Why on earth would Hume mention religion while discussing a public figure who had fallen from grace and was in need of redemption and forgiveness? Boy, talk about coming out of left field!
What religion -- what topic -- induces this sort of babbling idiocy? (If liberals really want to keep people from hearing about God, they should give Him his own show on MSNBC.)
Most perplexing was columnist Dan Savage's indignant accusation that Hume was claiming that Christianity "offers the best deal -- it gives you the get-out-of-adultery-free card that other religions just can't."
In fact, that's exactly what Christianity does. It's the best deal in the universe. (I know it seems strange that a self-described atheist and "radical sex advice columnist f*****" like Savage would miss the central point of Christianity, but there it is.)
God sent his only son to get the crap beaten out of him, die for our sins and rise from the dead. If you believe that, you're in. Your sins are washed away from you -- sins even worse than adultery! -- because of the cross.
"He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross." Colossians 2:14.
Surely you remember the cross, liberals -- the symbol banned by ACLU lawsuits from public property throughout the land?
Christianity is simultaneously the easiest religion in the world and the hardest religion in the world.
In the no-frills, economy-class version, you don't need a church, a teacher, candles, incense, special food or clothing; you don't need to pass a test or prove yourself in any way. All you'll need is a Bible (in order to grasp the amazing deal you're getting) and probably a water baptism, though even that's disputed.
You can be washing the dishes or walking your dog or just sitting there minding your business hating Susan Sarandon and accept that God sent his only son to die for your sins and rise from the dead ... and you're in!
"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9.
If you do that, every rotten, sinful thing you've ever done is gone from you. You're every bit as much a Christian as the pope or Billy Graham.
No fine print, no "your mileage may vary," no blackout dates. God ought to do a TV spot: "I'm God Almighty, and if you can find a better deal than the one I'm offering, take it."
The Gospel makes this point approximately 1,000 times. Here are a few examples at random:
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:8.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23.
In a boiling rage, liberals constantly accuse Christians of being "judgmental." No, we're relieved.
Christianity is also the hardest religion in the world because, if you believe Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead, you have no choice but to give your life entirely over to Him. No more sexual promiscuity, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no killing inconvenient old people or unborn babies -- no doing what all the other kids do.
And no more caring what the world thinks of you -- because, as Jesus warned in a prophecy constantly fulfilled by liberals: The world will hate you.
With Christianity, your sins are forgiven, the slate is wiped clean and your eternal life is guaranteed through nothing you did yourself, even though you don't deserve it. It's the best deal in the universe.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Areas of greatest Christian persecution
SANTA ANA, CA-- Two of the most notorious and restrictive regimes in the world top the Open Doors 2010 World Watch List (WWL) of 50 countries which are the worst persecutors of Christians.
In the No. 1 spot for the eighth straight time is North Korea, the country where every religious activity is recognized as an insurrection to the North Korean socialist principles. In 2009, the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il targeted Christians all over the country. That resulted in arrests, torture and killings. North Korean leaders are desperately trying to control society in order to eradicate all Christian activities. There are an estimated 200,000 North Koreans in political prisons, including 40,000 to 60,000 Christians.
A veteran North Korean watcher, who can't be identified due to security reasons, states: "Christians are the target of fierce government action, and once caught, are not regarded as human. Last year we had evidence that some were used as guinea pigs to test chemical and biological weapons."
Iran is now No. 2 on the list. Iran was previously No. 3 on the WWL for many years, behind Saudi Arabia. The wave of arrests of Christians which started in 2008 continued even stronger during 2009, resulting in the arrest of at least 85 Christians. It is suspected that the arrests are a way for the Iranian government to distract attention from internal problems, including the domestic turmoil after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most of those arrested were mistreated in prison. The turmoil and rioting continued at the end of 2009.
Of the countries on the top 10 list, eight have Islam as their dominant religion -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Maldives, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritania and Uzbekistan. North Korea and Laos are communist countries. Also, 35 of the 50 countries on the list have Islamic governments.
"It is certainly not a shock that North Korea is No. 1 on the list of countries where Christians face the worst persecution," says Carl Moeller, President/CEO of Open Doors USA. "There is no other country in the world where Christians are persecuted in such a horrible and systematic manner. Three generations of a family are often thrown into prison when one member is incarcerated.
"Iran jumping to No. 2 is noteworthy. Iranian Muslim Background Believers Maryam Rustampoor and Marzieh Amirzadeh were arrested simply for being Christians and refusing to recant their faith in Jesus Christ. They were released almost two months ago, helped by an advocacy campaign by Open Doors and other Christian organizations. But these two brave women along with hundreds of other believers still remain at risk inside Iran."
Moeller adds that despite the growth of persecution in many regions of the world, Christianity continues to flourish. "There is a strong group of Christians in North Korea and actually the number of Christians in North Korea has grown in the last 10 years. Many are coming to Christ in the Muslim World. But we need to continue to embrace them in prayer in 2010."
Saudi Arabia at No. 3 remains unchanged in the situation of religious freedom for Christians. However, no reports of Christians killed or physically harmed for their faith were received, and only one report of a Christian arrested was noted.
Somalia moved up one spot to the No. 4 position as religious freedom for Christians became worse. In April the Parliament voted unanimously to institute Islamic law.
Rounding out the top 10 are Maldives No. 5, followed by Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritania, Laos and Uzbekistan.
The Yemeni Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but it also declares that Islam is the state religion and that Sharia Law is the source of all legislation. The Yemeni government allows expatriates some freedom to live out their faith, but Yemeni citizens are not allowed to convert to Christianity (or other religions). Converts from Islamic background may face the death penalty if their new faith is discovered. Last June nine expatriate Christian health workers were kidnapped by armed men. A few days later the mutilated bodies of three of them were found. The fate of the remaining six aid workers remains unknown.
New to the top 10 this year is the North African country of Mauritania, holding the No. 8 position. Mauritania jumped 10 spots, the biggest increase of any country in the poll. The situation deteriorated due to the murder of a Christian aid worker in June 2009, the arrest and torture of 35 Mauritanian Christians in July and the arrest of a group of 150 of sub-Saharan Christians in August.
The lone country to drop out of the top 10 list is the tiny African country of Eritrea, which fell from No. 9 to No. 11. Open Doors recorded fewer reports on persecution of Christians in Algeria, India, Cuba, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, which dropped from No. 41 to No. 48 -- the biggest improvement of any country in 2009.
