Five myths about church and state in America

by David Sehat

Liberals claim that the founding fathers separated church and state, while conservatives argue that the founders made faith a foundation of our government. Both sides argue that America once enjoyed a freedom to worship that they seek to preserve. Yet neither side gets it right. As we mark Passover and Easter, let’s end some misconceptions about religion and politics in America.

1. The Constitution has always protected religious freedom.

Many Americans believe that the First Amendment’s separation of church and state safeguards religious liberty. But when the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, it did not apply to the states and would not until well into the 20th century. As a result, the First Amendment did not prevent states from paying churches out of the public treasury, as Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and South Carolina did when that amendment was written. And those states that did not fund churches still favored Christianity. Blasphemy was forbidden in Delaware in 1826, and officeholders in Pennsylvania had to swear that they believed in “the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments.”

American federalism gave states enormous power to regulate the health, welfare and morals of their citizens. Because many thought religion was the foundation of American society, they used their power to imprint their moral ideals on state constitutions and judicial opinions for much of American history. Even today, these laws linger on the books. I still can’t buy beer on Sundays in Atlanta.

2. The founders’ faith matters.

Christians who consider the founders saintly won’t have much luck backing that up. Thomas Jefferson wrote a version of the New Testament that removed references to Jesus’s divinity. Ben Franklin was a deist. And George Washington may not have taken Communion.

But whatever the founders’ religious beliefs were, the First Amendment merely preserved the church-and-state status quo. There had never been an official religion in the 13 colonies, and the new states favored different faiths. The South was traditionally Anglican but had a growing Methodist and Baptist population. New England was traditionally Congregationalist, but evangelicals moved there nonetheless. The middle colonies mixed Lutherans, Catholics (in Maryland), Presbyterians and Quakers. A small number of Jews lived in early America, as well.

So the framers punted the issue of religion to the states, promising only that the power of the federal government would not be used to advance, say, Congregationalist beliefs over Presbyterian ones. This was a pluralistic vision of sorts but one that still allowed states to declare official religions and grant privileges to specific denominations.

3. Christian conservatives
have only recently taken over politics.

Christian partisans mobilized early in U.S. history, seeking to impose an interdenominational — but still Christian and, more specifically, Protestant — moral order on the new nation.

Initially, Christians were more successful in exercising political and legal control at the state level. They passed blasphemy laws. They required Sabbath rest on Sundays. In Massachusetts, they mandated devotional exercises in public schools, a practice that spread to every state with public education.

Five myths about church and state in America


In time, however, the faithful found a federal audience for moral reform with the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, a national experiment in prohibition. These moral campaigns anticipated many of the political disputes over religion that have emerged in recent decades, and they weren’t any less divisive than debates about the death penalty, abortion or gay marriage.

4. America is more secular
than it used to be.

The American Revolution was actually a low point in American religious adherence. Sociologists have shown that no more than 20 percent of the population in 1776 belonged to a church. Then, under the influence of evangelical expansion during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century, church membership grew rapidly until, by 1850, more than one-third of Americans belonged to a church. In 1890, after another round of Protestant evangelization and Catholic immigration from Ireland, Italy and elsewhere, the proportion rose to 45 percent. And in 1906, church members became a majority — 51 percent of the population.

The trend continues. In 2000, 62 percent of the populace belonged to religious institutions, if not specifically Christian churches. Evangelical Christians still lead this expansion, and their influence has become more pronounced, not less, over the past two centuries. The presidency of George W. Bush — the most evangelical commander in chief — testifies that Americans are becoming more religious, not less.

5. Liberals are anti-religious.

In 1947’s Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court demanded a more thorough separation of church and state. States could no longer endorse specific religions, and prayer and Bible reading in schools and blasphemy laws went on the chopping block. This led religious conservatives to accuse the high court — as well as liberals in general — of, well, irreligion.

