Author: Douglas Knight

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Without ceasing

Three things – the Church prays unceasingly, it withdraws to pray, and it prays in public, in the open air, before the whole city. The prayer of the Church is unceasing, and it alternates between this public form and this withdrawn, even monastic, form.

The practice of perpetual prayer(Latin: laus perennis) was inaugurated by the archimandrite Alexander (died about 430) the founder of the monastic Acoemetae or “vigil-keepers”. Laus perennis was imported to Western Europe at Agaunum, where it was carried on, day and night, by several choirs, or turmae, who succeeded each other in the recitation of the divine office, so that prayer went on without cessation.

The practice of perpetual prayer, 24-7 prayer movement continues to gain momentum. It focuses on creating “prayer rooms” where there are Christians engaged in prayer day and night.

The 24-7 prayer room is a simple idea – to make time, ‘away’ from the usual distractions of life, to speak with and listen to God. Even Jesus took time away from the demands of the crowds to be with his Father (Matthew 14.23). How much must we need this space and time ‘away’, so that we can be more effectively ‘with’?

And it prays in public.
I have been calling this ‘processing’. But I suppose you could call it Prayer walking

Prayerwalking is the twin to praise marching in taking prayer onto the streets. It can be used by Christians in any land any day of the year. March for Jesus is rooted in the recognition that united, powerful prayer is a necessary foundation for effective evangelism. The key step was to take this prayer to the streets, to the very locations where the answers would be seen.

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A remedial history of economics

What is economics about?
Jesus once made the empirical observation that since the days of Noah and Lot, people have been doing, and until the end of the world presumably will be doing, four kinds of things. He gave these examples: “planting and building,” “buying and selling,” “marrying and being given in marriage,” and “eating and drinking” (Luke 17:26-8). In other words, we humans produce, exchange, give, and use our human and nonhuman goods.

A Brief, Remedial History of Economics
Scholastic economics (1250-1776) began when Thomas Aquinas integrated these four elements (production, exchange, distribution and consumption), all drawn from Aristotle and Augustine, in an outline integrated at the individual, domestic and political levels. This scholastic outline was taught by Catholics and Protestants (after the Reformation) for more than five centuries. Classical economics (1776-1871) began when Adam Smith cut these four elements to two, trying to explain “division of labor” by production and exchange alone, eliminating distribution and consumption. Today’s “neoclassical” economics (1871-c.2000) began when three economists independently reinvented Augustine’s theory of utility, reintegrating consumption with production and exchange, but not distribution. I think “neoscholastic” economics will revolutionize the field again by restoring the missing element of distribution.

The three worldviews
When Paul preached in the marketplace of Athens, he prefaced the Gospel with a Biblically orthodox adaptation of Greco-Roman natural law. The evangelist Luke tells us that “some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers argued with him” (Acts 17:18). The same dispute continues among (neo)scholastic, classical and neoclassical economists. In (neo)scholastic natural law, economics is a theory of rational providence, describing how we choose both persons as “ends” (expressed by our personal and collective gifts) and the scarce means used (consumed) by or for those persons, which we make real through production and exchange. By dropping both distribution and consumption, Smith expressed the Stoic pantheism that viewed the universe “to be itself a Divinity, an Animal” with God as its immanent soul, while sentimental humans choose neither ends nor means rationally. By restoring consumption but not distribution, neoclassical economics expresses the Epicurean materialism that claims humans somehow evolved as clever animals, adept at calculating means but not ends, since “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.”

John D Mueller Three worldviews in economics

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The British, never fond of children…

The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society. The signs of this fear are unmistakable on the faces of the elderly in public places. ..

The British may have always inclined toward harshness or neglect (or both) in dealing with children; but never before have they combined such attitudes with an undiscriminating material indulgence. My patients would sometimes ask me how it was that their children had turned out so bad when they had done everything for them. When I asked them what they meant by â??everything,â?? it invariably meant the latest televisions in their bedrooms or the latest fashionable footwearâ??to which modern British youth attaches far more importance than Imelda Marcos ever did.