The World Watch List, started by the Open Doors Research Department in 1991, seeks to understand the unique persecution fingerprint of each country. This is to ensure effective intervention since Open Doors ministers to the persecuted church in more than 45 countries worldwide. The data is derived from a questionnaire containing 53 questions sent to Open Doors co-workers, key church leaders and recognized experts in 70 countries. The questionnaire examines every aspect of persecution, including the degree of legal restriction, state attitudes, how free the church is to organize itself, as well as noting incidents of persecution, such as church burnings, anti-Christian riots and even martyrdom. Open Doors is uniquely positioned to provide this research as it is the world's largest mission agency working on behalf of the persecuted.
In the No. 1 spot for the eighth straight time is North Korea, the country where every religious activity is recognized as an insurrection to the North Korean socialist principles. In 2009, the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-Il targeted Christians all over the country. That resulted in arrests, torture and killings. North Korean leaders are desperately trying to control society in order to eradicate all Christian activities. There are an estimated 200,000 North Koreans in political prisons, including 40,000 to 60,000 Christians.
A veteran North Korean watcher, who can't be identified due to security reasons, states: "Christians are the target of fierce government action, and once caught, are not regarded as human. Last year we had evidence that some were used as guinea pigs to test chemical and biological weapons."
Iran is now No. 2 on the list. Iran was previously No. 3 on the WWL for many years, behind Saudi Arabia. The wave of arrests of Christians which started in 2008 continued even stronger during 2009, resulting in the arrest of at least 85 Christians. It is suspected that the arrests are a way for the Iranian government to distract attention from internal problems, including the domestic turmoil after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Most of those arrested were mistreated in prison. The turmoil and rioting continued at the end of 2009.
Of the countries on the top 10 list, eight have Islam as their dominant religion -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Maldives, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritania and Uzbekistan. North Korea and Laos are communist countries. Also, 35 of the 50 countries on the list have Islamic governments.
"It is certainly not a shock that North Korea is No. 1 on the list of countries where Christians face the worst persecution," says Carl Moeller, President/CEO of Open Doors USA. "There is no other country in the world where Christians are persecuted in such a horrible and systematic manner. Three generations of a family are often thrown into prison when one member is incarcerated.
"Iran jumping to No. 2 is noteworthy. Iranian Muslim Background Believers Maryam Rustampoor and Marzieh Amirzadeh were arrested simply for being Christians and refusing to recant their faith in Jesus Christ. They were released almost two months ago, helped by an advocacy campaign by Open Doors and other Christian organizations. But these two brave women along with hundreds of other believers still remain at risk inside Iran."
Moeller adds that despite the growth of persecution in many regions of the world, Christianity continues to flourish. "There is a strong group of Christians in North Korea and actually the number of Christians in North Korea has grown in the last 10 years. Many are coming to Christ in the Muslim World. But we need to continue to embrace them in prayer in 2010."
Saudi Arabia at No. 3 remains unchanged in the situation of religious freedom for Christians. However, no reports of Christians killed or physically harmed for their faith were received, and only one report of a Christian arrested was noted.
Somalia moved up one spot to the No. 4 position as religious freedom for Christians became worse. In April the Parliament voted unanimously to institute Islamic law.
Rounding out the top 10 are Maldives No. 5, followed by Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritania, Laos and Uzbekistan.
The Yemeni Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but it also declares that Islam is the state religion and that Sharia Law is the source of all legislation. The Yemeni government allows expatriates some freedom to live out their faith, but Yemeni citizens are not allowed to convert to Christianity (or other religions). Converts from Islamic background may face the death penalty if their new faith is discovered. Last June nine expatriate Christian health workers were kidnapped by armed men. A few days later the mutilated bodies of three of them were found. The fate of the remaining six aid workers remains unknown.
New to the top 10 this year is the North African country of Mauritania, holding the No. 8 position. Mauritania jumped 10 spots, the biggest increase of any country in the poll. The situation deteriorated due to the murder of a Christian aid worker in June 2009, the arrest and torture of 35 Mauritanian Christians in July and the arrest of a group of 150 of sub-Saharan Christians in August.
The lone country to drop out of the top 10 list is the tiny African country of Eritrea, which fell from No. 9 to No. 11. Open Doors recorded fewer reports on persecution of Christians in Algeria, India, Cuba, Jordan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, which dropped from No. 41 to No. 48 -- the biggest improvement of any country in 2009.
The World Watch List, started by the Open Doors Research Department in 1991, seeks to understand the unique persecution fingerprint of each country. This is to ensure effective intervention since Open Doors ministers to the persecuted church in more than 45 countries worldwide. The data is derived from a questionnaire containing 53 questions sent to Open Doors co-workers, key church leaders and recognized experts in 70 countries. The questionnaire examines every aspect of persecution, including the degree of legal restriction, state attitudes, how free the church is to organize itself, as well as noting incidents of persecution, such as church burnings, anti-Christian riots and even martyrdom. Open Doors is uniquely positioned to provide this research as it is the world's largest mission agency working on behalf of the persecuted.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Guidelines For Fasting, By Abp. McClanahan
Biblical fasting is refraining from food accompanied by prayer. The primary purpose, of which, is to seek the face of God.
How to Begin Ask God to give you a clear goal. Be specific. Why are you fasting? Do you need direction, healing, restoration of marriage or family issues? Are you facing financial difficulties? Ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. Pray daily and read the Bible. Fasting must be accompanied by prayer or we have missed the point. The primary purpose is to seek the face of God. I have asked that we especially pray for the Province, our Diocese and local churches or ministries.
Preparing Spiritually Confess your sins to God. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal areas of sin and/or weakness. Forgive all who have offended you and ask forgiveness from those you may have offended (Mark 11:25; Luke 11:4; 17:3-4). Surrender fully to Jesus asking Him to reveal any conflicts or desires that try to hinder you in your walk before Him.(Romans 12:1-2). Remember that the ministry to which He has called us is an overflow of our personal life with Him.
Deciding What to Fast The type of fasting you choose is up to you and God. You could go on a regular fast in which you only drink water, you may desire to have a partial fast which may mean consuming only liquids or fasting certain meals or like Daniel, who abstained from sweets and meats, and the only liquid he drank was water. A complete fast is abstaining from all food and water and should never exceed three days. If there are physical issues please consult your Doctor before proceeding with a complete fast. Remember to replace that time with prayer and Bible study.
Deciding How Long You may fast as long as you like. Most can easily fast from one to three days, but you may feel the grace to go longer, even as much as 21 to 40 days. Use wisdom and pray for guidance. I am asking that you prayerfully consider a minimum of one week.