But liberals such as Justices Robert H. Jackson and William Brennan argued that they sought to honor the multiple religious traditions that had been repressed in the United States. They pointed out that Catholics had been made to recite the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in public schools; that observant Jews labored at an economic disadvantage because they had to close their shop on the Sabbath; that Buddhists, who could not swear that they believed in God, were banned from office in several states; that Jehovah’s Witnesses were made to say the pledge of allegiance in violation of their religious beliefs; and that secular humanists could be drafted without regard to their conscientious objection.

Liberals on the court sought to do away with this heritage of official discrimination, but they did not seek to do away with religion. As Jackson wrote in 1952: “My evangelistic brethren confuse an objection to compulsion with an objection to religion. It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar.”

Amen to that.

David Sehat is an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University and the author of “The Myth of American Religious Freedom.”

Faith

Trust in the Lord and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him. (Psalm 37:3-5, 7a)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was posted on a website I write for. It made me so sad:


"All religions summed up:
1. I'm terrified at the thought of death and non-existence, so
2. I need to believe in an eternal life, so
3. I need to believe that if I'm good enough I'll live forever, so
4. I have to have a "god" that will make me live forever, so
5. I need to believe that god cares enough about me to answer my prayers, so
6. I need to know that that god likes me better than the rest of you, so

So I can go out and demonize everybody who isn't like me. 'Cause god likes me best."

My answer was this:

1.) Faith makes me feel at one with the The creator, earth and nature,
2.) Faith makes me push on and try to do good even when I am tired and feeling my hope wain,
3.) Faith helps me see the big picture and let go of the small stuff.
4.) Faith gives me the understanding that all beings are connected and all draw life from the creator.
5.) Faith invests me with knowledge and hope and a sense that all men and women are family and should be treated as family.
6.) Faith keeps me ever mindful that one should love their neighbor as themselves because we are all children of God.

Musings from a New World Shepherd

by Marianne Stokes:
St. Elizabeth Spinning for the Poor

I have come to believe that what you eat, who you associate with, how much you exercise and your faith or lack there of affect your over all mind set enormously. I have fibromyalgia and the pain and side effects from medications I took for the pain in past years caused me to be very depressed. One day about 7 years ago I just made up my mind to reconnect with my old life and try to fight my way back because I knew that at the rate I was going I was heading for an early grave. Prayer and meditation have been very helpful in my life.

Brain chemistry is a fascinating thing and recent scientific studies have revealed how little we understand the human brain or how its function or dysfunction affects our bodies. I find it just fascinating that having a pet dog or a cat can lower blood pressure and also find it fascinating people who are married and people who have faith have been shown to live longer on average.

Faith and fellowship are very helpful in changing one's outlook but it's effects go deeper to our very brain chemistry. Depression can be treated with exercise and as we know that changes our body functions and allows the brain to work better. Depression is not a disease, depression is a mental health disorder. If one has struggled with depression once in one's life one almost always will have it again. Often something triggers depression like a loss or an illness.

Faith is not a panacea but it is something that has healing properties perhaps because it helps us to look at the world differently. Prayer and meditation are very helpful in gaining perspective and in starting the healing process. Faith does not blot out pain it gives you the strength to work through the pain and often it changes one so much one can resolve depression.

My problem with meds is they are numbing. You don't really resolve your depression you just mask it with meds. They can help you when you are in such a bad way you see no hope and they can give you rest so you can regain your normal life but they need to be taken with supervision and caution. Antidepressants can be useful to end depression but being on them too long usually is not a good thing from my experience. I happen to have faith in God but belief in mankind's enduring spirit or in a concept that guides one's life can also be the reason some people thrive and live long happy lives while others seem to give up and die young.

Belief in God

The tantalising proof that belief in God makes you happier and healthier

By Tom Knox



God has had a tough time over the past few years. On TV, in newspapers and on the internet, the debate as to whether faith has any relevance in a sceptical modern world has been as ubiquitous as it has been vigorous.

And it has been pretty clear which side is the most splenetic.

From Richard Dawkins’ powerful atheist polemics to Christopher Hitchens’ public derision of the Roman Catholic Tony Blair and Stephen Hawking’s proclamation that the universe ‘has no need for God’, it seems that unbelievers have had the dwindling faithful on the run.

