GLOBAL AND ECUMENICAL IN SCOPE
CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE
Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: wholst@telus.net
CANADIAN IN PERSPECTIVE
Wayne A. Holst, Editor
My E-Mail Address: wholst@telus.net
This email is sent only to a voluntary subscriber list.
If you no longer wish to receive these weekly columns,
write to me personally - waholst@telus.net
*****
Dear Friends:
Due to picture problems on the Anglican Journal website last weekend, some of you may have missed my Special Item. My Anglican Journal Column for July, 2018 was:
"Trillium and Wild Rose"
https://tinyurl.com/ybmdp9ap
Here it is again. It seems to have been well-received nonetheless.
This week my Special Item is a book notice for:
FUTURE FAITH -
Ten Challenges Reshaping Christianity
in the Twenty-First Century
by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
I find this a very helpful resource and plan to keep it handy.
Please enjoy the other selections in this week's issue as well.
Wayne
*****
SPECIAL ITEM
Book Notice -
FUTURE FAITH
Ten Challenges Reshaping Christianity
in the 21st Century
by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
Fortress Press, Philadelphia
2018. 261 pages. $16.75 CAD.
ISBN #978-1-5064-3344-8
Publisher's Promo:
In Future Faith: Ten Challenges Reshaping the Practice of Christianity, author Wesley Granberg-Michaelson provides a lucid view of how the top ten winds of change blowing through global Christian faith are reshaping the practice of Christianity today. He is uniquely qualified to identify and interpret connection points between global Christian trends and the American church.
Drawing on the stories, examples, and personalities of pastors and congregations from throughout the U.S. as well as those from Africa, Asia, Latin America, who are the faces of Christianity's future, Future Faith is designed to inform and empower followers of Jesus to seek new ways of becoming the face of Christ to a rapidly changing world.
Leaders and practitioners in church growth, renewal, and planting will be a primary audience for this book. Students of religion from Catholic, evangelical, Pentecostal, and historic Protestant streams will find this book an informative and stimulating resource for pondering together the future of their faith. Small groups engaged in congregational nurture and growth will find in the author a welcome companion for guiding them through the multi-cultural landscape of contemporary faith.
--
Author's Words:
Christianity is at a hinge point in its history. It's happened before.
Today, Christianity is undergoing another major historical shift. For the first time in more than one thousand years, a majority of the world's Christians are living in the Global South. This trend is accelerating, and constitutes the most dramatic geographical shift in the history of Christianity... Christianity has now become a non-Western religion.
But this shift is about far more than geography. The future of Christian faith in the world is being driven by diverse, expanding groups of believers centred in Africa, Latin America and Asia. How they see the world and how they practice their faith are different from the well-established forms of Christianity in the West. (Our inter-connected world means that changes in other continents will significantly impact the faith of our own.)
This book's purpose is to focus on how US congregations are challenged to change at this watershed moment in Christian history. (Please note "My Thoughts" comments on implications for Canadian congregations, below.) I want to explore that this shift in world Christianity means, for congregations large and small, across the country.
(The author recalls the influence that the books Future Shock (Toffler) and Megatrends (Naisbitt) had on his early life.)
Recalling both those books, I became convinced that a similar approach was needed to explain and explore what this shift in global Christianity means for the future of US congregations.
In this book, I have identified what I believe are the ten major trends or challenges, that require our awareness if we wish to participate in changing expressions of Christian faith that are being driven by God's spirit.
(The author provides background on his own life and career that help him to write a book like this. The book Future Faith is the result. He does not investigate all modern challenges such as Islam, persecution, global urbanization, economic inequalities, globalization, however.)
The primary purpose of this book is to focus on how the dramatic movement of world Christianity to non-Western cultures of the Global South present challenges and opportunities to the practice of faith in US congregations.
(Taking many factors into consideration, however the author declares)
"Looking to the future, Christianity's global trajectory displays clear signs of vitality and promise."
The problem for many Christians in the United States is that we instinctively believe that we are the center of the Christian world. Realizing that we are not and embracing the re-centering of global Christianity as God's gift to the whole church open pathways for our renewal...
