Daily Reading for July 1 • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Writer and Prophetic Witness, 1896

In fictitious writing, it is possible to find refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No such resource is open in a work of fact; and the subject of this work is one in which the truth, if told at all, must needs be very dreadful. There is no bright side to slavery, as such. Those scenes which are made bright by the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses, would be brighter still if the element of slavery were withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful, in the family attachment of old servants, which is not to be found in countries where these servants are legally free. The tenants on an English estate are often more fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery, therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to slavery, and distinguishes it from free servitude, is evil, and only evil, and that continually. . . .

The writer has aimed, as far as possible, to say what is true, and only that, without regard to the effect which it may have upon any person or party. She hopes that what she has said will be examined without bitterness—in that serious and earnest spirit which is appropriate for the examination of so very serious a subject. . . . She can only say that she has used the most honest and earnest endeavors to learn the truth.

The book is commended to the candid attention and earnest prayers of all true Christians, throughout the world. May they unite their prayers that Christendom may be delivered from so great an evil as slavery.

From A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story is Founded by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Cleveland, Ohio: John P. Jewett, 1853).

Daily Reading for July 2 • Walter Rauschenbusch, 1918, Washington Gladden, 1918, and Jacob Riis, 1914, Prophetic Witnesses

Freedom is also the condition of a christianized social order. Men can have no fraternal relations until they face one another with a sense of freedom and of equal humanity. Despotism is always haunted by dread, and fear is not a symptom of the prevalence of fraternity. In tracing the moral evolution of the Family, the School, the Church, and the State, we saw that every social organization is on the road to redemption when it finds the path of freedom.

We are told that democracy has proved a failure. It has in so far as it was crippled and incomplete. Political democracy without economic democracy is an uncashed promissory note, a pot without the roast, a form without substance. But in so far as democracy has become effective, it has quickened everything it has touched. . . .

Capitalism has overdeveloped the selfish instincts in us all and left the capacity of devotion to larger ends shrunken and atrophied. But a little observation of actual life will show us that it is not dead. Whenever an individual enters a social group that calls for free obedience and devotion, there is some response of his moral nature. When a selfish man marries, he begins to labor with all his might to support the family group and even to protect them against want after he is dead. When a self-willed and obstinate little child from a lonely home enters the kindergarten, it soon submits to the higher will and the orderly collective life of the schoolroom. When a half-grown boy enters a shop, it may be no ideal place for him, but it is an organized community of labor, and it assimilates him and helps to make a man of him. The love with which men freely work for their church, their lodge, their union, their philanthropic society, their party, their city, their country, demonstrates what enduring loyalties a true social organism can evoke in its members. Make a man a trustee of an institution, let him serve it for years, and it becomes part of his life. He prays for it, plans for it, and endows it when he dies; yet it never did anything for him except to give him an honorable chance to serve his fellow-men. Would that same man be too selfish to serve the cooperative commonwealth with devotion? In our present economic order the accumulation of private property has been the only means of securing personal safety and advancement. Year in and year out men have to plan and labor intensely for their own business profit. Is it any wonder that the roots of their minds are coiled inside of that flowerpot? Compel them to think for the common good, connect their personal welfare and wealth with the prosperity and opulence of the community, spur them with the fear of public shame or the hope of public distinction, and see what heroic exertions they will put forth in the service of the commonwealth!

From Christianizing the Social Order by Walter Rauschenbusch (New York: Macmillan, 1912).

Daily Reading for July 3

The changes which have been taking place in our ideas about God have been mainly in the direction of a purified ethical conception of his character. We have been learning to believe, more and more, in the justice, the righteousness, the goodness of God. In the oldest times men thought him cruel and revengeful; then they began to regard him as willful and arbitrary—his justice was his determination to have his own way; his sovereignty was his egoistic purpose to do everything for his own glory. We have gradually grown away from all that, and are able now to believe what Abraham believed, that the Judge of all the earth will do right.

In the presence of a God who, I am assured, is a being of perfect righteousness, who never blames any one for what he cannot help, who never expects of any one more than he has the power to render, who means that I shall know that his treatment of me is in perfect accord with my own deepest intuition of truth and fairness and honor, I can stand up and be a man. My faith will not be the cringing submission of a slave to an absolute despot, but the willing and joyful acceptance by a free man of righteous authority.

Now it is certain that the belief of the Christian church respecting the character of God has been steadily changing, in this direction, through the Christian centuries. Enlightened Christians have been coming to believe, more and more, in a good God; and by a good God I mean not merely a good-natured God, but a just God, a true God, a fair God, a righteous God. The growth of this conviction has been purging theology of many crude and revolting dogmas.

It is a great deliverance which is wrought out for us when we are set free, in our religious thinking, from the bondage of unmoral conceptions, and are encouraged to believe that God is good. It is a great blessing to have a God to worship whom we can thoroughly respect. A tremendous strain is put upon the moral nature when men are required, by traditional influences, to pay adoration and homage to a being whose conduct, as it is represented to them, is, in some important respects, conduct which they cannot approve. All the religions, through the imperfection of human thought, have put that burden on their worshipers.

Christianity has been struggling, through all the centuries, to free itself from unworthy conceptions of the character of its Deity, and each succeeding re-statement of its doctrines removes some stain which our dim vision and halting logic had left upon his name.

From The Church and Modern Life by Washington Gladden (1908); found at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12290/12290-8.txt.

Daily Reading for July 4 • The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

God, source of all freedom,
this day is bright with the memory
of those who declared that life and liberty
are your gift to every human being.
Help us to continue a good work begun long ago.
Make our vision clear and our will strong:
that only in human solidarity will we find liberty,
and justice only in the honor that belongs
to every life on earth.
Turn our hearts toward the family of nations:
to understand the ways of others,
to offer friendship,
to find safety only in the common good of all.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

From Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers (2007), quoted in An American Prayer Book, compiled and edited by Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 5 • Independence Day (transferred)

O Holy, righteous and immortal God, King of kings and Lord of lords, thou art the Giver of all good, and the only hope of all the ends of the earth. With humble adoration we would lift our heart and voice to thee, in praise and prayer. We adore thee as the God in whom our fathers trusted; as the God, whose holy protecting arm has preserved the people of these United States, through many and great perils.

Grant unto us, we beseech thee, such sense of thy blessings to us, and to the people of our country, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, and our lives be devoted to thee. We beseech thee to continue thy merciful good to us and to our country. Give wisdom and strength and union to the government and people of these United States. Bless all who are set in authority over us, and so enlighten their minds, direct their counsels and strengthen their hands, that righteousness and peace may dwell in our land. May they who are appointed to give laws and to execute them, be endued with wisdom and equity and a just regard to the public good, that, through their impartial ministrations, peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety may increase, and the safety and welfare of thy people promoted.

Grant, O Lord, that a deep sense of thy providential care may preserve us from pride and self-dependence. While we are thankful for the great blessings of civil liberty, and political independence, may we be preserved from a trust in ourselves, and from all vain confidence of boasting. May we never forget who it is that makes us to differ from others, nor use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness; but follow after charity and the things which make for peace. Preserve us, O Lord, from desolating judgments; from selfishness, discord and contention.

O grant, we beseech thee, that we may be united and happy; ever rejoicing in thy holy protection. And wilt thou, O Lord, be merciful to those, who need the blessings which we enjoy. May light and liberty, and pure and undefiled religion be more and more extended, till all the nations of the earth shall rejoice in thee their God.

