Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Amanda Smith biography and article online

Folks, I've just discovered online a complete full text version of Amanda Smith's Autobiography. This is great, because the published version that's still in print costs a pretty penny:

http://docsouth.unc.edu/smitham/smith.html

Also, here is a two-part popular article on Smith:

http://www.urbana.org/wtoday.witnesses.cfm?article=48
http://www.urbana.org/wtoday.witnesses.cfm?article=49

Thanks to Erica Olson for pointing these articles out to me.
Posted by Grateful to the Dead at 13:50:29 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Friday, March 24, 2006

Sayers against "historicism gone to seed"

In my recent series on www.christianhistory.net, "Grateful to the Dead: Diary of a Christian History Professor," I argued that the enterprise of reading history and biography for the purpose of personal transformation has been under attack from a number of fronts, and that we ought to do everything we can to defend that enterprise. Now I discover that Dorothy L. Sayers, bless her, launched her own cautious, balanced defense of just this enterprise, against an enemy she calls "a 'sense of period,'" but which in scholarly circles (as she well knew) is called "historicism." That is the idea that writings from the past are very much of their time, and we must not try to read them as if they weren't. What Sayers correctly objected to was the sort of "historicism-gone-to-seed" that goes on to argue that since past writings are so much of their time, we cannot read them with benefit in our own time. But already I'm failing to do her justice, so, on to her own words . . .
Posted by Grateful to the Dead at 16:33:52 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Sayers on the variety--and commonality--of saints

"Saints come in all varieties. The only kind that seems to be rare in real life is the spineless and 'goody-goody' figure familiar to us in the feebler sort of pious fiction and stained-glass windows of the more regrettable periods. There are as many types of saint as of men and women, and most of them are people of great character. There are stormy and complex souls like Augustine of Hippo, with his burning sense of sin and his passionate love and dread of physical beauty, pouring out treatises, sermons, memoirs, apologetics, amide the distracting cares of a busy bishopric, travelling for ever between the city of the world and the City of God. There are anchorites, fleeing this world altogether, and devoting themselves to solitude and prayer: some, sweet and gentle like the desert Fathers; some, harsh and fanatical like Simeon Stylites, perched in austere discomfort upon his pillar. There is Francis, the 'troubadour of God', going barefoot among poor men and singing out his love to God and man and the whole creation: there is Albertus Magnus, toiling conscientiously at his vast commentaries upon Aristotle--certainly no singer, but the conspicuous glory of the Schools. There is Albertus's still greater pupil, Thomas Aquinas, a man to whom virtue seemed to come naturally, whose towering intellect completed his master's work and co-ordinated Greek learning and Christian revelation into a comprehensive system of Catholic doctrine. . . . There is little Theresa of Lisieux, meekly practising the Way amid the trivial duties of daily life and in the face of cramping family opposition: there is mighty Theresa of Avila, the eagle of contemplation, ruling her nuns with that fierce practical ability in which great mystics so often excel, and quite prepared to take God to task, with a tongue as vigorous as Job's and a good deal tarter, when He moved in ways more exasperatingly mysterious than usual. Stubborn martyrs, subtle theologians, ardent missionaries, cloistered contemplatives, homely pastors, brilliant administrators, obscure social workers, orators whose spell-binding eloquence could move multitudes and shake the thrones of princes, the saints seem to have little in common except a heroic love of God and a flaming single-mindedness of purpose.

Dorothy L. Sayers, "Introduction" to Richard of Chichester by C. M. Duncan-Jones (1953), excerpted in Dorothy L. Sayers: Spiritual Writings, selected and introduced by Ann Loades (Cambridge: Cowley, 1993).

Posted by Grateful to the Dead at 16:10:43 | Permanent Link | Comments (4) |

Thursday, March 02, 2006

In Minneapolis: A study on Antony of Egypt

At the Cathedral of Saint Mark in Minneapolis, there will be a Lenten study on Saint Antony of Egypt, running Wednesday evenings through March and into April, 6:15 to about 7:30 pm, March 8, 15, 22, 29, and April 5. The study group will use Robert C. Gregg's translation of Athanasius's Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (Paulist Press). Leading the study is late antique scholar and University of Minnesota professor Oliver Nicholson.

I'll be there for sure!

Posted by Grateful to the Dead at 14:00:31 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |