Templar Edification

When I warn my children of consequences for their bad behavior, I have to be both discerning and sparing; for whatever I threaten, I must then be willing to follow through. One arrow in my quiver that worked particularly well when they were younger was my promise to play one of my black-and-white subtitled samurai films, which I adore and which bore my children to tears. They took this threat seriously, because they knew that I would be happy to carry it out. American and Japanese pop culture have been entwined in a love affair ever since the end of World War II. Few directors on either side of the Pacific have been so influential as Akira Kurosawa. His movies have been remade, often shot for shot, into such familiar titles as The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars, A Bug’s Life, and, yes, even Star Wars. For his part, Kurosawa loved Shakespeare, filming his own medieval Japanese interpretations of Macbeth and King Lear. Most fascinating to me was how he adapted the religious aspe...

Last night our daughters informed me that they had finally grown too old for me to read to them at bedtime. Granted, the younger was in a grumpy mood, having generally gotten too little sleep over the holiday break. But as they are in fifth and seventh grade respectively, I can’t say that they’re entirely off-base. I knew this day would come. Our son was in seventh grade when he likewise asked me to stop reading to him, and I still view that as something of a bittersweet milestone. Together we had read about medieval Japan and World War I and chocolate factories and New England whaling and the Native American invention of lacrosse. I miss those bedside adventures. For as long as I can remember, books have been holy to me. Credit this to my parents, both lifelong educators, and especially to my mother, who read to me from day one—and who taught me to read on my own when, at three years of age, I grew frustrated with my inability to do so. Frugal as they were when I was growing up, my pa...

Our middle child has outgrown most of her old stuffed animals, yet two retain their prominence of place: her plush Krampus, and her plush Jersey Devil. Yes, the pastor’s daughter delights in adorable little demons, both of which I bought for her. In fairness, they’re really more fairy tale monsters than anything else: folkloric entities limited to St. Nicholas’ Day and the greater Philadelphia area, respectively. And in these particular renditions, they’re honestly quite cute. Creatures such as Krampus are often claimed to be heathen holdovers from pre-Christian times, but most of that is bunk. Pagans don’t have devils. They didn’t need them. Their gods were bad enough. Devils, by and large, are of Christian conception, and for good reason. The Hebrew Scriptures, which make up the bulk of the Christian Old Testament, are best taken not as a single work but as a library. They contain histories, mythologies, poetry, letters, liturgies, all witnessing to the relationship between God and H...

By: Reverend Grand Chaplain Ryan Stout One of the perks of being a Christian of a catholic disposition—by which I mean coming from a religious tradition that emphasizes liturgy, history, the sacraments and saints—is that I, as a grown man, get to continue proudly to believe in Santa Claus. Not only that, but the stories about Santa Claus only improve as one delves deeper into his legend. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. I have a vial of the oil from his bones. Perhaps I should back up a tick. The story of St Nicholas begins, as do so many good things, with a mother’s prayer. Nonna and Theophannes were a Greek Christian couple living in third-century Lycia, reckoned today as part of Turkey. They had everything they could want: wealth, respect, an honorable bloodline; everything except a child. Nonna’s prayers were answered late in life, and she bore a son, Nicholas, named for his uncle in the monastery. Alas, both parents would soon be lost to a plague, and the young Nicholas woul...

I have a melancholic disposition. I don’t mean that in the modern sense of sad and vaguely depressing, but in the medieval sense of melancholic as introverted and thoughtful. Rowling readers might term it Ravenclaw. Books have been my portals to worlds of endless learning ever since my youth, and when silence seeps into my bones it provides to me a wondrous rejuvenation. My grandparents’ property abutted an old church and graveyard, ancient by American standards, with headstones dating back to the 1600s. We used to take walks amongst the monuments, deciphering their weathered engravings, some fallen over like loosened teeth. We would read the inscriptions and imagine their stories. My grandparents rest there now too. I’ve always been drawn to liminal spaces, those borderlands betwixt past and present, man and nature, Christian and pagan, life and death. Autumn of course is perfect for that, with holidays like Halloween. I never was much of a hunter myself, but I understand why people l...

The Templars were Latin—that is, Catholic—Christians. Their faith was the faith of pre-Reformation Europe, a broad Church which expected believers to attend church only three times a year and did not expect the laity to take an active role in church services. The Templars were not educated in theology and would not have been aware of or even interested in the complex theological debates that were taking place in the Latin Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their function was to serve the Holy Land, not to engage in intellectual debate. The Templars’ admission ceremony instructed that new members should make their vows to “God and Our Lady” (the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ's Mother). They swore to be obedient to the master of the order, to preserve their physical chastity, and live without personal property. They also promised to keep the customs of the order, to help to conquer the Holy Land of Jerusalem, never to leave the order without permission from the master, and...