An amazing vocal performance.
He is risen!
A college psychology professor's observations about public policy, mental health, sexual identity, and religious issues
An amazing vocal performance.
He is risen!
This is a tradition on the blog:
Recorder artist Victoria Rigel played two recorders at once in this 2008 performance of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. I accompanied her on the guitar. She adds the second recorder at the beginning of the second verse.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel by Fellowship Community Church Worship Team https://t.co/fDPDT6WE94 #NowPlaying #np #soundclick
— Warren ET Throckmorton (@wthrockmorton) December 25, 2019
Merry Christmas!
A Christmas tradition on the blog has been to feature a song on Christmas Eve by Audible Waters, a musical project of a blog commenter who goes by “Mr. Jesperson.” His project has focused on a collection of Christmas songs over the years. This year I post a new one for them: Do You Hear What I Hear?
I hope your Holiday season is wonderful.
This is a tradition on the blog:
Recorder artist Victoria Rigel played two recorders at once in this 2008 performance of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. I accompanied her on the guitar. She adds the second recorder at the beginning of the second verse.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel by Fellowship Community Church Worship Team https://t.co/fDPDT6WE94 #NowPlaying #np #soundclick
— Warren ET Throckmorton (@wthrockmorton) December 25, 2019
Another tradition is to feature music by Audible Waters. I usually do it on Christmas Eve but I was unusually busy this year.
Several years ago, they put together a collection of Christmas carols which I enjoy. Here is one: Angels We Have Heard on High.
Thanks for reading through the year and however you celebrate I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and holiday season.
Literally, I will be home for Easter. My wife and I will be watching our church service on the television in our living room. I’ll miss seeing my brothers and sisters at church, but Easter will happen and God will be fine with it.
Some Christian pastors are not happy about this, and some Christians are stirring up a ruckus. For example, the president of the Claremont (CA) Institute, Ryan Williams, appears to be calling for civil disobedience.
Starting the resistance and civil disobedience to an unconstitutional lockdown on Easter Sunday would probably maximize the effect.
It’s a natural rights two-fer: freedom of association AND free exercise of religion.
Trump’s 1st instincts were correct. #FreeEasterSunday
— Ryan P. Williams (@RpwWilliams) April 11, 2020
I don’t understand the problem. I am naturally a skeptic and don’t like being ordered around, but I really like breathing. Taking rational precautions to avoid COVID-19 just seems smart. I can tell the difference between an arbitrary usurpation of my natural rights and a situational one in a crisis.
In 1918, the people of Claremont, CA apparently didn’t mind putting the common good ahead of their rights. With just a little bit of searching, I found this clipping from the October 26 edition of the Pomona Bulletin Sun.
During the Spanish Flu pandemic, churches all over the U.S. closed. There were some clergy who complained but here is a truth: closing churches didn’t lead to a loss of religious rights. It was temporary and a benefit to all citizens. Christianity survived; some might say it thrived.
Some might protest, “But Easter?” Well, Easter is an important day in Christianity to be sure. But Christians aren’t supposed to worry about how we keep “holy days.” The book of Colossians tells us, “Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.” (2:16).
In my tradition, I get no more grace or credit for going to church on Easter than any other day. The first Easter the grave was empty. This year our church will be pretty empty too. But that’s okay. If He is taking attendance, God can keep track of where we all are.
On the Constitutional question, legal scholar Jonathan Turley opined today that the state has the right to halt church gatherings temporarily. I agree that the state has a compelling interest in stopping the spread of the virus and has not singled out religion or any particular church. The edicts are temporary, impose no permanent harm on churches, and do not prevent other means of worship (e.g., online). Although untested, I agree with Turley that the courts would likely uphold the orders to close.
But I really cringe to hear about churches taking things to that extreme. Christians are not of this world, but we are in it. And if we are going to do any good in it, we shouldn’t put our desire to meet for a church service over the good of our neighbors.
Addendum:
The technology of 1918 was the local newspaper and pastors used the papers to communicate with their congregations. The Pomona Bulletin Sun (11/3/1918) gave local pastors space to give greetings to their flock at home.
I appreciate this winsome word from Methodist preacher Walter Buckner:
This is a tradition on the blog:
Recorder artist Victoria Rigel played two recorders at once in this 2008 performance of O Come, O Come Emmanuel. I accompanied her on the guitar. She adds the second recorder at the beginning of the second verse.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel by Fellowship Community Church Worship Team https://t.co/fDPDT6WE94 #NowPlaying #np #soundclick
— Warren ET Throckmorton (@wthrockmorton) December 25, 2019
Thanks for reading through the year and however you celebrate I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and holiday season.
Commenter Mr. Jesperson and friends make up Audible Waters. Several years ago, they put together a collection of Christmas carols which I enjoy. Here is one: Angels We Have Heard on High.
John Wilsey on the Past as a Foreign Country
Jared Burkholder on Politics And The First Thanksgiving
Barry Hankins on Thanksgiving as the Perfect Civil Religion Holiday
The third post today is a brief note from Barry Hankins. Hankins is Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of History and Resident Scholar, Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University.
