laudable Practice

...  thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree - Romans 11:24. On Monday coming, Holocaust Memorial Day, I will open my Book of Common Prayer to say Morning Prayer, as we recollect the deep horror and vile evil of the Shoah. After the first lesson, I will say the Benedicite, from the text in the Apocrypha now appropriately known as 'The Song of the Three Jews' - the praises uttered by Ananias, Azarias, and Misael in the fiery furnace: O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever ... O let Israel bless the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever. It brings to mind those who repeated the Shema Yisrael and declared the praises of Adonai even in the face of the unspeakable evil of the death camps. The God of Abraham is to be ever praised, even when thick darkness gathers, when deep injustice appears to reign, when death approaches. To pray the Benedi...

Many thanks to The Critic for carrying my article for Holocaust Memorial Day, calling for it to be observed by Christians as a day of lament and penitence.  At the heart of the article is the suggestion that A Commination in BCP 1662 (or the alternative penitential liturgies in other versions of the Book of Common Prayer e.g. Ireland 1926 ) be used by Anglicans on this day as an expression of our penitence. Holocaust Memorial Day confronts Christians with a shameful history of anti-Semitism, a history that was invoked by the instigators of the Holocaust and which motivated some in Nazi-occuppied territories to collude with this evil. The Church of England’s 2019 report on Christian-Jewish relations, ‘ God’s Unfailing Word ’, states that Christians over centuries “have used Christian doctrine in order to justify and perpetuate Jewish suffering”. The report continues to say that this “has fostered attitudes of distrust and hostility among Christians towards their Jewish neighbours,...