Somehow I was voted into it. Last year, on December 24 no less, I was invited by Les Lanphere to debate Rev. Joseph Spurgeon on the lawfulness of Christmas. (Other platforms.) Joseph was for, while I was against; and Les did a great job of moderating. I thought it went really well, and I came away feeling that I did a service to this unpopular position. I also endeavored to be as charitable as possible. Perhaps I overshot things by being so affable; but I’d rather fall into that error than the other way, lest folks think that being against Christmas is somehow a function of a grumpy predisposition. After all, I consider myself the merriest neo-Puritan I know. Ask my kids!
Archive for November, 2021
My debate over Christmas
Posted in Authored by Site Admin, Sabbatarianism & the Church Calendar, Worship, True & False on November 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »
The 1676 Project?
Posted in Authored by Site Admin, Contemporary Issues, Historiography, Missiology, New England Puritanism, WPE Audio on November 24, 2021| Leave a Comment »
In light of the ‘National Day of Mourning’ tomorrow, I find New England Puritan Increase Mather’s sermon here such an illuminating and worthy rejoinder. As the King Philip’s War (1675-1678) raged, natives attacking English settlements, he leads his contemporaries to probe the source. And it’s no hateful rant against the Indians! (Listen here; read here.)
Mather indicts the English settler’s provocations of the natives, including land-greed, which may well have contributed to the war. For these and other offenses, Mather takes off the gloves and summons his peers to repentance. But more, he rebukes them for growing cold and even in some cases becoming hostile to the explicit missionary intentions of the New England Fathers. How many had become prejudicial to these poor souls!
Definitely a cause for mourning, as the bodies piled up and the houses burned in 1676. But a far cry from the mourning of the modern “1619 Project” types who have swung from the one extreme of myopic idealization and historical whitewashing, to the other extreme of tarring and feathering everything that is European. The truth, as they say, is often in the middle.
I mourn today for all the wrongs my ancestors have done to those who lived before us — though hardly all of them, or even the majority. I further mourn for our national apostasy and covenant-breaking with God and His Son, Jesus Christ, and grieve for the judgments we are even now experiencing, one of which is a generation that has been taught to reject and abhor all things past, including the Pearl of Great Price that our ancestors brought with them to the New World.
But tomorrow I’m going to give thanks and remember the Pilgrim Fathers, and Squanto, and Massasoit, the fair treaties that were honored, and John Eliot’s work among the Massachusetts, and their Praying Villages, the myriad of other blessings we now enjoy in civil society where the rule of law prevails, and above all, the freedom to worship God according to His Word. God knows the New World was no native paradise before 1619.
For more audio resources from our Reformed heritage, visit WPE Audio.
Join us for our next Chalmers study
Posted in Parish in American Context, Parish in Perspective (Qualifications), Parish Theory & Practice, RP Study Group, Thomas Chalmers on November 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Next Meeting: Thursday, November 18, 2021 @ 4:00 p.m. EST
“A Charge to New Elders at the Tron Kirk, Glasgow” (1816)
For some background reading on this period of Chalmers’ ministry, here are selections from James Dodd’s, Thomas Chalmers: A Biographical Study (1870). And for more about this study, see here.
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