Roger Scruton - Half-way Home

Roger Scruton is the Robert Redford-esque staunch defender of truth, goodness, and beauty of our day. We should cherish the fact that in the shambles of western civilization we still have such a knight on our side.

Having said that, he considered once joining the Catholic Church and stopped off instead at the Anglican Church. This reminds me of a story my late spiritual director, Father (and medical doctor and former Abbot) Mark Delery told me of a woman who came to speak with him. She told Father Mark that she had decided to join the Episcopal Church instead of going all the way into Mother Church.

As she reached the door she turned around, startled and stared at him. "What did you say?" she entoned. Father Mark said, "What?" She looked a bit hurt and puzzled. "I thought I heard you say, 'Coward!'" Father Mark smiled at me and said, "I thought it. I didn't know I said it out loud."

Joining the Catholic Church today, especially for one as high-profile and respected as Roger Scruton, carries certain penalties: loss of club membership, parking space, and place at the bar in the Club for Determiners of Terms of Public Discourse and Value. I feel sad and a bit like Father Mark about Scruton.

Particularly since I admire Scruton's work so much. For example: Stealing from Churches. See what you think.

Graham - Scimitar 'gets a pass'

Franklin Graham isn't afraid to return stiff-arms with the White House, or to call a Scimitar a scimitar:

Evangelical leader Rev. Franklin Graham issued his toughest remarks yet Monday on the administration's role in revoking his invitation to speak at the Pentagon's National Day of Prayer event, charging that President Obama is "giving Islam a pass" rather than speaking openly about the "horrific" treatment women and minorities receive in many Muslim countries.

In an exclusive telephone interview with Newsmax.TV, Graham called revoking his invitation to the prayer service "a slap at all evangelical Christians."

And he clearly placed the blame on the Obama administration, telling Newsmax that the Pentagon would never revoke such an invitation without first consulting with the White House.

"I'm being restricted from my religious rights, and from what I believe," Graham warned, as he complained of a growing “secularization” in the government.

He also warned Christian of “coming” persecution for believing in Jesus Christ .. More>>

Converting Beyond Middle East

Maggie's Farm's Bruce Kesler turns our attention to small but growing victories in the war for hearts and souls beyond the Middle East: Christianity winning converts over the Scimitar.

NYT - Tea Parties

The NYT take on the Tea Party movement here.

Sally Jenkins - Attack of the DOLLS

Sally Jenkins is a sports columnist for the WaPo and not a pro-life advocate herself, yet she sees the shoddy flim-flam of the seething intolerance toward the Tim Tebow pro-life Super Bowl ad:

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on...

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell..More>>

Keillor - Don't Mess with Christmas

Well. O. Kay. Garrison Keillor, buddy, there's hope for you yet:

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough. And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

Christmas is a Christian holiday -- if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

Christmas does not need any improvements. It is a common ordinary experience that resists brilliant innovation. Just make some gingerbread persons and light three candles and sing softly in dim light about the poor man gathering winter fu-u-el and the radiant beams and the holly and the ivy, and you've got it. Too many people work too hard to make Christmas perfect, find the perfect gifts, get a turkey that reaches 100 percent of potential. Perfection is a goal of brilliant people and it is unnecessary where Christmas is concerned..Read all ...

Like He'd Seen a Ghost

As you probably already know, Mark Twain wrote a biography of Saint Joan of Arc. You may know, too, that he said it was his personal favorite writing project.

Stephen Ryan at MinistryValues.com relates a fascinating account from an article in the NYT dated 1905 that explains the photo above:

It had been arranged that when the humorist arose to speak Miss Angersten, a well-known model, was to appear in the garb and with the simple dignity of Jean d'Arc, his favorite character in all history. He was on his feet as Jean d'Arc entered the room. She wore the armor of the French heroine and her hair and face made a strangely appealing picture.

The face of the humorist, which had been wearing its "company" smile all night, suddenly changed. He had every appearance of a man who had seen a ghost. His eyes fairly started out of his head, and his hand gripped the edge of the table.

Jean d'Arc presented him with a wreath of bay. He merely bowed, with his eyes fixed on the girl's face. They followed her as in reverent silence she passed out, followed by a little boy in suitable costume, bearing a banner over her head. Then Mark Twain spoke. His voice was broken, and his word came slowly..More>>

Running from death threats .. in Ohio

I know: that adieu / hiatus didn't last long. Did the prophet Jeremiah ever waffle? Probably not.

Nonetheless, I strongly suggest you watch and listen to the young convert from the Scimitar to the Christian faith in this video. She understands the Scimitar first hand.

Shea - What's the Diff

For the record: Mark Shea's The Semi-Permeable Membrane of Protestantism.