What to Expect When you fast your body detoxifies, eliminating toxins from your system. This can cause mild discomfort such as headaches and irritability during withdrawal from caffeine and sugars. And naturally, you will have hunger pains. Drink lots of warm water, this will not only help to cleanse your system but will also reduce or stop headaches. Limit your activity and exercise moderately. Take time to rest. Fasting brings about miraculous results. You are following Jesus' example when you fast. Spend time listening to praise and worship. Pray as often as you can throughout the day. Get away from the normal distractions as much as possible and keep your heart and mind set on seeking God's face.
How to End Don't overeat when the time comes to end your fast. Begin eating solid food gradually; eat small portions or snacks. For those on a prolonged fast juices and fruits are recommended to gradually break the fast.
How to Begin Ask God to give you a clear goal. Be specific. Why are you fasting? Do you need direction, healing, restoration of marriage or family issues? Are you facing financial difficulties? Ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. Pray daily and read the Bible. Fasting must be accompanied by prayer or we have missed the point. The primary purpose is to seek the face of God. I have asked that we especially pray for the Province, our Diocese and local churches or ministries.
Preparing Spiritually Confess your sins to God. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal areas of sin and/or weakness. Forgive all who have offended you and ask forgiveness from those you may have offended (Mark 11:25; Luke 11:4; 17:3-4). Surrender fully to Jesus asking Him to reveal any conflicts or desires that try to hinder you in your walk before Him.(Romans 12:1-2). Remember that the ministry to which He has called us is an overflow of our personal life with Him.
Deciding What to Fast The type of fasting you choose is up to you and God. You could go on a regular fast in which you only drink water, you may desire to have a partial fast which may mean consuming only liquids or fasting certain meals or like Daniel, who abstained from sweets and meats, and the only liquid he drank was water. A complete fast is abstaining from all food and water and should never exceed three days. If there are physical issues please consult your Doctor before proceeding with a complete fast. Remember to replace that time with prayer and Bible study.
Deciding How Long You may fast as long as you like. Most can easily fast from one to three days, but you may feel the grace to go longer, even as much as 21 to 40 days. Use wisdom and pray for guidance. I am asking that you prayerfully consider a minimum of one week.
What to Expect When you fast your body detoxifies, eliminating toxins from your system. This can cause mild discomfort such as headaches and irritability during withdrawal from caffeine and sugars. And naturally, you will have hunger pains. Drink lots of warm water, this will not only help to cleanse your system but will also reduce or stop headaches. Limit your activity and exercise moderately. Take time to rest. Fasting brings about miraculous results. You are following Jesus' example when you fast. Spend time listening to praise and worship. Pray as often as you can throughout the day. Get away from the normal distractions as much as possible and keep your heart and mind set on seeking God's face.
How to End Don't overeat when the time comes to end your fast. Begin eating solid food gradually; eat small portions or snacks. For those on a prolonged fast juices and fruits are recommended to gradually break the fast.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
A Prayer For The New Year
Dear Lord, please give me
A few friends who understand me and remain my friends;
A work to do which has real value,
without which the world would be the poorer;
A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed;
An understanding heart;
A sense of humor;
Time for quiet, silent meditation;
A feeling of the presence of God;
The patience to wait for the coming of these things,
With the wisdom to recognize them when they come.
Amen.
May God continue to bless and guide you, your family and your ministry in the upcoming year.
Dr. Charles Travis
A few friends who understand me and remain my friends;
A work to do which has real value,
without which the world would be the poorer;
A mind unafraid to travel, even though the trail be not blazed;
An understanding heart;
A sense of humor;
Time for quiet, silent meditation;
A feeling of the presence of God;
The patience to wait for the coming of these things,
With the wisdom to recognize them when they come.
Amen.
May God continue to bless and guide you, your family and your ministry in the upcoming year.
Dr. Charles Travis
The Oxford Tractarians, Renewers of the Church, By James Kiefer
I found the following article online at http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/249.html, written by one James Kiefer. It's a great discussion of the impact that the Tractarians had on Anglicanism, and I hope you enjoy it.
In the early Church, it was the normal practice for every baptised Christian to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion at least once a week. But gradually the practice changed. It was still understood that a Christian would attend a celebration of the Liturgy every Sunday, but attending the Liturgy did not necessarily mean receiving the Sacrament. By the early 1500's, most Christians in Western Europe other than clergy or monastics received the Sacrament once a year, at Easter. The rest of the year, a typical devout Christian would attend the Liturgy every Sunday, but, not understanding Latin, would spend most of his time praying silently or in an undertone in his pew, while the priest read the Liturgy in Latin in an undertone at the altar some distance away. Partway through the service, a bell would ring and the priest would hold up the consecrated bread and wine, and the private prayers would stop for a moment as all eyes focused on what Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself had appointed as the vehicle of His abiding presence among His people. Then the private prayers would resume.
It was the hope of the sixteenth-century Reformers to restore the ancient practice of the Church by celebrating the Liturgy in the language of the people, and encouraging the people to participate, not only by listening to the readings and joining in the prayers, but also by reverently receiving the Sacrament at every Liturgy they attended. In England, at least, they only partly achieved their goals.
The English Reformers provided that, at every celebration of the Liturgy, after the prayers and Bible readings and the sermon and Creed, there would be a general confession of sins, and that those intending to receive the Sacrament would come forward and kneel at the altar rail to repeat the Prayer of Confession, while the rest of the congregation would remain in their pews, and recite the prayer along with them. The priest would turn around and see how many worshippers were at the rail. If there were at least three, he would place the bread and wine on the altar and proceed to consecrate them. Unless there were at least three, he was to close the service at that point with a Blessing and Dismissal. The theory was that when the people were thus dramatically reminded that receiving the Sacrament was the reason for having the service, they would flock to receive. Instead, they simply got used to the idea that the Liturgy would be celebrated only a few times a year. On most Sundays, the Sunday morning service in most parishes consisted of Morning Prayer (one Reading from the Psalms, one Old Testament Reading, one New Testament Reading, interspersed with Prayers and Hymns, taking about fifteen minutes), Litany (prayer with responses, taking about eight minutes), and Ante-Communion (first part of the Liturgy, with the Ten Commandments, a reading from an Epistle and another from a Gospel, the Creed, plus a few hymns and prayers, lasting about fifteen minutes). As the years passed, this was reduced in many parishes to Morning Prayer with Hymns and Sermon.
