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Fleming Rutledge is a preacher and teacher known throughout the mainline Protestant denominations of the US, Canada and parts of the UK. She is the author of six books and has received a grant from the Louisville Foundation to complete a book about the meaning of the Crucifixion.
One of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, she served for fourteen years on the clergy staff at Grace Church on Lower Broadway at Tenth Street, New York City. A native of Franklin, Virginia, Mrs. Rutledge has been married for forty-five years and has two daughters and two grandchildren.
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Discerning God's Work In The World: Tips From The Times For Preachers: Botox nationFriday, July 25, 2008Botox nationA big article in The New York Times yesterday describes only a small percent of the population, I suppose, but all the same, it is truly frightening. This is part of an overall trend that affects absolutely everyone. Here is the link:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/fashion/24skin.html?ex=1217649600&en=895f6105b0665ba3&ei=5070 Compare David Brooks' column of July 22, "The Culture of Debt." Here is the relevant section: ------------------------------------------------------------- "Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight. "According to this view, what happened to...the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded. "Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do." --------------------------------------------------------------- We might add that churches are among those "other institutions" that no longer talk the language of sin and temptation. Shouldn't we be rethinking this?
Permanent Link for this Post: http://www.generousorthodoxy.org/tips-from-the-times/2008/07/botox-nation.htm |
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1 Comments:
Mrs. Rutledge: I sent you a personal letter at your Rye, NY address that I hope you received. I was most recently directed to your March 2006 meditation at the National Cathedral re: the then recent events in Nigeria (I was pre-occupied at the time with my mother's last illness and death). While I have earlier written you that I do not believe in the desecration of any symbol, be it of a religious or national identity nature, I believe that the inscription, "Jesus is Lord," on the walls of a charred mosque (you implied that the moslems had started the battle) can be read in the context of the Islamic claim that "Mohammed is the only prophet of God," that is, as a rebuke to Islam's duotheism in the hollowed out former place of worship of a false god. Ground-level Christians' exultation over defeat of an evil system may be offensive to our western, cultured eyes, but that offense has been inoculated by more than five centuries' remove from a system that stones adulterers or mutilates women. As to the prayer for our enemies, while its sentiments are laudable, its desuetude is no less notable than that for the church that I, as a Morning Prayer Episcopalian, said each Sunday: "where it is in error, correct it; where it is in want, provide for it." Perhaps if the church were more concerned about its doctrine, a prayer for one's enemies might seem noble. Now it simply seems sanctimonious.
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