Or have they?


Proof? Research has found that religious believers have a healthy and happier life, but what is the secret and how does religion work its magic?

As research for my latest novel, Bible Of The Dead, I have spent months investigating the science of faith versus atheism, and discovered startling and unexpected evidence. It might just change the way you think about the whole debate, as it has changed my view.

I am not a religious zealot. On the contrary, I was a teenage atheist. And although in adulthood I have had a vague and fuzzy feeling that ‘there must be something out there’, I was never a regular church-goer. But what I have discovered, on my voyage through the science of faith, has astonished me.

My journey began a couple of years ago when I was travelling in Utah, the home of Mormonism. During my first week there, I approached this eccentric American religion with a typically European cynicism. I teased Mormons about their taste in ‘spiritual undergarments’; I despaired at being unable to find a decent cappuccino (Mormons are forbidden coffee, as well as alcohol, smoking, tea and premarital sex).

But then I had something of an epiphany. One night, after a long dinner, I was walking back to my hotel in downtown Salt Lake City at 2am and I suddenly realised: I felt safe. As any transatlantic traveller knows, this is a pretty unusual experience in an American city after midnight.

Why did I feel safe? Because I was in a largely Mormon city, and Mormons are never going to mug you. They might bore or annoy you when they come knocking on your door, touting their faith, but they are not going to attack you.

The Mormons’ wholesome religiousness, their endless and charitable kindliness, made their city a better place. And that made me think: Why was I so supercilious about such happy, hospitable people? What gave me the right to sneer at their religion?

From that moment I took a deeper, more rigorous interest in the possible benefits of religious faith. Not one particular creed, but all creeds. And I was startled by what I found.

For a growing yet largely unnoticed body of scientific work, amassed over the past 30 years, shows religious belief is medically, socially and psychologically beneficial.

In 2006, the American Society of Hypertension established that church-goers have lower blood pressure than the non-faithful.

Likewise, in 2004, scholars at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested that college students involved in religious activities are more likely to have better mental and emotional health than those who do not.

Meanwhile, in 2006, population researchers at the University of Texas discovered that the more often you go to church, the longer you live.



Attack: Christopher Hitchens made a public derision of Tony Blair's decision to becoming a Roman Catholic

As they put it: ‘Religious attendance is associated with adult mortality in a graded fashion: there is a seven-year difference in life expectancy between those who never attend church and those who attend weekly.’

Exactly the same outcome was recently reported in the American Journal of Public Health, which studied nearly 2,000 older Californians for five years. Those who attended religious services were 36 per cent less likely to die during this half-decade than those who didn’t.

Even those who attended a place of worship irregularly — implying a less than ardent faith — did better than those who never attended.

Pretty impressive. But there’s more; so much more that it’s positively surreal.

In 1990, the American Journal of Psychiatry discovered believers with broken hips were less depressed, had shorter hospital stays and could even walk further when they were discharged compared to their similarly broken-hipped and hospitalised, but comparatively heathen peers.

It’s not just hips. Scientists have revealed that believers recover from breast cancer quicker than non-believers; have better outcomes from coronary disease and rheumatoid arthritis; and are less likely to have children with meningitis.

Intriguing research in 2002 showed that believers have more success with IVF than non-believers.

A 1999 study found that going to a religious service or saying a few prayers actively strengthened your immune system.

These medical benefits accrue even if you adjust for the fact that believers are less likely to smoke, drink or take drugs.

And faith doesn’t just heal the body; it salves the mind, too. In 1998, the American Journal of Public Health found that depressed patients with a strong ‘intrinsic faith’ (a deep personal belief, not just a social inclination to go to a place of worship) recovered 70 per cent faster than those who did not have strong faith.

Another study, in 2002, showed that prayer reduced ‘adverse outcomes in heart patients’.

But perhaps this is just an American thing? After all, those Bible-bashing Yanks are a bit credulous compared to us more sceptical Europeans, aren’t they?