Piper - No, Mr. President

A. N. Wilson - Return to Faith

(O)nly hard evidence will satisfy the secularists, but over time and after repeated readings of the story, I've been convinced without it.

And in contrast to those ephemeral pundits of today, I have as my companions in belief such Christians as Dostoevsky, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson and all the saints, known and unknown, throughout the ages.

When that great saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England, was on trial for his life for daring to defy Henry VIII, one of his prosecutors asked him if it did not worry him that he was standing out against all the bishops of England.

He replied: 'My lord, for one bishop of your opinion, I have a hundred saints of mine.'

Now, I think of that exchange and of his bravery in proclaiming his faith. Our bishops and theologians, frightened as they have been by the pounding of secularist guns, need that kind of bravery more than ever.

Sadly, they have all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity, and that the few intelligent people left in the churches are there only for the music or believe it all in some symbolic or contorted way which, when examined, turns out not to be belief after all.

As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational.

Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.

The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story.

J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music. Most of the greatest writers and thinkers of the past 1,500 years have believed it.

But an even stronger argument is the way that Christian faith transforms individual lives - the lives of the men and women with whom you mingle on a daily basis, the man, woman or child next to you in church ...

Read all of Wilson's Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity.

D'Souza Interview

A worth-your-while interview with Dinesh D’Souza, Author of What's So Great About Christianity here. [ht: Anchoress]

Lewis - Romantic Love

French poets, in the 11th century, discovered or invented, or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the 19th. They effected a change which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life untouched … Compared with this revolution, the Renaissance is a mere ripple.

- C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love

Vote Strong - Vote Culture of Life

Thanks, Patrick!

For the Love of Christ

A grand piece from The Guardian's Juie Burchill:

Once, of course, I was a teenage atheist; and it brings me no shame to say that, but it certainly makes me smile. I grew up, and stopped being an atheist, in my 20s, in the 1980s. But it was only when my parents died, within a year of each other at the turn of the century, that I became religious. I'm going to be a bit un-Christian here, but nothing makes me hoot, mock and retch like people who bleat that they stopped believing in God when their parents died. Don't get me wrong – if a parent buries a child and rails against God, I can see why. But to lose one's faith because of the death of a parent? That's what old people do, the swine, they die on you! And don't tell me about loving your parents – I loved mine just fine. I am an only child who, well into her early 20s, simply assumed that when the surviving parent kicked the bucket, I would quite cold-bloodedly top myself because life would be simply incomprehensible without them. But when my father died in 1999 and my mother in 2000, I stood in the same church twice in two years and felt the same sense of what I can best describe as joy as I watched the two coffins move away from me. While all around me wept, I was filled with the absolute certainty that they were on their way to a better place...

Read all ...

Cross Conversion

A highly significant and clear-seeing convert from the Scimitar who understands the centrality of the Cross for salvation. Mosab Hassan Yousef is interviewed by Fox News. But like all such converts, one should take seriously what happens when one crosses an expression of the primitive sacred by conversion.

What Took Them So Long

Anglican Church attacks Labour for betraying Christians - Strongest criticism of Government in decades

All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name

Check out the top of the page at this link to Mark Shea: a Scimitar-wielder comes to know the power of Jesus’ Name.

"WHY would Jesus help a Muslim?" Afshin asked in his confusion. Because, he finds, God is Love. Best 20-minutes of MY day, I'm telling ya. Deo gratias. +

Atheist Shakes Hands with Vatican

Self-avowed athiest, Giuliano Ferrara, has become pro-life (somewhat - calling for 'moratorium' on abortion), conservative, and friendly with the Vatican. These guys, like Oriana Fallaci, get a glimpse of the light, and make make interesting allies:

For his part, Mr. Ferrara says he remains an atheist. “I’m not a converted Catholic,” he said. “I’m still a nonbeliever, even though my idea of reason is the idea of a reason which is open to mystery.” Whatever his motivations, his new crusade says as much about the power vacuum in Italy as the power. After all, as the critic Nicola Chiaromonte observed in the late 1940s, “In Italy, the Church offers not heaven so much as protection from the sheer impact of history.”

They Want Jesus Instead

And Chuck Colson says it’s caught the attention of an imam or two:

In 2001, Sheikh Ahmad Al Qatanni, a leading Saudi cleric, delivered the disturbing news on Al-Jazeera: Every day, he said, “16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity . . . every year, that is six million Muslims becoming Christians . . . A tragedy has happened.” It is possible the sheikh was inflating his numbers to incite a reaction against Christianity. But clearly, something is happening.

How thrilling to learn that so many Muslims have been set free from the chains of their sins—just as you and I have—by the power of Christ’s blood! We must pray for these new brothers and sisters; many are being violently persecuted for their new-found faith.

Meanwhile, Sherry Wendell talks about urban legends and the Great Commission. [h/t: Mark Shea]