Harvard Study Reveals Religious Upbringing Better for Kids’ Health, Well-Being | The Stream

A Harvard study reveals that children who had a religious upbringing will likely be healthier and have a higher degree of well-being in early adulthood.

Source: Harvard Study Reveals Religious Upbringing Better for Kids’ Health, Well-Being | The Stream

“Researchers found that people who attended religious services weekly or who practiced prayer or meditation daily in their youth reported having a higher life satisfaction and positivity in their 20s.

“Individuals were found less likely to smoke, have symptoms of depression, use illicit drugs, or have sexually transmitted infections than people who engaged in less regular spiritual practices…

“Results show that those who went to religious services at least once a week as children were about 18 percent more likely to report higher levels of happiness as young adults between the ages of 23 and 30 than those who didn’t.”

Nothing surprising, at least to me, here! Sadly, the article goes on to note,

“Though the positive effects of growing up in a religious household is clear, religiosity in America is declining, particularly among millennials.”

That is indeed sad. But let us hope that pendulum too, begins to swing back. It would be to the advantage of the individuals concerned, as well as to society as a whole, if it were to do so!

Modernism, Traditionalism, and the Role of Women | Pendulum

Source: Modernism, Traditionalism, and the Role of Women – Pendulum

This is an absolutely splendid essay by friend and supporter of The Anglophilic Anglican, Stephen Clay McGeehee, and I commend it to your attention. He writes,

“The polarization that we see in the Western world is not just the political Left vs. Right. It is modernism vs. traditionalism, urban vs. rural, chaos vs. order, hedonism vs. morality, Secularism vs. Christianity, egalitarianism vs. hierarchy, and many others. Men vs. women should not be part of this polarization, yet that is precisely what feminism has done,”

and continues,

“Modernism tells us that we are all interchangeable economic units whose worth is best expressed in dollars. Traditionalism tells us that men and women were both made for each other and made to fill their own unique roles.”

Indeed! We didn’t get where we are overnight, and we’re not going to get back overnight, either; but if we’re going to get there at all, we need to begin perceiving with clear eyes where the problems lie, and what to do about them. Stephen has taken a major stride in this direction, as you will see.

A great essay: read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

World-Famous Scientist: God Created the Universe | Intellectual Takeout

‘The final resolution could be that God is a mathematician.’

Source: World-Famous Scientist: God Created the Universe | Intellectual Takeout

Now, this does not come as any surprise to me! I have long believed that science and religion, properly understood, are not and cannot be in opposition to one another – except in the sense defined by British physicist Sir William Bragg:

“From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.”

— Sir William Bragg, in Sir Kerr Grant, The Life and Work of Sir William Bragg (1952), 43.

Indeed, it seems to be physicists who, among scientists, are most prone to adopt a theistic worldview. It may be that those whose life’s work leads them to ponder the secrets of the cosmos itself are more inclined to discover that one of those secrets is the secret of design. And design, of course, requires a Designer…

Unless, of course, one is so dead-set against the notion that one comes off sounding strident and silly in one’s opposition, as (for example) Richard Dawkins does, to anyone who is not among his defenders… but I digress!

Michio Kaku, who as the linked post notes, “has made a name for himself as a world-leading theoretical physicist unafraid to speak his mind,” has dropped a bit of a bombshell:

“I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence,” Kaku said, as quoted by the Geophilosophical Association of Anthropological and Cultural Studies. “To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance…

“The final resolution could be that God is a mathematician,” says Kaku. “The mind of God, we believe, is cosmic music. The music of strings resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace.”

I must say, I like that image!

When I consider thy heavens, even the work of thy fingers; the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world!

— Psalm 8:3-4, 9 (Psalter, Book of Common Prayer 1928)

Amen, and amen.

Feast of St. Nicholas – December 6th

A contemporary icon, in traditional style, of St. Nicholas, whose feast-day is the 6th of December. This is not the “jolly old St. Nick” of the secular mythos, mind you, but the passionately-dedicated orthodox Christian bishop of Myra, who reportedly got into a physical altercation with the presbyter Arius, who taught that Jesus Christ was not of the same substance as God the Father, but rather the first of all created beings, during the Council of Nicaea. However, it is he who evolved, in the public imagination, and by many steps and stages, into the “St. Nicholas” we all – even the most secular – know and, usually, love.

Today marks one of the steps in that evolution, for in Holland, traditionally, on the eve of St. Nicholas’ DAy, the children would put their wooden shoes outside the door of their room, in hopes of finding them filled with fruit, candy, and coins (today usually foil-covered chocolates), on the morning of December 6th. Why? Well, St. Nicholas quickly became known as the patron saint of children, after a legend in which he saved three daughters of a poor man from slavery (or worse – forced prostitution) by tossing a small bag of gold into their house each of three successive nights (in Europe “down the chimney,” but in Myra in Anatolia – now Turkey – it is more likely to have been through a roof-top entrance), to serve as their dowries.