Proclamation: Professor Stephen Hawking has said that the 'universe has no need for God'

Not so. In 2008, Professor Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics and Doctor Orsolya Lelkes of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research conducted a vast survey of Europeans. They found that religious believers, compared to non-believers, record less stress, are better able to cope with losing jobs and divorce, are less prone to suicide, report higher levels of self-esteem, enjoy greater ‘life purpose’ and report being more happy overall.

What is stunning about this research is that the team didn’t go looking for this effect — it came to them unexpectedly. ‘We originally started the research to work out why some European countries had more generous unemployment benefits than others,’ says Professor Clark.

But as they went on, the pattern of beneficial faith presented itself. ‘Our analysis suggested religious people suffered less psychological harm from unemployment than the non-religious. Believers had higher levels of life satisfaction.’

So what’s going on? How does religion work this apparent magic?

One of the latest surveys to suggest that religious people are happier than the non-religious was conducted by Professors Chaeyoon Lim and Robert Putnam, from Harvard, and published last year.

They discovered that many of the health benefits of religion materialise only if you go to church regularly and have good friends there. In other words, it’s the ‘organised’ part of organised religion that does a lot of the good stuff.

Going to a friendly church, temple or mosque gives you a strong social network and a ready-made support group, which in turn gives you a more positive outlook on life — and offers vital help in times of need. The Harvard scientists were so startled by their findings that they considered altering their own religious behaviour.

As Professor Lim said: ‘I am not a religious person, but . . . I personally began to think about whether I should go to church. It would make my mum happy.’

But if the ‘congregation’ effect is one explanation for the good health of churchgoers, it’s not the only one. Other surveys have found that intrinsic faith is also important.

For instance, a study of nearly 4,000 older adults for the U.S. Journal of Gerontology revealed that atheists had a notably increased chance of dying over a six-year period than the faithful.

Crucially, religious people lived longer than atheists even if they didn’t go regularly to a place of worship. This study clearly suggests there is a benefit in pure faith alone — perhaps this religiousness works by affording a greater sense of inner purpose and solace in grief.

This begs the question: Given all this vast evidence that religion is good for you, how come the atheists seem so set against it?

They pride themselves on their rationality, yet so much of the empirical evidence indicates that God is good for you. Surely, then, it is the atheists, not the devout, who are acting irrationally?

All this will come as no surprise to many students of genetics and evolution, who have long speculated that religious faith might be hard- wired into the human mind.

For instance, twin studies (research on identical siblings who are separated at birth) show that religion is a heritable characteristic: if one twin is religious, the other is likely to be a believer as well, even when raised by different parents.


Prayer: Studys have found that even those with a small connection to religion can feel the benefits of it

Neurologists are making exciting progress in locating the areas of the brain, primarily the frontal cortex, ‘responsible’ for religious belief — parts of the brain that seem designed to accommodate faith. This research even has its own name: neurotheology.

Why might we be hard-wired to be religious? Precisely because religion makes us happier and healthier, and thus makes us have more children.

In the purest of Darwinian terms, God isn’t just good for you, He’s good for your genes, too.

All of which means that, contrary to expectation, it is the atheists who are eccentric, flawed and maladaptive, and it’s the devout who are healthy, well-adjusted and normal.

Certainly, in purely evolutionary terms, atheism is a blind alley. Across the world, religious people have more children than non-religious (go forth and multiply!), while atheist societies are the ones with the lowest birth rates.

The Czech Republic is a classic example. It proclaims itself the most atheist country in Europe, if not the world; it also has a puny birthrate of 1.28 per woman, one of the lowest on the planet (so soon there won’t be any godless Czechs to proclaim their atheism).

The existence of atheism is therefore something of an anomaly. But then again, anomalies are not unknown in evolution.

Think of the dodo or the flightless parrot, doomed to extinction. Are atheists similarly blighted? Are Richard Dawkins and his type destined to vanish off the face of the Earth — the victims of their own intellectual arrogance?