Adapted from a prayer for Independence Day by Alexander Viets Griswold, 1766-1843, quoted in An American Prayer Book, compiled and edited by Christopher L. Webber. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 6 • Jan Hus, Prophetic Witness and Martyr, 1415

When I was a divinity student at Erfurt, my hand happened to alight, one day, in the library of the monastery, on a volume of John Huss’s sermons. Having read, on the cover of the work, the words, Sermons of John Huss, I was immediately inflamed with a desire to ascertain, by perusing this book, that had escaped from the flames, and was thus preserved in a public library, what heresies he had disseminated. I was struck with amazement as I read on, and was filled with an astonishment difficult to describe, as I sought out for what reason so great a man—a doctor, so worthy of veneration, and so powerful in expounding the Scriptures—had been burned to death. But the name of Huss was, at that period, such an object of execration, that I absolutely believed that if I spoke of him in terms of praise, the heavens would fall on me, and the sun veil his light. Having then closed the book, I withdrew sad at heart, and I remarked to myself, by way of consolation—“Perhaps he wrote those things before he fell into heresy.” At that time I was still ignorant of what had passed in the Council of Constance.

All that I could say would only add infinitely to the high character of John Huss. His adversaries render him a striking, though unintentional testimony; for if their clouded eyes could open to the light, they would blush at the remembrance of the things which they themselves narrate. The author of a collection of the acts of the council, written in German, and enriched with very many remarkable details, endeavours, with all his power, to cover with odium the cause of John Huss; and yet he declares, that when Huss beheld himself stripped of all the dignities of his order, he smiled with intrepid firmness. . . . The man who, in the agony of death, invoked, with so firm a heart, Jesus the Son of God—who, for such a cause, delivered up his body to the flames with so strong a faith, and so stedfast a constancy—if such a man, I repeat, deserves not to be considered a generous and intrepid martyr, and true follower of Christ, it will be difficult for any one to be saved. Jesus Christ himself has declared:—“He who confesses me before men, him will I also confess before my Father.” . . .

I have again specified these matters, in order that they may serve as a salutary warning to such of our theologians as may repair to the approaching council. . . .The doctors of Constance were convinced that no person would ever presume to accuse them, either by word or writing, and much less in the teeth of the cruelest menaces, to honour John Huss as a saint, and condemn them for their conduct. Events have, on the contrary, either by me or by others, verified the predictions of John Huss. Our theologians, strong in their authority, anticipate no peril. I admit their power to be equal to what they possessed in John Huss’s time; but it is not less certain, that he who then stood at their tribunal now sits in a place where his judges must give way before him.

From Martin Luther’s preface to Letters of John Huss, Written During His Exile and Imprisonment by Emile de Bonnechose (Edinburgh: William Whyte, 1846).

Daily Reading for July 7

In a recent essay on Benedictine holiness, Professor Henry Mayr-Harting describes it as “completely undemonstrative, deeply conventual, and lacking any system of expertise.” Perhaps the most important thing to emphasize is the “deeply conventual”: the holiness envisaged by the Rule is entirely inseparable from the common life. The tools of the work are bound up with the proximity of other people—and the same other people. As Benedict says the end of chapter 4, the workshop is itself the stability of the community. Or, to pick up our earlier language, it is the unavoidable nearness of these others that becomes an extension of ourselves. One of the things we have to grow into unselfconsciousness about is the steady environment of others.

To put it a bit differently, the promise to live in stability is the most drastic way imaginable of recognizing the otherness of others—just as in marriage. If the other person is there, ultimately, on sufferance or on condition, if there is a time-expiry dimension to our relations with particular others, we put a limit on the amount of otherness we can manage. Beyond a certain point, we reserve the right to say that our terms must prevail after all. Stability or marital fidelity or any seriously covenanted relation to person or community resigns that long-stop possibility; which is why it feels so dangerous.

At the very start, then, of thinking about Benedictine holiness, there stands a principle well worth applying to other settings, other relationships—not least the church itself. How often do we think about the holiness of the church as bound up with a habitual acceptance of the otherness of others who have made the same commitment? And what does it feel like to imagine holiness as an unselfconscious getting used to others? The presence of the other as a tool worn smooth and grey in the hand? The prosaic settledness of some marriages, the ease of an old priest celebrating the Eucharist, the musician’s relation to a familiar instrument playing a familiar piece—these belong to the same family of experience as the kind of sanctity that Benedict evokes here; undemonstrative, as Mayr-Harting says, because there is nothing to prove.

From “Shaping Holy Lives” by Rowan Williams, an address given at the “Shaping Holy Lives” conference on Benedictine spirituality at Trinity Wall Street, New York, April 2003, and quoted in The Oblate Life, edited by Gervase Holdaway OSB (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2008).

Daily Reading for July 8

What sort of things do we think are holy? God is holy, so whatever is to do with God is holy too. This leads us very naturally to think about prayer, going to church, acting justly and other spiritual things. All of these are holy and worthwhile, but if we concentrate on them alone, we miss out some very large parts of our lives. Most people spend much of their time working for their living, and working for and within their families. Our daily lives often seem to have nothing holy about them at all. This is a thoroughly un-Christian way of looking at things and the Rule of St. Benedict provides something of an antidote.

In Chapter 48 of the Rule, Benedict makes arrangement for the work of the monks. He begins with a remark that has become a proverb, “Idleness is the enemy of the soul.” He goes on to describe the timetable and anticipates that some communities will be so small or poor that they will have to do quite a lot of work. It is worth reflection that the only practice St. Benedict explicitly commends as monastic in the whole of the Rule is that the monks should earn their living.

Yet work is not often seen as a part of the spiritual life. St. Benedict meets this head on. For Benedict, idleness is the enemy because monks who do not work well will not pray well. Therefore he says, monks “should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading.” Work is given a protected place in the monastic timetable, just as much as prayer and the Opus Dei. This is quite a radical position. The force of St. Benedict’s commendation of work is not simply that it is another good monastic practice, but there is something about work which sums up the goals of monastic, and hence of Christian life.

From “Work” by Laurence McTaggart, quoted in The Benedictine Handbook (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for July 9

When I first picked up the Rule my immediate reaction was gratitude that it was short. I was expecting it to be largely irrelevant to my life, but it was like the start of a conversation with a friend, a conversation in which I would explore new issues and discover new depths, always finding myself revived, encouraged and also challenged. Benedict became friend and guide. When I first read the Rule it was as the wife of a busy husband and the mother of four teenage sons. It spoke to my situation then, and that has remained true through all subsequent change, and not least in my present situation where I find myself living on my own. For the Rule is like the Gospel itself, a spring or source, to which one returns all the time, for it possesses a dynamism capable of inspiring the lives of those in every age who approach it prayerfully with openness and receptivity.

Benedict shows me a life in which there is no separation between praying and living, for everything is undergirded by prayer. Of course I would like to say the daily offices but I find that impossible. I do, however, begin each morning with prayer and reading, a commitment which lays the foundation for the rest of the day. Often in the psalms there will be a small phrase to which I pay particular attention, listening with the “ear of the heart” and making it my very simple daily lectio. “If you hear his voice today do not harden your hearts.”

I return time and time again in my mind to the image of the cloisters which said so much to me in those early Canterbury days and which I have now internalized. What other complex of buildings would have the audacity to put emptiness at its centre? What does that tell me about myself?

