Founding Fathers Christian Quotes

However, there is a way to know for certain that Noah’s Flood and the Creation story never happened: by looking at our mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).  Mitochondria are the “cellular power plants” found in all of our cells and they have their own DNA which is separate from that found in the nucleus of the cell.  In humans, and most other species that mitochondria are found in, the father’s mtDNA normally does not contribute to the child’s mtDNA; the child normally inherits its mtDNA exclusively from its mother.  This means that if no one’s genes have mutated, then we all have the same mtDNA as our brothers and sisters and the same mtDNA as the children of our mother’s sisters, etc. This pattern of inheritance makes it possible to rule out “population bottlenecks” in our species’ history.  A bottleneck is basically a time when the population of a species dwindled to low numbers.  For humans, this means that every person born after a bottleneck can only have the mtDNA or a mutation of the mtDNA of the women who survived the bottleneck. This doesn’t mean that mtDNA can tell us when a bottleneck happened, but it can tell us when one didn’t happen because we know that mtDNA has a rate of approximately one mutation every 3,500 years (Gibbons 1998; Soares et al 2009). So if the human race were actually less than 6,000 years old and/or “everything on earth that breathed died” (Genesis 7:22) less than 6,000 years ago, which would be the case if the story of Adam and the story of Noah’s flood were true respectively, then every person should have the exact same mtDNA except for one or two mutations.  This, however, is not the case as human mtDNA is much more diverse (Endicott et al 2009), so we can know for a fact that the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah are fictional.   There

When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However [Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice... I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did. {The Anas, February 1, 1800, written shortly after the death of first US president George Washington}

If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons, to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians; and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are able to find among them no such act of adoption; we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. ['Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law?', letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, from Monticello, February 10, 1814]

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true.

Now I knew what it meant to follow God. It meant walking boldly by His Spirit of grace and love, in the firm confidence of everlasting life given through the Son, with the eternal purpose of proclaiming and glorifying the Father. Now I had found Jesus.

Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

There can be no freedom without order, and there is no order without virtue. Now, that’s a simple enough formulation, but it’s an insight found not only in the writings of Founding Fathers like Washington or great political thinkers like Edmund Burke; it is also found in a great part of our Judeo-Christian tradition.

For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth then formerly we have been acquainted with.

Once you attain the state of Absolute Oneness or Non-Duality, you become one of those spiritual legends that humanity so gloriously venerates as the founding fathers of religion.

When I was seventeen I found a man, or maybe he found me. Away from home for the first time, out of reach of my father’s archaic restrictions and my mother’s culinary insistence, I cut off my hair, dropped my Christian name, wore black and toyed with anorexia, passing incognito among the city workers, just another ant in that vast heap.

Anarchy!" Tony confirmed in sort of a laugh. "Sometimes I think, you know, if there were not cops, I would be fine, and I probably would. I was taught right from wrong when I was a kid. But the truth is, I drive completely different when there is a cop behind me than when there isn't." And what Tony and I were talking about is true. It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in a system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued. Just think about the Congress and Senate and even the president. The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. Is is as the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse.

The Lord was looking for fruit on the tree. He found “nothing but leaves.” There are thousands of people like that. They dress up like Christians, but it is all leaves. “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit …” (John 15:8). He has no way in which to get fruit, only through us. We have not to be ordinary people. To be saved is to be an extraordinary man, an exposition of God. When Jesus was talking about the new life He said, “…Except a man be born again [of God], he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is

The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the risk of tribal religious conflict very well. George Washington observed, “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.” James Madison agreed, noting the “torrents of blood” that result from religious competition. John Adams insisted that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” America has slipped a bit since then.

[The Founding Fathers] were not advocates for a monolithic notion of "God and Country," as promoters of a Christian America would now have us believe. They were precisely the opposite: the very prototypes, in fact, of the East Coast intellectuals we are always being warned against by today's religious right.

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

By their actions, the Founding Fathers made clear that their primary concern was religious freedom, not the advancement of a state religion. Individuals, not the government, would define religious faith and practice in the United States. Thus the Founders ensured that in no official sense would America be a Christian Republic. Ten years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United States was a secular state, and that its negotiations would adhere to the rule of law, not the dictates of the Christian faith. The assurances were contained in the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 and were intended to allay the fears of the Muslim state by insisting that religion would not govern how the treaty was interpreted and enforced. John Adams and the Senate made clear that the pact was between two sovereign states, not between two religious powers.

The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as 'the father of the American Revolution.'... Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. [The Christian Nation Myth, 1999]

Don’t you see, Anthony? For all the evangelicals’ talk about this nation being founded on religious principles…this being a Christian nation and all…most of the Founding Fathers were like Jefferson…atheists, pointy-headed intellectuals, Unitarians…

Many have found it hard to see what claim the law can have on the Christian. We are free from the law, they say; our salvation does not depend on law-keeping; we are justified through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. How, then, can it matter, or make any difference to anything, whether we keep the law henceforth or not? ....While it is certainly true that justification frees one forever from the need to keep the law, or try to, as the means of earning life, it is equally true that adoption lays on one the abiding obligation to keep the law, as the means of pleasing one's newfound Father....The sins of God's children do not destroy their justification or nullify their adoption, but they mar the children's fellowship with their Father.

From the beginning, Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation for American public dialogue and government policy. They serve as the solid basis for political activism in support of a better socioeconomic environment. Found in American homes, truth from the Hebrew Christian Bible has enabled individual liberty to prevail over secular empires because it is a practical message about reality from man’s Creator. In their quest for liberty, Americans focused upon the conspicuously self-evident “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It is the governing character of these principles (laws), such as humility, the Golden Rule, and the Ten Commandments, that leads to success. This is the sure foundation upon which man’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” rests. Called “virtue” by America’s Founding Fathers, the impartial and divine element frees man to do what is right. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).

The phrase 'Founding Fathers' is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group: the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, but these fifty-five made up the core. Among the delegates were twenty-eight Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, two Roman Catholics, one unknown, and only three deists- Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin. This took place at a time when church membership usually entailed "sworn adherence to strict doctrinal creeds." This tally proves that 51 of 55 -a full 93 percent- of the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political underpinnings of our nation were Christians, not deists.

I belong to a generation that inherited disbelief in the Christian faith and created in itself a disbelief in all other faiths. Our fathers still had the believing impulse, which they transferred from Christianity to other forms of illusion. Some were champions of social equality, others were wholly enamoured of beauty, still others had faith in science and its achievements, and there were some who became even more Christian, resorting to various Easts and Wests in search of new religious forms to entertain their otherwise hollow consciousness of merely living. We lost all of this. We were born with none of these consolations. Each civilization follows the particular path of a religion that represents it; turning to other religions, it loses the one it had, and ultimately loses them all. We lost the one, and all the others with it. And so we were left, each man to himself, in the desolation of feeling ourselves live. A ship may seem to be an object whose purpose is to sail, but no, its purpose is to reach a port. We found ourselves sailing without any idea of what port we were supposed to reach. Thus we reproduced a painful version of the argonauts’ adventurous precept:* living doesn’t matter, only sailing does.

The most insidious aspect of systemic racism is its capability of shielding the dominant cultural group from self-awareness. This is how the founding fathers could own slaves and still draft a document declaring all men to be created equal. It’s how the majority of white Christian churches stood against Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement.

The major premises of Christian religions are (1) the idea of Original Sin and (2) the belief in salvation through faith. Deists totally opposed these two basic Christian principles. Instead, they espoused the eighteenth-century philosophy that defined human beings as (1) essentially good, and (2) capable of progress through knowledge, reason, justice, and liberty. Deists denied the dogmas of the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, the concept of heaven and hell, and all ideas of damnation and redemption. Deism was, in fact, the origin of what is now called “secular humanism,” and it was the practicing philosophy of the men who conducted and won the American Revolution, and became the “Founding Fathers” of the American government.

It was not only some of the American founding fathers who thought of themselves as the ‘new Israel’ discovering the ‘promised land’. Some French Canadians saw the province of Quebec in the same way.

While he hung on the cross, caught in the agony of such a death, Jesus found the strength to speak a handful of words. Shall I tell you my favorite? He said, 'Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing.' He said this about his tormenters and murderers. Roman and Jew. It did not matter to him. He spoke forgiveness over them, although they betrayed him and robbed him of life itself.

Don’t lose sight of the radicals’ goal: to delegitimize the Founding Fathers and America’s Judeo-Christian heritage. And, for that matter, delegitimize all of Western history and condemn those who brought us the civilization we enjoy today.

Two things can be true. First, most of America’s founding fathers believed in some deity, and many were devout Christians, drawing their revolutionary inspiration from the scriptures. Second, the founders wanted nothing to do with theocracy. Many of their families had fled religious persecution in Europe; they knew the threat posed by what George Washington, several weeks into his presidency in 1789, described in a letter to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia as “the horrors of spiritual tyranny.” Washington was hardly alone: From skeptics like Benjamin Franklin to committed Christians like John Jay, the founders shared John Adams’s view that America was conceived not “under the influence of Heaven” or in conversation with the Creator, but rather by using “reason and the senses.

I knew I lived in a country founded on the murder of the body and the spirit of others. Native American nations were decimated with little regret, Africans fell beneath the same juggernaut, and all of the bloodshed was aided and abetted by practitioners of Christianity who manufactured innumerable ways to glorify Manifest Destiny and slavery. The Founding Fathers thought it easier to subjugate by dehumanizing their prey; their descendants find it easier to subjugate their prey by humanizing and prioritizing corporate entities.

I’m not going askew from the principles on which the United States was built; I’m right there with our founding fathers. I’m a patriot and a Christian, and I’m moving forth with what they started. But now it’s gotten to where I’m some kind of nut or Bible beater. I say, so be it. I’ll still go across the country spreading God’s Word, like I’ve done since I was twenty-eight. I may be only one man reading Scripture and quotes, carrying his Bible, and blowing duck calls to crowds, but, hey, it has to start somewhere. It’s what makes me happy, happy, happy.