That’s not for me to say; it’s for you to ponder. All I do know is that reassessing the research has changed the way I think about faith. These days I go to church quite a lot, especially when I am travelling and researching my books.

For instance, the other day I found myself in Cambridge — the home of Stephen Hawking — and took the opportunity to do some sightseeing of the city’s intellectual landmarks.

I strolled by the labs where Hawking does his brilliant work, popped into the pub where they announced the discovery of DNA and admired the library where Charles Darwin studied. As I did, I was in awe at the greatness of Man’s achievements.

And then I went to Evensong at King’s College Chapel, and it was beautiful, sublime and uplifting. And I felt a very different kind of awe.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1358421/The-tantalising-proof-belief-God-makes-happier-healthier.html

In defense of Faith and Justice

I have not forgotten George Bush nor have most other people forgotten the evil misuse of faith. Using religion as a weapon of war is not new. Bush used the oldest trick in the book. What we can't do is say all relgion is evil because someone used faith to do evil. You can twist anything into a tool to do evil if it holds any power. Shall we say no Black people can have organizations of any kind now because the Black Panthers existed? It's very un-American to persecute good people and group them all together. Religion is nothing more than people's value systems or way of seeing the world. The communists killed millions and millions of people in Russia and so did the Chinese and they both wanted to get rid of religion and replace it with complete loyalty to the state. If you want to advance free thinking and be true to the constitution you can't try to make someone's value system and beliefs a scapegoat. The persecution of people of faith will backfire in the most horrific way imaginable because when you attack people's core beliefs and their traditional way of life you attack their very existence. You can't separate a person from the things they hold most dear without an incredible backlash. Most cultures look at the decadent, materialist culture that is America today and they see clearly where forsaking faith leads. Most of the West has replaced faith with narcissism and materialism. We have more people accessing hard porn and violent videos on YouTube now than attend religious services or volunteer on a weekly basis to help others. The violent reactions you see in the developing world are a reaction to our sick culture and you can't blame them for that. We tell them of human rights violations while we sexualize children in our own culture and consume more illegal drugs than any other nation in the world. America spawns the violence in Mexico with its endless lust for drugs. Is it any wonder people of faith from other cultures look in horror on American influence on their societies? I love my country but we need to clean house and change if we want to be respected or have any positive influence in the world.

Secular Humanism vs. Chrstian Humanism

Secular humanism is very popular with so called "academics" and social activists today and there is a reason that the word secular is used with the word Humanist. It is to distinguish from the root movement known as Christian Humanism. The first Humanists were Christians. It is revisionist history to deny the moral impact of traditional Christianity on today's morality and culture in the West but it is widely done. Humanism as it is understood today actually has its roots firmly based in Christianity and it's beginning can be traced back as early as the second century. Taking faith out of the equation and claiming it for its own American and European (non-believing) academics have in fact been perpetuating lies or at best half truths. Christian humanism may have begun as early as the 2nd century. Jesus himself used Greek thinking and logic in his approach to teaching. Ironically Christianity is responsible for the way much of mainstream academia today looks at the world.

It should be noted here that after the conquest by Alexander the Great in the third century BC, Greek culture and language made increasing inroads in Palestine. The Palestinian Judaism of Jesus' day was known as Hellenistic Judaism. Some new Greek cities were founded in Palestine during this period as well. Greek culture and language affected Jews, especially in Jerusalem where about 16,000 people spoke Greek. The Judaism of Jesus had been already deeply changed by its contact with the Greek and Roman world.

The contemporary academics who teach secular humanism as the only way and as being superior intellectually to Christianity are wrong. It is not more just or legitimate than Christian morality is, in fact people who do this are disregarding their own social history and culture and are perpetuating half truths or even blatant lies. Their patronizing and smug criticisms are a violation of the very reasoning they claim to advocate. There is a conscious effort in many academic circles to demonize and marginalize spirituality and faith today. Some would even have Christianity marginalized to the point that all practicing Christians be ridiculed and dismissed as superstitious and backward.

