In the post at April 15, 1912 Remembered  a great American of a century ago asked us, in the wake of the Titanic disaster, “if this ideal [of Christian manhood] was to survive and prevail in our civilization or not?”

Somewhere between 1912 and post modernity this ideal appears to have passed away.  Possibly in the trenches of WWI?  Possibly while entire cities were bombed to dust in WWII?  Possibly in the napalm, ”freedom” and sexual revolution that followed the horrible wars of the twentieth century?

Before we can re-capture what was lost we must first miss what we have thrown away.

This poem by Harvey F. Thewl (written within months of the sinking of the Titanic) should help us miss Christian manhood. 

AI Director Barb Budzon read it during our somber tribute to the chivalry found on the deck of that great sinking Lady of the Sea last Monday.  Read it and weap for an age lost, an age that valued true manhood.  Read it and pray that the men of our present social order will determine it best to rescue manhood from its seeming demise . . . 

Where Manhood Perished Not

Where across the lines of forty north and fifty-fourteen west
there rolls a wild and greedy sea with death upon it’s crest.
No stone or wreath from human hands will ever mark the spot
where fifteen hundred men went down, but manhood perished not.

Old ocean takes but little heed of human tears or woe.
No shafts adorn the ocean graves, nor weeping willows grow.
Nor is there need of marble slab to keep in mind the spot
where noble men went down to death, but manhood perished not!

Those men who looked on death and smiled,
and trod the crumbling deck,
have saved much more than precious lives from out that awful wreck.
Though countless joys and hopes and fears were shattered at a breath,
’tis something that the name of man did not go down to death.

‘Tis not an easy thing to die,
e’en in the open air,
Twelve hundred miles from home and friends,
in a shroud of black dispair.
A wreath to crown the brow of man, and hide a former blot
will ever blossom o’er the waves,
where manhood perished not.

By: Harvey F. Thewl

Monday, April 14, as I finalized the work for the Monday evening informational presentations and marking of the 96th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, a young man with dred locks repeatedly walked past the Institute.  He then sat for  a spell in the little park beside the former clinic.  Handel’s Messiah was then playing on the external speakers.

At one point I looked up from the computer to see him standing on the porch looking in at me.  Tears streamed down his face.  I went to the door and asked if I could be of help.  “This was the, the place where, ah …” he stammered through a cracking voice.  “Yes, I replied, this was the abortion clinic, but no longer.”  “You have done a very good thing, you are doing the right thing,” he blurted out.  The tears began rolling down his face once again.  “We have people who can help you,” I offered.  “Jesus forgives and heals, and I can set you up with an appointment to come in here and talk with someone who can help you find peace.”  He shook his head and explained that he was not yet ready for that.  “I have been here twice now, I just sit in the park” he explained.  He then turned, waved and walked away, and I once again pointed him toward the Ultimate Source of forgiveness, assuring him that I, too, had drawn from that font of healing and hope that he would as well.  “Jesus can help you!” I assured him as he headed back toward the benches in the park.

As he sat on the bench in deep sadness ArchAngel Director Jim Leeson prayed for him from inside the Institute.  We hope that he finds the healing that only Jesus can deliver.

This young modern man is suffering from having not put women and children first.  The young modern man is suffering as a victim of a culture that fails to put women and children first.

Yesterday’s post was Dr. Van Dyke noting that “only through the [Christian] belief that the strong are bound to protect and save the weak because God wills it so, can we hope to keep self-sacrifice, and love, and heroism, and all the things that make us glad to live and not afraid to die.” 

This young, sad, modern lad is the victim of an industry that puts the playboy first, puts women last and renders children a mere commodity to be scrapped for profits.  From the image of God to the coins of Caesar.  Thirty of them to be exact. 

Please pray for this profoundly sad young man.  We will call him “Rasta.”

Tomorrow’s post will celebrate heroism on the Titanic once again.  That sad tomb was made glad, in the long run, because many of its men were activist, Christian men. 

To again quote the good Presbyterian Van Dyke, “It [takes] a catastrophe like the wreck of the Titanic to bring out the absolute contradiction between {the Christian} ideal and all of the counsels of materialism and selfish expediency.”

“Without {this Christian moral code}, no doubt, we may have riches and power adn dominion.  But what a world to live in!”

Indeed.  Rasta may be more wealthy thanks to the abortion clinic.  He may be free of economic support orders.  He may have asserted his dominion.  But what a sad world he now lives in!  Materialism and selfish expediency always leads to the same sad place.

May God Rescue Him  — and us all! 

Great American churchman Dr. Henry Van Dyke was called upon to eulogize the 1635 souls who went down to a watery gave on April 15, 1912.