From “Living the Rule in the World” by Esther de Waal, quoted in The Benedictine Handbook (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for July 10 • St. Benedict of Nursia, c 540 (transferred)

Take care of everything.
Revere one another.
Eat and drink moderately.
Pray where you work.
Think deeply about life every day.
Read.
Sleep well.
Don’t demand the best of everything.
Pray daily.
Live as community.

A basic summary of the Rule of St. Benedict, found in The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister (Crossroad, 1996).

Gracious and holy Father,
give us wisdom to perceive you,
intelligence to understand you,
diligence to seek you,
patience to wait for you,
eyes to behold you,
a heart to meditate on you,
and a life to proclaim you;
through the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

A prayer of Benedict of Nursia, quoted in 2000 Years of Prayer, compiled by Michael Counsell. Copyright © 1999. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 11 • The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Robbers left you half-dead on the road, but you have been found lying there by the passing and kindly Samaritan. Wine and oil have been poured on you. You have received the sacrament of the only-begotten Son. You have been lifted onto his mule. You have believed that Christ became flesh. You have been brought to the inn, and you are being cured in the church.

That is where and why I am speaking. This is what I too, what all of us are doing. We are performing the duties of the innkeeper. He was told, “If you spend any more, I will pay you when I return.” If only we spent at least as much as we have received! However much we spend, brothers and sisters, it is the Lord’s money.

From Sermon 179A.7-8 of Augustine of Hippo, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III, Luke, edited by Arthur A. Just, Jr. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2003).

Daily Reading for July 12 • Nathan Söderblom, Archbishop of Uppsala and Ecumenist, 1931

It is my belief that “leaving ourselves in peace” with our self-conceit and evil passions does not lead to real peace. Peace can be reached only through fighting against the ancient Adam in ourselves and in others.

Our generation has lived through not only a world catastrophe, but also through a violent inner revolution. People with unshakable faith in progress, believing that the world was on the road to Paradise, suddenly found themselves plunged into the darkest hell of hatred and duplicity. Filled with anguish, we asked ourselves whether the church, which had been called the Prince of Peace, had fulfilled its duty. Had we not sung on every Sunday “Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men”? . . . Many of us in different countries and of different creeds, both in the Old World and in the New, asked ourselves this question and realized that more could be done for peace by a Christendom united at least in its most essential principle: to live according to the commandment of love. We also realized that ignorance should be dispelled and that religion and morality should be based on the following two major premises: (I) the commandment of love transcends all frontiers, as enunciated by the Savior in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the son of a hated neighboring people; and (2) the Christian concept of justice is generated by a continuous process of divine creation, as are the sanctity and the dissemination of Christian justice. . . .

If efforts toward peace are to get anywhere, they must be more realistic than in the past. The question is not whether one is orthodox in conforming to some peace formula or other, but whether one does something to promote peace. No road to peace exists other than that of the narrow path whose name is conversion. All men of goodwill ought to unite in perceiving this. We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into any monistic peace dream. We must struggle to win peace, struggle against schism, against the mad measures of fear, against the ruthlessness of Mammon, against hatred and injustice. This fight must be directed primarily toward the primitive man within us. Impatient minds may perhaps find such a concept hopeless, pessimistic, and old-fashioned. But we must face reality. The noble and practical measures for world peace will be realized only to the extent to which the supremacy of God conquers the hearts of the people.

From the Nobel lecture “The Role of the Church in Promoting Peace” delivered at the University of Oslo by Nathan Söderblom on December 11, 1930; found at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1930/soderblom-lecture.html

Daily Reading for July 13 • Conrad Weiser, Witness to Peace and Reconciliation, 1760

Keeping a “true Corrispondence” between Indians and colonists in colonial Pennsylvania required skilled negotiators, and on the colonial side of the fence, there was no one better than Conrad Weiser. For thirty years, Weiser served as Pennsylvania’s Indian agent and interpreter, traversing the province (and in some cases going far beyond it) to deliver wampum, speeches, and presents. In the diplomatic idiom of the day, “paths” were lines of communication between towns and villages that needed to be kept open, so that a “true Corrispondence” could prevent misunderstandings and disputes from leading to war. Weiser’s job was to keep those paths open and clear.

Intercultural negotiators such as Weiser had to be able to do much more than simply speak the other side's language. They had to be physically fit enough to endure long journeys under trying circumstances, brave enough to venture among strangers who might be hostile, and adept enough at native customs so as to speak with comfort and authority before their audiences. . . .

In 1731, he began a personal quest for spiritual fulfillment. Although raised a Lutheran, he visited German mystic religious leader Conrad Beissel at Ephrata. Moved by his preaching, Weiser was baptized in 1735 and then joined the celibate order. Soon, his wife also joined the cloister, but their stay at Ephrata was short. Weiser left the order in 1737, but continued his personal religious mission for the next twenty-five years. . . .

In his capacity as diplomat for Pennsylvania, Weiser undertook numerous diplomatic missions to the most powerful Indian confederation in the colonies. As an adopted Mohawk, he fully understood Iroquoian customs. In his first journey to Onondaga in 1737 his participation in traditional rituals laid the groundwork for further negotiations, peaceful coexistence and a solid working relationship that endured for decades. Like his Indian counterparts Shickellamy and Moses Tunda Tatamy, Weiser had a reputation for honesty that greatly aided his work, and Indians respected his participation in their councils. When tempers flared between Indians and colonists in Pennsylvania because of trade disputes, land frauds, or violence, Weiser’s timely intervention helped smooth the waters and restore a “true Corrispondence” between the aggrieved parties. . . . He died on July 13, 1760, and with him passed an age of intercultural negotiation for one of violence and dispossession.

From the history behind the Conrad Weiser marker at the Weiser Homestead, at http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=753

Daily Reading for July 14 • Samson Occum, Witness to the Faith in New England, 1792

From 1765 to 1768, Occom traveled to England as a fundraiser for Moor’s Indian Charity School, an educational experiment designed by the Yale-educated New Light minister Eleazar Wheelock to train Native missionaries. Throughout his tour, Occom was ogled, scrutinized, mocked, misrepresented, interrogated, and exoticized. Wheelock’s American rivals accused Occom of imposture, declaring it impossible that in one generation a traditional Mohegan could become an ordained minister. Occom wrote to Wheelock in 1765, “They further affirm, I was bro’t up Regularly and a Christian all my Days, Some Say, I cant Talk Indian, others Say I Cant read.” Despite these indignities, Occom managed to raise thirteen thousand pounds. “I was quite Willing to become a Gazing Stock, Yea Even a Laughing Stock, in Strange Countries to Promote your Cause,” he remembered bitterly in a letter to Wheelock. Wheelock soon phased out admissions of Native American students and moved Moor’s Indian Charity School to Hanover, New Hampshire. It became Dartmouth College.

