Maggie Dawn directs us to this recording of O Holy Night, captured by the Music Academy. Apparently, it is for real. And, as one commenter said, it is not without sincerity.
My question is whether social media really does level hierarchies in as thoroughgoing a way as some of its most ardent theorists suggest. Any number of public figures use Facebook and Twitter as part of a strategy that fosters visibility for their ideas and initiatives, and only a minimum of interaction around very safe sorts of ideas. And I am not saying there is anything wrong with that.
Barbara Bradley Hagerty interviewed David Bahati, author of Uganda’s notorious anti-gay legislation, and Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who was defrocked by Archbishop Henry Orombi, primate of the Church of Uganda, for ministering to LGBT Christians, for this report.
The children of St. Paul’s in Auckland New Zealand tell the Christmas story in this lilting video.
As gay people around the country reveled on Sunday in the historic Senate vote to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a liberal media watchdog group said it planned to announce on Monday that it was setting up a “communications war room for gay equality” in an effort to win the movement’s next and biggest battle: for a right to same-sex marriage.
A recording of Messiah was the first “adult” Christmas present I remember receiving. I was 16, and had sung a few choruses from Messiah in high school chorus. My parents gave me the Robert Shaw Chorale’s performance, my very own – probably the first classical album I owned, too. I cried when I opened it. I hadn’t realized how much I really wanted to be able to listen to this music.
O Clavis David
O Key of David, and Sceptre of the House of Israel,
Thou That openest and no man shutteth, and shuttest, and no man openeth:
Come, and loose the prisoner from the prison house,
and him that sitteth in darkness, from the shadow of death.
O Radix Jesse
O Root of Jesse, Who standest for an ensign of the people,
at Whom Kings shall shut their mouths,
unto Whom the Gentiles shall pray:
Come and deliver us, and tarry not.
Nathan A. Scott, Jr. died, four years ago this December, in Charlottesville, Va. He was one of the most significant Christian commentators on contemporary culture of the second half of the twentieth century and merits a place in the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints.
O Adonai
O Lord and Ruler of the House of Israel,
Who appearedst unto Moses in a flame of fire in the bush,
and gavest unto him the Law of Sinai:
Come redeem us with a stretched-out arm.