Then, in the 1830's, several lecturers at Oxford University, reading their copies of the Book of Common Prayer, noticed that this was not the intended state of affairs. The Prayer Book provided for a sermon at the Liturgy, but not at Morning Prayer, for the taking of a collection at the Liturgy, but not at Morning Prayer. In every way it was clear that the compilers of the Prayer Book had intended the Liturgy to be the principal service on every Sunday and Feast Day. So the lecturers got busy and wrote a series of pamphlets explaining this and various related points to their readers. They called the pamphlets Tracts For the Times, By Residents in Oxford, and the public referred to them as The Oxford Tracts.
The immediate result was a total washout. The majority of their readers, both clergy and laity, responded in effect by saying: "Yes, you have shown that the universal custom of the Church from apostolic times down to the sixteenth century was for every Christian congregation to celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday. You have shown that it was the clear intent of the reformers here in England to continue this practice. And I suppose that in theory it would be a good thing if we did continue it. But, well, you know...."
The problem was that Englishmen had forgotten what it was like to celebrate the Liturgy every Sunday. Because they had no experience of such a thing, they simply could not imagine its actually being done. And when an occasional priest who had been convinced by the Tracts tried to abolish ten o'clock Morning Prayer on Sundays in favor of a ten o'clock Liturgy instead, his congregation simply refused to have anything to do with it.
Eventually the leaders of the Tractarian Movement (as it came to be called) saw their mistake and began advising priests as follows. "Don't try to change the ten o'clock service. Leave it as Morning Prayer. Start another service at eight o'clock. Make it Holy Communion. Get anyone you can to come to it. But be there every Sunday at eight and celebrate the Liturgy even if there is only one person present besides yourself. And keep it up for Years!" And they did. Eventually the generation of Anglicans who said, "But we have never had the Liturgy except at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. That's the way it has always been!" was replaced by a new generation who said: "Every Sunday we have Holy Communion at eight and Morning Prayer at ten, and Evening Prayer at six. That's the way it has always been!" At first, it was understood that the Early Service was only for the exceptionally devout, perhaps ten per cent of a typical congregation. But the numbers grew, and gradually the ten o'clock service became Holy Communion on the first Sunday of each month, and the rest of the time Morning Prayer, and then the first and third Sundays of each month, and every Sunday in Lent, and then.... It is perhaps worth mentioning that, while the Tractarians were recovering for the Anglican Church the practice of celebrating the Liturgy every Sunday and every major Feast Day (and, in the larger parishes, every day), other Churches that had lost that practice in the sixteenth century were also recovering it (partly because their theologians were paying some attention to the Tractarians), and the Roman Catholic Church was gradually encouraging its people to receive the Holy Communion every Sunday, and more generally to be participants in the Liturgy and not mere spectators. Indeed, I understand that in the East Orthodox Churches, the receiving of the Holy Communion by the ordinary layperson every Sunday is far commoner now than it was a century ago.
[Note: a correspondent reminds me that, almost a century before the Tractarians, the Wesleys were receiving the Holy Communion daily at Oxford. He suggests that the picture of a pre-Tractarian England in which frequent celebrations of the Eucharist were unheard-of smacks of Puseyite propaganda. Point taken. It was wrong of me to state that frequent celebrations were unheard-of. On the other hand, there were many parishes in which celebrations were rare, and the Tractarian movement greatly reduced the number of such parishes.]
Back to the subject of the Oxford Tracts. There were ninety Tracts in all, written over the eight years from 1833 to 1841 -- about one Tract per month. They created a school of thought and action in the Anglican Communion that came to be called the Tractarian Movement, or Puseyism, or the Oxford Movement. (Kindly note that the Oxford Group, or Moral Re-Armament, or Buchmanism, was founded in the 1920's or 1930's by Frank Buchman, and is not at all the same thing). The Tractarians defended what is sometimes called High Anglicanism, or High Churchmanship, which involves emphasis on the continuity of the Anglican Church from earliest times (in the third century or earlier) through the sixteenth century, and down to the present. Part of what is meant by continuity is illustrated by something I have heard from a friend who teaches English history of the Tudor and Stuart period. He has researched the history of a certain small monastery. In the early 1500's, the monks chanted the Psalms in Latin every day from the book called the Breviary, as a part of the monastic routine. When their monastery was abolished by Henry VIII, they were not simply set adrift, but were attached to the choir of a cathedral, where they continued to chant the Psalms in Latin. When King Henry died and Edward succeeded him, they chanted the Psalms in English as part of Morning and Evening Prayer, as found in the Book of Common Prayer. When Mary came to the throne, they switched back to Latin and the Breviary. When Mary died and Elizabeth came to the throne, they returned to chanting the Psalms in English from the Book of Common Prayer. And through all these years, they never missed a day. There is no reason to suppose that they thought of themselves as having turned their backs on one Church or religion and adopted another. (The change from Latin to English was doubtless a jolt for some of them, but no more so than the same change for Roman Catholic monks in our own time.)
It must not be supposed that the Tractarians were concerned only with a renewed emphasis on the sacraments. They were instumental in stirring up the Church's concern for the welfare, both spiritual and material, of the working classes. The building of factories had flooded many areas with workers who were without churches to minister to them. The Tractarians built churches in these areas, and in slum areas, and staffed them with dedicated priests. The influence of their work was widespread. For example:
One disciple of Pusey was R M Benson, the founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist. One of Benson's disciples was Fr C N Field, who came to America and became deeply interested in the housing conditions of the poor in Boston. One of his disciples was Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch. She says that it was Fr Field and the other priests of the Ssje who first taught her to visit the poor. Mrs Simkhovitch is accounted one of the founders of social work. she founded Greenwich House in New York City. One of her disciples was Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor in the New Deal. She and Mrs Simkhovitch went to Harold Ickes and persuaded him to put public housing on the agenda of the New Deal. Thus the American public housing program of the 1930's and after was indirectly a result of the Tractarian movemento [I owe this point to Mr. Robert Rea.]
The leaders of the Tractarian Movement were Froude, Keble, Pusey, and Newman, all fellows of Oriel College, Oxford.
Richard Hurrell Froude (1803--28 Feb 1836) was a scholar whose conversation did much to encourage the other tractarians. He died while the movement was still young. In 1838-9, shortly after his death, his friends published his diary and some papers he had written. One of the papers was called, "On Reserve in Communicating Religious Doctrine," and pointed out that in the early years of the Church, when being a Christian was an offence punishable by death, Christian church services were not open to the general public, and Christians were sometime evasive when asked about their beliefs by outsiders. Froude thought that this might justify Christians today in not volunteering information about their beliefs to those who would only misunderstand and sneer at them. The paper caused a public uproar. Many persons already suspected that the Tractarians were secret agents of the Pope, and Froude's paper looked like an explicit admission that they were up to something crooked.