It cannot be disputed world cultures have always blended and changed over time. All religions and movments have borrowed from others. Greek culture and thought was spreading rapidly to the far reaches of the Roman empire at the time of Christ. The land of Jesus was in fact multicultural at the time Jesus was teaching and the world Jesus knew was evolving rapidly. It has only been since the 70s that universities in the US began removing Christian Civilization from their required studies. The loss of the knowlege of our culture's Christian history has proved disastrous. It should be noted here that even though Christianity was deeply influenced by its Greco-Roman and Germanic environment, there is no doubt that it adopted a number of important philosophical ideas and ethical concepts that were uniquely Jewish and that had no real precedent in pagan European religions. The idea of history as a linear process of progress toward a specific end goal came from Judaic elements influencing mainstream thought.

It sometimes seems that our modern historians are trying to wipe out centuries of history to advance their pet theory that there is no God and that Christianity is inherently evil or superstitious at best. Apparently they feel threatened by the teaching of the humble carpenter. Ironically this mirrors what the Soviets did in Eastern Europe and Russia after the dissolution of Czarist Russia. My question is, If you are free thinking why would you fear and suppress religion and Christian influence in modern society? Our forefathers here in America spelled out that there should be freedom to practice one's religion without persecution. It was not their intention to stifle or ban religion from the public realm or drive it underground.The thinly veiled hate of Christians in the West by the far left truly is frightening to me. The fact is progressives and liberals are increasingly advocating that Christians be persecuted in the name of "Reason". The whole idea of progressive history is Christian! How very unreasonable!

I used to consider myself liberal and truly believed the progressive liberal impulses in our society were noble and truly moving us in the right direction but the attacks on all religion by a very large portion of the left has left me no choice but to chart a new coarse. I am not going to join the conservatives but I do not belong in circles where religion is portrayed as backwards and no longer relevant or righteous. My faith in God has been my rudder and Christ is the center of my universe. I believe I am a good person for being faithful to the faith my parents imparted to me and that the teachings of Jesus have served as the best guide possible to living a good life allowing me to contribute very positively to society and giving me great satisfaction and joy in the process. Perhaps this is my confession of faith. If we ban God from mainstream culture it does not mean He does not exist. What then shall they replace God with? Materialism has already brought the West to it's knees.

As I have said before on this blog, the hatred of all religion is the new religion. It's zealots are as angry and hate filled as the the Grand Inquisitor. It's practitioners think they are in fact saving humanity. The world has never needed the Prince of Peace so much, methinks.

Lent: Our Pilgrimage of Faith

I have never really observed lent with such depth like I am this year. Somehow it has taken on a greater meaning in this time of world economic crisis, especially following a very hard winter here in Western, NY. The following is a lovely piece about Lent as our pilgrimage of faith.



The season of LENT is the most penitential period of the Church Year. It is a time for Christians to focus our attention on human redemption through Christ’s suffering and death. The word LENT means springtime. It is from the Old English word “lengthen” recalling the lengthening of days as the dead of winter gives way to the renewing of life in spring. In the northern hemisphere we move closer to the sun, the source of life. As Christians we move closer to the Son during Lent for he is our source of life everlasting. LENT lasts 40 days and is part of the 93 day PASCHAL CYCLE, which also includes Triduum (3 days) and the 50 days of Easter. The number 40 is significant because it reminds us of the 40 days Noah, his family and God’s creatures were saved from the flood. It is the period of time that Moses, Elijah and Jesus spent in fasting as they prepared for the ministries to which God called them. It is symbolic of the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness. In the early church, a 40-day period of preparation was observed for the baptismal candidates who would study, fast and otherwise make ready for baptism and entrance into the Holy Communion on Easter. It is therefore meet and right for us as Christians to observe the forty days of Lent as our preparation time for the
celebration of Easter. The tradition of the Church and the mandate of the Gospel call us to turn away from our sins, which alienate us from God. Self-denial is one way that we can remind ourselves of the great sacrifice Jesus Christ made on our behalf. The 6th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew advises penance in three forms: Giving of alms (works of charity toward others), prayer, and fasting. Matthew is quick to point out, though, that we don’t do these things to be praised or noticed by others, but to praise God who has already rewarded us by his grace. Lent asks us to discipline our lives by praying and meditating on God’s Word.