Needless to say, the British stateâ??s response to the situation that it has in part created is simultaneously authoritarian and counterproductive. The government pretends, for example, that the problem of child welfare is one of raw poverty… But after many years of various redistributive measures and billions spent to reduce it, child poverty is, if anything, more widespread.

A system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism, where the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it.

Theodore Dalrymple Childhood’s End

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The fantasy world of our media class

‘The London Bombers’ is a TV film the BBC made but then dropped.

It makes no sense until you understand the moral contortions of the postmodern liberal establishment. In the past few years, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the West Midlands Police, the liberal press, the Liberal Democrats, the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Lord Chief Justice and the Archbishop of Canterbury have all either supported ultra-reactionary doctrines or made libellous accusations against the critics of radical Islam. All have sought to prove their liberal tolerance by supporting the most illiberal and intolerant wing of British Islam, and by blocking out the voices of its Muslim and non-Muslim critics as they do it.

As the sorry history of ‘The London Bombers’ shows, they have left us a country that cannot tell its own stories; a land so debilitated by anxiety and stupefied by relativism that it dare not meet the eyes of the face that stares back at it from the mirror.

Nick Cohen Self-censorship and the BBC

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Diversity industry

In June, Christian registrar Lillian Ladele won a case for religious discrimination against her employers, Islington Council in London, after she was ‘discriminated, bullied and harrassed’ for refusing to conduct civil partnership ceremonies for gay couples…
Since the CEHR has a statutory responsibility to oppose all forms of discrimination, one might have expected it to have applauded, rather than criticised, a victory for a victim of religious discrimination. But the reaction of the CEHR and other ‘liberal’ commentators to the Ladele case has shown up the nasty, intolerant underside of the modern diversity and equality establishment, and its double standards concerning the interrelationship of Christianity, law and society. In addition, the reactions demonstrate an increasing inability to understand the concept of conscientious moral objection…. two employees at Islington, who described themselves as ‘members of the gay community’, complained about Ladele. In consequence, Lillian was bullied by her manager and details of her personal situation and a ‘confidential’ management letter about her was revealed to the local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Forum. What her complainants ultimately objected to was not what Lillian did or how she acted, but what she thought and what she believed. She could not be allowed to continue her work in peace, she had to be challenged and her views had to be changed because, in the mind of the heresy hunters of the modern diversity industry, she was guilty of ‘thought crime’

Neil Addison

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Kasper to Anglicans

The welcome candor of Cardinal Kasper’s remarks at Lambeth can easily be captured in a series of quotations.

* “In our dialogue we have jointly affirmed that the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the church of the past, and in a particular way with the apostolic church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition.”

* “It also seems to us [the Catholic Church] that the Anglican commitment to being ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’ has not always functioned in such a way as to maintain the apostolicity of the faith and that synodical government misunderstood as a kind of parliamentary process has at times blocked the sort of episcopal leadership envisaged by Cyprian [St. Cyprian, cited earlier]….”

* “He [Pope John Paul II in settling the question of the ordination of women] concluded, ‘I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.’ This formulation clearly shows that this is not only a disciplinary position but an expression of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church finds herself bound by the will of Jesus Christ and does not feel free to establish a new tradition alien to the tradition of the church of all ages.”