The words and acts of the founding fathers, especially the first few presidents, shaped the form and tone of the civil religion as it has been maintained ever since. Though much is selectively derived from Christianity, this religion is clearly not itself Christianity. ROBERT BELLAH1

eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's

CHAPTER XXVI.—A new Prince in a City or Province of which he has taken Possession, ought to make Everything new. Whosoever becomes prince of a city or State, more especially if his position be so insecure that he cannot resort to constitutional government either in the form of a republic or a monarchy, will find that the best way to preserve his princedom is to renew the whole institutions of that State; that is to say, to create new magistracies with new names, confer new powers, and employ new men, and like David when he became king, exalt the humble and depress the great, "filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away." Moreover, he must pull down existing towns and rebuild them, removing their inhabitants from one place to another; and, in short, leave nothing in the country as he found it; so that there shall be neither rank, nor condition, nor honour, nor wealth which its possessor can refer to any but to him. And he must take example from Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander, who by means such as these, from being a petty prince became monarch of all Greece; and of whom it was written that he shifted men from province to province as a shepherd moves his flocks from one pasture to another. These indeed are most cruel expedients, contrary not merely to every Christian, but to every civilized rule of conduct, and such as every man should shun, choosing rather to lead a private life than to be a king on terms so hurtful to mankind. But he who will not keep to the fair path of virtue, must to maintain himself enter this path of evil. Men, however, not knowing how to be wholly good or wholly bad, choose for themselves certain middle ways, which of all others are the most pernicious, as shall be shown by an instance in the following Chapter.

The New World was settled [by Europeans] to promote Christianity. For more than 150 years, colonial governments actively supported the dominant faith. Less acknowledged today is a point well understood by the Founding Fathers: Nearly all of these experiments in state encouragement of religion failed.

Sir Arthur St. Clare, as I have already said, was a man who read his Bible. That was what was the matter with him. When will people understand that it is useless for a man to read his Bible unless he also reads everybody else's Bible? A printer reads a Bible for misprints. A Mormon reads his Bible, and finds polygamy; a Christian Scientist reads his, and finds we have no arms and legs. St. Clare was an old Anglo-Indian Protestant soldier. Now, just think what that might mean; and, for Heaven's sake, don't cant about it. It might mean a man physically formidable living under a tropic sun in an Oriental society, and soaking himself without sense or guidance in an Oriental Book. Of course, he read the Old Testament rather than the New. Of course, he found in the Old Testament anything that he wanted—lust, tyranny, treason. Oh, I dare say he was honest, as you call it. But what is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?

The right’s contention that we are a “Christian nation” that has fallen from pure origins and can achieve redemption by some kind of return to Christian values is based on wishful thinking, not convincing historical argument. Writing to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790, President Washington assured his Jewish countrymen that America “gives…bigotry no sanction.” In a treaty with the Muslim nation of Tripoli initiated by Washington, completed by John Adams, and ratified by the Senate in 1797, the Founders declared that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….

The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father’s heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15). But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him. They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him. In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land. He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water ( Jer. 2:13). He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8). Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness. It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall. But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can be found only in God.

In telling these stories of our Nation's past, however, let's not be so zealous in correcting liberal historians that we create our own historical revisionism. If the Founding Fathers were alive today, some of them would not want to go to the typical Evangelical church. Some were influenced by the pagan Enlightenment, as well as the Protestant Reformation. one historical figure (not a Founding Father) who's been misrepresented in our quest to find Christian heroes is Johnny Appleseed. He's routinely pictured as a nice man who went around scattering apple seeds everywhere and toting a Bible under his arm. The fact is, Johnny Appleseed was a missionary for Swedenbogrism, a spiritist cult. This cult taught many false doctrines and claimed that the writings of the Apostle Paul had no place in the Bible. When a child hears that Johnny Appleseed is a 'godly hero' and then discovers that he was in fact a cult member, what will he logically conclude about everything he's been taught?

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

The triad, being the fundamental principle of the whole Kabalah, or Sacred Tradition of our fathers, was necessarily the fundamental dogma of Christianity, the apparent dualism of which it explains by the intervention of a harmonious and all-powerful unity. Christ did not put His teaching into writing, and only revealed it in secret to His favored disciple, the one Kabalist, and he a great Kabalist, among the apostles. So is the Apocalypse the book of the Gnosis or Secret Doctrine of the first Christians, and the key of this doctrine is indicated by an occult versicle of the Lord's Prayer, which the Vulgate leaves untranslated, while in the Greek Rite, the priests only are permitted to pronounce it. This versicle, completely kabalistic, is found in the Greek text of the Gospel according to St Matthew, and in several Hebrew copies, as follows: Ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εις τοὺς αἰῶνας. ἀμήν. The sacred word MALKUTH substituted for KETHER, which is its kabalistic correspondent, and the equipoise of GEBURAH and CHESED, repeating itself in the circles of heavens called eons by the Gnostics, provided the keystone of the whole Christian Temple in the occult versicle. It has been retained by Protestants in their New Testament, but they have failed to discern its lofty and wonderful meaning, which would have unveiled to them all the Mysteries of the Apocalypse. There is, however, a tradition in the Church that the manifestation of this mysteries is reserved till the last times.

I have found so much freedom in living a life of simple trust in Jesus and letting go of all my efforts to be the "ideal Christian." When I finally got to the end of myself, it was there that I discovered for the first time how much my heavenly Father really cared for me. I saw that all the accomplishments I'd made on my own journey were not because of my hard work, but because of God's grace.

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” — James Madison (1751–1836), American founding father, fourth president of the United States, and the recognized “founder of the Constitution

How grossly are they mistaken in imagining slavery to be disallowed by the Alcoran! Are not the two precepts, to quote no more, Masters treat your slaves with kindness: Slaves serve your masters with cheerfulness and fidelity, clear proofs to the contrary? Nor can the plundering of infidels be in that sacred book forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the world and all that it contains to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of right as fast as they can conquer it. Let us then hear no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of christian slaves, the adoption of which would, by depreciating our lands and houses, and thereby depriving so many good citizens of their properties, create universal discontent, and provoke insurrections, to the endangering of government, and producing general confusion.

God I am a sinner.  I have done so many wrongs, in my life.  I have wronged many people, unaware. I have hurt so many people, it wasn’t my intention.  I have made so many mistakes , without thinking. I am no saint, and I am not perfect. I have fallen into temptation many times. Father forgive me. Take away the pain, I have caused to others. Give me the pure heart to love and forgive everyone and may your love be found in me. Please help me with the sins, that I am battling to overcome. Give me strength to fight my demons and dark pleasures. Guide me to path of righteousness. Let me not be judgmental towards others. Let me not curse or speak foul of anyone. There is no person who should shed a tear, because of me. There is no person who should be heart broken , because of me. In Jesus name Amen.  Matthew 26:41 | 1 John 5:16 | 2 Chronicles 7:14-15

MELITO OF SARDIS Melito, bishop of Sardis, died around the year A.D. 180. Until recently, few students of church history paid much attention to him. One of the reasons might be that he ended up on the “wrong side” of the ancient debate over how to determine the date of Easter. Only recently a sermon on the Passover was found, penned by Melito. It provides us with a tremendous insight into the theology of the late second century. I reproduce here just one section, which requires no commentary, only a hearty “Amen!”: And so he was lifted up upon a tree and an inscription was attached indicating who was being killed. Who was it? It is a grievous thing to tell, but a most fearful thing to refrain from telling. But listen, as you tremble before him on whose account the earth trembled! He who hung the earth in place is hanged. He who fixed the heavens in place is fixed in place. He who made all things fast is made fast on a tree. The Sovereign is insulted. God is murdered. The King of Israel is destroyed by an Israelite hand. This is the One who made the heavens and the earth, and formed mankind in the beginning, The One proclaimed by the Law and the Prophets, The One enfleshed in a virgin, The One hanged on a tree, The One buried in the earth, The One raised from the dead and who went up into the heights of heaven, The One sitting at the right hand of the Father, The One having all authority to judge and save, Through Whom the Father made the things which exist from the beginning of time. This One is “the Alpha and the Omega,” This One is “the beginning and the end” . . . the beginning indescribable and the end incomprehensible. This One is the Christ. This One is the King. This One is Jesus. This One is the Leader. This One is the Lord. This One is the One who rose from the dead. This One is the One sitting on the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father. “To him be the glory and the power forever. Amen.” The deity of Christ, His two natures, His virgin birth, His being the Creator, His distinction from the Father—all part and parcel of the preaching of the bishop of Sardis near the end of the second century.

In a letter to soldiers in 1798, John Adams, a Founding Father and practicing Unitarian, remarked: We had no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard, how those who came early in the day complained that those who came later got the same wages. What does the master say? "Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" And then Jesus adds, as he does so often, "So the last will be first, and the first last." But one hears the objection, "What's the point of being a Christian if, in the end, everyone is saved?" People who ask that should listen to themselves. What's the point of being first rather than last in serving the Lord whom you love? What's the point of being found rather than lost? What's the point of knowing the truth rather than living in ignorance? What's the point of being welcomed home by the waiting father rather than languishing by the pig sties? What's the point? The question answers itself.

Whenever the fame and the fury became too oppressive, Jesus found peace speaking to his Father among trees. If Jesus is our teacher, model, and savior, then we should follow his example. When we are tired, when we are discouraged, when we are frustrated, when we are downcast, we need to do what Jesus did: seek solace in the woods. Go to the forest, sit under the trees, and pray. There, beneath the canopy of shade-giving branches, we, like Jesus, can be still and know God (Psalm 46:10).

One example is the familiar parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), which in some ways might be better called the parable of the elder brother. For the point of the parable as a whole - a point frequently overlooked by Christian interpreters, in their eagerness to stress the uniqueness and particularity of the church as the prodigal younger son who has been restored to the father's favor - is in the closing words of the father to the elder brother, who stands for the people of Israel: 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.' The historic covenant between God and Israel was permanent, and it was into this covenant that other peoples too, were now being introduced. This parable of Jesus affirmed both the tradition of God's continuing relation with Israel and the innovation of God's new relation with the church - a twofold covenant.

