Falls Church, one of the oldest congregations here in Virginia, broke away from the Episcopal church due to its rampant disregard of historic Christianity. The congregation, one of the largest in that denomination, affiliated itself with an archbishop from Nigeria. The Episcopal church sued, claiming that it now should get the congregation’s property. But a court last Thursday ruled in favor of the congregation, which will also mean that 11 other conservative parishes in Virginia that are breaking away will also get to keep their property. See this.

One of the priests from Falls Church spoke on our campus today and told us all about it.

There is so much here that is interesting: conservatives revolt against liberal theology; the liberals’ heavy-handed tactics against them; the role of “third world” Christianity–the old mission field–now becoming the protectors of the historic faith in the “first world” that once sent the missionaries.

What are we to think about that action against the Mormon polygamists in Texas, surrounded in their compound by government agents worried about child abuse? From 400+ Kids Taken From Polygamist Compound:

More than 400 children, mostly girls in pioneer dresses, were swept into state custody from a polygamist sect in what authorities described Monday as the largest child-welfare operation in Texas history.

The dayslong raid on the sprawling compound built by now-jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs was sparked by a 16-year-old girl’s call to authorities that she was being abused and that girls as young as 14 and 15 were being forced into marriages with much older men.
Dressed in home-sewn, ankle-length dresses with their hair pinned up in braids, some 133 women left the Yearning for Zion Ranch of their own volition along with the children.

I’m thankful there was no Waco-type bloodletting. I believe the secular arm should indeed be used against religious groups that violate the moral and natural law, as seems to be the case here. And yet, is taking all of these children away from their mothers and father a violation of parental rights and religious liberty?

Bob Dylan was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for music. See this if you don’t believe me. And it’s much deserved, say I.

Considering our on-going discussion of aesthetics and granted that Dylan doesn’t exactly have the best VOICE, why do you think I’m such a Bob Dylan fan who asserts that his music is objectively good?

I mentioned the fact that I can never recall watching a basketball game in which my team has won. (The one exception is a high school game in my home town when I was in gradeschool.) Nevertheless, I turned on the NCAA championship game to watch my graduate school alma mater play Memphis. I was also in the middle of a writing project that I had to finish. I felt like Zeus in the Iliad with his golden scales, watching the back-and-forth progress of the battle. When I was looking at my computer screen, Kansas would pull ahead. When I looked at the television screen, they gave up the lead. Then I would go back to my computer and they would pull ahead.

At half time, Kansas had a slight lead. I had finished my article. It was 10:30 p.m. (This Eastern Time Zone is murder on watching sports!) The half-time punditry went on and on. I decided to do what was best for my team and went to bed.

This morning I learned that the Kansas Jayhawks won in overtime! I’m sure it was thrilling, but I’m also sure that, through some mechanism that I do not fully understand–possibly involving bosons or that quantum physics principle that observing a system alters it–if I had been watching, that final winning shot would not have gone in.

So I feel that I played a part in this victory.