Catholic Culture

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The Bishop

Gathered around the bishop the presbyters are the image of the apostles, pointing us to Christ. The presbyters’ first task therefore was teaching, convening assemblies, preaching and catechizing. Saint John Chrysostom and Origen have left us the homilies they preached as presbyters. While bishops gave us our liturgies and in particular the anaphoras, the Eucharistic prayers of offering, presbyters taught, preached and looked after the administration of the Church, and together with the bishop, were members of the synod of the Church in that place.
However, this arrangement did not last long. By the third century the Church was beginning to take a different course, particularly in the West, as evidenced by Cyprian. The notion of the bishops as the image of Christ changed in favour of the idea that they were the image of the apostles. Nowadays a bishop is regarded as a successor to the apostles, so his primary responsibility is to teach. However, Saint Ignatius says that it is not the bishop who does the teaching and that we should respect the silence, which according to Ignatius’s understanding, the bishop maintains for everything apart from the anaphora of the divine Eucharist, which is his responsibility solely.
This contemporary view that the primary role of the bishop is teaching and only secondarily the Eucharist, is a clear divergence from the historic understanding of the Church. In the West in particular, teaching
became the bishop’s chief role, while the celebrating the liturgy was handed over to the presbyters. Thus in the West the priest performs the liturgy, while the bishop is primarily a manager, who exhausts himself in the administration of the Church. Here is a very significant divergence from the eschatological understanding of the bishop.

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Labour and the Muslim vote

Labour’s appeasement of Islamism in the UK

1 Immediately after the 2005 election, which saw Labour share of the Muslim vote collapse – the government announced the incitement to religious hatred legislation. This was widely seen by Islamic organisations as the ‘Muslim blasphemy law’ they had campaigned 18 long years for since the Rushdie affair. Blasphemy against Muhammad is THE most serious offence in sharia – and carries the automatic death penalty in countries such as Pakistan.

2 August 2006 Ruth Kelly (Communities Secretary) and John Prescott (deputy Prime Minister) met Islamic leaders immediately after the Heathrow terrorist arrests. They were asked for a partial implementation of sharia for family law in the UK and Muslim festival to become bank holidays. Ruth Kelly then set up a commission to look into implementing the first.

3 June 2007 (Brown now Labour leader and as PM in waiting making joint decisions with Blair) – a government sponsored report on the teaching of Islam in British universities was published. One may well ask exactly what the Labour government was doing asking a senior member of the Islamic Foundation – the UK’s largest overtly Islamist group – to write this government sponsored report ON HIS OWN? The report recommended that non Muslims should be banned from teaching the main Islamic subjects in British universities! The PM publicly welcomed this report!

Cranmer

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How to pray 5

Ye holy angels bright, Who wait at God’s right hand, Or through the realms of light Fly at your Lord’s command, Assist our song; For else the theme Too high doth seem For mortal tongue.

Ye blessed souls at rest, Who ran this earthly race, And now, from sin released, Behold the Saviour’s face, God’s praises sound, As in his sight, With sweet delight, Ye do abound.

Ye saints, who toil below, Adore your heavenly King. And onward as ye go Some joyful anthem sing; Take what he gives And praise him still, Through good or ill, Who ever lives!

My soul, bear thou thy part, Triumph in God above: And with a well-tuned heart Sing thou the songs of love! Let all thy days Till life shall end, Whate’er he send, Be filled with praise.

Richard Baxter Ye Holy Angels Bright

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Two men

In The Eschatological Economy I compared two christologies. One is the Christian christology, in which Christ is the truth of man, and true man is in fellowship with God and with all men and creation. As Christ is the truth of man, so (Christian) christology is the truth of anthropology. I take this from Irenaeus.

But there is another ‘man’ and another, non-Christian, christology. This man is a titan. He is man without God, and without anything that is not himself. This is a christology of ascent, determined by man’s belief in his own autonomy. Man is ascending away from his fellowmen, away from bodies and earth. The great chariot of mankind roars down the track, gathering ever greater speed, zooms up the ramp, lifts off and soars into the air, leaving the earth and heading out – but then, looking around for some third party confirmation of its lift-off, the chariot hesitates, finds that it has peaked, and beginning to fall back towards earth, starts to fly apart. So it is that we find ourselves tumbling and twisting in ever smaller pieces, each making our re-entry alone. In this ‘christology’ without Christ, in which man decides to do without the confirmation of his fellows, man can have no idea whether he is in fact ascending or descending, gathering unity and permanence or breaking up and dissolving. I credit Kant with this anthropology.

So, just as there are two loves, that make two cities, so there are two men and two histories of man. One history crashes, the other is sustained by the call of God.