He delivered this very moving statement . . . (click on red hyperlink)

http://instituteed.blogspot.com/

Source:  The Sinking of the Titanic & Great Sea Disasters (a Detailed and Accurate Account of the Most Awful Marine Disaster in History, Constructed from the Real Facts as Obtained from Those on Board Who Survived), with a message of spiritual consolation by Rev. Henry Van Dyke, D.D., edited by Logan Marshall, Regent Press, 1912 (910.916 SI65)

DEDICATION of the above:  “To the 1635 souls who were lost with the ill-fated Titanic, and especially to those heroic men, who, instead of trying to save themselves, stood aside that women and children might have their chance;  of each of them let it be written, as it was written of a Greater One — HE DIED THAT OTHERS MIGHT LIVE.”     

April 15, 2008 is the 96th anniversary of the sinking of that great ship the Titanic.

The Titanic represents so much more than just the sinking of a cruise-liner.  She was one of the greatest examples of the “gilded age,” and her sinking was in many ways a portent of what was about to unfold in world history.  Within a few short years Europe was ravished by WWI, and then, after a time of uneasy and non-gilded peace, World War II.  Post-modernity was born out of the brokenness of those great civil wars in the West.

So we mark the loss of that great lady of seas for both the cost in human life and the portend of a very bad run of almost 100 years now. 

All men and women of the local area are invited to join in a brief memorial service honoring the brave men of the Titanic at  9:30 pm on Monday, April 14.  This is the very time that the Titanic scraped alongside the iceberg that was to send her, horrific hours later, to a grave miles under the Atlantic Ocean.

The time of recollection will include a spiritual reading penned in 1912 by the great American Presbyterian clergyman Rev. Henry Van Dyke, pictured.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_van_Dyke

Other readings, music from 1912, a brandy toast and cigars will also accompany this first ArchAngel Institute memorialization of the brave men and women who gave their very lives so that others might live.

No children at this event please.  It should take about one hour to remember and toast those who set a shining example for us all. 

This event is sponsored by the ArchAngel Raphael Division of the Institute, as a launch of the Titanic Brigade and in conjunction with the Donegal Corridor.

An ArchAngel informational dinner will be held earlier in the evening of April 14.  For information on that event call (260) 515-8511.

Too many official voices, both in government and the media, have attempted to persuade the American people that giving voice to patriotism or the robust expression of a Christ-centered worldview are hurtful acts.

The Titanic Brigade identifies this political correctness as nothing less than the iceberg that has ripped a gaping hole in our national fabric.

This searing tear, if not repaired, will sink the ship called the United States of America.

The hole must be repaired, the iceberg that tore the hole must melt.

To be less obscure, as St. Paul taught, everything raised up against the knowledge of Christ is to be torn down.

The Institute is not the first to declare that post-modernity is opposed to the Faith Once Delivered. It is no secret and the conflicts have become glaring during the past decades.

The only question is what the Church is prepared to do about it.

One of the inspirations for the ArchAngel Institute said it quite well way back in the 80’s. He is the Saint Francis of the Protestant Evangelicals, and has an honored place in the Institute’s pantheon of Christian leaders:

“Make no mistake. We as Bible-believing evangelical Christians are locked in a battle. This is not a friendly gentleman’s discussion. It is a life and death conflict between the spiritual hosts of wickedness and those who claim the name of Christ. It is a conflict on the level of ideas between two fundamentally opposed views of truth and reality. It is a conflict on the level of actions between a complete moral perversion and chaos and God’s absolutes. Do we really believe we are in a life and death battle? Do we really believe that the part we play in the battle has consequences for whether or not men and women will spend eternity in hell? Or whether or not in this life people will live with meaning or meaninglessness? Or whether or not those who do live will live in a climate of moral perversion and degradation? Sadly, we must say that very few in the evangelical world have acted as if these things are true. …”
[Excerpted from The Great Evangelical Disaster, Francis A. Schaeffer, Crossway Books, p.31,32]

The ArchAngel Institute ended its August 25, 2007 launch with a clip from Schaeffer’s truly profound film series “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”

Schaeffer’s writings had a profound effect upon many young and idealistic evangelicals in the 1980’s. The principles and exhotations found in Schaeffer’s writings are found in the teachings of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI as well.

Those teachings form a common foundation from which an ecumenical evangelism addressing the whole of the human experience can be explored. Not a mere reactionary Christian Right, but a true Renaissance of the best in Christendom.

If not now, when? If not at 827 Webster Street, where?

The Titanic Brigade will answer Saint Francis’ call to faithful service while building a bridge between Faith communities that have for far too long been separated by walls.

This second post in the explanation of the mission of the Institute’s Titanic Brigade further explains why groups like the Brigade are important in the grand scheme of things. 

The Titanic Brigade is the Institute’s recognition that we must mobilize the grassroots of this nation if we are to preserve Christian culture.   A few standing alone can be overcome.  Millions standing together cannot.

