By Hans Boersma, PhD, Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Professor in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House

Christians need to learn only two lessons. No more, no less. Jesus himself provides this basic Christian catechesis in John 3, which recounts Nicodemus’s nighttime meeting with our Lord.

Imagine Jesus as catechism teacher and ourselves as sitting with Nicodemus in the back of the room, learning our lessons. “Rabbi,” we say to Jesus as we raise our hand, “we know that you are a teacher come from God.”

By The Rev. Stewart Clem, Ph.D.

The Bible does not condone lying.

Or does it?

On the one hand, when lying is considered in the abstract, the biblical authors are unequivocal: “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 12:22a), “You destroy those who tell lies” (Ps. 5:6), “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices,” (Col. 3:9). But there are plenty of stories in the Bible in which characters tell lies, and not only do they get away with it — they’re often praised for their actions. The Hebrew midwives lied to the Egyptians, who were carrying out the king’s edict to murder every newborn Hebrew boy. The narrator tells us, “And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families” (Ex. 1:21). Rahab lied to the Canaanite soldiers in order to protect Joshua’s spies (Josh. 2:4-6) and was later eulogized in the New Testament (Heb.11:31; Jas. 2:25). How can we reconcile these passages of Scripture?

A Book Review from Tara Jernigan

The prayer attributed to St. Francis profoundly requests, "O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love." That prayer speaks to us because at some level each of us wishes to be understood, and each of us knows that true love of our neighbors must instead seek to understand, to accept the stranger, not on our terms but on theirs. There is, however, another desire deep within us, to keep our pain to ourselves. We want to be understood, except where it hurts. When someone overcomes this natural desire for self-preservation and makes their pain known to us, we have a profound responsibility; we walk on holy ground.

A unique interview experience between a current student and an alumnus of Nashotah House. In the following interview, the Rev. Steve Schlossberg, ‘07, and his son, Nashotah House upcoming “middler” Jacob Schlossberg, speak about their respective calls to serve God, their ministries, families, and time spent in formation at Nashotah House.

Winter Course Highlight 2022

By the Rev. Stewart Clem, Ph.D.

People are angry. Given everything that’s happened in the past eighteen months, combined with the unlimited opportunities created by the internet for expressing our anger, this might be the angriest period in all of human history. That must be a bad thing, right? Anger is not a Christian virtue, after all. Jesus tells us that if anyone is angry with a brother or sister, that person will be liable to judgment (Matt. 5:22). The psalmist writes, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath” (37:8). How can anger be anything other than a vice?

By Hans Boersma, PhD, Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Professor in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House

Contemporary worship music is often banal. No matter the content, the form by itself trivializes what takes place in the liturgy. We keep trying to put asunder what God has joined together—medium and message, form and content—but invariably the divorce does not end well.

I’ll never forget when our kids came home with a new song they had learned at school.

A Book Review from the Rev. Charles Hoffacker, (‘82)

This is a different sort of book about saints than many others. First, the word “saint” does not appear. The word used instead is “witness.” This avoids various problems associated with sainthood. It recalls the practice of those who do not ask deceased Christians to pray “for” them, but instead to pray “with” them. Second, the categories of holiness represented by these thirteen are limited to peacemakers, community builders, and agitators, people who take action in the public square and make “good trouble,” in the memorable phrase of John Lewis. Such specialization stands in contrast to a more complete range of categories. Yet, like other books about saints, this one focuses on people who lived out their faith in ways so costly that they ought not be overlooked.

The Rev. Canon James "Jim" R. Braun, 71, died suddenly and unexpectedly, on Friday, January 1, 2021. He was born in Racine on May 24, 1949, the son of the late Jerome and Dorothy Konrad Braun. Jim graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 1971, and from Nashotah House in 1974.