I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits? We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?

And this is what [Donald] Trump has proven: beneath the surface of the American consensus, the belief in our founding fathers and the faith in our ideals, there lies another America--[Pat] Buchanan's America, Trump's America--one that sees no important distinction between democracy and dictatorship. This America feels no attachment to other democracies; this America is not "exceptional." This America has no special democratic spirit of the kind [Thomas] Jefferson described. The unity of this America is created by white skin, a certain idea of Christianity, and an attachment to land that will be surrounded and defended by a wall. This America's ethnic nationalism resembles the old-fashioned ethnic nationalism of older European nations. This America's cultural despair resembles their cultural despair. The surprise is not that this definition of America is there: it has always existed. The surprise is that it emerged in the political party that has most ostentatiously used flags, banners, patriotic symbols, and parades to signify its identity.

Christianity, then, was in one sense the stone these builders of the American nation rejected, except for Benjamin Rush and Charles Carroll. Yet the other Founding Fathers, even as modern men, still held fast to much that was good from the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Jefferson's enthusiasm for the defense of reason, natural law, and the principle of subsidiarity is worthy of the best Christian thinkers. And there could be no better advice (properly understood) for any age than Franklin's "imitation of Jesus and Socrates, " for man needs humbly to live both the life of the spirit and the intellect. But it was the most unlikely of all of them, the Caesarist Alexander Hamilton, who, laying down his life for an enemy, proved that the lives and thought of the Founding Fathers - even in the heady days of the American revolution - could be completely transformed. Obedient to Christ's command of absolute love, Hamilton died very much in the manner of those other and greater figures of destiny, those who build the futures of two worlds, the only true revolutionaries - the saints.

In the songbun system, everyone is ranked among three main groups, based on their supposed loyalty to the regime. The highest is the “core” class made up of honored revolutionaries—peasants, veterans, or relatives of those who fought or died for the North—and those who have demonstrated great loyalty to the Kim family and are part of the apparatus that keeps them in power. Second is the “basic” or “wavering” class, made up of those who once lived in the South or had family there, former merchants, intellectuals, or any ordinary person who might not be trusted to have complete loyalty to the new order. Finally, lowest of all, is the “hostile” class, including former landowners and their descendants, capitalists, former South Korean soldiers, Christians or other religious followers, the families of political prisoners, and any other perceived enemies of the state. It is extremely difficult to move to a higher songbun, but it is very easy to be cast down into the lowest levels through no fault of your own. And as my father and his family found out, once you lose your songbun status, you lose everything else you have achieved along with it.

They follow the argumentation of the Declaration of Independence, which declares that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are divinely endowed rights. Therefore those believers say such rights are part of a Christian worldview, worth attaining and defending at all costs, including military insurrection at times. But such a position is contrary to the clear teachings and commands of Romans 13:1–7. So the United States was actually born out of a violation of New Testament principles, and any blessings that God has bestowed on America have come in spite of that disobedience by the Founding Fathers. Also,

Philosophically, Ethical Culture was as deist and republican as the Founding Fathers’ revolutionary principles. If the revolution of 1776 had brought with it an emancipation of American Jews, well, an apt response to nativist Christian bigotry was to become more American— more republican—than the Americans. These Jews would take the next step to assimilation, but they would do it, so to speak, as deist Jews. In Adler’s view, the notion of Jews as a nation was an anachronism. Soon he began creating the institutional structures that would make it practical for his adherents to lead their lives as “emancipated Jews.

How I thank God, then, that from the start He has given me a loving wife to be my best friend of all. She is (as the poem at the end of the book suggests) my monastery. For having set out in the Christian life to become a monk, I found myself instead falling in love with a woman. At first I worried intensely that I’d made a huge mistake, fallen prey to a terrible temptation. But what a surprise it was to discover, over the years, that as a married man (and a father too) I have become more and more a true monk than I ever could have been within the walls of a monastery. How is this? It’s because love, true love, sets people free to be whoever they are.

Similarly, we revere our founding fathers precisely because they were loudmouths on the subject of freedom: Give me liberty or give me death! Even the Christianity of early American religious revivals, dating back to the First Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, depended on the showmanship of ministers who were considered successful if they caused crowds of normally reserved people to weep and shout and generally lose their decorum. “Nothing gives me more pain and distress than to see a minister standing almost motionless, coldly plodding on as a mathematician would calculate the distance of the Moon from the Earth,” complained a religious newspaper in 1837.

...the founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected {George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson}, not a one had professed a belief in Christianity... When the war was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution. The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the secretary, and the history of the day, show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate he was deliberately voted out of it.... There is not only in the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty, but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable to its theory. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity... Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man; but he was not a professing Christian... [Sermon by Reverend Bill Wilson (Episcopal) in October 1831, as published in the Albany Daily Advertiser the same month it was made]

In the New Testament, God's steadfast love and faithfulness are seen, not in an act of deliverance from foreign enemies, but in sending the Son and raising Him from the dead to enact a global rescue mission (Romans 8:3.) Jesus is God's supreme, grand, climactic act of faithfulness. Not only that, but "faithful" also describes Jesus. Paul writes, "We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but in faith in Jesus Christ" (Galations 2:16...). A better reading is "faithfulness of Jesus Christ" -- which is found in footnotes of many Bibles -- and the two readings couldn't be more different... Paul isn't saying, "You are not justified by your efforts but by your faith." The contrast he's making isn't between two options we have; the contrast is between your efforts and Jesus' faithfulness to you, shown in His obedient death on a Roman cross. Paul is interested in telling readers what Jesus did, Jesus' faithfulness, not what we do. God's grand act of faithfulness is giving His son for our sake. God is all in. Jesus' grand act of faithfulness is going through with it for our sake. Jesus is all in. Now it's our move, which really is the point of all this. Like God the Father and God the Son, we are also called to be faithful. On one level, we are faithful to God when we trust God, but faith (pistis) doesn't stop there. It extends, as we've seen, in faithfulness toward each other, in humility and self-sacrificial love. And here is the real kick in the pants: When we are faithful to each other like this, we are more than simply being nice and kind -- though there's that. Far more important, when we are faithful to each other, we are, at that moment, acting like the faithful God and the faithful Son. Being like God. That's the goal. And we are most like God, not when we are certain we are right about God, or when we tell others how right we are, but when we are acting toward one another like the faithful Father and Son. Humility, love, and kindness are our grand acts of faithfulness and how we show that we are all in.

Apokatastasis, as is clear from some passages cited and many others, depends on illumination and instruction, which goes hand in hand with correction. This is fully consistent with Origen's ethical intellectualism, a Platonic-Socratic and Stoic heritage that is found in other Fathers as well, such as Gregory of Nyssa. How one behaves depends on what one knows and how one thinks and regards reality; will depends on the intellect and is not an autonomous force. As a consequence, evil is never chosen qua evil, but because it is mistaken for a good, out of an error of judgment, due to insufficient knowledge and/or obnubilation (e.g., Hom. 1 in Ps. 37.4; Hom. in Ez. 9.1). Hence the importance of instruction. If one's intellect is illuminated, and achieves the knowledge of the Good, one will certainly adhere to the Good. Apokatastasis itself, as the end of Book 2 of Περὶ ἀρχῶν, is described as an illumination and a direct vision of the truth, as opposed to the mere 'shadows' that the logika knew beforehand (Origen is reminiscent not only of Plato's Cave myth, but also of 1 Tim 2:4-6, that God wants all humans to reach the knowledge of the truth, and of 1 Cor 13:12 on eventually knowing God 'face to face'). Only with full knowledge is choice really free, and a choice done with full knowledge is a choice for the Good. A choice for evil is not really free: it results from obnubilation, ignorance, and passion. This is why Origen was convinced that divine providence will bring all logika to salvation by means of education and rational persuasion, instruction and illumination – or fear of punishments, but only initially, when reason is not yet developed, and not by means of compulsion, since the adhesion to the Good must be free, and to be free it must rest on a purified intellectual sight. This is why for Origen divine providence will lead all to salvation, but respecting each one's free will; each logikon will freely adhere to God, and to do so each will need its own times, according to its choices and development, so that both divine justice first and then divine grace are saved. (pp. 178-179)

If Paul brought the first generation of Christians the useful skills of a trained theologian, Origen was the first great philosopher to rethink the new religion from first principles. As his philosophical enemy, the anti-Christian Porphyry, summed it up, he 'introduced Greek ideas to foreign fables' -- that is, gave a barbarous eastern religion the intellectual respectability of a philosophical defense. Origen was also a phenomenon. As Eusebius put it admiringly, 'even the facts from his cradle are worth mentioning'. Origen came from Alexandria, the second city of the empire and then it's intellectual centre; his father's martyrdom left him an orphan at seventeen with six younger brothers. He was a hard working prodigy, at eighteen head of the Catechetical School, and already trained as a literary scholar and teacher. But at this point, probably in 203, he became a religious fanatic and remained one for the next fifty years. He gave up his job and sold his books to concentrate on religion. he slept on the floor, ate no meat, drank no wine, had only one coat and no shoes. He almost certainly castrated himself, in obedience to the notorious text, Matthew 19:12, 'there are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' Origen's learning was massive and it was of a highly original kind: he always went back to the sources and thought through the whole process himself. This he learned Hebrew and, according to Eusebius, 'got into his possession the original writings extant among the Jews in the actual Hebrew character'. These included the discovery of lost texts; in the case of the psalms, Origen collected not only the four known texts but three others unearthed, including 'one he found at Jericho in a jar'. The result was an enormous tome, the Hexapla, which probably existed in only one manuscript now lost, setting out the seven alternative texts in parallel columns. He applied the same principles of original research to every aspect of Christianity and sacred literature. He seems to have worked all day and though most of the night, and was a compulsive writer. Even the hardy Jerome later complained: 'Has anyone read everything Origen wrote?'