From that it is not far to the image of a saint (or in later, secular interpretation, a sort of magical being who embodies “the spirit of Christmas”) who comes down the chimney with toys for good little boys and girls! He also became known as the patron saint of Holland, probably as an extension of his older status as patron saint of sailors: Holland was for a long time quite a sea-power. The Dutch – who settled part of the Eastern seaboard of what is now the U.S. – called him “Sinter Klaas.” And it is from that name that we now know him as “Santa Claus.” An interesting historic and linguistic transformation!

December 6th: Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c. 342 | For All the Saints

Source: Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, c. 342 | For All the Saints

“Nicholas is famed as the patron of Russia and Greece, the guardian of virgins and poor maidens, the protector of travelers, sailors, and merchants. He is also the patron of many towns and cities, including Bari, Venice, Freiburg, and Galway. In modern times he is perhaps best known as the protector and benefactor of children.”

When I was spending a semester studying abroad in Galway, Ireland, in 1990, I attended St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church, Church of Ireland (Anglican). I was greatly comforted by the clergy there, and by John, Anglican Bishop of Galway, following the death of my beloved Jeanne.

Feminism Is Leaving A Wake Of Unhappy, Unmarried, And Childless Women In Its Path | Daily Wire

The so-called sexual liberation of women is indeed screwing women, and not in a good way.

Source: Feminism Is Leaving A Wake Of Unhappy, Unmarried, And Childless Women In Its Path | Daily Wire

While we’re on the subject of feminism… here’s another essay, by another “woman on the right,” Amanda Prestigiacomo, who asserts,

“Feminists claim to promote the advancement of women and gender equality, largely via the promotion of so-called sexual liberation, but their movement is leaving a wake of unhappy, unmarried, and childless women in its path, a real problem feminists seemingly refuse to entirely address.”

She goes on to ask,

“Why would a man rush to settle down and marry someone if he can not only have sex with ‘liberated’ women without a ring, but even cohabitate with them, too? Moreover, the less chaste a woman is, the less preferable she will likely be to a man. Not to mention a woman’s increasing age and creeping near infertility as another massively undesirable trait.”

I am reminded of the old saying, blunt but to the point, which I heard from my mother and many other women of her generation (the “Greatest Generation,” that survived the Great Depression and World War Two) and earlier: “why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?”

There are, of course, many other reasons to seek a close, committed, intimate, marital relationship besides sex! But here again, the so-called “sexual revolution” has resulted in a dramatic elevation of sexual pleasure above the older and co-essential values of child-rearing and mutual support that bonded men and women in a life-long marital union.

Add to that the neophilia and “trading up” mentality that permeates our contemporary culture, and you have a social milieu that radically destabilizes, and devalues, the traditional marriage relationship. Is it any wonder that women and men alike, though more “liberated” than ever, are also more unfulfilled?

Follow the link to read this interesting and thought-provoking article.

The curious case of third wave feminists | The Spectator

There’s one type of woman that feminists will not tolerate.

Source: The curious case of third wave feminists | The Spectator

It used to be, up until, oh, 20 or 30 years ago, that feminists could – and often did – make the argument that they don’t hate men, they’re just seeking equality. Fair enough! Although like many others on the left-hand side of the socio-political aisle, they have missed the point that equality need not, and often does not, mean identicality.

Be that as it may, the rise of third-wave feminism has made it difficult to near impossible to make that claim (no hate, just equality), with any kind of credibility. And, perhaps realizing this, many third-wave feminists have taken off the gloves, and are no longer even pretending they don’t hate men. As the author of this piece, self-described “woman on the right” Daisy Cousens, points out,

“The third-wave feminist is a curious creature. Her comrades are a strange sub-strata of Millennial and Generation X women with a peculiar inferiority complex. They’re obsessed with picking at the scab of women’s lib, trying to draw fresh blood, and are often seen prowling (or lumbering) around, attempting to sniff out sexism in every nook and cranny. Theirs is an ideology based not on equality, but misplaced victimhood.

“According to your standard third-waver, the most insidious issues facing women today are not genital mutilation, or underage marriages, or sexual slavery. They are ‘manspreading’, ‘mansplaining’, and ‘micro-aggressions’. Terms cooked up to keep feminists in business as they steadily ran out of things to complain about.”

But their hatred of women who don’t agree with them, who stray from politically-correct orthodoxy, may be even more intense. Commenting that “third-wavers are perpetually miserable, and seek to make other women as brutally unhappy as they are,” Cousens points out that third-wave feminists are prey to “a strange form of misogyny” which “is starkly revealed in their treatment of right-wing women.”

Read on for more…