In 1768, Occom composed a short autobiographical narrative, in the hopes that he could once and for all establish his identity on his own terms. “Having Seen and heard Several Representations, in England and Scotland, made by Some gentlemen in America, Concerning me, and finding many gross Mistakes in their Account,—I thought it my Duty to give a Short Plain and Honest Account of myself, that those who may hereafter see it, may know the Truth Concerning me.” Occom affirmed that he had been brought up a “Heathen,” in “Heathenism,” choosing words that squared with his white audiences’ vocabularies and expectations. He included ethnographic details that also satisfied his readers’ notions of the cultural distinctions that supposedly separated American Indians from Europeans: “Neither did we Cultivate our Land, nor kept any Sort of Creatures except Dogs, Which We Used in Hunting; and Dwelt in Wigwams, These are a Sort of Tents, Coverd with Matts, made of Flags.” A few paragraphs later, Occom repeated this autoethnographic detail, describing his home at Montauk, Long Island, in the 1760s: “I Dwelt in a Wigwam, a Small Hutt fraimed with Small Poles and Coverd with Matts made of Flags.” The repetition is revealing. When he wrote this narrative in 1768, Occom was living in a wood-frame house in Uncasville. But he knew that the English colonial imagination coded wigwams, not frame houses, as Indian, and proving his identity and defending his integrity meant satisfying to some extent the English colonial imagination of Indianness.

Just as Samson Occom had to prove he was really “Indian” in terms familiar and comfortable to his English and Anglo-American audiences, American Indians today are often called upon to answer non-Indian expectations about how “real” Indians should look and act.

From “Samson Occom at the Mohegan Sun” by Joanna Brooks, in Common-place 4:4 (July 2004); found at http://www.common-place.org/vol-04/no-04/brooks/4.shtml

Daily Reading for July 15

The debt of love is natural and continual. We all owe it, and we owe it unto all. And unto whom we owe it we never pay it, except we acknowledge that we owe it still. In this debt of love we must consider why we must love, whom we must love, and lastly, how we must love.

We must love because God hath so commanded, and because it is the fulfilling of all his commandments. In our new birth or regeneration we are made brethren and fellow-heirs with Christ of God’s kingdom. As God therefore for ever loves us in Christ, so we ought to love our brethren for God, and in Christ, for ever. Love does no evil or hurt to any: he that loves his neighbor will not take away his life, will not defile his bed, will not steal or rob him of his goods, will not witness untruly against him, will not in his heart covet any thing that is his; “therefore is love the fulfilling of the law.” So you see great cause why we should enter into this holy and Christian band of love.

But whom must we love? “You shall love your neighbor. And who is our neighbor?” Not he only to whom we are joined by familiar acquaintance, by alliance, or nearness of dwelling; but whosoever needs our help, he is our neighbor, be he Jew or gentile, Christian or infidel, friend or enemy, he is our neighbor. To him we ought to be near to do him good. It is frivolous for you to object, He is mine enemy, he has in many ways wronged me, he has raised slanderous reports of me, he has practiced against me, spoiled and robbed me: how can I love him? If Christ had loved his friends only, he would never have loved you, when you were his foe. No man proposes him as a pattern to be followed, whom in his heart he dislikes. You dislike your enemy because he hates you: if you hate him, then you imitate the very thing which you hate. Love your neighbor therefore without exception, and love him as yourself.

From a sermon on “The Debt of Love” by Edwin Sandys, in The Sermons of Edwin Sandys, edited by J. Ayre (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1842).

Daily Reading for July 16 • “The Righteous Gentiles”

Rescuers’ actions, whether they were religious or not, extended beyond the deeds of the Good Samaritan parable in the Bible. . . .While this biblical story encouraged some to get involved, rescuers were well aware that their decision to help was far more demanding and dangerous than caring for a wounded roadside stranger. The German directives were clear and the punishment for defying them equally clear. A Pole caught selling bread to Jews outside the Warsaw ghetto, for example, was automatically sentenced to three months at hard labor. . . .

The Good Samaritan went on his way after a night; a rescuer could not. No one knew how long the war would last. In some cases, an offer to provide a safe haven for one night stretched into months and sometimes years of nerve-racking tension. The unsettling and terrifying conditions of war added more pressure to an already intense situation. Fear of discovery loomed over the rescuers’ every action and haunted their every thought. . . . Underlying these tensions was the rescuers’ awareness that they had voluntarily put themselves and their loved ones in grave danger. They sometimes wondered: Should they continue to place their children’s lives in peril? Should they continue to serve their family meager rations so there was enough food for those in hiding? Should they continue to risk their lives when their children were dependent on them? . . .

These men, women, and children who risked their lives to save others were flesh-and-blood human beings with strengths and faults. Yet they saw people who were different from them and responded, not to these differences, but to their similarities. While most people saw Jews as pariahs, rescuers saw them as human beings. Their humanitarian response sprang from a core of firmly held inner values. These values, which included an acceptance of people who were different, were unwavering and immutable. And central to these beliefs was the conviction that what an individual did, or failed to do, mattered. They recognized that for many Jews the choice made by a bystander could mean life or death.

From Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust by Eva Fogelman (New York: Anchor Books, 1994).

Daily Reading for July 17 • William White, Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1836

When we extend our views beyond the bounds of Protestantism, the early fathers afford to us abundant proof of the claim of our Church to be independent on the dictation or the control of an external jurisdiction. However enormous the power, gradually acquired, of a See dominant over the whole of Christendom, there is not the shadow of a claim to it during the first three centuries. In every diocese, its interests were watched over by its own independent authorities; and although Christian communion was maintained of the churches with one another, yet it was on the ground of a common faith, departure from which was a severance from the body, independently on the control of a prelatical jurisdiction, held to be obligatory on all.

As for general councils, no such bodies were assembled until toward the end of the ages comprehended within this review, when there was held the Council of Nicea, under a perfect equality of its members, and with no distinction of any one member in preference to all the others for the sanctioning of its decrees.

To instance another point, on which there may be derived to our Church similar advantage from the same source. It is the being in possession of a prescribed form of prayer; and the not subjecting of a congregation to the discretion of every officiating minister. For this, besides our Lord’s enjoining on his disciples of the form of prayer called by his name, we think we have a warrant in his attendance, and in that of his Apostles, on the devotions of the Temple and of the synagogues. Yet it being contended, that a more spiritual worship was designed to be instituted under the Gospel, and that this is inconsistent with ritual requirements, suited to the imperfect dispensation of the Law, it sustains our cause, that we are able to produce expressions from the three earliest of the centuries, evincing that there were known in the Church what were called “common prayers,” and “constituted prayers”; and that there are remains of liturgies, although imperfect and adulterated, of the origin of which no history can be given; a ground of presumption, that the principle which gave occasion to them was in operation from the beginning. We do not allege that there was the same form of sound words obligatory in all Churches. On the contrary, we declare, in the language of our 34th Article—“It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one or utterly like; for at all times they have been diverse, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners; so that nothing be ordained against God’s word.” There was not effected identity of practice in this matter, until, in times far distant from the primitive, it became expedient, for the subjecting of all the Churches of Christendom to one dominant See.

From “A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy and Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, From the Bishops of the Same, Assembled in General Convention in the City of Philadelphia, August, 1835” (New York: The Protestant Episcopal Press, 1835); found at http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/wwhite/pastoral1835.html.

Daily Reading for July 18 • The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Lord, for the blessing of sisters
For friendship and laughter and tears
For the road walked together and adventures shared
For the breaking of bread and mugs of coffee
For sisters whose lives are hard and oppressed
For sisters who toil and have no time for rest
Lord, we pray

Lord, for the blessing of grandmothers
For gentle and wise counsel
For the gift of time when all else seems hurried
For memories passed on to be kept and treasured
For being a stead presence when life is tough
For being there when the going gets rough
Lord, we pray

Lord, for the blessing of women
For women who energize and inspire
For women who blaze new trails
For women who march for justice
For women who question and stir
For saintly women who have gone before
Lord, we pray.