My hope and prayer is that individuals and faith communities will address these ten challenges as opportunities to embrace a new future reshaping Christianity in the twenty-first century.
- from the author's Introduction
--
Author's Bio:
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson has served as General Secretary of the Reformed Church, Director of Church and Society for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, and as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. His most recent book is From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church.
--
My Thoughts:
Readers of Colleagues List know that I am always on the lookout for books that give perspective on the future of Christian faith. In addition, I keep a close eye on the work of Canadian colleagues like Reginald Bibby and Angus Reid to give us an authentically Canadian perspective.
We are no longer dependent on Americans to provide us with a "continental perspective." Frequently in the past I would cringe when reading an American view assuming that "those people to the north of us where the cold winds come from" are essentially Americans. There are growing, distinctively Canadian ways of looking at things and it is important for Canadians and non-Canadians to recognize this.
That said, a book like this from an American author is different. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson starts with a global perspective and has a lot of experience to back that up. His ten key points about the future can be applied to the Canadian situation as well as his own. His philosophy is not committed to "making America great again" but rather to seeing how a healthy globalized balance is better for everyone.
(I want to make clear that this approach is not anti-American. I hope it reflects a more mature internationalism and ecumenism.)
Here then are his ten challenges to the faith (his chapter headings)
1. Revitalizing Withering Congregations
2. Embracing the Color of the Future
3. Seeing through Non-Western Eyes
4. Perceiving the World as Sacred
5. Affirming Spirit-Filled Communities
6. Rejecting the Heresy of Individualism
7. De-Americanizing the Gospel
8. Defeating Divisive Culture Wars
9. Belonging Before Believing
10. Saving This World.
This is the kind of book I want to spend time digesting and utilizing. I can see it influencing a lot of my teaching and writing in the future.
Many of you would benefit from securing this volume so I hope you will consider doing so.
____
Buy the book from Amazon.ca
https://tinyurl.com/ybo6bsel
*****
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS
Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX
Personal Web Site
July 16th, 2018
"A Slur that Cuts Deep"
https://tinyurl.com/y8fl9gfv
--
Philip Yancey,
Colorado
Philip Yancey.com
July 19th, 2018
"On the Road Again"
https://tinyurl.com/y7fjw5en
--
Martin Marty,
Chicago, IL
Sightings,
July 16th, 2018
"Martha Nussbaum Faces Our Fears"
https://tinyurl.com/y9uovzbo
*****
NET NOTES
NELSON MANDELA -
MINISTER OF RECONCILIATION
White South African Testimony
America Magazine,
Dec. 6th, 2013
https://tinyurl.com/y83lb233
--
"A COMPLETE CORRUPTION IN MORALITY"
American Treatment of Refugees Prompts
Canadian Law Response
The Jurist/UToday (Calgary)
July 17th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/yaeybdp9
--
IT'S GOOD FOR GIRLS TO HAVE
CLERGYWOMEN MODELS
A Current Study Confirms This
Religion News Service,
July 17th, 2018
*****
Dear Friends:
Due to picture problems on the Anglican Journal website last weekend, some of you may have missed my Special Item. My Anglican Journal Column for July, 2018 was:
"Trillium and Wild Rose"
https://tinyurl.com/ybmdp9ap
Here it is again. It seems to have been well-received nonetheless.
This week my Special Item is a book notice for:
FUTURE FAITH -
Ten Challenges Reshaping Christianity
in the Twenty-First Century
by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
I find this a very helpful resource and plan to keep it handy.
Please enjoy the other selections in this week's issue as well.
Wayne
*****
SPECIAL ITEM
Book Notice -
FUTURE FAITH
Ten Challenges Reshaping Christianity
in the 21st Century
by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
Fortress Press, Philadelphia
2018. 261 pages. $16.75 CAD.
ISBN #978-1-5064-3344-8
Publisher's Promo:
In Future Faith: Ten Challenges Reshaping the Practice of Christianity, author Wesley Granberg-Michaelson provides a lucid view of how the top ten winds of change blowing through global Christian faith are reshaping the practice of Christianity today. He is uniquely qualified to identify and interpret connection points between global Christian trends and the American church.
