Some ironies of American slavery
This was only one of many ironies in the debates over slavery, which saw Catholics ignoring or reinterpreting papal decrees, Episcopalians celebrating early American Puritans, Presbyterians defending medieval society while criticizing the Reformation, Baptists treating patristic exegesis as authoritative, and anticlerical abolitionists praising the pope. Not all of this irony was lost on contemporaries. As has been discussed, African American historians, in particular, took pleasure in pointing out the hypocrisy of proslavery authors who cited North African church fathers in their arguments for white supremacy.
Paul J. Gutacker, The Old Faith in a New Nation
No creed but the Bible?
Orthodoxy in America
Whatever else Orthodoxy in America is, it’s not bourgeois. It’s too weird for that. At the same time, bourgeois people like me come to it. The point is to be converted by it, to learn by the fasts, the prayers, and the way of Orthodox life to train our hearts to want what Christ says we should want.
Rod Dreher, Schmemann and Social Justice
Me too
I fear that I’m like the little girl in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, who was sure she could never be a saint, but thought she might could be a martyr if they killed her quick.
Rod Dreher, Sunday With St. Paraskeva
Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.
George Elliot, Janet’s Repentance, via Alan Jacobs
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 