Grassroot efforts colonized this blessed city on a hill.  Grassroot efforts brought about the American Revolution.  Grassroots effort formed the Underground Railroad.  Grassroot efforts supported most every civil rights initiative in our national history, and especially those that were religious at their core.  Grassroot efforts made the Rescue Movement what it was. Grassroot efforts explain the explosion of crisis pregnancy centers and independent churches across America. 

We Americans are a people given to grassroots movements.

The Titanic Brigade is a grassroots movement that recognizes Christian Unity as the necessary foundation to healing this sin-sick nation of ours.  Jesus is not a mere pasttime.  He is the author of eternity and time.  

Without Him we can do nothing.  Thus the Institute seeks to build nothing apart from Him.

Christian Unity is the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ and the desire of Pope Benedict XVI.  The latter recently wrote the following:

“It [Christian Unity] is a unanimous plea made with one soul and one heart in response to the Redeemer’s own desire, who turned to our Father at the Last Supper and said, “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:20-21). Asking for the gift of unity, Christians join in Christ’s prayer and commit themselves to work actively so that all of humanity welcomes and recognizes Christ as our only Shepherd and Lord, and thus experiences the joy of his love.”

Message in anticipation of the Feast of St. Paul, 2008 http://www.zenit.org/article-21582?l=english

America is faced with a crisis of unbeleif.  More than anything else, America needs the faith that once formed her culture.  More than anything else, America needs to really beleive that the Father sent Jesus.

America needs Christian Unity.  Not party unity, not community unity, not even racial or ethnic unity.  These all will be byproducts of a robust Christian unity, but cannot be the lead step in the dance that is needed in this desparate hour.  The ship of state has struck an iceberg and is taking on water fast. The time for partial solutions is past.

We need Christian Unity — much like the Christian Unity that undoubtedly graced the brave men who fought the waves by loading women and children onto lifeboats … and then died together singing hymns to their Risen King.

Joe Catholic layman and Joe Protestant layman need to get together to network on the question of how to further a rebirth of Christian chivalry in this dire hour. 

Joe Protestant layman and Joe Catholic layman must get together to network on the question of how to save America from sinking further into the dark abyss of moral relativism and cultural destruction.

The Christian Joe laymen of this nation will, as was the case at every critical juncture in the past, make or break America.  We must make and dare not break.

We Christian laymen all realize that Jesus is the answer . . .  now just how do we get each other to ask the right questions???  And to ask them outside of the safe comfort of our cloistered sanctuaries???

Let’ s explore that very issue while meeting in Susan Hill and George Klopfers’ former abortion clinic as members of the Titanic Brigade. (I can assure you that they would not approve!)

The fact that it did not create any stir at all is further evidence that this culture is in trouble. As in failing to reproduce itself trouble.

That really, really big story that played out really small is this:

Our youth are not being taught the cultural history of these United States.

This is no shock to most who follow such things. It is time that our fifty years of shock began to crystalize into substantive action. 

Before it is too late, for our culture is well worth saving.

The USA Today article reports that,

The public education system is not producing students who have common historical touchstones with past generations of Americans. The public education system is graduating fully half of its students without teaching them, by way of example, how to understand the following literary concepts: “Big Brother. McCarthyism. The patience of Job.

Note that the first two have to deal with the recognition of totalitarian politics and the latter with the Holy Scriptures. An understanding of both were once considered hallmarks of American thought. No more.

Here is what the author of this troubling study by a new thinktank, Common Core, has to say: “If you think that it matters whether or not kids have common historical touchstones and whether, at some level, we feel like members of a common culture, then familiarity with this knowledge matters a lot,” says American Enterprise Institute researcher Rick Hess, who wrote the study.

Pop quiz:

What makes a white kid raised in Russia different than a white kid raised in America?

What makes a black kid raised in Trinidad different than a black kid raised in Hawaii?

What makes an oriental kid raised in southeast Asia different than an oriental kid raised in Fort Wayne?

Hint: It is not race. All of the above can be true, blue Americans. All they need is ….. no, not love. All they need is culture.

Take away the culture and you take away the nationality. Take away the culture and you take away the software identity. Take away culture and the kid can be most any nationality on Earth. All you then have is race. Even ethnicity is largely cultural.

Write this ten times “It’s the Culture, Pilgrim.”

Indeed, what made the Pilgrims who founded this nation different than the Hessians who later came to kill the descendants of the Pilgrims? Most were, according to race, Caucasian. Most were, according to family trees, out of Northern Europe.

But oh how different their cultures.

Write this ten times” “It’s the Culture, Warriors.”

Indeed, we can work the politics, we can work the economics, we can watch Fox News, we can gather in separatist enclaves on Sunday morning from now until the Second Coming and not have all that much of an effect on where America is really headed.

