The Axehead Circular

[Text Version]

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[Text Version]

Thank you for listening. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.

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[Text Version]

Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.

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When were these sermons preached?

A reading of our recent post by the same name and the soft relaunch of The Axehead Circular podcast.

Welcome back, boys.

A special episode of The Axehead Circular featuring a reading of “Matins and Vespers in the Life of the Church,” by the Rev. Charles L. McClean, pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Baltimore. A link to a PDF of this article can be found in the show notes.

“Let all the faithful, whether men or women, when early in the morning they rise from their sleep and before they undertake any tasks, wash their hands and pray to God; and so they may go to their duties. But if any instruction in God’s word is held that day, everyone ought to attend it willingly, recollecting that he will hear God speaking through the instructor and that prayer in the church enables him to avoid the day’s evil; any godly man ought to count it a great loss if he does not attend the place of instruction, especially if he can read. . . . But if on any day there is no instruction, let everyone at home take the Bible and read sufficiently in passages that he finds profitable.” (Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition, Part IV.35)

Today we learn what happens when the opening monologue doesn’t end, Trent doesn’t really have a topic, and the entire episode is a tangent. Not entirely, but close enough. Today we’re talking about the village again, but in a roundabout way. It’s called “the conversation and consolation of brethren,” and boy do we all need it. No, it isn’t a conference. It’s not not a conference. But if it’s only happening at conferences, something is very, very wrong. We discuss sharks in your living room, der ewige Porch, weaving, hymn-singing, and why you don’t need call documents to be a Christian, a friend, or a Christian friend.

In this episode Trent introduces William Holmes McGuffey and his famous readers. He talks about why the idea of the tabula rasa is false and pernicious, the biological reality of the American people, and some lessons about national identity from Ancient Israel. The discussion moves to the topic of the great shift in language instruction in the mid-twentieth century, why you might want to think twice about Dr. Seuss, and why Calvinism is a whipping boy for historians of American education. Toward the end of the episode, Trent points out several instances of how the virtues of McGuffey’s readers are often made evident in the mirror of his enemies’ critiques.

In this episode Trent begins a survey of the weekly schedule used by St. Boniface. He discusses the significance of the week as a divine period of time, makes a digression on the worthlessness of modern American conservatism, and thinks out loud regarding the benefits of differentiated attendance and the variable shortening of the school day as a means of accommodating diverse academic abilities. As the episode wraps up, Trent makes the case for dialing down the academic rigor when teaching Literature and History during the elementary school years, not because these subjects are unimportant, but because the opposite is the case, and the readiness is all.