Drawing on the stories, examples, and personalities of pastors and congregations from throughout the U.S. as well as those from Africa, Asia, Latin America, who are the faces of Christianity's future, Future Faith is designed to inform and empower followers of Jesus to seek new ways of becoming the face of Christ to a rapidly changing world.
Leaders and practitioners in church growth, renewal, and planting will be a primary audience for this book. Students of religion from Catholic, evangelical, Pentecostal, and historic Protestant streams will find this book an informative and stimulating resource for pondering together the future of their faith. Small groups engaged in congregational nurture and growth will find in the author a welcome companion for guiding them through the multi-cultural landscape of contemporary faith.
--
Author's Words:
Christianity is at a hinge point in its history. It's happened before.
Today, Christianity is undergoing another major historical shift. For the first time in more than one thousand years, a majority of the world's Christians are living in the Global South. This trend is accelerating, and constitutes the most dramatic geographical shift in the history of Christianity... Christianity has now become a non-Western religion.
But this shift is about far more than geography. The future of Christian faith in the world is being driven by diverse, expanding groups of believers centred in Africa, Latin America and Asia. How they see the world and how they practice their faith are different from the well-established forms of Christianity in the West. (Our inter-connected world means that changes in other continents will significantly impact the faith of our own.)
This book's purpose is to focus on how US congregations are challenged to change at this watershed moment in Christian history. (Please note "My Thoughts" comments on implications for Canadian congregations, below.) I want to explore that this shift in world Christianity means, for congregations large and small, across the country.
(The author recalls the influence that the books Future Shock (Toffler) and Megatrends (Naisbitt) had on his early life.)
Recalling both those books, I became convinced that a similar approach was needed to explain and explore what this shift in global Christianity means for the future of US congregations.
In this book, I have identified what I believe are the ten major trends or challenges, that require our awareness if we wish to participate in changing expressions of Christian faith that are being driven by God's spirit.
(The author provides background on his own life and career that help him to write a book like this. The book Future Faith is the result. He does not investigate all modern challenges such as Islam, persecution, global urbanization, economic inequalities, globalization, however.)
The primary purpose of this book is to focus on how the dramatic movement of world Christianity to non-Western cultures of the Global South present challenges and opportunities to the practice of faith in US congregations.
(Taking many factors into consideration, however the author declares)
"Looking to the future, Christianity's global trajectory displays clear signs of vitality and promise."
The problem for many Christians in the United States is that we instinctively believe that we are the center of the Christian world. Realizing that we are not and embracing the re-centering of global Christianity as God's gift to the whole church open pathways for our renewal...
My hope and prayer is that individuals and faith communities will address these ten challenges as opportunities to embrace a new future reshaping Christianity in the twenty-first century.
- from the author's Introduction
--
Author's Bio:
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson has served as General Secretary of the Reformed Church, Director of Church and Society for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, and as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress. His most recent book is From Times Square to Timbuktu: The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church.
--
My Thoughts:
Readers of Colleagues List know that I am always on the lookout for books that give perspective on the future of Christian faith. In addition, I keep a close eye on the work of Canadian colleagues like Reginald Bibby and Angus Reid to give us an authentically Canadian perspective.
We are no longer dependent on Americans to provide us with a "continental perspective." Frequently in the past I would cringe when reading an American view assuming that "those people to the north of us where the cold winds come from" are essentially Americans. There are growing, distinctively Canadian ways of looking at things and it is important for Canadians and non-Canadians to recognize this.
That said, a book like this from an American author is different. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson starts with a global perspective and has a lot of experience to back that up. His ten key points about the future can be applied to the Canadian situation as well as his own. His philosophy is not committed to "making America great again" but rather to seeing how a healthy globalized balance is better for everyone.
(I want to make clear that this approach is not anti-American. I hope it reflects a more mature internationalism and ecumenism.)