From “For the Blessing of Women” by Jan Brind and Tessa Wilkinson (Woking, Surrey, England), quoted in Lifting Women’s Voices: Prayers to Change the World edited by Margaret Rose, Jenny Te Paa, Jeanne Person, and Abagail Nelson. Copyright © 2009. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com

Daily Reading for July 19 • Macrina, Monastic and Teacher, 379, and Adelaide Teague Case, Teacher, 1948

On one of the banks of the river was the abode of a society of holy women under the spiritual guidance of Emmeline, the mother, and Macrina, the sister, of Gregory. Basil had returned from his journeying in the monastic regions of Egypt and the East, had brought back the best hints he had gathered, and applied them with his excellent judgment. It was one of those institutions that seemed to be founded and sustained in the spirit of serene devotion. The foolish austerities of ascetics were not suffered to extinguish the tenderest sensibilities; nor did a stupid inactivity, engendered by a morbid enthusiasm, forbid the exercise of the delightful office of charity. Not only were the souls of the residents entranced by prayer, by retirement within the still chambers of meditation, and by morning and evening melodies; but the study of the sacred narratives and of good men’s works, the labor of the hands, and the interchange of friendly deeds, made up the cheerful and instructive round of each day’s occupations.

Already Basil had gone out, bearing the message of life. He was now pleading for the sublime principles of purity, beneficence, and forgiveness before the mixed populace, the noble and the servile, the thoughtful and the worldly, the fortunate and the distressed, at Caesarea—the same crowded capital where he was, a few years previous, pleading their secular interests in the presence of human tribunals. . . .

“Are there tidings from Caesarea?” asked Macrina, as the old pilgrim, who was the only bearer of news to the solitaries, presented himself at the entrance to the coenobium. Her eye fell upon the well-known scroll of her brother Basil; and bestowing the usual blessing, the welcome and the reward upon the worn traveler, she hurried with it to her mother’s apartment, to rejoice or to weep over its communications. “The evil god of ambition hath gained the heart of our brother,” commenced the epistle. It proceeded to relate how Gregory had left the sacred office for a return to his profane studies, and had become an instructor in oratory. . . .The grief of his loving guardians was intense. It was as if he had renounced forever the name and hopes of a Christian; and their tears fell for him as for one lost from the number of the faithful. . . . But with the hoping and trusting Macrina some relief always came to the darkest apprehensions. . . .“To prayer, then, for the mistaken wanderer! Let our love utter itself in supplication. Pray that, having clothed himself with the saint’s robe, he be not suffered to turn unto idols. Pray that he put not the excellency of speech and the words that man’s wisdom teacheth above the simple but divine instructions of the Redeemer. Pray that his faith fail not. And may He who keepeth his children’s way send us answers of peace!”

Their intercessions and remonstrances, with the earnest arguments of the Bishop and the stern rebukes of Basil, finally prevailed. The joyful hour when they learned the resolve of the eloquent youth to bring his whole heart’s gift to the consecrated service, was recompense enough for their weepings and forebodings. He seemed himself to confess from whom came the most effective persuasions, by repairing himself immediately to the side of those gentle counselors. Among these influences he strengthened his purposes, and prepared himself for the trying struggles into which his fresh determinations must bear him.

From “Macrina, the Sister of Gregory” by F. D. Huntington, D.D., in The Church Monthly, volume 1 (April 1861).

Daily Reading for July 20 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1902; Amelia Bloomer, 1894; Sojourner Truth, 1883; and Harriet Ross Tubman, 1913, Liberators and Prophets

When a child of fifteen years, my feelings were deeply stirred by learning that an old lady, a dear friend of mine, was to be turned from her home and the bulk of her property taken from her. Her husband died suddenly, leaving no will. The law would allow her but a life interest in one-third of the estate, which had been accumulated by the joint earnings and savings of herself and husband through many years. They had no children and the nearest relative of the husband was a second or third cousin, and to him the law gave two-thirds of her property, though he had never contributed a dollar towards its accumulation, and was to them a stranger. Later, other similar cases coming to my knowledge made me familiar with the cruelty of the law towards women; and when the Woman’s Rights Convention put forth its declaration of sentiments, I was ready to join with that party in demanding for women such change in the laws as would give her a right to her earnings, and her children a right to wider fields of employment and a better education, and also a right to protect her interests at the ballot-box.

In the spring of 1849, my husband was appointed postmaster of Seneca Falls, N.Y. He proposed that I should act as his deputy. I accepted the position, as I had determined to have a practical demonstration of woman’s right to fill any place for which she had capacity. I was sworn in as his deputy, and filled the position for four years, during the administration of Taylor and Fillmore. It was a novel step for me to take in those days, and no doubt many thought I was out of woman’s sphere; but the venture was very successful and proved to me conclusively that woman might, even then, engage in any respectable business and deal with all sorts of men, and yet be treated with the utmost respect and consideration.

From Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer by D. C. Bloomer (BiblioLife, 2009).

Daily Reading for July 21 • Albert John Luthuli, Prophetic Witness in South Africa, 1967

The main thing is that the government and the people should be democratic to the core. It is relatively unimportant who is in the government. I am not opposed to the present government because it is white. I am only opposed to it because it is undemocratic and repressive. I do not cherish such expressions as “the all-black government,” “the African majority.” I like to speak about “a democratic majority,” which should be a non-racial majority, and so could be multi-racial or not.

My idea is a non-racial government consisting of the best men—merit rather than color counting. The political parties in the country should also reflect the multi-racial nature of the country. Parties, basically, should arise from a community of interests, rather than from a similarity of color. If the electorate puts on a one-color government that should be accidental, and not purposeful. Appeals to racialism at elections will be an offense in law. . . .

The position in South Africa is such that a white hobo in the street and an 18-year-old youth is equated politically—if not in all respects—as being above a non-white educated person. What a ridiculous disparity! I stress that the question of “color” and “swamping” will not be relative in the South Africa I think of—a South Africa that is a non-racial democracy. No doubt, initially, as a result of the unfortunate historical developments which stressed divisions into color and with the state having previously legislated racially, people have become color conscious. This might not be wiped off in one day. People should not be blamed in the beginning for thinking in racial categories, but this will be discouraged by law and by a process of re-education in all spheres and avenues of life. State policies and practices should not take account of those who persist to think and act on the basis of racialism.

I stress, all discriminatory laws will be removed from the statute book and civil liberties extended to all without qualification. As stated earlier, fundamental human rights will be guaranteed by the constitution. Individual freedom will be fully respected, and will be basic. . . . I realize that a state such as I visualize—a democratic social welfare state—cannot be born in one day. But it will be the paramount task of the government to bring it about and advance it without crippling industry, commerce, farming and education.

From “What I Would Do If I Were Prime Minister” by Albert John Luthuli, in Ebony (February 1962).

Daily Reading for July 22 • Saint Mary Magdalene

Identified both as apostle to the apostles and as a redeemed prostitute, perhaps no other biblical saint has been the subject of as much interpretation and misinterpretation as Mary of Magdala. Although her commemoration was added to the Western church calendar only in the Middle Ages, a number of patristic writers comment on the biblical texts about her. Noncanonical Gospels and other literature discovered during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly material found at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, have shed new light on her role. Scholarship since the 1980s has emphasized her authority and leadership in early Christianity, while literature, film, and other artistic expressions continue to focus on her sexuality.