John Keble (1792--29 March 1866), ordained in 1816, tutor at Oxford from 1818 to 1823, published in 1827 a book called The Christian Year, containing poems for the Sundays and Feast Days of the Church Year. The book sold many copies, and was highly effective in spreading Keble's devotional and theological views. Keble was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1831 to 1841. In 1833, Parliament voted to combine several dioceses and reduce the number of bishops, and on 14 July 1833, in the University Chapel, Keble responded with a sermon entitled "On National Apostacy," which is generally accounted as the beginning of the Oxford Movement. (It is also called the Assizes Sermon. "Assizes" is the English word for a term of the law courts, and at the beginning of each term the judges hear a sermon called the Assizes Sermon.) Keble wrote 9 of the 90 Tracts. The Tractarians urged the study of the early Christian writers, and arranged for their translation and publication. Keble translated the works of Irenaeus of Lyons (second century). and produced an edition of the works of Richard Hooker, a distinguished Anglican theologian who died in 1600. He also wrote more books of poems, and numerous hymn lyrics. Three years after his death, his friends and admirers established Keble College at Oxford.
Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800--16 September 1882) was competent in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, and was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, from 1828 until his death. He wrote two of the Oxford Tracts (on Fasting and on Baptism), and preached a sermon on the Eucharist that got him suspended from university preaching for two years. This episode gained publicity for the Tractarian Movement, and greatly increased the sales of the Tracts. In 1845 he helped to found a convent in London, the first Anglican convent since the 1500's. His best-known books defend the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the inerrancy of Scripture (see his Daniel the Prophet, and The Minor Prophets). In the great cholera epidemic of 1866, he did outstanding work in caring for the sick. Two years after his death, his friends and admirers established Pusey House at Oxford, a library and study center.
John Henry Newman (1801--11 August 1890) became a Calvinist in his teens, and moved thence to religious liberalism, and thence, under the influence of Froude at Oriel College, to High Anglicanism. He edited the entire series of the Oxford Tracts, and wrote 24 of them himself (including Tract Ninety, which brought the series to an abrupt end), but his books had a more profound influence, particularly his Lectures On the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), his University Sermons (1843), and his Parochial and Plain Sermons (1834-1842). He also wrote extensively on the theologians and theological issues of the first few centuries of the Church, as in his Arians of the Fourth Century (1833) and his translation, with notes and commentary, of Selected Treatises of St. Athanasius (1842-1844). It was his conviction, based on historical studies, that the Anglican Church was in its teaching and organization closer to the early Church than the Roman Church was, and that consequently the Anglican Church had a better right than the Roman to be called Catholic and the spiritual heir of the apostles. However, his writings were taken by many readers to be a defense of Romanist or semi-Romanist beliefs.
Matters came to a head in 1841 with the publication of Tract Ninety, written by Newman. This tract dealt with the Thirty-Nine Articles, adopted by the Church of England in the sixteenth century. Anglican clergy in Newman's day were required to subscribe them. Opponents of the Tractarians often complained that the Tractarian position was too close to that of Rome, and included beliefs condemned by the Articles. To this, Newman replied by asserting that the Articles had been drawn up (like a modern party platform) in an attempt to include as many persons as possible, and that they therefore were worded in such a way that someone could hold a position not very different from the Roman one and nevertheless be able to sign the Articles with a clear conscience. For example,
Article 25 (Of the Sacraments) reads, in part:
The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, Or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.
The first reaction of the reader will be that this condemns the practice of holding up the consecrated Elements at the Liturgy so that the worshippers might reverently behold them. But a Roman Catholic, though he would insist that this is a proper thing to do, would, after a moment's thought, agree that this is not the purpose for which the Sacrament was instituted. He would therefore find no difficulty in signing this particular Article, or at least this portion of the Article.
Article 22 (On Purgatory) reads, in part:
The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons,...
IS... repugnant to the Word of God.
Here, Newman says that he repudiates the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, but not the doctrine that there is a Purgatory. This may seem like an obviously dishonest play on words, but in fact there is a distinction between the ideas of Purgatory as Purification and Purgatory as Punishment. In the writings of (for example) Dante in the fourteenth century, Purgatory is a place where Christians are cleansed after death from any lingering affection for sin, and are sanctified so that they may enter with pure hearts and minds into the joy of heaven. That the process of being made better is sometimes painful is incidental. On the other hand, in the writings of Roman Catholics in the sixteenth century (see More and Fisher among those writing in English), Purgatory is treated almost entirely as a place where one is tortured as punishment and payment for one's misdeeds. One can repudiate the latter notion (which both in the time of Fisher and More and in the later time of Newman could not unreasonably be called "the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory") without repudiating the former one -- the one expressed in Dante. And Newman, in his poem The Dream of Gerontius, does in fact magnificently reassert the Dantean understanding of Purgatory.
Tract Ninety had a very different effect on the British public from the one that Newman had hoped for. It was taken as proof that the Tractarians were undercover agents for the Pope, dishonest men who cleverly twisted the words of creeds around to mean something quite different from their plain meaning. (The publication two years earlier of Froude's "On Reserve in Communicating Religious Doctrine," referred to above, helped to re-enforce the suspicion that the Tractarians had a hidden agenda.) The Bishop of Oxford asked the Tractarians to discontinue the series, and they did. Newman was crushed and bewildered by the fury that descended on him from all sides. He was a gentle man, not relishing the rough-and-tumble of controversy, and being called a Jesuitical scoundrel and hypocrite by men whose good will and good opinion of him meant a great deal to him was a shattering experience. In 1843 he resigned his post at Oxford, and his position as vicar of St Mary's in Oxford, and went into retirement, where he devoted himself to writing a book called An Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine. In October of 1845 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and a few weeks later published the Essay. It argued that doctrinal positions could grow, and develop, and change, and that, although the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in modern times differed from the teachings of earlier times (as he had pointed out in his historical studies while still an Anglican), this was an instance of legitimate development of ideas. The Roman Church was uncertain how to make use of his talents. He was ordained as a priest, and it was proposed to establish a Roman Catholic University in Ireland and to put him in charge of it, but the plan fell through. He was also asked to prepare a new translation of the Scriptures into English for Roman Catholic use, but this project also was cancelled. Suspected of Romanism when an Anglican, he was suspected of Anglicanism when a Roman, and his essay, "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine" narrowly escaped condemnation as heretical.