America’s future is being forged this very instant by the culture that is being enculturated in our nation’s kids.  And that future appears to be unAmerican (from a historical perspective), to use a phrase that is considered politically correct for some strange reason.  (Think of the Founder’s emphasis upon an understanding of the Bible as a key to the common culture necessary to govern this nation, for example.)

This process of enculturation is taking place, in the main, in public schools and through the media. Television and the internet give us a trite “pop culture,” modern education gives our kids a trite “popular education” and added together they give us what the February 25 USA Today story documents: The death of historic American culture and the birth of something that few of us under 40 will recognize in a few short years.

These “It’s the Culture” messages are important enough to share. (President Bill Clinton’s advisers posted ”It’s the Economy, Stupid” in the Oval Office to keep him on point.  Our problem is not, at root, economic.  Our problem is the culture.  This difference in focus arises out of a very consequential difference in philosophical assumptions.)

And that is why the Institute has put the message on bumper stickers that are in our rectangular office!  (See examples below) 

Drop by the Institute and pick one up — or send us a request and we will mail one out to you.

More important than sporting the stickers, start spreading the news. 

We must save this culture — or America is lost on our watch.  Lost for good, as in lost forever. 

The Institute’s Titanic Brigade is dedicated to standing on the bridge and resisting the cold waves that threatens to drown all that was good and holy about the culture that our forefathers and foremothers gave their sacred honor, fortunes and very lives to birth on this continent.

JOIN US!

Vision & Mission of the

ArchAngel Institute’s

Titanic Brigade

(an ecumenical & grassroots initiative)

A celebration of Christian chivalry advancing the Culture of Life by organizing Christian men (of various denominational Heritage) to cherish, to defend and to promote faith, family and freedom. 

Operational Goals for 2008

            – Advance ecumenism among Evangelicals in the three major branches of Christendom through informal dialogue, prayer, fellowship and joint service projects.

            – April 13 memorial kick-off dinner memorializing the men who gave their lives while rescuing women and children on the Titanic.

– Structured monthly meetings of the Brigade at 827 Webster Street 

            – Service projects, including, but not limited to . . .  

– security details for local crisis pregnancy centers.

                        – aiding widows, orphans and abandoned women as requested by local CPC’s and other Christian ministries.

                        – joint evangelism projects presenting a unified message based upon the historic teachings of the Christian Faith.

                        – community standards statements intended to shore up the morality of the community.

Note:  A local journalist recently told the ArchAngel Institute’s Executive Director that “getting Christians together is a fine idea, as long as you do not try to get them to pray together.”  The Titanic Brigade hopes to prove this journalist wrong on that front.

 The Titanic Brigade will be a group of men dedicated to, in the words of the Apostle Paul, making “every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” 

We seek men of strong Christian character and Evangelical, ecumenical intent. 

We seek men interested in making ecumenical history in the Fort.

The Titanic Brigade is the next station in our virtual tour of the Institute.

 This station has been set up by the previous posts on current social problems and our wonderful, treasured heritage as Christians in America.  If you have not read the last few posts, this would be a fine time to do just that.

Now we turn to our English cousins, for our wonderful American heritage was European before it was American.

My grandfather (the original owner of the brown mirror discussed in the previous post) was born in 1903 and thus came of age as the world that then was immolated itself on the technological battlefield of modernity.  WWI ushered in a New Age, an age that has led to most of the social problems that we struggle with in contemporary America.

The following is borrowed from the above mission criticals tab.  It prepares us for the coming post on the Institute’s Titanic Brigade . . . 

Christian Chivalry in America was, at least in part, the “quaint” social order that seventy years of post-War affluence has pretty much undone. Margaret Storm Jameson made this point in her 1965 work, The Early Life of Stephen Hind, therein recording a grandmother’s mourning for the demise of
 “[a]nother civilization … the one I was born into. It has died, I say, not vanished, because it was a living organism. A civilization based upon the family. What has taken its place is not alive; an atomized society, without security, without warmth, a chaos of fragmented mechanical relationships. O, I know as well you do, that in my world there was ignorance and poverty. But the right way was not to tear that world down and replace it by anarchy. The family base should have been extended, cherished, encouraged.”
Indeed.  The ArchAngel Institute stands four square on the concept of protecting the family at all costs.  Without the family civilization as our fore-bearers defined it will cease to exists.  Our social order is taking on water, in fact, because modernity has torn a gaping wound in our cultural superstructure.  Men and women of Faith and Courage must now stand in the gap and fight to repair the damage visited upon our social order by the modernist iceberg — before Christendom — the greatest ship of state known to mankind – sinks to the bottom.Will you stand with the Institute in the Titanic Brigade?More to follow . . .