Re: [asa] Ken Ham Honored

Good points, Michael. I also forgot to inform Janice that when Washington
was President and afterwards, on those rare occasions when he did attend
services, he used the American Prayer Book of 1789 (not the prayer book of
1662), which is heavily based on the 1637 Prayer Book of the Scottish
Episcopal Church. The reason for the latter is that when the first elected
American bishop could not be ordained in London, because he couldn't swear
an oath of alliegence to the Crown, he went north to Scotland where the
non-juring Scottish bishops ordained him. The deal was that he would accept
certain features of the Scottish prayer book in the American prayer book, a
deal that was honored in the first draft of 1786. That's why the service of
Holy Communion in subsequent American prayer books up to 1979 followed the
Scottish rite.

Bob Schneider

On 6/28/07, Michael Roberts <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I never knew you could get the 1662 Prayer book on line! I just use an
> old print version when I celebrate communion from it! Even in 1776 many
> Anglicans did not accept what was in the prayer book.
>
> According to Mark Noll (a passable church historian!!!!!!!!!!!!)
> Washington never took communion and rarely went to church on Sundays.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net>
> *To:* Robert Schneider <schneider98@gmail.com> ; Ted Davis<TDavis@messiah.edu>
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu ; Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
> *Sent:* Thursday, June 28, 2007 5:37 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [asa] Ken Ham Honored
>
>
> At 07:44 AM 6/28/2007, Robert Schneider wrote:
>
> Yes, Ted. *That nominal Anglican with a Deist's sensibilities George
> Washington, along with Jefferson, Franklin, and several others of the
> founders*, would be puzzled by this accolade. ..." ~ Bob
>
>
> *@ 4 things:
>
> [1] * "...This is why to "deconstruct," say, George Washington, is* not
> just an attack on the father of our country, but on fatherhood, God, and the
> realm of transcendent (i.e., the Real) in general. .." ~ *
> http://tinyurl.com/2m2g7p
>
> *
>
> [2] "...*No, Washington was no Deist and those who say so are
> ignoramouses. Washington was a Vestryman who understood his place with the
> Lord God Almighty and dared not presume on his Providence.
>
> Please read the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which may be found online at*
> http://www.eskimo.com/~lhowell/bcp1662/. *Read it and you will understand
> Washington and his God. You might even join him in reverent worship. *"*
> ~ Reviewer J. Ames Washington: a typical Churchman of his day*, *July 2,
> 2006
>
> *Scroll down to read his complete review of the book *Washington's God -
> *by Michael Novak
> *
> http://www.amazon.com/Washingtons-God-Michael-Novak/dp/046505126X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/104-0343672-7556739
>
> **
>
> *[3] *The above book reviewer is backed up here: *Leading Christian
> Myths - *James Patrick Holding *
> http://www.tektonics.org/af/christianmyths.html
>
> * <http://www.tektonics.org/af/christianmyths.html>Myth #2 God is my
> buddy, Jesus is my friend. The modern hymn calls Jesus a "friend" and some
> may appeal to a verse in John where Jesus calls his disciples "friends". But
> the understanding of the word is decontextualized. People of the time of the
> Bible did not "get to know" each other as modern persons in the West do. A
> "friend" meant a person who looked out for your practical interests -- not
> someone you had beer and watched football with. ..." *[snip]
>
> *
>
> [4] **Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes below are from *Michael
> Novak's On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at America's Founding<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1893554341/002-7478175-6474406?ie=UTF8&tag=onecosmos-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1893554341>
> * http://tinyurl.com/2724rw
>
> " [large snip] ...The question I have is whether any of any of this
> integral theorizing of about human nature and the role of the state is in
> any way superior to what America's founders already worked out some 225
> years ago. I cannot see any advantage whatsoever. *In my view, the
> founders combined timeless truths about human nature with a deep
> understanding of the dynamics of progress, both material and spiritual,
> collective and individual. Clearly, they regarded the individual as
> sacrosanct, and I do not regard any form of leftist collectivism as
> developmentally "higher" than classical liberalism. More often than not, it
> is a regressive move backward, dictated by the desire for maternal comfort
> and security. *....."
>
> Perhaps one of the differences between the integral movement and the
> American experiment is that the former seems to be steeped in Buddhist
> metaphysics, *while the American founders could only have come from a
> Judeo-Christian perspective that regards the interior and exterior as
> equally real and valuable. America's founders, although liberal -- again,
> classically liberal -- were in no way analogous to modern day "flatland"
> secular liberals who deny interiors, blame society for their problems, and
> need a large federal government to help them get through life.
>
> As John Adams wrote, "I always consider the settlement of America with
> reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in
> Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the
> slavish part of mankind all over the earth." *In other words, at its core,
> America is all about the possibility of interior evolution. This has been
> its very purpose from the start. Leftists have perverted that purpose and
> taken America further away from its founding ideals and principles. Should
> they ever prevail, they would eliminate the very idea of America, that "last
> best hope of earth."
>
> As I have mentioned before, human beings have a horizontal aspect that
> develops and changes through time, and is largely conditioned by the
> environment. However, they also have a vertical nature which it is the
> purpose of life to actualize or "realize" in the horizontal.
>
> *You might say that we have a genetic blueprint (the horizontal) and a
> divine blueprint (the vertical). This is a distinction of which the
> founders were fully aware.
>
> For example, Alexander Hamilton wrote that "The sacred rights of mankind
> are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are
> written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand
> of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."
>
> Does this vertical awareness sound anything like a contemporary leftist
> liberal? Hardly. One cannot imagine HowardDean making such a statement,
> while [our current president] has made any number of statements that
> parallel the words of Hamilton.
>
> *From the start, America's founders believed they had forged a new *compact
> with God*, in exactly the same way the ancient Hebrews had. They were
> fully conscious of being chosen for a divine evolutionary mission.
>
> In his second inaugural address, *Jefferson pleaded for the assistance of
> "that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old,
> from their native land and planted them" in this new world. This goes
> completely against modern secular myths that suggest that America was
> somehow set up to protect us from religion -- from the great interior.
>
> One scholar undertook the task of counting the citations found among the
> writings of the founders. Of 3,154 references, nearly 1,100 of them -- 34
> percent -- are to the Bible. Nothing else comes close.
>
> Like the ancient Jews, America's founders regarded time as linear and
> progressive, not cyclical. But the operative word is progressive. They did
> not, like the modern progressive, regard time as linear and going nowhereexcept toward increasing materialism and collectivism.
>
> Rather, as Michael Novak writes, the founders "believed history had a
> beginning and was guided by Providence for a purpose.... Time was created
> for the unfolding of human liberty, for human emancipation." Again, the
> purposes of time and history were not merely for exterior emancipation
> but, more importantly, interior emancipation. Or, one might say that the
> purpose of exterior liberty was for the purpose of interior, vertical
> development, so that history becomes "a record of progress (or decline),
> measured by permanent standards, God's standards..." (Novak).
>
> As Novak notes, "Without this metaphysical background, the founding
> generation of Americans would have had little heart for the War of
> Independence. They would have had no ground for believing that their
> seemingly unlawful rebellion actually fulfilled the will of God -- and
> suited the laws of nature and nature's God."
>
> But the Founders, in the words of the Declaration of Independence,
> specifically appealed "to the Supreme Judge of the world for the Rectitude
> of our Intentions."
>
> Modern secular liberals often cite the words of Jefferson or Franklin to
> support their erroneous ideas about the founding of America, but, as Novak<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDliOGUzMjJkNmQ3ZjI4Nzc3MGRlYTg2NWNiMjBmYjA=>writes, "the greatest of all American historians, Gordon Wood.... has not
> found a single atheist during the Founding period (not even Tom Paine), and
> certainly not among the Founders.
>
> Second, he finds even the least religious of the Founders considerably
> more religious than the average professor at American universities today.
>
> Ours is a far, far more secular age, our leaders and our people are far
> more ignorant of religious ideas. Third, he finds that Jefferson -- the
> Founder most attended to today -- was an outlier among the Founders."
>
> In that same article, Novak cites a letter written by Benjamin Franklin,
> who, like Jefferson, was one of the least orthodox of the founders. And
> yet, he wrote that "I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he
> governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most
> acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.
> That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in
> another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the
> fundamental principles of all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in
> whatever sect I meet with them."
>
> Even Thomas Paine -- whom many mistakenly regard as an atheist -- "was so
> hostile to atheism that he sailed to France after 1789 to fight against it,
> holding it responsible for the bloody massacres of the Terror." This
> hostility to atheism "was nearly universal in America, on the ground that where
> there is no omniscient Judge, political power knows no moral check." Atheism
> is the exterior philosophy par excellence, completely denying even the
> possibility of interior evolution.
>
> The founders categorically rejected atheism because it violated all common
> sense -- and America's founders were nothing if not common-sensical.
>
> As Washington wrote, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that
> National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles."
> Moreover, as Novak writes, the founders were aware that "a free society
> demands a higher level of virtue than a tyranny, which no other moral energy
> has heretofore proven capable of inspiring except Judaism and Christianity."
> Novak retraces the simple logic of the Founders:
>
> Liberty is the object of the Republic.
> Liberty needs virtue.
> Virtue among the people is impossible without religion.
>
> Again, I do not see "progressives" as having progressed beyond
> Washington's understanding. Since what Washington said is eternally true,
> one can only deviate from it and move backward, which secular and atheistic
> ideologies have proved time and again. Keep in mind that dreadful figure
> -- 200 million souls murdered in the 20th century due to atheistic and
> anti-Christian ideologies.
>
> *Yes, things have not turned out as we might have hoped in Iraq. But the
> "progressive" left sees our mission there as an entirely ignoble,
> fundamentally evil enterprise motivated by purely venal interests. *They
> see this because, in their flatland view of the world, this is all they
> can see. *Instead of seeing in [our current president] an idealist with
> flawed execution, they see a greedy and self-interested religious fascist.
> * For the left there is no vertical.
>
> *It's not easy to bring the vertical world of liberty to a resistant
> hellhole such as the Muslim Middle East. *Tocqueville wrote that "Fixed
> ideas about God and human nature are indispensable to men for the conduct of
> daily life," even if these fixed ideals are difficult for most men to reach.
> But eliminate them, and you descend to the horizontal wasteland of the
> contemporary leftist liberal.
>
> *"Democracy," wrote Tocqueville, "favors the taste for physical
> pleasures," i.e., the exterior and the horizontal. But "this taste, if it
> becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that nothing but matter
> exists." Thus, the downward pull of secular "progressivism" must be actively
> countered by each generation anew. ..." [snip]
>
> Wednesday, December 13, 2006 *America's Founding Avatars: Back to the
> Future (with updates from mankind's progressive past) *
> http://tinyurl.com/2vxx9w
>
> ~ Janice ...... agreeing that "....if we could somehow eliminate *envy*from the human genome, there would be almost no reason for the left to
> exist. They would instantly lose that which animates them, for example, envy
> masquerading as justice or economic theory. *In order to be happy, we
> must all keep our envy in check, because envy is the opposite of gratitude.
> Envy does not appreciate what one has, only what one doesn't have. And our
> capacity to imagine what we do not have--and that someone else is enjoying
> it--is literally infinite, as is envy.* .." Friday, April 28, 2006* *
> http://tinyurl.com/jhwlp
>
>

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Received on Thu Jun 28 15:18:50 2007