By the Rev. Jason S. Terhune, ‘15, Director of Operations and Student Services at Nashotah House

Here in this place rooted in mission, people continue to see that we are called to something larger than ourselves and even larger than what we comprise as a group. One of the first things I read about our historic institution was from N.T. Wright, “I have a sense that maybe Nashotah House, like the Irish in the Dark Ages, is called to hang onto certain things which other bits of the tradition have thrown away against the time when the rest of the church realizes it needs them again.” As I invite people to Nashotah House, I realize that I am inviting them to more than simply a place; I am inviting them to consider becoming members of our community so they may worship, study, and join in our common life. This invitation has been extended for nearly 175 years yet there is much that is new here, and certainly there are a number of choices for degrees, but at our core we are and have remained Nashotah House. 

By Owen Jacobsen, Eagle Scout Troop 359 Hartland, Wisconsin

Hello, Nashotah House! My name is Owen Jacobsen and I am part of Eagle Scout Troop 359 from Hartland, Wisconsin, and for my recent scout project, I built a kayak and canoe rack for the Nashotah House community.

To let you know more about me: some things that I like to do are sports and robotics.  I play football, swim, run track, and also bike. Some things that I do in my free time are hang out with friends, build things and mountain bike. I am currently the Shield patrol leader in my Troop. I am currently working on my eagle rank which is scouting’s highest honors. 

By the Rt. Rev. Dr. John C. Bauerschmidt, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee

I can see it in the mind’s eye: my teenaged self, in a suburban strip mall bookstore, taking down a paperback volume from the rack and beginning to read. I am a cradle Episcopalian, a hereditary Anglican, but neither catechized nor a church-goer. I do not know the words of the Lord’s Prayer, nor do I know the One who taught us that prayer. I live in a medium-sized southern city, in the midst of the broadly evangelical Christian culture of the time and place, with peers involved in church life, but most of what this means is opaque to me. I think I know enough about Jesus to dismiss him, but I am not as well informed as I think.

By The Rt. Rev. Keith L. Ackerman, ‘74, SSC, DD

When I arrived at Nashotah House, we still wore cassocks on campus, we said the grace in Latin, and the dean and faculty dined together at the “High Table” in the Refectory where all of us seminarians took turns wearing our white jackets as we served one another. In addition, as we all took our turns as sacristan, we daily “took down” and “put up” all that was necessary for the oratory masses - most of which were held in the administration building. We enjoyed our corporate recitation of Matins (as we called it then) at 6:30 or 6:45 a.m. in the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, and then each faculty member would proceed to his oratory, followed by the seminarian charged with serving Mass that day.

By Hans Boersma, Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Professor in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House

Talking about the gospel as therapeutic is dangerous. Not wrong, just dangerous. I used to think it was wrong, since Philip Rieff famously inveighed against the psychologizing of the self in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, his prophetic 1966 book. His critique fueled my suspicion of all things therapeutic.

Noted theologians have taken up Rieff’s mantle. Gregory Jones warns in Embodying Forgiveness (1995) that in our therapeutic culture, we are in danger of manipulating forgiveness by turning it into a self-help process: We are told to forgive others not for their sake but for ours, since it gives us psychological relief. The result, Jones rightly insists, is that we no longer “discern whether there are tragic misunderstandings or culpable wrongdoing and brokenness that need to be dealt with through practices of forgiveness and repentance.” Rather than work through the mess to make things right, we turn forgiveness into a tool for restoring our own inner peace.

In  this  paper,  Dr. Elisabeth Kincaid  argues  that  the  work of  Francisco de Vitoria (1483-1546), Domingo de Soto (1494-1560),  and  Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) presents a sustained tradition arguing that the proper end of civil law is formation in true virtue of the citizens, making citizens capable of achieving natural happiness. Although this  development  in  virtue  may prepare citizens to obtain the supernatural  happiness  made  possible  ultimately by  God’s  grace,  it  still contains  its own integrity and moral importance.

Edith Ho, who served as the Church of the Advent’s music director and organist for three decades, died July 30, 2021, in Worcester, Massachusetts, following a long illness. She was 88 years old. Ms. Ho earned a bachelor’s degree in piano from Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, Maryland, before  going on to receive another bachelor’s in organ, as well as her master’s degree, from Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Additionally, Ms. Ho was awarded an honorary degree from Nashotah House in 1994. She was also a member of the American Guild of Organists and the Association of Anglican Musicians.