This piece on lent was taken from:
http://www.feautor.org/uploads/contributions/11962136933/pilgrimage_of_faith.pdf

The old English word bede or bead

The old English word bede (Anglo-Saxon bed ) means a prayer, though the derivative form, gebed , was more common in this sense in Anglo-Saxon literature. When, in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the use of little perforated globes of bone, wood, or amber, threaded upon a string, came into fashion for the purpose of counting the repetitions of the Our Father or Hail Mary, these objects themselves became known as bedes (i.e. prayers ), and our modern word bead , as applied to small globular ornaments of glass, coral, etc., has no other derivation. In middle English the word bedes was used both in the sense of prayer and rosary. Thus Shakespeare could still write (Rich. III, iii, 7)
When holy and devout religious men
Are at their beads [prayers ], 'tis much to draw them thence,
So sweet is zealous contemplation.

While of Chaucer's Prioress we are told
Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene.

The gauds, or gaudys, were the ornaments or larger beads used to divide the decades. The phrase pair of beads (i.e. set of beads — cf. pair of stairs), which may still be heard on the lips of old-fashioned English and Irish Catholics, is consequently of venerable antiquity. With such speakers a pair of beads means the round of the beads, i.e. the chaplet of five decades, as opposed to the whole rosary of fifteen. Again, to "bid beads " originally meant only to say prayers, but the phrase "bidding the beads ", by a series of misconceptions explained in the "Historical English Dictionary", came to be attached to certain public devotions analogous to the prayers which precede the kissing of the Cross in the Good Friday Service. The prayers referred to used to be recited in the vernacular at the Sunday Mass in medieval England, and the distinctive feature of them was that the subject of each was announced in a formula read to the congregation beforehand. This was called "bidding the bedes". From this the idea was derived that the word "bidding" meant commanding or giving out, and hence a certain survival of these prayers, still retained in the Anglican "Book of Canons", and recited before the sermon, is known as the "bidding prayer ".

The words bedesman and bedeswoman , which date back to Anglo-Saxon times, also recall the original meaning of the word. Bedesman was at first the term applied to one whose duty it was to pray for others, and thus it sometimes denoted the chaplain of a guild. But in later English a bedesman is simply the recipient of any form of bounty; for example, a poor man who obtains free quarters in an almshouse, and who is supposed to be bound in gratitude to pray for his benefactors. Similarly, bedehouse , which originally meant a place of prayer or an oratory, came at a later date to be used of any charitable institution like an almshouse. It has now practically disappeared from literary English, but survives provincially and in a number of Welsh place-names in the form bettws , e.g. Bettws y Coed. Finally, bede-roll , as its etymology suggests, meant the roll of those to be prayed for, and in some sense corresponded to the diptychs of the early Church. The word is of tolerably frequent occurrence in connection with the early English guilds. In these associations a list was invariably kept of departed members who had a claim on their prayers. This was the bede-roll.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02383b.htm

A Very Interesting Blog on Christian Mystics

http://christianmystics.com/

At The Very Heart of Jesus

Jan 28th, 2009 by Brian Robertson

I think we can all agree that Jesus now comes in a rather impressive variety of flavors.

I have said it before and will say it again — we have lost site of the fact that the spirituality OF Jesus has become the religion ABOUT Jesus. It has disintegrated to the point where the original teachings and intentions from Jesus have been lost in countless interpolations, in imaginative adaptations to fit specific political needs (both governmental and within the Church) and certainly in countless other influences, many of which have taken a 180 degree turn from what the original tenor and tone and teachings of Jesus must have been.

So, while Christianity waxes and wanes, have we buried Jesus? in some cases, yes, such is the case. I maintain that at the heart of it all, however, we can build from one very solid fact reflecting Jesus’ experiences and attitudes, his teachings and his challenge. If I had to put all of that into one particular starting point, it would be this — God consciousness.