In 1864, Newman was publicly attacked by an Anglican priest, Charles Kingsley, who suggested that Newman, even when supposedly an Anglican, had been secretly an agent of Rome, serving one side while wearing the uniform of the other. Newman replied in a book called Apologia Pro Vita Sua (A Defense of the Author's Life), in which he explained the mental processes by which he came to hold the Roman Catholic position. The result of this controversy was to win for Newman a great deal of public sympathy and affection. In 1870 (the year in which the first Vatican Council proclaimed the dogma of Papal infallibility), he published An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (usually called The Grammar of Assent), in which he considers the process by which one decides to commit oneself to a certain intellectual position. In 1879 he was summoned to Rome and made a cardinal-deacon by Pope Leo XIII. (He was never a bishop. The College of Cardinals is the group of men who elect a new Bishop of Rome (that is, a new Pope) when the old one dies. It is the ancient custom that a bishop should be elected by the clergy of his diocese, and to be a cardinal is to be an honorary clergyman of the city of Rome and vicinity. There are cardinal-bishops, cardinal-priests, and cardinal-deacons. Although most cardinals are bishops, one need only be a priest in order to be a cardinal-priest, and a priest or deacon in order to be a cardinal-deacon. In this century, the Vatican has adopted a policy of appointing only bishops to the College of Cardinals.) After becoming a cardinal-deacon, Newman spent the remainder of his life quietly in Birmingham, at a religious house which he had established there called the Oratory of St Philip Neri. He died 11 August 1890.
Although the Tractarians were Anglicans, there is perhaps no Christian group that has not been in some degree influenced, directly or indirectly, by their work.
PRAYER (traditional language)
Grant unto us, O God, that in all time of our testing we may Know thy presence and obey thy will; that, following the example of thy servants Edward Pusey, Richard Froude, John Keble, and John Newman, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what thou givest us to do, and endure what thou givest us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
PRAYER (contemporary language)
Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know your Presence and obey your will; that, following the examples of your servants Edward Pusey, Richard Froude, John Keble, and John Newman, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Psalm 106:1-5 or 84:7-12
1 Peter 2:19-23
Matthew 13:44-52 (St2)
In the early Church, it was the normal practice for every baptised Christian to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion at least once a week. But gradually the practice changed. It was still understood that a Christian would attend a celebration of the Liturgy every Sunday, but attending the Liturgy did not necessarily mean receiving the Sacrament. By the early 1500's, most Christians in Western Europe other than clergy or monastics received the Sacrament once a year, at Easter. The rest of the year, a typical devout Christian would attend the Liturgy every Sunday, but, not understanding Latin, would spend most of his time praying silently or in an undertone in his pew, while the priest read the Liturgy in Latin in an undertone at the altar some distance away. Partway through the service, a bell would ring and the priest would hold up the consecrated bread and wine, and the private prayers would stop for a moment as all eyes focused on what Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself had appointed as the vehicle of His abiding presence among His people. Then the private prayers would resume.
It was the hope of the sixteenth-century Reformers to restore the ancient practice of the Church by celebrating the Liturgy in the language of the people, and encouraging the people to participate, not only by listening to the readings and joining in the prayers, but also by reverently receiving the Sacrament at every Liturgy they attended. In England, at least, they only partly achieved their goals.
The English Reformers provided that, at every celebration of the Liturgy, after the prayers and Bible readings and the sermon and Creed, there would be a general confession of sins, and that those intending to receive the Sacrament would come forward and kneel at the altar rail to repeat the Prayer of Confession, while the rest of the congregation would remain in their pews, and recite the prayer along with them. The priest would turn around and see how many worshippers were at the rail. If there were at least three, he would place the bread and wine on the altar and proceed to consecrate them. Unless there were at least three, he was to close the service at that point with a Blessing and Dismissal. The theory was that when the people were thus dramatically reminded that receiving the Sacrament was the reason for having the service, they would flock to receive. Instead, they simply got used to the idea that the Liturgy would be celebrated only a few times a year. On most Sundays, the Sunday morning service in most parishes consisted of Morning Prayer (one Reading from the Psalms, one Old Testament Reading, one New Testament Reading, interspersed with Prayers and Hymns, taking about fifteen minutes), Litany (prayer with responses, taking about eight minutes), and Ante-Communion (first part of the Liturgy, with the Ten Commandments, a reading from an Epistle and another from a Gospel, the Creed, plus a few hymns and prayers, lasting about fifteen minutes). As the years passed, this was reduced in many parishes to Morning Prayer with Hymns and Sermon.
Then, in the 1830's, several lecturers at Oxford University, reading their copies of the Book of Common Prayer, noticed that this was not the intended state of affairs. The Prayer Book provided for a sermon at the Liturgy, but not at Morning Prayer, for the taking of a collection at the Liturgy, but not at Morning Prayer. In every way it was clear that the compilers of the Prayer Book had intended the Liturgy to be the principal service on every Sunday and Feast Day. So the lecturers got busy and wrote a series of pamphlets explaining this and various related points to their readers. They called the pamphlets Tracts For the Times, By Residents in Oxford, and the public referred to them as The Oxford Tracts.
The immediate result was a total washout. The majority of their readers, both clergy and laity, responded in effect by saying: "Yes, you have shown that the universal custom of the Church from apostolic times down to the sixteenth century was for every Christian congregation to celebrate the Lord's Supper every Sunday. You have shown that it was the clear intent of the reformers here in England to continue this practice. And I suppose that in theory it would be a good thing if we did continue it. But, well, you know...."
The problem was that Englishmen had forgotten what it was like to celebrate the Liturgy every Sunday. Because they had no experience of such a thing, they simply could not imagine its actually being done. And when an occasional priest who had been convinced by the Tracts tried to abolish ten o'clock Morning Prayer on Sundays in favor of a ten o'clock Liturgy instead, his congregation simply refused to have anything to do with it.
Eventually the leaders of the Tractarian Movement (as it came to be called) saw their mistake and began advising priests as follows. "Don't try to change the ten o'clock service. Leave it as Morning Prayer. Start another service at eight o'clock. Make it Holy Communion. Get anyone you can to come to it. But be there every Sunday at eight and celebrate the Liturgy even if there is only one person present besides yourself. And keep it up for Years!" And they did. Eventually the generation of Anglicans who said, "But we have never had the Liturgy except at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. That's the way it has always been!" was replaced by a new generation who said: "Every Sunday we have Holy Communion at eight and Morning Prayer at ten, and Evening Prayer at six. That's the way it has always been!" At first, it was understood that the Early Service was only for the exceptionally devout, perhaps ten per cent of a typical congregation. But the numbers grew, and gradually the ten o'clock service became Holy Communion on the first Sunday of each month, and the rest of the time Morning Prayer, and then the first and third Sundays of each month, and every Sunday in Lent, and then.... It is perhaps worth mentioning that, while the Tractarians were recovering for the Anglican Church the practice of celebrating the Liturgy every Sunday and every major Feast Day (and, in the larger parishes, every day), other Churches that had lost that practice in the sixteenth century were also recovering it (partly because their theologians were paying some attention to the Tractarians), and the Roman Catholic Church was gradually encouraging its people to receive the Holy Communion every Sunday, and more generally to be participants in the Liturgy and not mere spectators. Indeed, I understand that in the East Orthodox Churches, the receiving of the Holy Communion by the ordinary layperson every Sunday is far commoner now than it was a century ago.