In all four Gospels, Mary Magdalene has a prominent place at the cross and the empty tomb. . . . Of particular importance is her encounter with the risen Jesus and his command for her to announce the good news to the disciples (John 20:11-18). Accordingly, she became known as “apostle to the apostles,” a title given by the third-century bishop Hippolytus as well as Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom.

Apart from the passion and resurrection narratives, Mary Magdalene receives only one brief mention in the New Testament. Luke introduces her as one of a group of women who traveled with Jesus and “the twelve” and “provided for them out of their resources” (Luke 8:1-3). Magdala was a prosperous town on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, known for its exports of salt fish and fish oil, and Mary’s ability to provide material support for Jesus and the disciples suggests that she may have been involved in the fishing industry or some other trade.

What has captured Christian imagination, however, is Luke’s description of Mary as one “from whom seven demons had gone out” (Luke 8:2; cf. Mark 16:9). . . . Western Christians have identified Mary Magdalene with the unnamed “woman in the city, who was a sinner,” who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and wipes them with her hair, then kisses and anoints his feet (Luke 7:36-50). The sensual nature of this scene and a tendency to identify women’s sinfulness with their sexuality has resulted in the identification of this woman as a prostitute. . . . In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I declared in a homily that Mary Magdalene, the sinner of Luke 7, and Mary of Bethany were the same person, an identification that has persisted for centuries. . . .

New understandings of Mary began to emerge as manuscripts of noncanonical texts were discovered during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [These] documents . . . depict Mary Magdalene as prominent among early Christians. She speaks boldly, sometimes questioning the earthly or risen Jesus. She comforts and encourages the disciples, correcting them and urging them to believe and to act. She experiences and interprets visions, and she is praised for her insight. She also meets opposition from the male disciples, especially Peter, who object to a woman’s presence and leadership. Some scholars propose that these texts reflect a struggle in the ancient church over the authority and leadership of women.

From “Mary Magdalene, Apostle” by Ruth A. Meyers, in New Proclamation Commentary on Feasts, Holy Days, and Other Celebrations, edited by David B. Lott (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2007).

Daily Reading for July 23

For leaders of the ancient church, hospitality was an important practice for transcending the status boundaries of the surrounding culture and for working through issues of recognition and respect. It was crucial to meeting human needs—especially the physical needs of impoverished believers—and it made sense in the economy of God. Generous hosts, though not seeking gain, would find themselves blessed in the hospitality relationship. By offering hospitality to someone in need, one both ministered to Christ and responded to God’s generous hospitality. John Chrysostom pointed out the disproportionate generosity of God that stands behind all of our acts of hospitality. In a homily on the book of Acts, he explained that we receive Jesus into our homes, but he receives us into the kingdom of his Father; in responding to a hungry person, we take away Jesus’ hunger, but he takes away our sins; we see him a stranger and he makes us citizens of heaven; we give him bread, but he gives us an entire kingdom to inherit and possess. . . .

There are many discussions within the tradition concerning to whom aid should be given and how it should be distributed. Faithful Christians struggled with questions about whether it was right to distinguish between “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, and with questions about whether help should be offered indiscriminately or by using certain criteria. These are the same questions with which we struggle. How many of us wonder whether we ought to make sure the person to whom we give a dollar will use it well or, at least, that they will not use it for drugs or alcohol? How many times have we volunteered at a homeless shelter or food pantry and felt a little uncomfortable about asking people to prove their need for a loaf of week-old bread, a brick of government cheese or a cot in an overcrowded gymnasium?

John Chrysostom’s warning to his congregation speaks to us about our rigorous needs tests: that it is the height of stinginess “for one loaf [of bread] to be exact about a man’s entire life.” While insisting on the importance of offering enthusiastic, generous and cheerful hospitality to strangers and to poor persons within the community, he also recognized concerns that imposters might take advantage of indiscriminate generosity. He acknowledged that if one knew they were imposters, it was appropriate not to receive them into one’s house, “But if thou does not know this, why does thou accuse them lightly?” In any case the risk is in the giver’s favor, because “greater are the benefits we receive than what we confer.” . . .

Among the most compelling discussions of hospitality are Chrysostom’s insights about the risk of shaming recipients while providing them with assistance. He repeatedly warned against having a grudging spirit in the exercise of hospitality, describing such an attitude as “cruel and inhuman.” Holding together respect and assistance is difficult—there is, as Philip Hallie has written, “a way of helping people that fills their hands but breaks their hearts.” Chrysostom understood how easy it could be for those with resources to “think themselves superior to the recipients and oftentimes despise them for the attention given them.” The antidote was deeply biblical and theological—remembering the generous welcome we had received in Christ and recognizing that in offering welcome to one in need we were somehow offering welcome to Jesus.

From Christine D. Pohl, “Hospitality: Ancient Resources and Contemporary Challenges,” in Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future, ed. Mark Husbands and Jeffrey P. Greenman (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2008), 143-155.

Daily Reading for July 24 • Thomas à Kempis, Priest, 1471

Until God ordains otherwise, a man ought to bear patiently whatever he cannot correct in himself and in others. Consider it better thus—perhaps to try your patience and to test you, for without such patience and trial your merits are of little account. Nevertheless, under such difficulties you should pray that God will consent to help you bear them calmly.

If, after being admonished once or twice, a person does not amend, do not argue with him but commit the whole matter to God that His will and honor may be furthered in all His servants, for God knows well how to turn evil to good. Try to bear patiently with the defects and infirmities of others, whatever they may be, because you also have many a fault which others must endure.

If you cannot make yourself what you would wish to be, how can you bend others to your will? We want them to be perfect, yet we do not correct our own faults. We wish them to be severely corrected, yet we will not correct ourselves. Their great liberty displeases us, yet we would not be denied what we ask. We would have them bound by laws, yet we will allow ourselves to be restrained in nothing. Hence, it is clear how seldom we think of others as we do of ourselves.

If all were perfect, what should we have to suffer from others for God’s sake? But God has so ordained, that we may learn to bear with one another’s burdens, for there is no man without fault, no man without burden, no man sufficient to himself nor wise enough. Hence we must support one another, console one another, mutually help, counsel, and advise, for the measure of every man’s virtue is best revealed in time of adversity—adversity that does not weaken a man but rather shows what he is.

From “Bearing with the Faults of Others,” chapter 16 in The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis; found at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kempis/imitation.ONE.16.html

Daily Reading for July 25 • The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

How do you set about praying? From our point of view, there is a fairly obvious order of priorities. We’re usually in some sort of mess, and we want God to get us out of it. Then we’ve usually got some fairly pressing needs, and we want God to supply them. It may strike us at that point that there’s a larger world out there. Again, we probably move from mess to wants: please sort out the Middle East, please feed the hungry, please house the homeless.

But then, once more, it may dawn on us that there’s not just a larger world out there; there’s a larger God out there. He’s not just a celestial cleaner-up and sorter-out of our messes and wants. He is God. He is the living God. And he is our Father. If we linger here, we may find our priorities quietly turned inside out. The contents may remain; the order will change. With that change, we move at last from paranoia to prayer; from fuss to faith.