He remembered an old tale which his father was fond of telling him—the story of Eos Amherawdur (the Emperor Nightingale). Very long ago, the story began, the greatest and the finest court in all the realms of faery was the court of the Emperor Eos, who was above all the kings of the Tylwydd Têg, as the Emperor of Rome is head over all the kings of the earth. So that even Gwyn ap Nudd, whom they now call lord over all the fair folk of the Isle of Britain, was but the man of Eos, and no splendour such as his was ever seen in all the regions of enchantment and faery. Eos had his court in a vast forest, called Wentwood, in the deepest depths of the green-wood between Caerwent and Caermaen, which is also called the City of the Legions; though some men say that we should rather name it the city of the Waterfloods. Here, then, was the Palace of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no end to the number of them, for they could not be counted. For the stones of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor. If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it, since it could not be discerned. But on common days they spread the Emperor's banquet in nine great halls, each nine times larger than any that are in the lands of the men of Normandi. And Sir Caw was the seneschal who marshalled the feast; and if you would count those under his command—go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River. But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset. He lit it with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass; and when his clerks sang before him all the jewels rose shining out of the earth, and all the stars bent shining down from heaven, so enchanting was the melody. Then was great bliss in all the regions of the fair folk. But Eos was grieved because mortal ears could not hear nor comprehend the enchantment of their song. What, then, did he do? Nothing less than this. He divested himself of all his glories and of his kingdom, and transformed himself into the shape of a little brown bird, and went flying about the woods, desirous of teaching men the sweetness of the faery melody. And all the other birds said: "This is a contemptible stranger." The eagle found him not even worthy to be a prey; the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be uttered. In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the chorus of the birds. But wise men heard that song from the faery regions and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who were bards in the Isle of Britain.

THERE is a view of the Christian life that regards it as a sort of partnership, in which God and man have each to do their part. It admits that it is but little that man can do, and that little defiled with sin; still he must do his utmost--then only can he expect God to do His part. To those who think thus,it is extremely difficult to understand what Scripture means when it speaks of our being still and doing nothing, of our resting and waiting to see the salvation of God. It appears to them a perfect contradiction, when we speak of this quietness and ceasing from all effort as the secret of the highest activity of man and all his powers. And yet this is just what Scripture does teach. The explanation of the apparent mystery is to be found in this, that when God and man are spoken of as working together, there is nothing of the idea of a partnership between two partners who each contribute their share to a work. The relation is a very different one. The true idea is that of cooperation founded on subordination. As Jesus was entirely dependent on the Father for all His words and all His works, so the believer can do nothing of himself. What he can do of himself is altogether sinful. He must therefore cease entirely from his own doing, and wait for the working of God in him. As he ceases from self-effort, faith assures him that God does what He has undertaken, and works in him. And what God does is to renew, to sanctify, and waken all his energies to their highest power. So that just in proportion as he yields himself a truly passive instrument in the hand of God, will he be wielded of God as the active instrument of His almighty power. The soul in which the wondrous combination of perfect passivity with the highest activity is most completely realized, has the deepest experience of what the Christian life is.

America was not a nation at all, but a league of thirteen separate nations—all of which had already standing Christian governments. For example the Constitution of Massachusetts required the Governor to “declare himself to be of the Christian religion” and gave the government the power to levy money “for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality”—and the Federal Government would not impede upon the existing State-level Religious Laws and Institutions. Schools used to be both public and Protestant and filled with peace, but without Protestantism, schools have become public and filled with violent protesters. It is true that public Protestant schools were a little harsh and a lot successful, but the public secular schools today are extremely soft and not successful at all. These harsh and hard religious schools produced very tender men, whereas the soft public schools seem to produce more hardened criminals.

He: "I mean, are you happy and are you fully alive?" I laughed: ''As you can see, you wove witty jokes into the lecture to please your listeners. You heaped up learned expressions to impress them. You were restless and hasty, as if still compelled to snatch up all knowledge. You are not in yourself" Although these words at first seemed laughable to me, they still made an impression on me, and reluctantly I had to / credit the old man, since he was right. Then he said: "Dear Ammonius, I have delightful tidings for you: God has become flesh in his son and has brought us all salvation." ""What are you saying," I called, "you probably mean Osiris, who shall appear in the mortal body?" "No," he replied, "this man lived in Judea and was born from a virgin." I laughed and answered: "I already know about this; a Jewish trader has brought tidings of our virgin queen to Judea, whose image appears on the walls of one of our temples, and reported it as a fairy tale." "No," the old man insisted, "he was the Son of God." "Then you mean Horus the son of Osiris, don't you?" I answered. "No,hewasnotHorus,butarealman,andhewashung from a cross." "Oh, but this must be Seth, surely; whose punishments our old ones have often described." But the old man stood by his conviction and said: "He died and rose up on the third day." "Well, then he must be Osiris," I replied impatiently. "No," he cried, "he is called Jesus the anointed one." ''Ah, you really mean this Jewish God, whom the poor honor at the harbor, and whose unclean mysteries they celebrate in cellars." "He was a man and yet the Son of God," said the old man staring at me intently. "That's nonsense, dear old man," I said, and showed him to the door. But like an echo from distant rock faces the words returned to me: a man and yet the Son of God. It seemed significant to me, and this phrase was what brought me to Christianity. I: "But don't you think that Christianity could ultimately be a transformation ofyour Egyptian teachings?" A: "If you say that our old teachings were less adequate expressions of Christianity, then I'm more likely to agree with you." I: "Yes, but do you then assume that the history of religions is aimed at a final goal?" A: "My father once bought a black slave at the market from the region of the source of the Nile. He came from a country that had heard ofneither Osiris nor the other Gods; he told me many things in a more simple language that said the same as we believed about Osiris and the other Gods. I learned to understand that those uneducated Negroes unknowingly already possessed most of what the religions of the cultured peoples had developed into complete doctrines. Those able to read that language correctly could thus recognize in it not only the pagan doctrines but also the doctrine of Jesus. And it's with this that I now occupy myself I read the gospels and seek their meaning which is yet to come.We know their meaning as it lies before us, but not their hidden meaning which points to the future. It's erroneous to believe that religions differ in their innermost essence. Strictly speaking, it's always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form of religion is the meaning of the antecedent." I: "Have you found out the meaning which is yet to come?" A: "No, not yet; it's very difficult, but I hope I'll succeed. Sometimes it seems to me that I need the stimulation of others, but I realize that those are temptations of Satan." I: "Don't you believe that you'd succeed ifyou were nearer men?" A: "maybeyoureright." He looks at me suddenly as if doubtful and suspicious. "But, I love the desert, do you understand? This yellow, sun-glowing desert. Here you can see the countenance of the sun every day; you are alone, you can see glorious Helios-no, that is - pagan-what's wrong with me? I'm confused-you are Satan- I recognize you-give way; adversary!" He jumps up incensed and wants to lunge at me. But I am far away in the twentieth century.

As everyone knows, Islam set up a social order from the outset, in contrast, for example, to Christianity. Islamic social teachings are so basic to the religion that still today many people, including Muslims, are completely unaware of Islam's spiritual dimensions. Social order demands rules and regulations, fear of the king, respect for the police, acknowledgement of authority. It has to be set up on the basis of God's majesty and severity. It pays primary attention to the external realm, the realm of the body and the desires of the lower soul, the realm where God is distant from the world. In contrast, Islamic spiritual teachings allow for intimacy, love, boldness, ecstatic expressions, and intoxication in the Beloved. All these are qualities that pertain to nearness to God. (...) In short, on the social level, Islam affirms the primacy of God as King, Majestic, Lord, Ruler. It establishes a theological patriarchy even if Muslim theologians refuse to apply the word father (or mother) to God. God is yang, while the world, human beings, and society are yin. Thereby order is established and maintained. Awe and distance are the ruling qualities. On the spiritual level, the picture is different. In this domain many Muslim authorities affirm the primacy of God as Merciful, Beautiful, Gentle, Loving. Here they establish a spiritual matriarchy, though again such terms are not employed. God is yin and human beings are yang. Human spiritual aspiration is accepted and welcomed by God. Intimacy and nearness are the ruling qualities. This helps explain why one can easily find positive evaluations of women and the feminine dimension of things in Sufism. (...) Again, this primacy of yin cannot function on the social level, since it undermines the authority of the law. If we take in isolation the Koranic statement, "Despair not of God's mercy surely God forgives all sins" (39:53), then we can throw the Sharia out the window. In the Islamic perspective, the revealed law prevents society from degenerating into chaos. One gains liberty not by overthrowing hierarchy and constraints, but by finding liberty in its true abode, the spiritual realm. Freedom, lack of limitation and constraint, bold expansivenessis achieved only by moving toward God, not by rebelling against Him and moving away. Attar (d. 618/1221) makes the same point more explicitly in an anecdote he tells about the great Sufi shaykh, Abu'l- Hasan Kharraqani (d. 425/1033): It is related that one night the Shaykh was busy with prayer. He heard a voice saying, "Beware, Abu'l-Hasan! Do you want me to tell people what I know about you so that they will stone you to death?" The Shaykh replied, "O God the Creator! Do You want me to tell the people what I know about Your mercy and what I see of Your generosity? Then no one will prostrate himself to You." A voice came, "You keep quiet, and so will I." Sufism is concerned with "maintaining the secret" (hifz al-sirr) for more reasons than one. The secret of God's mercy threatens the plain fact of His wrath. If "She" came out of the closet, "He" would be overthrown. But then She could not be found, for it is He who shows the way to Her door.