[Note: a correspondent reminds me that, almost a century before the Tractarians, the Wesleys were receiving the Holy Communion daily at Oxford. He suggests that the picture of a pre-Tractarian England in which frequent celebrations of the Eucharist were unheard-of smacks of Puseyite propaganda. Point taken. It was wrong of me to state that frequent celebrations were unheard-of. On the other hand, there were many parishes in which celebrations were rare, and the Tractarian movement greatly reduced the number of such parishes.]
Back to the subject of the Oxford Tracts. There were ninety Tracts in all, written over the eight years from 1833 to 1841 -- about one Tract per month. They created a school of thought and action in the Anglican Communion that came to be called the Tractarian Movement, or Puseyism, or the Oxford Movement. (Kindly note that the Oxford Group, or Moral Re-Armament, or Buchmanism, was founded in the 1920's or 1930's by Frank Buchman, and is not at all the same thing). The Tractarians defended what is sometimes called High Anglicanism, or High Churchmanship, which involves emphasis on the continuity of the Anglican Church from earliest times (in the third century or earlier) through the sixteenth century, and down to the present. Part of what is meant by continuity is illustrated by something I have heard from a friend who teaches English history of the Tudor and Stuart period. He has researched the history of a certain small monastery. In the early 1500's, the monks chanted the Psalms in Latin every day from the book called the Breviary, as a part of the monastic routine. When their monastery was abolished by Henry VIII, they were not simply set adrift, but were attached to the choir of a cathedral, where they continued to chant the Psalms in Latin. When King Henry died and Edward succeeded him, they chanted the Psalms in English as part of Morning and Evening Prayer, as found in the Book of Common Prayer. When Mary came to the throne, they switched back to Latin and the Breviary. When Mary died and Elizabeth came to the throne, they returned to chanting the Psalms in English from the Book of Common Prayer. And through all these years, they never missed a day. There is no reason to suppose that they thought of themselves as having turned their backs on one Church or religion and adopted another. (The change from Latin to English was doubtless a jolt for some of them, but no more so than the same change for Roman Catholic monks in our own time.)
It must not be supposed that the Tractarians were concerned only with a renewed emphasis on the sacraments. They were instumental in stirring up the Church's concern for the welfare, both spiritual and material, of the working classes. The building of factories had flooded many areas with workers who were without churches to minister to them. The Tractarians built churches in these areas, and in slum areas, and staffed them with dedicated priests. The influence of their work was widespread. For example:
One disciple of Pusey was R M Benson, the founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist. One of Benson's disciples was Fr C N Field, who came to America and became deeply interested in the housing conditions of the poor in Boston. One of his disciples was Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch. She says that it was Fr Field and the other priests of the Ssje who first taught her to visit the poor. Mrs Simkhovitch is accounted one of the founders of social work. she founded Greenwich House in New York City. One of her disciples was Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor in the New Deal. She and Mrs Simkhovitch went to Harold Ickes and persuaded him to put public housing on the agenda of the New Deal. Thus the American public housing program of the 1930's and after was indirectly a result of the Tractarian movemento [I owe this point to Mr. Robert Rea.]
The leaders of the Tractarian Movement were Froude, Keble, Pusey, and Newman, all fellows of Oriel College, Oxford.
Richard Hurrell Froude (1803--28 Feb 1836) was a scholar whose conversation did much to encourage the other tractarians. He died while the movement was still young. In 1838-9, shortly after his death, his friends published his diary and some papers he had written. One of the papers was called, "On Reserve in Communicating Religious Doctrine," and pointed out that in the early years of the Church, when being a Christian was an offence punishable by death, Christian church services were not open to the general public, and Christians were sometime evasive when asked about their beliefs by outsiders. Froude thought that this might justify Christians today in not volunteering information about their beliefs to those who would only misunderstand and sneer at them. The paper caused a public uproar. Many persons already suspected that the Tractarians were secret agents of the Pope, and Froude's paper looked like an explicit admission that they were up to something crooked.
John Keble (1792--29 March 1866), ordained in 1816, tutor at Oxford from 1818 to 1823, published in 1827 a book called The Christian Year, containing poems for the Sundays and Feast Days of the Church Year. The book sold many copies, and was highly effective in spreading Keble's devotional and theological views. Keble was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1831 to 1841. In 1833, Parliament voted to combine several dioceses and reduce the number of bishops, and on 14 July 1833, in the University Chapel, Keble responded with a sermon entitled "On National Apostacy," which is generally accounted as the beginning of the Oxford Movement. (It is also called the Assizes Sermon. "Assizes" is the English word for a term of the law courts, and at the beginning of each term the judges hear a sermon called the Assizes Sermon.) Keble wrote 9 of the 90 Tracts. The Tractarians urged the study of the early Christian writers, and arranged for their translation and publication. Keble translated the works of Irenaeus of Lyons (second century). and produced an edition of the works of Richard Hooker, a distinguished Anglican theologian who died in 1600. He also wrote more books of poems, and numerous hymn lyrics. Three years after his death, his friends and admirers established Keble College at Oxford.
Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800--16 September 1882) was competent in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, and was Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, from 1828 until his death. He wrote two of the Oxford Tracts (on Fasting and on Baptism), and preached a sermon on the Eucharist that got him suspended from university preaching for two years. This episode gained publicity for the Tractarian Movement, and greatly increased the sales of the Tracts. In 1845 he helped to found a convent in London, the first Anglican convent since the 1500's. His best-known books defend the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the inerrancy of Scripture (see his Daniel the Prophet, and The Minor Prophets). In the great cholera epidemic of 1866, he did outstanding work in caring for the sick. Two years after his death, his friends and admirers established Pusey House at Oxford, a library and study center.