Here then are his ten challenges to the faith (his chapter headings)
1. Revitalizing Withering Congregations
2. Embracing the Color of the Future
3. Seeing through Non-Western Eyes
4. Perceiving the World as Sacred
5. Affirming Spirit-Filled Communities
6. Rejecting the Heresy of Individualism
7. De-Americanizing the Gospel
8. Defeating Divisive Culture Wars
9. Belonging Before Believing
10. Saving This World.
This is the kind of book I want to spend time digesting and utilizing. I can see it influencing a lot of my teaching and writing in the future.
Many of you would benefit from securing this volume so I hope you will consider doing so.
____
Buy the book from Amazon.ca
https://tinyurl.com/ybo6bsel
*****
COLLEAGUE CONTRIBUTIONS
Ron Rolheiser,
San Antonio, TX
Personal Web Site
July 16th, 2018
"A Slur that Cuts Deep"
https://tinyurl.com/y8fl9gfv
--
Philip Yancey,
Colorado
Philip Yancey.com
July 19th, 2018
"On the Road Again"
https://tinyurl.com/y7fjw5en
--
Martin Marty,
Chicago, IL
Sightings,
July 16th, 2018
"Martha Nussbaum Faces Our Fears"
https://tinyurl.com/y9uovzbo
*****
NET NOTES
NELSON MANDELA -
MINISTER OF RECONCILIATION
White South African Testimony
America Magazine,
Dec. 6th, 2013
https://tinyurl.com/y83lb233
--
"A COMPLETE CORRUPTION IN MORALITY"
American Treatment of Refugees Prompts
Canadian Law Response
The Jurist/UToday (Calgary)
July 17th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/yaeybdp9
--
IT'S GOOD FOR GIRLS TO HAVE
CLERGYWOMEN MODELS
A Current Study Confirms This
Religion News Service,
July 17th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/y8wzsnu8
--
THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL -
DANGEROUS AND DIFFERENT
Catholic Journal Again Criticizes
American Evangelicals
Religion New Service,
July 18th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/yd3vlqd8
--
PIERRE TEILHARD de CHARDIN'S
THEOLOGICAL TROUBLES
Paleontologist Challenged
Church Teaching on Creation
The Christian Century,
July 11th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/ycuakj3l
--
MOST U.S. FAITH GROUPS SAY
COUNTRY ON THE WRONG TRACK
Ideological Evangelicals Stand Apart
Religion News Service,
July 19th, 2018
--
MODI ACCUSED OF TURNING INDIA
INTO 'A REPUBLIC OF HATE'
Writers, Other Activists Demonstrate
UCA News,
July 17th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/ycs49kzo
--
DESPITE OPPOSITION, GHANA PLANS
TO BUILD A NATIONAL CATHEDRAL
Opponents Cry "Religious Favouritism"
La Croix International,
July 18th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/y7pkjtfx
--
TURKISH COURT REJECTS APPEALS
TO RELEASE JAILED AMERICAN PASTOR
Policy of Holding Without Charges Remains
Washington Post,
July 18th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/ycpy2qmrWA
--
HOW THE 465 YEAR-OLD ARM
OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER
BROUGHT HEALING TO CANADA
A Contemporary Argument
for the Veneration of Relics
America Magazine,
July 19th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/y7xfzt4a
*****
MODI ACCUSED OF TURNING INDIA
INTO 'A REPUBLIC OF HATE'
Writers, Other Activists Demonstrate
UCA News,
July 17th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/ycs49kzo
--
DESPITE OPPOSITION, GHANA PLANS
TO BUILD A NATIONAL CATHEDRAL
Opponents Cry "Religious Favouritism"
La Croix International,
July 18th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/y7pkjtfx
--
TURKISH COURT REJECTS APPEALS
TO RELEASE JAILED AMERICAN PASTOR
Policy of Holding Without Charges Remains
Washington Post,
July 18th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/ycpy2qmrWA
--
HOW THE 465 YEAR-OLD ARM
OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER
BROUGHT HEALING TO CANADA
A Contemporary Argument
for the Veneration of Relics
America Magazine,
July 19th, 2018
https://tinyurl.com/y7xfzt4a
*****
WISDOM OF THE WEEK
From Sojourners and the Bruderhof online:
To be truly radical is to make hope possible,
rather than despair convincing.
- Raymond Williams
--
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth
upon them.
- Ida B. Wells
--
Obviously, while I love all, I must, like Christ, have a
special love for the poor. At the last judgement, we
shall all be judged by the treatment we have given to
Christ, to Christ in the person of those who are hungry
or thirsty, who are dirty, wounded, and oppressed.
- Dom Helder Camara
--
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.
When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we
are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with
passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to
learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our
imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot
fully open to our ability to love others or our potential
to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world
rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of
people who embrace life.
- John Lennon
--
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake
in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life
and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where
the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the
green heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
- Wendell Berry
--
The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely
achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be
oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our
journey, but the first step on a longer and even more
difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off
one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and
enhances the freedom of others. The true test of
our devotion to freedom is just beginning.
- Nelson Mandela
--
I have seen almost all the beautiful things that God
has made; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that
he has planned for us; and yet as I look back I see
standing out above all the life that has gone four or
five short experiences when the love of God reflected
itself in some poor imitations, some small act of love
of mine. And these seem to be the things which alone
of all one’s life abide. Everything else in all our lives
is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the
acts of love which no one knows about, or can ever
know about – they never fail.
- Henry Drummond
*****
MOMENTS IN TIME
Globe and Mail
July 17th, 2018
Russian Imperial Family Assassinated
July 17, 1918: Exactly a century ago, in the middle
of the night, the bodies of the Russian imperial family
were taken to the woods. It was five months after the
beginning of the Russian Revolution, and their
assassination by Bolsheviks set off a narrative that
would fascinate the world for decades to come. In
the basement of mansion in the city of Yekaterinburg,
Czar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra were shot in
the head. But in the ensuing smoke and noise, the
executioners fired wildly at the children, Olga, Tatiana,
Maria, Anastasia and Alexei. Wearing bodices inlaid
with diamonds, they had to be shot and bayonetted
several times. All told, the killings took 20 minutes,
but it would be more than 70 years before their
deaths were officially confirmed.
Despite rumours, the Bolsheviks maintained for
decades that the czar alone had been killed. Only
in 1991 did an amateur historian’s discovery lead
to a state investigation and the exhumation of the
czar, his wife and three of their daughters. After
seven decades of state propaganda dedicated to
erasing the facts around the revolution’s brutal
beginnings, the surviving Romanovs, and those
who grew up under Soviet rule, could finally learn
the truth. – Jack Hauen
--
Globe and Mail,
July 19th, 2018
The Rosetta Stone
July 19, 1799: It was 219 years ago that French
captain Pierre-François Bouchard discovered an
oddly shaped black slab 3 feet and 9 inches in
length, and 2 feet and 4.5 inches in width in Rashid,
Egypt, near Alexandria. Dated to 196 BCE, the slab
was inscribed with three translations of the same text,
in Greek, hieroglyphics and Demotic (a form of
Egyptian writing that came after hieroglyphics). Its
text outlined rituals for the worship of Pharaoh
Ptolemy V, and it is believed to have originally been
displayed within a temple. Linguists would soon come
to know this piece of granite as the Rosetta Stone.
Its influence was great: While many scholars were
fluent in Greek and Demotic at the time, they had so
far been unable to translate hieroglyphics.The artifact
became a tool for linguists such as Thomas Young of
England and Jean-François Champollion of France to
compare hieroglyphic symbols with a known text.
The knowledge gained finally helped open the door
to further study of the Ancient Egyptians.
Since then, the stone has primarily been housed at the
British Museum in London, except for a brief period
during the First World War, when it was moved to an
underground location along with other irreplaceable
items. – Audrey Carleton
--
Globe and Mail
July 20th, 2018
Canada Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
With Civil Marriage Act of 2005
The Civil Marriage Act, which received Royal Assent
on this day in 2005, opened marriage nationwide to
gay and lesbian couples, making Canada just the fourth
country in the world where same-sex weddings were legal.
