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Showing posts from July, 2009

Anglican Studies Houses

In two previous posts on this blog, I have written about an idea for an Anglican educational community, what I now call an "Anglican Studies House." I can report some progress on that front, and would like to issue a call, as well. Progress: I have now shared this idea with several leaders in the ACNA (and to a lesser extent, the Episcopal church), and it has received enthusiastic support. Along the way, I have also learned of at least one other such initiative already under way. I am working to organize people locally so that we might begin planting one in the Chicagoland area sometime in the next year or so. In these conversations, I have sensed a deeply felt need to 'do education' differently, in a way that forms young people in the Anglican ethos with a uniquely Christian worldview, to the glory of Christ and the advancement of His kingdom. Many have genuinely agreed with my general assessment that Anglicans (in north America at least) have done a poor job a

A Canticle for Leibowitz and the Benedict Option

     I have been reading and enjoying A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. The novel outlines a grim future where a global nuclear holocaust has sent man back to primitive times and an order of Catholic monks preserve any knowledge of our age that they can get their hands on. They laboriously copy and re-copy blueprints, scraps of textbooks and so on.      The book describes how in the wake of the nuclear war, the people who survived turned on anyone of learning and killed them because they blamed the intellectuals for creating nuclear weapons and allowing or causing the massive death and suffering across the globe. In their fury the mobs kill anyone with knowledge and burn every book they can get their hands on. Vast stores of learning are wiped out of existence by these mobs. Add to this the nuclear war which has turned cities into lakes of glass and you have almost erased our civilization overnight.      Reading this scenario in 2009 conjures up a Cold War feelings and t