My grandfather, also named Fraser Robinson, was decidedly less fun to be around, a cigar-puffing patriarch who’d sit in his recliner with a newspaper open on his lap and the evening news blaring on the television nearby. His demeanor was nothing like my father’s. For Dandy, everything was an irritant. He was galled by the day’s headlines, by the state of the world as shown on TV, by the young black men—“boo-boos,” he called them—whom he perceived to be hanging uselessly around the neighborhood, giving black people everywhere a bad name. He shouted at the television. He shouted at my grandmother, a sweet, soft-spoken woman and devout Christian named LaVaughn. (My parents had named me Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, in honor of her.) By day, my grandmother expertly managed a thriving Bible bookstore on the Far South Side, but in her off-hours with Dandy she was reduced to a meekness I found perplexing, even as a young girl. She cooked his meals and absorbed his barrage of complaints and said nothing in her own defense. Even at a young age, there was something about my grandmother’s silence and passivity in her relationship with Dandy that got under my skin. According to my mother, I was the only person in the family to talk back to Dandy when he yelled. I did it regularly, from the time I was very young and over many years, in part because it drove me crazy that my grandmother wouldn’t speak up for herself, in part because everyone else fell silent around him, and lastly because I loved Dandy as much as he confounded me. His stubbornness was something I recognized, something I’d inherited myself, though I hoped in a less abrasive form.

Another way of expressing the history of religion is that faith has hijacked religious spirituality. The prophets and leaders of organized religions, consciously or not, have put spirituality in the service of groups defined by their creation myths. Awe-inspiring ceremonies and sacred rites and rituals and sacrifices are given the deity in return for worldly security and the promise of immortality. As part of the exchange the deity must also make correct moral decisions. Within the Christian faith, among most of the denominational tribes, God is obliged to be against one or more of the following: homosexuality, artificial contraception, female bishops, and evolution. The Founding Fathers of the United States understood the risk of tribal religious conflict very well. George Washington observed, “Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing and ought most to be deprecated.” James Madison agreed, noting the “torrents of blood” that result from religious competition. John Adams insisted that “the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” America has slipped a bit since then. It has become almost mandatory for political leaders to assure the electorate that they have a faith, even, as for the Mormonism of Mitt Romney, if it looks ridiculous to the great majority. Presidents often listen to the counsel of Christian advisers. The phrase “under God” was introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and today no major political candidate would dare suggest it be removed.

When you are fully owned by your disbelief, then there is no further discussion that needs to be had between you and the God you once trusted. In fact, your very senses are numb to His presence, your eyes shut, your ears closed, and your body turned away. In this instance you have come to grips with the fact that, if need be, you would stand up in front of the world and say, “I deny Jesus is Lord,” and you would be content with that denial. But before you jump to your feet, first consider that this verbal rejection of Jesus comes with an effect, and that is that as you deny Him, so He denies you. As He said in the book of Matthew, “Whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33 esv). So is it any wonder that in your denial of the One who was sent to save you, you have found more and more animosity toward God and His people? That your heart has hardened more with each passing day? This is the result of Jesus denying you more than it is of you denying Him. The truth is that you own your faith when and only when Christ owns you. William Barley, in The Letters of James and Peter, spoke this better than we ever could when he said, It frequently happens that the value of a thing lies in the fact that someone has possessed it. A very ordinary thing acquires a new value if it has been possessed by some famous person. In any museum we will find quite ordinary things—clothes, a walking-stick, a pen, pieces of furniture—which are only of value because they were possessed and used by some great person. It is the ownership which gives them worth. It is so with the Christian. The Christian may be a very ordinary person, but he acquires a new value and dignity and greatness because he belongs to God. The greatness of the Christian lies in the fact that he is God’s.

Sometimes it takes a knock in life to make us sit up and grab life. And I had just undergone the mother of all knocks. But out of that despair, fear, and struggle came a silver lining--and I didn’t even know it yet. What I did know was that I needed something to give me back my hope. My sparkle. My life. I found that something in my Christian faith, in my family, and also in my dreams of adventure. My Christian faith says that I have nothing ever to fear or worry about. All is well. At that time, in and out of hospital, it reminded me that, despite the pain and despair, I was held and loved and blessed--my life was secure through Jesus Christ. That gift of grace has been so powerful to me ever since. My family said something very similar: “Bear, you are an idiot, but we love you anyway, forever and always.” That meant the world to me and gave me back some of the confidence that I was struggling to find again. Finally, I had my not insubstantial dreams of adventure. And those dreams were beginning to burn bright once more. You see, I figure that life is a gift. I was learning that more than anyone. My mum always taught me to be grateful for gifts. And as I slowly began to recover my strength and confidence, I realized that what mattered was doing something bold with that present. A gift buried under a tree is wasted. Alone one night in bed, I made a verbal, out-loud, conscious decision, that if I recovered well enough to be able to climb again, then I would get out there and follow those dreams to the max. Cliché? To me it was my only hope. I was choosing to live life with both arms open--I would grab life by the horns and ride it for all it was worth. Life doesn’t often give us second chances. But if it does, be bloody grateful. I vowed I would always be thankful to my father in heaven for having somehow helped me along this rocky road.

But it was nothing remotely multicultural that induced Judah Maccabeus to reconsecrate the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC, and to establish the date which the soft celebrants of Hannukah now so emptily commemorate. The Maccabees, who founded the Hasmonean dynasty, were forcibly restoring Mosaic fundamentalism against the many Jews of Palestine and elsewhere who had become attracted by Hellenism. These true early multiculturalists had become bored by “the law,” offended by circumcision, interested by Greek literature, drawn by the physical and intellectual exercises of the gymnasium, and rather adept at philosophy. They could feel the pull exerted by Athens, even if only by way of Rome and by the memory of Alexander’s time, and were impatient with the stark fear and superstition mandated by the Pentateuch. They obviously seemed too cosmopolitan to the votaries of the old Temple—and it must have been easy to accuse them of “dual loyalty” when they agreed to have a temple of Zeus on the site where smoky and bloody altars used to propitiate the unsmiling deity of yore. At any rate, when the father of Judah Maccabeus saw a Jew about to make a Hellenic offering on the old altar, he lost no time in murdering him. Over the next few years of the Maccabean “revolt,” many more assimilated Jews were slain, or forcibly circumcised, or both, and the women who had flirted with the new Hellenic dispensation suffered even worse. Since the Romans eventually preferred the violent and dogmatic Maccabees to the less militarized and fanatical Jews who had shone in their togas in the Mediterranean light, the scene was set for the uneasy collusion between the old-garb ultra-Orthodox Sanhedrin and the imperial governorate. This lugubrious relationship was eventually to lead to Christianity (yet another Jewish heresy) and thus ineluctably to the birth of Islam. We could have been spared the whole thing.

Behold, thou art fair, my Beloved." Song of Solomon 1:16 From every point our Well-beloved is most fair. Our various experiences are meant by our heavenly Father to furnish fresh standpoints from which we may view the loveliness of Jesus; how amiable are our trials when they carry us aloft where we may gain clearer views of Jesus than ordinary life could afford us! We have seen him from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, and he has shone upon us as the sun in his strength; but we have seen him also "from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards," and he has lost none of his loveliness. From the languishing of a sick bed, from the borders of the grave, have we turned our eyes to our soul's spouse, and he has never been otherwise than "all fair." Many of his saints have looked upon him from the gloom of dungeons, and from the red flames of the stake, yet have they never uttered an ill word of him, but have died extolling his surpassing charms. Oh, noble and pleasant employment to be forever gazing at our sweet Lord Jesus! Is it not unspeakably delightful to view the Saviour in all his offices, and to perceive him matchless in each?--to shift the kaleidoscope, as it were, and to find fresh combinations of peerless graces? In the manger and in eternity, on the cross and on his throne, in the garden and in his kingdom, among thieves or in the midst of cherubim, he is everywhere "altogether lovely." Examine carefully every little act of his life, and every trait of his character, and he is as lovely in the minute as in the majestic. Judge him as you will, you cannot censure; weigh him as you please, and he will not be found wanting. Eternity shall not discover the shadow of a spot in our Beloved, but rather, as ages revolve, his hidden glories shall shine forth with yet more inconceivable splendour, and his unutterable loveliness shall more and more ravish all celestial minds.

The earliest commentaries on Scripture had been of this discursive nature, being addresses by word of mouth to the people, which were taken down by secretaries, and so preserved. While the traditionary teaching of the Church still preserved the vigour and vividness of its Apostolical origin, and spoke with an exactness and cogency which impressed an adequate image of it upon the mind of the Christian Expositor, he was able to allow himself free range in handling the sacred text, and to admit into the comment his own particular character of mind, and his spontaneous and individual ideas, in the full security, that, however he might follow the leadings of his own thoughts in unfolding the words of Scripture, his own deeply fixed views of Catholic truth would bring him safe home, without overstepping the limits of truth and sobriety. Accordingly, while the early Fathers manifest a most remarkable agreement in the principles and the substance of their interpretation, they have at the same time a distinctive spirit and manner, by which each may be known from the rest. About the vith or viith century this originality disappears; the oral or traditionary teaching, which allowed scope to the individual teacher, became hardened into a written tradition, and henceforward there is a uniform invariable character as well as substance of Scripture interpretation. Perhaps we should not err in putting Gregory the Great as the last of the original Commentators; for though very numerous commentaries on every book of Scripture continued to be written by the most eminent doctors in their own names, probably not one interpretation of any importance would be found in them which could not be traced to some older source. So that all later comments are in fact Catenas or selections from the earlier Fathers, whether they present themselves expressly in the form of citations from their volumes, or are lections upon the Lesson or Gospel for the day, extempore indeed in form, but as to their materials drawn from the previous studies and stores of the expositor. The latter would be better adapted for the general reader, the former for the purposes of the theologian.