Polls suggested Canadians were evenly divided on the issue
and emotionally invested. Ralph Klein, then the premier of
Alberta, declared it to be a “sad day for the majority of
Albertans who believe in the traditional definition of marriage”
Alberta was one of just two provinces where same-sex
marriages were not already being performed. But senators
erupted in applause after passing the bill by a vote of 47 to 21.
The Globe and Mail declared in an editorial that “to deny
homosexuals the blessing of marriage was not only cruel
but stupid.” And Paul Martin, who was the prime minister,
said Canada is a nation of minorities and “in a nation of
minorities, it is important that you don’t cherry-pick rights.”
Eleven years later, the census found 24,370 wedded gay
couples in Canada. And three quarters of Canadians taking
part in a survey last year agreed it is “great” that lesbians
and gays can marry.
*****
CLOSING THOUGHT - Maya Angelou
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps
fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination
full of hope.
(end)
--
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth
upon them.
- Ida B. Wells
--
Obviously, while I love all, I must, like Christ, have a
special love for the poor. At the last judgement, we
shall all be judged by the treatment we have given to
Christ, to Christ in the person of those who are hungry
or thirsty, who are dirty, wounded, and oppressed.
- Dom Helder Camara
--
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love.
When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we
are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with
passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to
learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our
imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot
fully open to our ability to love others or our potential
to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world
rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of
people who embrace life.
- John Lennon
--
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake
in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life
and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where
the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the
green heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
- Wendell Berry
--
The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely
achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be
oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our
journey, but the first step on a longer and even more
difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off
one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and
enhances the freedom of others. The true test of
our devotion to freedom is just beginning.
- Nelson Mandela
--
I have seen almost all the beautiful things that God
has made; I have enjoyed almost every pleasure that
he has planned for us; and yet as I look back I see
standing out above all the life that has gone four or
five short experiences when the love of God reflected
itself in some poor imitations, some small act of love
of mine. And these seem to be the things which alone
of all one’s life abide. Everything else in all our lives
is transitory. Every other good is visionary. But the
acts of love which no one knows about, or can ever
know about – they never fail.
- Henry Drummond
*****
MOMENTS IN TIME
Globe and Mail
July 17th, 2018
Russian Imperial Family Assassinated
July 17, 1918: Exactly a century ago, in the middle
of the night, the bodies of the Russian imperial family
were taken to the woods. It was five months after the
beginning of the Russian Revolution, and their
assassination by Bolsheviks set off a narrative that
would fascinate the world for decades to come. In
the basement of mansion in the city of Yekaterinburg,
Czar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra were shot in
the head. But in the ensuing smoke and noise, the
executioners fired wildly at the children, Olga, Tatiana,
Maria, Anastasia and Alexei. Wearing bodices inlaid
with diamonds, they had to be shot and bayonetted
several times. All told, the killings took 20 minutes,
but it would be more than 70 years before their
deaths were officially confirmed.
Despite rumours, the Bolsheviks maintained for
decades that the czar alone had been killed. Only
in 1991 did an amateur historian’s discovery lead
to a state investigation and the exhumation of the
czar, his wife and three of their daughters. After
seven decades of state propaganda dedicated to
erasing the facts around the revolution’s brutal
beginnings, the surviving Romanovs, and those
who grew up under Soviet rule, could finally learn
the truth. – Jack Hauen
--
Globe and Mail,
July 19th, 2018
The Rosetta Stone
July 19, 1799: It was 219 years ago that French
captain Pierre-François Bouchard discovered an
oddly shaped black slab 3 feet and 9 inches in
length, and 2 feet and 4.5 inches in width in Rashid,
Egypt, near Alexandria. Dated to 196 BCE, the slab
was inscribed with three translations of the same text,
in Greek, hieroglyphics and Demotic (a form of
Egyptian writing that came after hieroglyphics). Its
text outlined rituals for the worship of Pharaoh
Ptolemy V, and it is believed to have originally been
displayed within a temple. Linguists would soon come
to know this piece of granite as the Rosetta Stone.