Christians can celebrate Thanksgiving by infusing it with all kinds of religious and national significance. But, people of other faiths and of no faith at all can celebrate the holiday equally. Christians have no corner on being thankful. Moreover, Thanksgiving has an advantage in this respect over Christmas and Easter. Although those holidays, especially Christmas, are commercialized and secularized to a large extent, they are still specifically Christian. In fact, they are the two central events of the Christian liturgical calendar, which means that to celebrate them commercially non-Christians have to ignore their potent religious meaning. Not so for Thanksgiving, which commemorates a national event, not a religious event. So, Thanksgiving is what I call “America’s perfect civil religion holiday.”
To read all articles in this series, click Thanksgiving 2019. Tomorrow I have a post from retired Grove City College history professor and first professor emeritus from the school, Gary Scott Smith on America as a blessed but not chosen nation.
Today’s second guest post is from friend and Grove City College colleague Andrew Mitchell who is an associate professor of history at the college.
Reclaim the Spirit of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is one of only two holidays Americans celebrate that consciously looks back to a colonial past. It also happens to be the only national holiday that is relatively free of political implications, at least on first glance. That is quite remarkable, since Americans are, and have been, a diverse group of people—of different ethnicities and faiths—who have agreed to unite over a number of political principles. It has been our commitment to those principles, rather than to specifically religious or economic ones, that has helped the nation endure for close to 250 years. Recently, historians, following the general trend of academia, have directed their research at exploring American diversity, and holiday celebrations have not escaped scrutiny. By stripping away the legends associated with “Pilgrim Fathers,” a fascinating story emerges.
It is quite evident now that the first “American” Thanksgiving celebration did not take place in 1623 at Plymouth, nor in 1619 at Berkley Hundred, nor in 1610 at Jamestown, but rather on 8 September 1565, in present-day St. Augustine, Florida. On that day a group of Spanish-speaking Catholics gave thanks to God for their safe travel across the ocean and afterwards held a modest feast, inviting the local tribe of Timucuan Indians to join them. In fact, regardless of whether the Plymouth Separatists were giving thanks to God or to Massasoit and the Wampanoags, it is clear that the Puritans of New England and their descendants ignored them entirely. The word “Pilgrim” to describe the Plymouth colonists only shows up in 1799; the record of their 1623 celebration first published in 1841, during a time when New Englanders and Southerners were ransacking historical sources, engaged in a fierce fight to prove that their traditions (and theirs alone) were authentically “American.” In light of this, Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 proclaiming a “day of thanksgiving” on the last Thursday in November appears more controversial—an affirmation right before his reelection that the Northern (New England-influenced) side had won. Indeed, despite subsequent presidents continuing Lincoln’s tradition, most Southern states did not acknowledge the day, or develop any rituals around it, until the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Sadly, the history of Thanksgiving is not devoid of political wrangling and gamesmanship. Franklin Roosevelt—in this as in other elements of his presidency—deviated from the traditions established by his predecessors, by moving Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939. Roosevelt was acting on the recommendation of his Secretary of Commerce who was concerned that the lateness of Thanksgiving (30 November) would compromise Christmas-season retail sales. The president’s decision created a significant uproar across the country. In a response that demonstrated how politicized America had become, nearly one-half of the states ignored the presidential declaration and celebrated a “Republican Thanksgiving,” instead of “Franksgiving.” The following year, 16 states kept to the traditional date. In 1941, after conclusive evidence that retail sales had not significantly improved, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring the fourth Thursday in November as “Thanksgiving Day.” Nevertheless, the reality of rationing during the Second World War meant that most Americans did not come to share in Norman Rockwell’s idealized depiction of until 1945.
Rather than being disconcerted by revisionist demonstrations that popular conceptions about our national celebration is little more than a peculiar New England tradition writ large and embellished, traditionalists should see in them a chance to celebrate. Despite the diversity of language and creed, all European colonists to the Americas acknowledged their need for giving thanks, and demonstrated their joy through unusual periods of festivity, whether the religious ceremony was accompanied by culinary indulgence or not. Furthermore, all of these thanksgiving celebrations, from Florida to Virginia to Massachusetts, included guests: strangers who were made welcome and encouraged to share in the community’s bounty, and for a few moments, perhaps, united in fellowship. For these people, most of our ancestors, thanksgiving was not a single day made special through capitalization, but one of life’s essential rituals, too important to practice only once every 365 days, and too special to keep to one’s own.
With increasing evidence from the realm of psychology that giving thanks is good for the mind as well as the body, perhaps this provides Americans today with something solid to grasp. In a society whose members are increasingly concerned about diversity and yet increasingly isolated from one another, whose daily call to self-indulgence tends to dull our physical and spiritual palates, perhaps we need to focus on the thankful theme that has united us in the past. By scaling back our own daily consumption (starting, perhaps with the last Friday in November), by beginning to reach out in loving hospitality to the strangers in our midst, we might be able reclaim some of that attractive spirit—and lifestyle—of giving thanks that all our ancestors (and their guests) shared.
For further reading, Dr. Mitchell recommends:
Diana Appelbaum, Thanksgiving: An American Holiday, an American History.
Kathleen Curtain, Sandra Oliver, and Plimouth Plantation, Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie.
Robert Emmons, Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier.
To read all articles in this series, click Thanksgiving 2019.