My wife and I have just returned from a week’s vacation on Hatteras Island, so I thought to catch up with the various AIC web presences, including reading all the many email messages.
One viewer raised a question concerning the current episode, Episode Five, in AIC’s Christian Education video series, The War on Christianity. The question indicates the need for a clarification for those who my have not seen Episode One through Episode Four. For those who have just joined in watching series, let me repeat some of the points I made in that first episode.
First, there is a vigorous War on Christianity that is literally going on each and every day all around the world. In Episode One I included data about how many physical assaults there have been and highlighted five such events in 2016 and 2017 A.D.
Second, the ultimate objective of those leading, and/or encouraging, the War on Christianity is to eliminate Christianity from the public and private sphere. The War on Christianity has nothing to do with fairness doctrines or equal treatment of all religions or cultural prejudices. It is a fight for the survival of Christian belief, although many modern Christians are in a state of denial. The objective is, just as it was for those who successfully suppressed the Church in the 2nd through the 15th C, is to make Christianity irrelevant in public, and, in my opinion, in private worship.
Third, the five incidents are a warning sign that, in spite of those who deny reality, the loss of majority status “can’t happen here,” such a loss has happened before and is happening now right before our eyes.
Self-imposed Limitations on the Format: Because AIC video series usually are presented in episodes of under 25 minutes. I cannot summarize in each episode all that has been said in previous episodes. The first effort to produce such a summary caused the initial version of Episode Two, the Summary History of the Church from Pentecost Until Now, to run about 34 minutes. I retreated and instead presented the subject matter in two episodes. The same problem reappeared in the first version of Episode Four, which ran even longer, with all three case studies of regional declines in a single episode. As with the previous example, I retreated and rewrote the material into two episodes, with important events in the Holy Land and North Africa treated in one episode, leaving Asia Minor to be treated in its own separate episode.
I made many of the same points that I made in Episode One in Episode Five, but perhaps I did not make the following point strongly enough in the section on Lessons Learned. Let me make it clearer now: many of the players in the decline of Christianity in the Holy Land, North Africa, and Asia Minor still exist today. They are Islamic fundamentalism plus international and Church politics. Additionally, in place of the greedy merchants of the Republic of Venice in the 13th through 15th C., whose objective was to destroy the Byzantine Empire and reap the benefits for themselves, are the international corporations and rich individuals with limitless wallets and atheistic values.
In future episodes I will offer ideas and practices which I think will make any Christian more able to defend the Christian Faith. In Episode Six, subtitled The First Line of Defense, I will discuss how important it is for any Christian to understand traditional Christian doctrine. Currently, I anticipate a total of 12 to 15 episodes.
All episodes of The War on Christianity series are linked from the Digital Library page (for the videos) and the Podcast Archive page (for the MP3 podcast versions. Use the appropriate tabs above and below to reach these pages.
Sunday Next Before Advent: On another topic of current interest: If you attended Church today and did not hear a homily/sermon on what the concept of “stir-up” means, where it came from, and how important it is to the coming Advent celebration, you can listen to a my Homily for Sunday Next Before Advent on the Podcast Homilies page of this site.
As always, thank you for your interest and support. You can help make our material more widely available by subscribing to this Blog or to our YouTube or Podbean pages.
May God bless you in all that you do in His Name! Glory be to God for all things! Amen!
To Western minds, so filled with confidence that the whole world constantly progresses, this episode demonstrates how three pivotal events which happened up to a millennium ago had consequence that are still being felt in the second decade of the 21st C. The three events are the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 A.D.; the capture of Constantinople by misguided Crusaders, led astray by the ambitions of the Venetian Republic, in 1204 A.D.; and the Fall of Constantinople in the Spring of 1453 A.D. The illustration is a 15th C. a miniature of the Battle of Manzikert in the National Library of France.
The War on Christianity series has been reorganized, with the addition of at least two and possible three new episodes that will provide a better bridge between Episode One, which examined the nature of the threat using actual examples of violence from around the world in A.D. 2016 and 2017, and the teaching episodes intended to offer self-defense through knowledge of Church doctrine and through the actual application of traditional teachings.