The old theological problem of "Faith" and "Knowledge," or more plainly, of instinct and reason―the question whether, in respect to the valuation of things, instinct deserves more authority than rationality, which wants to appreciate and act according to motives, according to a "Why," that is to say, in conformity to purpose and utility―it is always the old moral problem that first appeared in the person of Socrates, and had divided men's minds long before Christianity. Socrates himself, following, of course, the taste of his talent―that of a surpassing dialectician―took first the side of reason; and, in fact, what did he do all his life but laugh at the awkward incapacity of the noble Athenians, who were men of instinct, like all noble men, and could never give satisfactory answers concerning the motives of their actions? In the end, however, though silently and secretly, he laughed also at himself: with his finer conscience and introspection, he found in himself the same difficulty and incapacity. "But why"―he said to himself― "should one on that account separate oneself from the instincts! One must set them right, and the reason ALSO―one must follow the instincts, but at the same time persuade the reason to support them with good arguments." This was the real FALSENESS of that great and mysterious ironist; he brought his conscience up to the point that he was satisfied with a kind of self-outwitting: in fact, he perceived the irrationality in the moral judgment.―Plato, more innocent in such matters, and without the craftiness of the plebeian, wished to prove to himself, at the expenditure of all his strength―the greatest strength a philosopher had ever expended―that reason and instinct lead spontaneously to one goal, to the good, to "God"; and since Plato, all theologians and philosophers have followed the same path―which means that in matters of morality, instinct (or as Christians call it, "Faith," or as I call it, "the herd") has hitherto triumphed. Unless one should make an exception in the case of Descartes, the father of rationalism (and consequently the grandfather of the Revolution), who recognized only the authority of reason: but reason is only a tool, and Descartes was superficial.

A tall, well-muscled blond man drew alongside Christian. He inclined his head to them. “Abbot,” he said to Christian in greeting. Christian seemed pleased to see him. “Falcon. It’s been a long time.” “Aye. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to greet you yester eve when you arrived.” Christian offered him a lopsided grin. “’Tis well understood. I heard about your escapade with the butcher’s daughter and your near miss with her father’s cleaver.” Falcon laughed. “Lies all. ’Twas the tanner’s daughter and her father’s ax.” Christian joined his laughter. “One day, my friend, you will meet the one father who can run faster than you.” “’Tis why God gave us horses.” He winked at Christian, then tilted his head so that he could see Adara. “’Tis a pleasure to meet you, Queen Adara. I am Lord Quentin of Adelsbury and my sword is ever at your disposal.” Christian gave him a meaningful stare. “And your sword had best stay sheathed, Falcon, until you’re on the battlefield.” “Your warning is well taken into consideration, Abbot, along with your sword skill and horsemanship. Have no fear of me. Your wife is ever safe from my designs. But no woman is safe from my charm.” Adara couldn’t help teasing the man who seemed of remarkable good spirit and cheer. “However some women might find themselves immune from it, my Lord Falcon.” “What, ho?” he said with a laugh. “Congratulations, Christian. You have found a woman as intelligent as she is beautiful. Tell me, Your Majesty, have you a sister who is fashioned in your image?” “Nay, my lord. I fear I am one of a kind.” He looked sincerely despondent at the news. “’Tis a pity, then. I shall just have to pray for Christian to lay aside his duties and become a monk in earnest.” Christian snorted at that prospect. “You would have a better chance courting my horse.” “Then I shall take my charm and work it on a woman who isn’t immune to it. Good day to you both.” Adara glanced over her shoulder as he fell back into the ranks with the other knights. “Don’t look at him,” Christian said in a teasing tone. “You’ll only play into his overbloated self-esteem.” She gave him a meaningful look. “In that regard, he reminds me of someone else I know.” “Ouch, my lady, you wound me.” “Never, Christian. I would never wound you.

For a start, most books like this, rich in such expensive pigments, had been made for palaces or cathedrals. But a haggadah is used only at home. The word is from the Hebrew root ngd, “to tell,” and it comes from the biblical command that instructs parents to tell their children the story of the Exodus. This “telling” varies widely, and over the centuries each Jewish community has developed its own variations on this home-based celebration. But no one knew why this haggadah was illustrated with numerous miniature paintings, at a time when most Jews considered figurative art a violation of the commandments. It was unlikely that a Jew would have been in a position to learn the skilled painting techniques evinced here. The style was not unlike the work of Christian illuminators. And yet, most of the miniatures illustrated biblical scenes as interpreted in the Midrash, or Jewish biblical exegesis. I turned the parchment and suddenly found myself gazing at the illustration that had provoked more scholarly speculation than all the others. It was a domestic scene. A family of Jews—Spanish, by their dress—sits at a Passover meal. We see the ritual foods, the matzoh to commemorate the unleavened bread that the Hebrews baked in haste on the night before they fled Egypt, a shank bone to remember the lamb’s blood on the doorposts that had caused the angel of death to “pass over” Jewish homes. The father, reclining as per custom, to show that he is a free man and not a slave, sips wine from a golden goblet as his small son, beside him, raises a cup. The mother sits serenely in the fine gown and jeweled headdress of the day. Probably the scene is a portrait of the family who commissioned this particular haggadah. But there is another woman at the table, ebony-skinned and saffron-robed, holding a piece of matzoh. Too finely dressed to be a servant, and fully participating in the Jewish rite, the identity of that African woman in saffron has perplexed the book’s scholars for a century. Slowly, deliberately, I examined and made notes on the condition of each page. Each time I turned a parchment, I checked and adjusted the position of the supporting forms. Never stress the book—the conservator’s chief commandment. But the people who had owned this book had known unbearable stress: pogrom, Inquisition, exile, genocide, war.

If one could nominate an absolutely tragic day in human history, it would be the occasion that is now commemorated by the vapid and annoying holiday known as “Hannukah.” For once, instead of Christianity plagiarizing from Judaism, the Jews borrow shamelessly from Christians in the pathetic hope of a celebration that coincides with “Christmas,” which is itself a quasi-Christian annexation, complete with burning logs and holly and mistletoe, of a pagan Northland solstice originally illuminated by the Aurora Borealis. Here is the terminus to which banal “multiculturalism” has brought us. But it was nothing remotely multicultural that induced Judah Maccabeus to reconsecrate the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 BC, and to establish the date which the soft celebrants of Hannukah now so emptily commemorate. The Maccabees, who founded the Hasmonean dynasty, were forcibly restoring Mosaic fundamentalism against the many Jews of Palestine and elsewhere who had become attracted by Hellenism. These true early multiculturalists had become bored by “the law,” offended by circumcision, interested by Greek literature, drawn by the physical and intellectual exercises of the gymnasium, and rather adept at philosophy. They could feel the pull exerted by Athens, even if only by way of Rome and by the memory of Alexander’s time, and were impatient with the stark fear and superstition mandated by the Pentateuch. They obviously seemed too cosmopolitan to the votaries of the old Temple—and it must have been easy to accuse them of “dual loyalty” when they agreed to have a temple of Zeus on the site where smoky and bloody altars used to propitiate the unsmiling deity of yore. At any rate, when the father of Judah Maccabeus saw a Jew about to make a Hellenic offering on the old altar, he lost no time in murdering him. Over the next few years of the Maccabean “revolt,” many more assimilated Jews were slain, or forcibly circumcised, or both, and the women who had flirted with the new Hellenic dispensation suffered even worse. Since the Romans eventually preferred the violent and dogmatic Maccabees to the less militarized and fanatical Jews who had shone in their togas in the Mediterranean light, the scene was set for the uneasy collusion between the old-garb ultra-Orthodox Sanhedrin and the imperial governorate. This lugubrious relationship was eventually to lead to Christianity (yet another Jewish heresy) and thus ineluctably to the birth of Islam. We could have been spared the whole thing.

The same lesson can be learned from one of the most widely read books in history: the Bible. What is the Bible “about”? Different people will of course answer that question differently. But we could all agree the Bible contains perhaps the most influential set of rules in human history: the Ten Commandments. They became the foundation of not only the Judeo-Christian tradition but of many societies at large. So surely most of us can recite the Ten Commandments front to back, back to front, and every way in between, right? All right then, go ahead and name the Ten Commandments. We’ll give you a minute to jog your memory . . . . . . . . . . . . Okay, here they are:        1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.        2. You shall have no other gods before Me.        3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.        4. Remember the Sabbath day, to make it holy.        5. Honor your father and your mother.        6. You shall not murder.        7. You shall not commit adultery.        8. You shall not steal.        9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.       10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor your neighbor’s wife . . . nor any thing that is your neighbor’s. How did you do? Probably not so well. But don’t worry—most people don’t. A recent survey found that only 14 percent of U.S. adults could recall all Ten Commandments; only 71 percent could name even one commandment. (The three best-remembered commandments were numbers 6, 8, and 10—murder, stealing, and coveting—while number 2, forbidding false gods, was in last place.) Maybe, you’re thinking, this says less about biblical rules than how bad our memories are. But consider this: in the same survey, 25 percent of the respondents could name the seven principal ingredients of a Big Mac, while 35 percent could name all six kids from The Brady Bunch. If we have such a hard time recalling the most famous set of rules from perhaps the most famous book in history, what do we remember from the Bible? The stories. We remember that Eve fed Adam a forbidden apple and that one of their sons, Cain, murdered the other, Abel. We remember that Moses parted the Red Sea in order to lead the Israelites out of slavery. We remember that Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his own son on a mountain—and we even remember that King Solomon settled a maternity dispute by threatening to slice a baby in half. These are the stories we tell again and again and again, even those of us who aren’t remotely “religious.” Why? Because they stick with us; they move us; they persuade us to consider the constancy and frailties of the human experience in a way that mere rules cannot.

My dear Marwan, in the long summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfathers’ farmhouse outside of Hom. We woke in the mornings to the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, to the bleating of your grandmother's goat, the clanking of her cooking pots, the air cool and the sun a pale rim of persimmon to the east. We took you there when you were a toddler. I have a sharply etched memory of your mother from that trip. I wish you hadn’t been so young. You wouldn't have forgotten the farmhouse, the soot of its stone walls, the creek where your uncles and I built a thousand boyhood dams. I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan. In its bustling Old City, a mosque for us Muslims, a church for our Christian neighbours, and a grand souk for us all to haggle over gold pendants and fresh produce and bridal dresses. I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square. But that life, that time, seems like a dream now, even to me, like some long-dissolved rumour. First came the protests. Then the siege. The skies spitting bombs. Starvation. Burials. These are the things you know You know a bomb crater can be made into a swimming hole. You have learned dark blood is better news than bright. You have learned that mothers and sisters and classmates can be found in narrow gaps between concrete, bricks and exposed beams, little patches of sunlit skin shining in the dark. Your mother is here tonight, Marwan, with us, on this cold and moonlit beach, among the crying babies and the women worrying in tongues we don’t speak. Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and Eritreans and Syrians. All of us impatient for sunrise, all of us in dread of it. All of us in search of home. I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother's voice, over the tide, and she whispers in my ear, ‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.' In the glow of this three-quarter moon, my boy, your eyelashes like calligraphy, closed in guileless sleep. I said to you, ‘Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen.' These are only words. A father's tricks. It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how powerless I am to protect you from it. Pray God steers the vessel true, when the shores slip out of eyeshot and we are in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting, easily swallowed. Because you, you are precious cargo, Marwan, the most precious there ever was. I pray the sea knows this. Inshallah. How I pray the sea knows this.