John Henry Newman (1801--11 August 1890) became a Calvinist in his teens, and moved thence to religious liberalism, and thence, under the influence of Froude at Oriel College, to High Anglicanism. He edited the entire series of the Oxford Tracts, and wrote 24 of them himself (including Tract Ninety, which brought the series to an abrupt end), but his books had a more profound influence, particularly his Lectures On the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), his University Sermons (1843), and his Parochial and Plain Sermons (1834-1842). He also wrote extensively on the theologians and theological issues of the first few centuries of the Church, as in his Arians of the Fourth Century (1833) and his translation, with notes and commentary, of Selected Treatises of St. Athanasius (1842-1844). It was his conviction, based on historical studies, that the Anglican Church was in its teaching and organization closer to the early Church than the Roman Church was, and that consequently the Anglican Church had a better right than the Roman to be called Catholic and the spiritual heir of the apostles. However, his writings were taken by many readers to be a defense of Romanist or semi-Romanist beliefs.
Matters came to a head in 1841 with the publication of Tract Ninety, written by Newman. This tract dealt with the Thirty-Nine Articles, adopted by the Church of England in the sixteenth century. Anglican clergy in Newman's day were required to subscribe them. Opponents of the Tractarians often complained that the Tractarian position was too close to that of Rome, and included beliefs condemned by the Articles. To this, Newman replied by asserting that the Articles had been drawn up (like a modern party platform) in an attempt to include as many persons as possible, and that they therefore were worded in such a way that someone could hold a position not very different from the Roman one and nevertheless be able to sign the Articles with a clear conscience. For example,
Article 25 (Of the Sacraments) reads, in part:
The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, Or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.
The first reaction of the reader will be that this condemns the practice of holding up the consecrated Elements at the Liturgy so that the worshippers might reverently behold them. But a Roman Catholic, though he would insist that this is a proper thing to do, would, after a moment's thought, agree that this is not the purpose for which the Sacrament was instituted. He would therefore find no difficulty in signing this particular Article, or at least this portion of the Article.
Article 22 (On Purgatory) reads, in part:
The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons,...
IS... repugnant to the Word of God.
Here, Newman says that he repudiates the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, but not the doctrine that there is a Purgatory. This may seem like an obviously dishonest play on words, but in fact there is a distinction between the ideas of Purgatory as Purification and Purgatory as Punishment. In the writings of (for example) Dante in the fourteenth century, Purgatory is a place where Christians are cleansed after death from any lingering affection for sin, and are sanctified so that they may enter with pure hearts and minds into the joy of heaven. That the process of being made better is sometimes painful is incidental. On the other hand, in the writings of Roman Catholics in the sixteenth century (see More and Fisher among those writing in English), Purgatory is treated almost entirely as a place where one is tortured as punishment and payment for one's misdeeds. One can repudiate the latter notion (which both in the time of Fisher and More and in the later time of Newman could not unreasonably be called "the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory") without repudiating the former one -- the one expressed in Dante. And Newman, in his poem The Dream of Gerontius, does in fact magnificently reassert the Dantean understanding of Purgatory.
Tract Ninety had a very different effect on the British public from the one that Newman had hoped for. It was taken as proof that the Tractarians were undercover agents for the Pope, dishonest men who cleverly twisted the words of creeds around to mean something quite different from their plain meaning. (The publication two years earlier of Froude's "On Reserve in Communicating Religious Doctrine," referred to above, helped to re-enforce the suspicion that the Tractarians had a hidden agenda.) The Bishop of Oxford asked the Tractarians to discontinue the series, and they did. Newman was crushed and bewildered by the fury that descended on him from all sides. He was a gentle man, not relishing the rough-and-tumble of controversy, and being called a Jesuitical scoundrel and hypocrite by men whose good will and good opinion of him meant a great deal to him was a shattering experience. In 1843 he resigned his post at Oxford, and his position as vicar of St Mary's in Oxford, and went into retirement, where he devoted himself to writing a book called An Essay On the Development of Christian Doctrine. In October of 1845 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and a few weeks later published the Essay. It argued that doctrinal positions could grow, and develop, and change, and that, although the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in modern times differed from the teachings of earlier times (as he had pointed out in his historical studies while still an Anglican), this was an instance of legitimate development of ideas. The Roman Church was uncertain how to make use of his talents. He was ordained as a priest, and it was proposed to establish a Roman Catholic University in Ireland and to put him in charge of it, but the plan fell through. He was also asked to prepare a new translation of the Scriptures into English for Roman Catholic use, but this project also was cancelled. Suspected of Romanism when an Anglican, he was suspected of Anglicanism when a Roman, and his essay, "On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine" narrowly escaped condemnation as heretical.
In 1864, Newman was publicly attacked by an Anglican priest, Charles Kingsley, who suggested that Newman, even when supposedly an Anglican, had been secretly an agent of Rome, serving one side while wearing the uniform of the other. Newman replied in a book called Apologia Pro Vita Sua (A Defense of the Author's Life), in which he explained the mental processes by which he came to hold the Roman Catholic position. The result of this controversy was to win for Newman a great deal of public sympathy and affection. In 1870 (the year in which the first Vatican Council proclaimed the dogma of Papal infallibility), he published An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (usually called The Grammar of Assent), in which he considers the process by which one decides to commit oneself to a certain intellectual position. In 1879 he was summoned to Rome and made a cardinal-deacon by Pope Leo XIII. (He was never a bishop. The College of Cardinals is the group of men who elect a new Bishop of Rome (that is, a new Pope) when the old one dies. It is the ancient custom that a bishop should be elected by the clergy of his diocese, and to be a cardinal is to be an honorary clergyman of the city of Rome and vicinity. There are cardinal-bishops, cardinal-priests, and cardinal-deacons. Although most cardinals are bishops, one need only be a priest in order to be a cardinal-priest, and a priest or deacon in order to be a cardinal-deacon. In this century, the Vatican has adopted a policy of appointing only bishops to the College of Cardinals.) After becoming a cardinal-deacon, Newman spent the remainder of his life quietly in Birmingham, at a religious house which he had established there called the Oratory of St Philip Neri. He died 11 August 1890.
Although the Tractarians were Anglicans, there is perhaps no Christian group that has not been in some degree influenced, directly or indirectly, by their work.
PRAYER (traditional language)
Grant unto us, O God, that in all time of our testing we may Know thy presence and obey thy will; that, following the example of thy servants Edward Pusey, Richard Froude, John Keble, and John Newman, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what thou givest us to do, and endure what thou givest us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
PRAYER (contemporary language)
Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know your Presence and obey your will; that, following the examples of your servants Edward Pusey, Richard Froude, John Keble, and John Newman, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Psalm 106:1-5 or 84:7-12
1 Peter 2:19-23
Matthew 13:44-52 (St2)
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