The Lord’s Prayer is designed to help us make this change: a change of priority, not a change of content. This prayer doesn’t pretend that pain and hunger aren’t real. Some religions say that; Jesus didn’t. This prayer doesn’t use the greatness and majesty of God to belittle the human plight. Some religions do that; Jesus didn’t. This prayer starts by addressing God intimately and lovingly, as “Father”—and by bowing before his greatness and majesty. If you can hold those two together, you’re already on the way to understanding what Christianity is all about.

From The Lord and His Prayer by N. T. Wright (Eerdmans, 1996).

Daily Reading for July 26 • Saint James the Apostle (transferred)

“Lord, teach us to pray.”—Luke xi.1
“Elias . . . prayed in his prayer.”—James v.17 (Marg.)

James, the brother of the Lord, and the author of this Epistle, was nicknamed “Camel-knees” by the early Church. James had been so slow of heart to believe that his brother, Jesus, could possibly be the Christ, that, after he was brought to believe, he was never off his knees. And when they came to coffin him, it was like coffining the knees of a camel rather than the knees of a man, so hard, so worn, so stiff were they with prayer, and so unlike any other dead man’s knees they had ever coffined. The translators tell us that they have preserved James’s intense Hebrew idiom for us in the margin: and I, for one, am much obliged to them for doing that. For, if I am saved at last, if I ever learn to pray, if I ever come to put my passions into my prayers,—I shall have to say to “Camel-knees,” and to his excellent editors and translators, that I am to all eternity in their debt. The apostolic and prophetic idiom in the margin takes hold of my imagination. It touches my heart. It speaks to my conscience. And it must do all that to you also. For, even after we have, in a way, prayed, off and on, for many years, in the pulpit, at the family altar, and on the platform in the prayer-meeting,—how seldom, if ever, we “pray in our prayers”! We repeat choice passages of Scripture. We recite, with sonorous voices, most excellent evangelical extracts from Isaiah and Ezekiel. We declaim our petitions in a way that would do credit to a stage surrounded with spectators. We praise one man, and we blame another man, in our prayers. We have an eye, now to this man present, and now to that man absent. We pronounce appreciations, and we pass judgments in our prayers. . . .

You have not Elijah’s prophetical office, not James’s apostolical inspiration . . . : but you have plenty of passion if you would but make the right use of it. You are all vicious or virtuous men, prayerful or prayerless men; and, then, you are effectual or unavailing men in your prayers—just as your passions are. You have all quite sufficient variety and amount of passion to make you mighty men with God and with men, if only your passions found their proper vent in your prayers. You have all passion enough—far too much—in other things. What an ocean of all kinds of passion your heart is! What depths of self-love are in your heart! . . . Yes: you have passions enough to make you a saint in heaven, or a devil in hell: and they are every day making you either the one or the other. We have all plenty of passion, and to spare: only, it is all missing the mark. . . . Our passions, all given us for our blessedness, are all making us and other people miserable. Our passions, and their proper objects, were all committed to us of God to satisfy, and to delight, and to regale, and to glorify us. But we have taken our passions and have made them the instruments and the occasions of our self-destruction. We are self-blinded, and self-besotted men: and it is the prostitution of our passions that has done it.

Does the thought of God ever make your heart swell and beat with holy passion? Does the Name of Jesus Christ ever make you sing in the night? Do His words hide in your heart like the words of your bridegroom? Do you tremble to offend Him? Do you number the days till you are to be for ever with Him? And so on—through all your passions of all kinds in your heart?

From Lord, Teach Us to Pray: Sermons on Prayer by Alexander Whyte, D.D., LL.D. (London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1922), 2.6.

Daily Reading for July 27 • William Reed Huntington, Priest, 1909

Experience has shown it to be possible for men to live peaceably together within the same national limits and under the same flag who differ very widely in political opinions—so widely, in fact, that in old times the notion of including such discordant elements within a single civil framework would have been scouted as an “iridescent dream.” . . . God forbid that I should commend to your confidence that thin and sickly caricature of Catholicity which would bring men into one Church by bidding them first divest themselves of whatever is especially characteristic of their present and past belongings! That sort of thing is sometimes commended to us under the name of “unsectarian religion,” and a very insipid nostrum it is. I distrust the forestry which under the pretext of unifying the trees of the wood begins by commanding the birch to denude itself of its peculiar bark, the oak to cast away its distinctive leaf, and the cedar to shed its cones. What should we have left but a totally uninteresting collection of bare poles?

The question to be propounded to the various groups of believers into which our American Christendom is broken up is not, Of how much are you willing to bereave yourselves for harmony’s sake? but this: Of how much stand you possessed which you consider worth contributing to the common fund? The author of the popular rhyme, “No Sect in Heaven,” meant well, and moreover hit upon a felicitous title; for it is as certain that there will be no sect there as it is that there will be no night there; but is it so certain that the unity of the heavenly Church is to follow, as effect from cause, upon the casting away as rubbish of whatever can be shown to have distinguished one portion of Christ’s flock from another here on earth? I cannot think it. I do not believe that it will be made a condition of entrance at those open gates, that the Methodist shall discard Charles Wesley’s hymns, or the Catholic unlearn his Te Deum. . . . Yes, depend upon it, unity by contribution is a better thing than unity by subtraction. Great changes await both man and his dwelling-place, but God will not suffer anything that is intrinsically precious to be lost: all the wheat is destined for his barn into his treasury, every coin that has the right stamp and the true ring shall fall at last.

From “Whole Church: A Plea for the Four Temperaments” by William Reed Huntington, D.D. (New York: James Pott & Co., 1895); found at http://anglicanhistory.org/usa/wrh/whole1895.html

Daily Reading for July 28 • Johann Sebastian Bach, 1750, George Frederick Handel, 1759, and Henry Purcell, 1695, Composers

The virtues inculcated in us through exposure to and practice in the church’s tradition aid us in the acquisition and development of “particular skills, patterns of experience, habits of perception and portions of knowledge” essential for understanding, embracing and communicating the gospel well.

I return to the metaphor of the Christian as an apprentice musician. An apprentice must learn more than musical theory, though the theory is essential if she is ever to create or play beautiful music. The apprentice must learn to be a practitioner of her craft. Along with the development of her mind, her muscle memory must also grow so that mind and muscle can ever more efficiently work together. What at first is quite difficult, even foreign to her natural inclinations, with practice becomes second nature. Discipline leads to freedom. As she listens, reads, watches and practices under the guidance of a skilled musical master, her habits, skills, experiences, preferences and choices are transformed.

She perceives, comprehends and appreciates notes, themes and meanings in a fresh manner that may indeed lead to innovation, but only because she now has the skills, knowledge, perceptions and insights to improvise. Her perceptions, judgments and musical experiences are quite different from those of persons who are musically illiterate. A well-trained musician will hear sour notes in a symphony performance much more acutely than one who does not possess a trained ear. Likewise, someone properly formed in the great tradition will perceive doctrinal and behavioral false notes better than someone who has not been trained or catechized well. . . .

Self-awareness increases as we are exposed to the great tradition. Again, this exposure is similar to the way a student of the violin is initiated into the classical repertoire and learns to cultivate an ear for Mozart and Bach. Some schools might choose to train their students in a nineteenth-century repertoire more than the Baroque, just as some branches of the Christian tradition will look to Wesley or Luther rather than Aquinas. All, however, belong to the larger tradition reaching back to the church fathers. When we fail to ground ourselves in the great tradition, when we are concerned for doctrinal correctness but fail to understand the traditions in which doctrinal clarity developed and matured, ecclesial and theological shallowness and self-deception easily cripple our understanding and incarnation of the gospel.

