The Arrow's Path

I will be honest. I really hate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This is no doubt heresy to secular liberals, but I do. Now, before you shout me down, let me be clear: I do not hate Martin Luther King, Jr. in fact, in some ways I quite admire the man. I have no problem with having a day that celebrates his legacy. What I despise is how we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy on that day. I find the secular holiday that supposedly honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to to trite and superficial, to the point of being demeaning of his legacy. Why do I say this? The fact is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.was a Christian. Not only was he a Christian, he was a Baptist minister. He had a sincere belief and relationship with Christ. Under-girding all of his political philosophy and theories of equality was the very basic premise: Mankind must look to God because humans are sinful. Take, for example, this sermon he preached in 1954. I quote directly: "The trouble isn’t so much ...

This week is supposedly the week of Christian unity. Anything the World Council of Churches has its fingers in makes me immediately skeptical, but the Vatican also has a Pontifical Council that is involved. Catholics call it the Octave of Christian Unity , which is really more a call for prayer for Christian Unity. I am more inclined to something like that. I always pray that the Church would be One, which is very much what Christ taught over and over. The image of the Church as the Bride of Christ is used over and over again in the New Testament. Christ does not have many brides. Given my own personal circumstances, the question of the Church being One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic is really what began to completely unravel my understanding of the Church and ultimately signaled the end of my career as clergy in a Protestant denomination (more on that in a moment.) When I say I had a crisis of faith, I suppose that is not completely correct. I did not have a crisis of faith in G...

When you go all "equal protection" for gay 'marriage,' this will inevitably be the logical result .

As an amateur World War I historian, I am pleased at the amount of historical data and writing about the Great War that has been coming out for the 100 year anniversary. I find this refreshing because research on the first World War has been hard to come by. You can find all sorts of stuff on World War II in both nonfiction and fiction, but if you local library has even two books on the subject of the first war, you are ahead of the curve.

"Christian values in Europe remain, of course, in the life of people. I have experience of contacting West Europeans who keep all this in their hearts. But the general political tendency, the general direction of elites is undoubtedly anti-Christian and anti-religious". "We [in Russia] have gone through an era of atheism and we want to shout for the whole world to hear: "People, stop, we know what kind of life it is". ~ Patriarch Kirill I

Congrats to Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux on their election into the Baseball Hall of Fame . They were a sight to behold when they were together with the Braves in the 1990s. They were both incredibly intelligent pitchers. I actually remember Maddux as much for his fielding ability. He was like a shortstop with some of his acrobatic catches. I got to watch both of them pitch live at Braves games more than once. Chicago White Sox first baseball Frank Thomas also got elected. Growing up in National League country, I seldom got to watch Thomas play that much, though I did get to see him in a game in Chicago the last year he was with the White Sox. By that point he was playing injured and a shadow of his former self, but people still cheered when he came to the plate. He loved the South Side, and they loved him. Congrats all...

Fr.. Herbel writes an interesting little reflection on why some Orthodox churches have Christmas on January 7th and not December 25th.

To an atheist Christians don't believe in a "sky-fairy", whatever that might be, and if you believe that is what theism entails it's no wonder you're an atheist. We just simply don't believe that human minds capable of rational thought and aesthetic and ethical judgement are simply random collocations of molecules existing in a Universe randomly thrown out into time and space going nowhere, meaning nothing, and slowly succumbing to entropic heat death. ~ Andrew Kirke

Heresy knows no bounds . But, as a friend of mine once said, "You don't have to worry. Heresy doesn't tend to reproduce."

This is pretty cool .

One of the songs we sang in church on Christmas was one of my favorites. I have several favorites. I noted that the footnote on the hymn was from a book of carols from the 1800s that I had never heard of. I wrote down the citation and went home to see if I could order a copy of it. I collect hymnals, don't ask me why. To my delight, I discovered the entire hymnal is found online here . It is worth looking at, if for no other reason that to see the artwork depicted. For Christmas liturgy nerds like myself, I also discovered this little website called HymnsandcarolsofChristmas.com  that has a wealth of information about the various Christmas carols. It is worth perusing. One of the reasons I like studying carols is that many times, so much of the lesson from the carol itself is lost. I mean, we can sing so many of the first verses of classic Christmas carols, but, for instance, do you really know why we sing about Good King Wencelas ? You have to read the entire hymn text to un...