Its influence was great: While many scholars were
fluent in Greek and Demotic at the time, they had so
far been unable to translate hieroglyphics.The artifact
became a tool for linguists such as Thomas Young of
England and Jean-François Champollion of France to
compare hieroglyphic symbols with a known text.
The knowledge gained finally helped open the door
to further study of the Ancient Egyptians.
Since then, the stone has primarily been housed at the
British Museum in London, except for a brief period
during the First World War, when it was moved to an
underground location along with other irreplaceable
items. – Audrey Carleton
--
Globe and Mail
July 20th, 2018
Canada Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
With Civil Marriage Act of 2005
The Civil Marriage Act, which received Royal Assent
on this day in 2005, opened marriage nationwide to
gay and lesbian couples, making Canada just the fourth
country in the world where same-sex weddings were legal.
Polls suggested Canadians were evenly divided on the issue
and emotionally invested. Ralph Klein, then the premier of
Alberta, declared it to be a “sad day for the majority of
Albertans who believe in the traditional definition of marriage”
Alberta was one of just two provinces where same-sex
marriages were not already being performed. But senators
erupted in applause after passing the bill by a vote of 47 to 21.
The Globe and Mail declared in an editorial that “to deny
homosexuals the blessing of marriage was not only cruel
but stupid.” And Paul Martin, who was the prime minister,
said Canada is a nation of minorities and “in a nation of
minorities, it is important that you don’t cherry-pick rights.”
Eleven years later, the census found 24,370 wedded gay
couples in Canada. And three quarters of Canadians taking
part in a survey last year agreed it is “great” that lesbians
and gays can marry.
*****
CLOSING THOUGHT - Maya Angelou
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps
fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination
full of hope.
(end)
*****
For those interested:
ST. DAVIDS ADULT SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT/ACTS MINISTRY
FALL PROGRAM BEGINS TO TAKE SHAPE
ST. DAVID'S ACTS MONDAY NIGHT FALL BOOK STUDY
A Ten Week Series September 17th - November 26th, 2018
Monday Evenings, TM Room 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
(No class on Thanksgiving Monday)
"THE BOOK OF JOY"
Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
Authors: Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu
Registration/Hospitality and Book: $60.00.
Book only: $25.00
Authors: Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu
Registration/Hospitality and Book: $60.00.
Book only: $25.00
Registration and Book Sale begins Sunday, August 26th
35 copies of the book will be available for sale.
Background information on the study book will be
provided here during the next weeks of summer:
--
Other background:
During the 2017-2018 fall/winter two session-term -
Total class registrations: 70
Total books sold: 78
Our best year ever, since we started in 1998!
***
***
ST. DAVID'S SPIRITUAL TRAVELERS TOUR, 2019
East Europe and Russia have been chosen as our destinations!
This will be our fifth Spiritual Travelers Tour, with a
group emerging from St. David's but very open to others.
The Tour is entitled: "From Vienna to Moscow"
We plan a twenty-day tour that combines a focus
on spirituality, culture and the relationship between
religion and politics. The tour will run from April 26th
through May 16th, 2019.
A beautiful brochure with trip cost, itinerary, and
many helpful travel hints will soon be published.
A beautiful brochure with trip cost, itinerary, and
many helpful travel hints will soon be published.
Our trip sale will begin (with early bird registration
benefits) beginning in September, 2018
Our Canadian tour company is Rostad Tours, Calgary.
Contact Rostad Tours: http://www.rostad.com/
Contact Rostad Tours: http://www.rostad.com/
Follow these notices for weekly updates.
***
ST. DAVID'S ACTS THURSDAY MORNING STUDY
Ten Sessions September 13th- November 22nd, 2018
Biblical book(s) to be studied this autumn will be
determined by the class at their first meeting on
Thursday, Sept. 13th with ten sessions following.
Gathering at 9:30 AM in the St. David's TM Room
and meeting 10:00 - 11:00 AM.
No charge
Study resource -
"The DK Complete Bible Handbook"
Edited by John Bowker
http://tinyurl.com/odxlv7q
*****
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