Episode Thirty-one, the last episode in the Second Series, celebrates St. Catherine of Alexandria, formerly a favorite saint but in the last 300 or so years relegated to near fictional status. Among the saints of the early 2nd millennium, largely as the result of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Western discovery of her story, she was widely popular. Her name endures today in various colleges, islands, and mountain ranges named in her honor. A strong tradition in the Eastern Church is that her remains are interred at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, built in the 6th C. under orders by, and sponsorship of, Emperor Justinian. There are many schools named after her, including St. Catherine’s here in Richmond, Va. She is the Patron Saint of Virgins and all young women. She met her death by beheading around 305 A.D. The illustration is a detail in tempera and gilt on velum of the death of St. Catherine which I extracted from a larger work from the Menologion of Basil II, a form of service book with a Synaxarion of over 400 martyrs prepared for the incumbent Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 10th C. The original is in the Vatican Library. The illustration and the larger work from which it was extracted are included in the video.
The episode features a short introduction placing the events in the historical context of the history of the Church of England from the 1620s through the accession of Elizabeth, with one picture each of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. After that is a brief biography of Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer. The very popular work, commonly called John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs but officially titled Acts and Monuments, is the source for many of the illustrations of the trial and executions. I’ve left the gruesome details out of this Blog entry, instead posting the attached colorized illustration by Joseph Martin Kronheim of Plate V, Latimer Before the Council, taken from an 1887 A.D. edition of Foxe’s famous work
St. Francis of Assisi, celebrated on October 4th (Episode Twenty-five), is one of the most popular, or at least one whose name is widely recognized, among the Western Church saints. No matter what you think about him, you can say without reservation that he was unique. He anticipated by many centuries the environmentalist movement, wrote a poem which was turned into a hymn in the 20th C. in the Church of England tradition, (All Creatures of Our God and King. trans. William R. Draper, 1925 A.D.; and he can be found in many gardens, both public and private, in the form of a diminutive statue. I’m unconvinced that he would have appreciated becoming a small garden ornament! The illustration is the central detail I extracted from a larger work showing scenes in his life. The source provided no details about either the artists, but I suspect it was not long after St. Francis’ lifetime, probably in the 13th C St. Francis’ poem is the basis for Hymn No. 777 in the AIC Bookstore publication, The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, in which Draper’s translation is set to the arrangement of the German/Lutheran hymn, Lasst uns erfreuen. He lives on in the memory of the Western Church in the Blessing of the Animals service, usually celebrated on his feast day in October each year.
recognition than he receives in the modern world. He is called “the blessed” because the modern Anglican world no longer designates faithful Christians as “saints,” probably thinking it is too Roman Catholic. Such denial of the right to celebrate the men and women who have done remarkable work in the service of the Lord and of the Church is one of those regrettable shortcomings of the modern Western Church. William Tynedale, pursued all across Europe until he was betrayed by a friend, was strangled, then burned at the state in Belgium on October 6th, 1536 A.D. for producing his New Testament in the English language, a violation of edicts of the Bishop of Rome. The identity of his persecutors and executioners is long gone from human memory, but the work of the Blessed William Tynedale lives on in the King James Version and New King James Versions of the Bible, which are largely based upon his pioneering translations of both the Old and New Testaments. Rather than post the gruesome depiction of his death, which is in the video, I post here Page One from Chapter 1 of his Gospel of St. John from either the 1525 or 1526 A;D. edition of his New Testament. Many people, myself included, believe he deserves the credit that William Shakespeare generally receives for the creation of the English language. His pioneering translation was adapted by his associate Miles Coverdale for the Great Bible of 1539 A.D. the first complete Bible in the English language (with credit also due to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who purchased copies for placement in all the churches of the Church of England, a goal ever achieved in his lifetime) and, a half-century later, without a word of recognition, provides the vast majority of the wording in the King James Version and its successor, the New King James Version. For more on which words and phrases were unique to the Blessed William Tynedale watch the video or listen to the Podcast. You’ll probably be surprised to learn how much of the Bible you know is the result of the Blessed William Tynedale’s creation of English prose phrasing.
Anglican Internet Church 