From Christopher A. Hall, “Tradition, Authority, Magisterium: Dead End or New Horizon?” in Ancient Faith for the Church’s Future, ed. Mark Husbands and Jeffrey P. Greenman (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2008).

Daily Reading for July 29 • Mary, Martha, and Lazarus of Bethany

A friend is called a guardian of love or, as some would have it, a guardian of the spirit itself. Since it is fitting that my friend be a guardian of our mutual love or the guardian of my own spirit so as to preserve all its secrets in faithful silence, let him, as far as he can, cure and endure such defects as he may observe in it; let him rejoice with his friend in his joys, and weep with him in his sorrows, and feel as his own all that his friend experiences.

Friendship, therefore, is that virtue by which spirits are bound by ties of love and sweetness, and out of many are made one. Even the philosophers of this world have ranked friendship not with things casual or transitory but with the virtues which are eternal. Solomon in the Book of Proverbs appears to agree with them when he says: “He that is a friend loves at all times,” manifestly declaring that friendship is eternal if it is true friendship; but, if it should ever cease to be, then it was not true friendship, even though it seemed to be so. . . .

For spiritual friendship, which we call true, should be desired, not for consideration of any worldly advantage or for any extrinsic cause, but from the dignity of its own nature and the feelings of the human heart, so that its fruition and reward is nothing other than itself. Whence the Lord in the Gospel says: “I have appointed you that you should go, and should bring forth fruit,” that is, that you should love one another. For true friendship advances by perfecting itself, and the fruit is derived from feeling the sweetness of that perfection. And so spiritual friendship among the just is born of a similarity in life, morals, and pursuits, that is, it is a mutual conformity in matters human and divine united with benevolence and charity. . . . Where such friendship exists, there, indeed, is a community of likes and dislikes, the more pleasant in proportion as it is the more sincere, the more agreeable as it is more sacred.

From Spiritual Friendship by Aelred of Rievaulx (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977).

Daily Reading for July 30 • William Wilberforce, 1833, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury, 1885, Prophetic Witnesses

From what we know of Lord Shaftesbury’s character, it is not surprising that he should have thrown himself headlong into the Slavery question, which was attracting great attention in consequence of the revelations made in the volume by Mrs. Stowe, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” This book stirred up a hatred of slavery which is unprecedented. Lord Shaftesbury entered actively into the movement, prepared an address from the women on England to those in America, and the negro slave question was discussed in all its bearings. . . .

These efforts on behalf of the negroes did not meet with very much favour in America. Mrs. Beecher Stowe was then in London, and was fêted by many personages. The address to the women of America by the women of England brought forth a retort from across the Atlantic to “look at home,” while Mrs. Tyler, the wife of the ex-President, declared that the condition of the whites in London slums was far worse than the condition of the Southern slaves. The American newspapers reviled Lord Shaftesbury in strong terms, and an angry “leader” in one of these organs is so funny that we are tempted to quote it—“Who, then, is this Earl of Shaftesbury? An unknown lordling—one of your modern philanthropists, who has suddenly started up to take part in a passing agitation! It is a pity he does not look at home. Where was he when Lord Ashley was so nobly fighting the Factory Bill, and pleading the cause of the English slave? We never even heard the name of this Lord Shaftesbury then.”

But the Slave question did not die out; the seed was sown, though it was not until a bitter struggle and civil war that the emancipation of the negroes in the United States was finally agreed to.

The recommendation put forth by the Americans to Lord Shaftesbury to look at home was quite unnecessary. His efforts on behalf of Refuges for children, young people reared in crime, and professional mendicants, were unceasing, and crowned with success. The action of the parents of these young thieves and beggars almost paralysed his efforts. To reclaim the children would have been a hard task, but to overcome the resistance of the parents besides, to deprive them of their selfish means of livelihood, for they sent the little ones to beg—as they do still—and lived in debauchery on the proceeds, was harder. Not only were parents thus kept in idleness and in a besotted state, but the people with whom they lodged were also paid by the proceeds of the theft and sins of other types. To put an end to such a state of things Lord Shaftesbury, the “unknown lordling,” as the American editor called him, brought in the Bill for the Repression of Juvenile Mendicancy and Crime. . . . In June, 1854, the Youthful Offenders’ Bill was passed, and Reformatories were encouraged. . . .

We have dwelt upon these incidents in Lord Shaftesbury’s career about this time in order to show the universality of his sympathy with suffering humanity, in any form and in any country. He was, as it were, surrounded by foes. . . . Although his efforts were applauded by thousands, though he had saved more lives than the Humane Society, though he had impoverished himself to find means for the distressed and the poor, though he had exhibited and practiced the most wide-embracing charity, he had never received any public recognition or any other of distinction. . . . The life-saver had his medal, the soldier his Victoria Cross; the philanthropist only the testimony of his conscience and the stinted applause of his fellows in life. There was as much bravery and value in fighting for the spiritual and bodily welfare of his poorer brethren, as there was in destroying them, or in rescuing them from death and accident.

From The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury by Henry Frith (London: Cassell & Co., 1887).

Daily Reading for July 31 • Ignatius of Loyola, Priest and Monastic, 1556

One of the greatest forces for revival in the Roman Church [was] the Society of Jesus. Like Valdesianism, it was a movement which sprang from the Iberian peninsula. It was founded by a Basque gentleman who had been a courtier of Charles V and who, like Valdés, had to take refuge from the Spanish Inquisition. Iñigo López de Loyola has become known to history as Ignatius after making the most of a scribal error over his Christian name when he matriculated in the University of Paris.

Like Luther and Contarini, Iñigo had a crisis of faith, but his crisis, triggered by devotional reading during prolonged convalescence from a severe war wound, led in the opposite direction to Luther: not to rebellion against the Church, but to a courtier’s obedience. In medieval knightly style, in 1522 he spent a vigil night in dedication to his lady before departing on crusade to the Holy Land—the lady was God’s Mother, in the shape of the pilgrimage statue of the Black Madonna at Monserrat. In fact his departure for Jerusalem was to be much postponed, and Jerusalem proved not to be the goal of his life that he hoped. Amid many painful and poverty-stricken false starts, Loyola began to note down his changing spiritual exercises. This was raw material for a systematically organized guide to prayer, self-examination and surrender to divine power. He soon began using the system with other people. It was to reach a papally approved final form in print in 1548 as the Spiritual Exercises, one of the most influential books in Western Christianity, even though Ignatius did not design it for reading any more than one might a technical manual of engineering or computing. It is there to be used by clerical spiritual directors guiding others as Ignatius did himself, to be adapted at whatever level might be appropriate for those who sought to benefit from it, in what came to be known as “making the Exercises."

It was the Spanish Inquisition’s unfavourable interest in this devotional activity which led to Loyola’s hasty exit from Spain for the University of Paris in 1528, a year before Valdés’s own flight. Around the exiled Spaniard gathered a group of talented young men who were inspired by his vision for a new mission to the Holy Land. To their severe disappointment, the international situation in 1537 made it impossible for them to take ship, but the friends resolved to look positively on their setback and create yet another variant on the gild/confraternity/oratory model: not a religious order, but what they called a Compagnia or Society of Jesus.

From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch (New York: Viking, 2009).