Dear friends in Christ,
The final session of the class on the collects of the Book of Common Prayer will be this Sunday (and repeated on Monday). After we look at the final two collects of the church year–the famous one on Scripture, and the new one on Christ the King–I intend to review the structure and history of these special prayers for each Sunday of the year and to identify some persistent themes of Anglican theology embodied within them. The class meets at 10 o’clock on the 5th floor, and is repeated on Monday at 12:40pm. on the 2nd floor.
Tuesday, April 26, the Rector’s Christian doctrine classwill be on “‘When things go wrong’ – Sacramental Confession and Healing ministry.” This class is in Andrew Hall at 6:30 p.m.; Father Daniels will be leading the class this week. (You got it: when things go wrong, we turn to Father Daniels!)
The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be on Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, on Monday, May 16, at 6:15pm. There is hardly a book more quintessentially American than this novel, which as the same time rises to be an extended parable of human life. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to the conversation, which lasts 90 minutes.
Once again, I would like to call your attention to a good theological resource. On our parish website is a set of substantive theological lectures given over the past six years, starting with John Polkinghorne in 2010 (“Can a Scientist Pray?”) and running through the recent lecture by Neil Arner on biological and theological explanations of morality. Other topics have included authority, the emergence of the New Testament, Aquinas’s views on God and evil, the early church’s views on money and property, and the apocryphal book 2 Esdras. You can access all of these lectures here.
Finally, my theological memoir, Losing Susan: Brain Disease, the Priest’s Wife, and the God Who Gives and Takes Away, is being released in June by Brazos Press. But we are going to be able to get some copies here before Memorial Day. So we have scheduled the following: On Wednesday, May 25, I will give a lecture at 6:30 p.m. that will include some theological reflections and some selected readings from the book. And afterwards there will be a book signing.
Peace,
Father Austin