It’s that simple, that revolutionary, and that challenging. It so much so that we fight about the construction and architecture of the house and fail to live in it. At the root of Jesus is the unmistakable notion of God Consciousness, of the awareness of God’s Presence. It is not as if God had a kingdom in which we might one day aspire to after our deaths, but, rather, that the kingdom of Heaven is here, now, within and without. We do not see it and in fact, many do all they can to fight against that central Presence rather than live it. That’s no surprise. Jesus lived it and was killed for it. There are countless other examples of people who attempted to have that God Consciousness and paid the price because, well, people like that can make people like us uneasy — not by what they do but by what they show that we do, just by being who they are.

Jesus called upon us to develop and to live from within that God Consciousness that is the living heart of Christianity in its truest form. The Bible is fine, as is any road map to help you start to get your directions, but, just as one lives in a real town and not the city map, simply living with the smug pride of knowing the Bible as a closed book and the last Word is just as delusional. Jesus’ challenge was not to believe this point or to live in such a way as to gain some sort of heaven but, rather, to be the very book, the book of Love. To be so aware of God — God Consciousness — that the very Source of Divine Love animates our entire being and radiates, not like a lamp hid under a basket but, rather, like the sun which shines on all, the wicked and the good.

We fall short, yes. In my own case, I know, shamefully short. Yet the promise given to me is simple — if I realize and celebrate the Presence of God in each moment, each face, each silence, each word I speak, I have no enemies, no hatred, no fear, no demand for control, no book, no church that can equal the treasure found amidst the great field of life.

A Christian mystic, then, in the sense to which I am speaking, is a person who believes that from the center, which is Jesus, spins a Voice and a Love that is so very close to us that we cannot see it or hear it with the same eyes and ears that behold the world. A Christian mystic knows that words on a page, no matter how lofty, are nothing compared to the wordless sideways glance from the Beloved in the chambers of our heart. A Christian mystic is not lofty and gratified to hold a high position of power in a church organization — because each one of us is Church and Book. There is, as Alan Watts once said, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.” Ego will not get us to God Consciousness. Certainty is not what will lead us to be, as another writer called his book, “Surprised by Joy.”

These are dangerous, frightening times we live in yet, thanks be to God, it is a time in which a tattered vestige of Hope appears beneath the headlines and is made to shine forth from the most unexpected, lowly places. Where that manger is for you is for you to decide and discover, not this writer or not that book or not some Church, as well meaning and community-driven as they might be.

We are Christian mystics because we find Jesus to be the clearest example of what it is to live in the Presence of God and, therefore, to shine forth with Love. We are not content with reading books about taking a journey to a foreign land, we believe we are led to travel to that far away land which, paradoxically, has been with us all the time, nurturing our every step.

Peace,

Rev. Brian Robertson

“When people say that the authority of Scripture or the centrality of Jesus is in question, actually it’s their social, economic and political system that has been built in the name of Jesus that’s being threatened.” Rob Bell

Shrove Tuesday

The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance. Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the shriving (confessing) that English Christians were expected to do prior to receiving absolution immediately before Lent began.Shrove Tuesday is the last day of "shrovetide", the English equivalent to the Carnival tradition that developed separately in countries of Latin Europe.

In countries of the Carnival tradition, the day before Ash Wednesday is known either as the "Tuesday of Carnival" (in Spanish-speaking countries, Martes de Carnaval, in Portuguese-speaking countries, Terça-feira de Carnaval, in German Faschingsdienstag) or Fat Tuesday (in Portuguese-speaking countries Terça-feira Gorda, in French-speaking countries, Mardi Gras, in Italian-speaking countries, Martedì Grasso, in Sweden, Fettisdagen). In Estonian, Vastlapäev.

The term "Shrove Tuesday" is no longer widely known in the United States outside of the Episcopal Church Tradition because of the increase in many immigrant populations and traditions since the 19th century. Mardi Gras was always the tradition among French Catholics.

Shrove Tuesday this year is also my 51st Birthday, Feb. 24.