Remarkably, we still have a ‘wild’ Indian’s account of his capture and incarceration. In 1878, when he was an old man, a Kamia called Janitin told an interviewer: I and two of my relatives went down ... to the beach ... we did no harm to anyone on the road, and ... we thought of nothing more than catching and drying clams in order to carry them to our village. While we were doing this, we saw two men on horseback coming rapidly towards us; my relatives were immediately afraid and they fled with all speed, hiding themselves in a very dense willow grove ... As soon as I saw myself alone, I also became afraid ... and ran to the forest ... but already it was too late, because in a moment they overtook me and lassoed and dragged me for a long distance, wounding me much with the branches over which they dragged me, pulling me lassoed as I was with their horses running; after this they roped me with my arms behind and carried me off to the Mission of San Miguel, making me travel almost at a run in order to keep up with their horses, and when I stopped a little to catch my wind, they lashed me with the lariats that they carried, making me understand by signs that I should hurry; after much travelling in this manner, they diminished the pace and lashed me in order that I would always travel at the pace of the horses. When we arrived at the mission, they locked me in a room for a week; the father [a Dominican priest] made me go to his habitation and he talked to me by means of an interpreter, telling me that he would make me a Christian, and he told me many things that I did not understand, and Cunnur, the interpreter, told me that I should do as the father told me, because now I was not going to be set free, and it would go very bad with me if I did not consent in it. They gave me atole de mayz[corn gruel] to eat which I did not like because I was not accustomed to that food; but there was nothing else to eat. One day they threw water on my head and gave me salt to eat, and with this the interpreter told me that I was now Christian and that I was called Jesús: I knew nothing of this, and I tolerated it all because in the end I was a poor Indian and did not have recourse but to conform myself and tolerate the things they did with me. The following day after my baptism, they took me to work with the other Indians, and they put me to cleaning a milpa [cornfield] of maize; since I did not know how to manage the hoe that they gave me, after hoeing a little, I cut my foot and could not continue working with it, but I was put to pulling out the weeds by hand, and in this manner I did not finish the task that they gave me. In the afternoon they lashed me for not finishing the job, and the following day the same thing happened as on the previous day. Every day they lashed me unjustly because I did not finish what I did not know how to do, and thus I existed for many days until I found a way to escape; but I was tracked and they caught me like a fox; there they seized me by lasso as on the first occasion, and they carried me off to the mission torturing me on the road. After we arrived, the father passed along the corridor of the house, and he ordered that they fasten me to the stake and castigate me; they lashed me until I lost consciousness, and I did not regain consciousness for many hours afterwards. For several days I could not raise myself from the floor where they had laid me, and I still have on my shoulders the marks of the lashes which they gave me then.

By emphasizing God’s mercy, more infinite than a parent’s for a child, she found salvation in her own weakness. “Sanctity,” Thérèse explains to her sister, is “a disposition of heart which is confident to the point of audacity in the goodness of our Father.

Brothers, beseech our Lord God, that he comfort Holy Christianity with His Grace, and His Peace, and protect it from all evil. Pray to Our God for our spiritual father, the Pope, and for the Empire and for all our leaders and prelates of Christianity, lay and ecclesiastical, that God use them in His service. And also for all spiritual and lay judges, that they may give Holy Christianity peace and such good justice that God’s Judgement will not come over them. Pray for our Order in which God has assembled us, that the Lord will give us Grace, Purity, a Spiritual Life, and that he take away all that is found in us or other Orders that is unworthy of praise and opposed to His Commandments. Pray for our Grand Master and all the regional commanders, who govern our lands and people, and for all the brothers who exercise office in our Order, that they act in their office of the Order in such a way as not to depart from God. Pray for the brothers who hold no office, that they may use their time purposefully and zealously in worship, so that those who hold office and they themselves may be useful and pious. Pray for those who are fallen in deadly sin, that God may help them back into his Grace and that they may escape eternal punishment. Pray for the lands that lie near the pagans, that God may come to their aid with his Counsel and Power, that belief in God and Love can be spread there, so that they can withstand all their enemies. Pray for those who are friends and associates of the Order, and also for those who do good actions or who seek to do them, that God may reward them. Pray for all those who have left us inheritances or gifts that neither in life nor in death does God allow them to depart from Him. Especially pray for Duke Friedrich of Swabia and King Heinrich his brother, who was Emperor, and for the honourable burghers of Lübeck and Bremen, who founded our Order. Remember also Duke Leopold of Austria, Duke Conrad of Masovia, and Duke Sambor of Pomerellia . . . Remember also our dead brothers and sisters . . . Let each remember the soul of his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters. Pray for all believers, that God may give them eternal peace. May they rest in peace. Amen.

The depth of Scripture The Christian Scriptures are so deep that, even if I studied them to the exclusion of all else, from early childhood to worn-out old age, with ample leisure and untiring zeal, and with greater capacity of mind than I possess, each day I would still discover new riches within them. The fundamental truths necessary for salvation are found with ease in the Scriptures. But even when a person has accepted these truths, and is both God-fearing and righteous in his actions, there are still so many things which lie under a vast veil of mystery. Through reading the Scriptures, we can pierce this veil, and find the deepest wisdom in the words which express these mysteries, and in the mysteries themselves. The oldest, the ablest, and the most ardent student of Scripture, will say at the end of each day: “I have finished, and yet my studies have only just begun.” Augustine of Hippo Letter 137

I heard the sound of a mill. As I followed the sound I came to a building that was full of cracks. The entrance went down underground. Inside I saw a man who was collecting [on slips of paper] a number of passages from the Word and other books concerning justification by faith alone. Copyists in the next room were writing out on a full sheet the passages he had found. When I asked him the topic of the passages he was collecting now, he said, “The point that God the Father lapsed from an attitude of grace toward the human race, and therefore sent his Son to make atonement and appease the Father.” By way of response, I said that it goes against Scripture and sound reason to think that God could lapse from an attitude of grace; that would be lapsing from his own essence, and that would mean he was no longer God. When I thoroughly demonstrated this, he became angry and ordered his copyists to throw me out. As I was walking out on my own, he picked up a book that happened to be at hand and threw it at me. The book was the Word.

… Communities repeat their central myths, the stories that make them a “cult” and give them an identity, in order to provide them a sense of social continuity. And so Americans tell themselves their “founding” stories over and over again, even though some of them are quite deranged and self-destructive: how the Founding Fathers were the homogenous embodiment of wisdom (when in fact the hated one another, mostly along Federalist and Republican lines); how these wise fathers created a Christian nation “under god” (when in fact many of them - Jefferson, Paine, Franklin - were Deistic skeptics) ; how the Second Amendment means that we all have the right to carry assault rifles; how everyone should strive for the American Dream understood as “success,” that “American bitch goddess” (William James), and so on. Deranged though they may be, these stories are comforting for many Americans, and so to challenge them is to invite vigorous debate if not a fistfight.

George Washington is known by Americans as the founding father of our nation. However, there has been great confusion and debate about his faith. The historic view was that he was a Christian. The consensus of scholars that has developed since the bicentennial of Washington’s birth in 1932 is that he was a Deist, that is, one who believes in a very remote and impersonal God.

RETURN BAD FRUIT Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Matthew 7:20 This Scripture applies to politicians as well as anyone. What really amazes me, though, is how little this wisdom ever gets applied. Liberal policies in this country can be linked directly to an almost unbelievable breakdown of the traditional family, to a corruption of our culture to the point that it’s often unwise to leave a child at home with the television remote control (that wasn’t a problem when I was a kid), to a national debt of astronomical proportions that will burden Americans for generations to come, to a heightening of racial division and racial politics, to rising crime and attacks on police, to welfare dependency, to bureaucrats who snip away at our freedom, to attempts to weaken our military . . . really, the list of evils that can legitimately be linked to liberal policies is endless. And yet liberals keep pushing the same snake oil of big government, high taxes, foreign policy weakness, an apparently endless sexual revolution, and cowardly political correctness, and all too often they get elected. Part of that is because too many people like us don’t pay enough attention. We don’t look at the fruits of feel-good, sound-good policies. And a lot of the time we don’t even vote. The Left wants to fundamentally transform America—that means to take us away from our Christian and constitutional principles. I don’t know about you, but I like the fruits of our Founding Fathers’ ideals that are based on time-tested truths and have proved to be infinitely better than the fruits of modern liberalism. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, resolve to vote elected representatives bearing bad fruit out of office. That’s your right!

