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Derelict Methodist Church, Walsall, England. Source: geograph.org.uk.

The old formula goes, “If a dog bites a man, that’s not news. If a man bites a dog, that’s news!”

So when one of my Facebook friends posted an article about another theologian of the Very Large Church Body Which Shall Remain Nameless denying the virgin birth of Christ, that was hardly surprising. What purposes do mainline churches serve nowadays, if not to be platforms for the proclamation of heresy?

Which led me to a question I’d never thought about before. What purpose, exactly, does a liberal church serve today? What is its mission?

Traditionally, the business of the church has been to follow the two great commandments, as taught by Christ (Matthew 22): “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” So the church has understood its business to be a) worship and evangelism, and b) service to those in need.

But for a liberal, those bases are already covered. For liberals, God’s love is unconditional and given equally to all, so there’s no need (besides, it’s sometimes offensive) to proclaim the gospel. Worship as an aesthetic experience may be a function of the church, but honestly, who wants to get up on a Sunday morning when God’s happy with you whatever you do?

And as for service to the poor, well, the last election certainly made it clear that liberals don’t think any assistance is worth a thing unless it goes through government. When conservatives argue for private charity, we’re condemned as uncaring.

So why should liberal churches exist at all? Just to provide sources of income for spiritually-minded intellectuals?

The bottom line for liberals, it seems to me, is “Look to Europe.” You see how the churches are dying over there? It’s coming here, and sooner than you think.

Theodore Dalrymple, in my opinion one of the most interesting writers today, writes over at City Journal about two separate books written about famous English serial murderers. Though the authors were born only a decade apart, they write as if from different worlds. Dalrymple contrasts the two accounts in order to highlight how western culture has changed within living memory.

But the woman of lesser education and humbler occupation displays in her book a much higher level of intellectual sophistication and moral intelligence than her more educated junior. Where one is modest, self-effacing, and straightforward, the other is grandiose and egotistical, her capacity to see clearly clouded by a combination of self-importance and obfuscatory pseudo-intellection. I believe that this contrast results not only from individual differences between the two women but from the different cultural environments in which they grew up and subsequently wrote. A week, said Harold Wilson, is a long time in politics; and it seems that ten years is a long time in the history of a culture.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with Dalrymple’s analysis of the Christian virtue of forgiveness. But I do agree with him that the concept has been entirely corrupted in modern times. I sometimes think that although western culture proudly regards itself as having cast off the shackles of Christianity, it has in fact only sunk into Christian heresy, with the labels switched to confuse the rubes. The theological act of forgiveness has been transformed into a vague principle that we are all morally obligated to forgive everything – even the most horrific crimes – because in fact they’re not crimes at all and there’s nothing to forgive. Our enemy, our tormenter, our murderer, is not a heinous malefactor but merely a fellow victim, the object of forces over which he had no control.

That’s not what Christian forgiveness means. Christianity grants to the sinner the dignity of responsibility. It has been argued that the doctrine of hell is the greatest compliment Christian theology ever paid to the human race. To say that someone is responsible, and to hold them responsible, is to attribute to them the dignity of free agency, declaring them a person capable of choice, rather than just an object subject to blind manipulation.

As in so many cases, it all comes down to what you think human beings are.

(Peter Brueghel the Elder, d. 1569)



[Last year, as a creative and devotional exercise, I composed the following nativity story in the Norse saga style. It has its faults, but I think it’s good enough to re-post.

This version includes some imaginary information not found in Luke’s or other gospel accounts. This is because sagas are very different literature from the gospels, and the telling detail is a necessary part of the technique, even if you have to make it up. ljw]

There was a man called Joseph, son of Jacob, son of Matthan, one of the clan of old King David from Bethlehem. Joseph was an honest man, and very clever at building things. But he didn’t get on with his kinfolk, especially his brothers. One day he said, “I’m going to move up to Nazareth in Galilee. They talk strangely up there, but at least they talk sense, and there’s work to be had.” And his brothers said, “Don’t let us stand in your way.”

Now Joseph was promised in marriage to a girl named Mary, daughter of Heli, daughter of Matthat, also of the David clan, though they had kin among the priests. Mary was a beautiful girl, and very devout. Some people said she was too devout for her own good. One day when she was praying in the house all alone, a mighty messenger of God appeared to her, clad in mail that shone like the sun, and he said, “Hail, highly favored one! You are about to conceive a Son, whom you will name Jesus. He will be a hero, and will be known as Gudsson, and the Highest of All will set Him in the high seat of David, and He will reign over the Jacoblings forever.”

“How can this be?” asked Mary. “I am a virgin.”

The messenger said, “The Spirit of the Secret One will come upon you, and the power of the Highest One will overshadow you, so that the Child to be born will be known as Gudsson.”

“I am the thrall of the Highest One,” said Mary. “Let Him do as He likes.” Continue reading The Saga of Bethlehem →

This is St. Lucy’s Day, known as Luciadagen in Norway. Through the vagaries of history, St. Lucy came to have special significance in Scandinavia, based on a legend that she appeared one night during a famine, in a shining ship loaded with food for the people. It’s originally a Swedish custom, but widely observed in other Scandinavian countries too, for one girl of the family to get up early and prepare special rolls for breakfast, which she serves while wearing the Lucia costume, a white gown and a garland in her hair with lighted candles in it. She leads a procession of other girls, singing the traditional Italian song as performed in the video above.

More information about the day’s customs below the fold, courtesy of Sverre Østen’s book, Hva Dagene Vet, ©1988 by Ernst G. Mortensen’s Forlag (my translation): Continue reading They love Lucy →