CHRIST, OUR SOURCE OF UNITY Today Christians argue about doctrines and divide over perceptions of end-time events. Yet let us look at the deeper issue: Do we each love Jesus Christ? If so, our love for Him is the result of His love for us. Even if we disagree with one another on minor doctrines, we should treat each other with reverence, for Christ has personally loved us. You see, the proof that we truly know Jesus Christ is not measured by the degrees we post on a wall but by the degree of love for Him that burns in our hearts. Do you not love Him? Your love is a response to the relentless warmth of God’s love for you, and His love has proven itself irresistible. He says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you” (John 15:16). Again He says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44). Even our coming to Him is a product of His love for us. When I say, “I love You, Jesus,” it is because at some point long before I knew Him, before I could discern His voice or recognize His influence in my life, a power born of His love was drawing me to Him. Yes, I know I am not worthy, but still Christ loved me. True, I have no righteousness of my own, but I imagine there was a moment in Heaven when the Son turned to the heavenly Father and said, “I love Francis. I will bring him to Myself, show him My ways, and become the strength of his life.” BEHOLD HOW HE LOVES US Our capacity to actually dwell in Christ’s presence is based upon knowing the true nature of God. If we see Him as a loving Father, we will draw near; if He seems to be a harsh judge, we will withdraw. Indeed, everything that defines us is influenced by our perception of God. If we do not believe God cares about us, we will be overly focused on caring for ourselves. If we feel insignificant or ignored by Him, we will exhaust ourselves seeking significance from others. Once we accept the profound truth that God loves us, that He desires we draw near to Him, a door opens before us into His heart. Here, in the shelter of the Most High, we can find rest and renewed power for our souls. Our Lord is not distant from us, for He is actually “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Heb. 4:15, KJV). He feels the pain of what we experience on earth. He participates in the life we live, for “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28, KJV). He is not removed from our need; we are His body. The

Now that we have seen what is in the Koran, let’s consider what is not in the Muslim holy book. Islam, being one of the “world’s great religions,” as well as one of the “three great Abrahamic faiths,” enjoys the benefit of certain assumptions on the part of uninformed Americans and Europeans. Many people believe that since Islam is a religion, it must teach universal love and brotherhood—because that is what religions do, isn’t it? It must teach that one ought to be kind to the poor and downtrodden, generous, charitable, and peaceful. It must teach that we are all children of a loving God whose love for all human beings should be imitated by those whom he has created. Certainly Judaism and Christianity teach these things, and they are found in nearly equivalent forms in Eastern religions. But when it comes to Islam, the assumptions are wrong. Islam makes a distinction between believers and unbelievers that overrides any obligation to general benevolence. A moral code from the Koran As we have seen, the Koran recounts how Moses went up on the mountain and encountered Allah, who gave him tablets—but says nothing about what was written on them (7:145). Although the Ten Commandments do not appear in the Koran, the book is not bereft of specific moral guidelines: its seventeenth chapter enunciates a moral code (17:22–39). Accordingly, Muslims should:           1.    Worship Allah alone.           2.    Be kind to their parents.           3.    Provide for their relatives, the needy, and travelers, and not be wasteful.           4.    Not kill their children for fear of poverty.           5.    Not commit adultery.           6.    Not “take life—which Allah has made sacred—except for just cause.” Also, “whoso is slain wrongfully, We have given power unto his heir, but let him not commit excess in slaying”—that is, one should make restitution for wrongful death.           7.    Not seize the wealth of orphans.           8.    “Give full measure when ye measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight”—that is, conduct business honestly.           9.    “Pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge.”           10.  Not “walk on the earth with insolence.” Noble ideals, to be sure, but when it comes to particulars, these are not quite equivalent to the Ten Commandments. The provision about not taking life “except for just cause” is, of course, in the same book as the thrice-repeated command to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5; 4:89; 2:191)—thus Infidels must understand that their infidelity, their non-acceptance of Islam, is “just cause” for Muslims to make war against them. In the same vein, one is to be kind to one’s parents—unless they are Infidels: “O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith. Whoso of you taketh them for friends, such are wrong-doers” (9:23). You

The “Founding Fathers” were not Christian. They were Deists. Deism was an eighteenth-century rationalist philosophy, emerging from the European Enlightenment. Deists understood “God” to be the principle of organization and intelligence in the universe. This ordering principle could be discerned by rational thought and investigation, but it was not a personal deity who could be petitioned by humans. Deists considered themselves to be decent and spiritually devoted men, but when they said “God” they referred to “cosmic law,” not the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Some Deists, including the American Deists, spent a good amount of time and energy criticizing and refuting the superstitions, dogmas, and rituals of the organized Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant.

we hear Christ proclaiming to us by the mouth of the priest His holy Gospel, to the profit and salvation of our souls. As the Mass proceeds, we behold Him exercising His miraculous power, transforming wine into His sacred Blood, a miracle far greater than that of Cana, where He changed water into wine. Or we see Him, as at the Last Supper, changing the elements of bread and wine into His very Flesh and Blood. Finally, at the Elevation we see Christ lifted up upon the Cross; with the ears of our spiritual sense we hear Him interceding for us: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). “They know not,” that is, how deeply they have outraged Thy Divine Majesty by their transgressions. We do not, it is true, behold all these things with our bodily eyes; we discern them by the light of supernatural faith, and by this our faith we merit a greater recompense than did those who witnessed them with the organs of the body. This we know on the authority of Our Lord Himself, who said: “Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed.” (John 20:29). The higher and more incomprehensible are these mysteries, the more meritorious is our faith, and the greater will be our reward in Heaven. In regard to this, Father Sanchez writes: “If Christians did but know how to profit by these things, they might, by hearing one single Mass, acquire a greater store of riches than could be found in all created things.

the real test of Pakistan will be the way it treats the nationalist Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus in Pakistan. Then Muslims themselves have various sects; there are Shias and Sunnis and various others. It is to be seen how these various sects are treated

By blood-sealed covenant by prophetic utterances and figures, and by prescriptions for sacrificial worship, God tried to prepare His people to expect a Redeemer who would have to bleed and die. But they wanted only a glorious conqueror with a universal and endless reign. Even when Jesus appeared to the Eleven, who had received two and one-half years of special training and instruction, He found them confused and wondering. As a doctrine, Christ crucified is central to Christian life. In practice, is there not much insistence on a comfortable Christ, a Christ without wounds? (Easter Tuesday)

God, thank you for the storm for I found You in the middle of it.

Consistency between Dionysos-type godforms is also demonstrated in five minor attributes, which fluctuate in degree depending upon the particular norms, standards, and values of a given culture. These attributes are: 1. Unsurpassed viciousness toward those who would harm the followers of the god. When this aspect of Dionysian godforms is aroused, they are what has been termed “Hunters of Men.” 2. These Deities are lawgivers who, very often, figure in literal or symbolic acts of human sacrifice, whether this sacrifice occurs because of the breaking of laws, as part of worship, or for the granting of special favors to a community at large. Paradoxically, these same godforms ultimately do away with all requirements for human sacrifice. 3. Such archetypes are portals between upper, lower, and middle worlds: Bridges between the realms of life and death, they are gatekeepers, or the companions of gatekeepers, and masters of altered states of being. 4. Godforms of this type are often portrayed as adherents or defenders of the divine feminine, and can often be found in the company of female worshippers, goddesses, or their own mates, without whom they are incomplete, and upon whom they rely in order to fulfill their multiple roles of Divine Child, Bridegroom, Father, Savior, and Reborn One. Sensuality, too, is a Dionysian trademark: This is usually a paradoxical sensuality, at once childlike and ravaging, remarkably androgynous yet undeniably masculine in its expression. 5. Bewitching is an acceptable description of Dionysos-syncretistic Deities; many are unsurpassed in the powers of discrimination, response, wisdom, healing, fertility, prophecy, and magic in general. When Dionysos was invoked or worshipped by the ancient Greeks for his command of the powers listed above, he was considered agathos daemon, or “the good demon”: Demons, to the pagan Hellenes, were not necessarily wholly evil forces of the kind espoused by the Christian faith. They were seen as demigods capable of bringing either wealth and happiness or pain and suffering to mankind, of appearing in any sort of theriomorphic form — including no form at all — and of interceding between the supreme godhead and mankind.

About halfway through high school, I abandoned my childhood religious upbringing. Not surprisingly, given my experience with my father, I was drawn irresistibly to the feminist movement, devouring all the classic books from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, and many more. Later, while living in Europe, I stumbled across L’Abri, the ministry of Francis Schaeffer in Switzerland. (We had lived in Europe when I was young, and I had gone back.) At L’Abri, for the first time I discovered that there exists something called Christian apologetics, and I was stunned. I had no idea that Christianity could be supported by logic and reasons and good arguments. Eventually I found the arguments persuasive and I reconverted to Christianity. Yet that was only the beginning of a decades-long process of spiritual and psychological healing from my father’s abuse.

Because in Western Christian circles worship is largely regarded as a matter of personal taste, Orthodox worship—indeed, traditional Christian worship—tends to be understood as just one of many preferences for how to worship. “Smells and bells,” as it were. It is assumed to be some form of Greek, Russian, Middle Eastern, or other arcane cultural expression of Christian worship. This, however, is far from the truth. The patterns, and even details, of Orthodox worship are based on a consistent interpretation of God’s commandments in the Torah, now grasped more fully and deeply in Christ. New Testament worship did not start over with a clean slate after abandoning the worship of the Old Testament. The apostles applied the commandments of the Torah regarding worship to the Christian communities they founded. This apostolic worship is continued in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church. This is the worship that God has given to humanity to allow them to make a pleasing offering to the Father, united to the Son, in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

one were to place the founding fathers on a spectrum between traditional Christian authority and Deistic rationalism, it might be reflected this way—Christians: John Jay, Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, John Witherspoon, Benjamin Rush; mixed theology: Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, George Washington; and Deists: James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine.

Schwager thinks like me that we need to see a spontaneous scapegoat phenomenon behind the crucifixion, as well as behind the myths. The whole difference rests on the recognition of this phenomenon, that cannot be found in myths, but is there in the Gospels. But the most extraordinary thing in the Gospels is that this recognition comes from Christ himself, rather than the evangelists, who do everything they can in order to follow Christ, and overall they accomplished it. I would like to write a total Christian interpretation of the history of religion that would really be the history of sacrifice. It would show that archaic religions are the real educators of mankind, which they lead out of archaic violence. Then God becomes victim in order to free man of the illusion of a violent God, which must be abolished in favour of Christ’s knowledge of his Father. One can regard archaic religions as a prior moment in a progressive revelation that culminates in Christ. Thus, to those who say that the Eucharist is rooted in archaic cannibalism, instead of saying ‘no’, we have to say ‘yes!’. The

This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,84 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed.