LSB: another Intro/bckgrnd – meld into one version

February 16, 2016

This excerpt comes from an anthology of letters written from 1933 to 1947 by spiritual leaders of the Anglican Church in England. They addressed the practical, daily experience of theological students and others struggling with the question of how to live a godly life that nurtures one’s own soul.

As identified by these authors, such spiritual gifts allow us to “face the future with an open heart” and find “the still, eternal, joyful spirit of a tender and loving G*d”, while also being a source of compassion and hope to humanity and healing to those who despair.

 

The majority of these communications were penned during the years of WWII, when enemy planes were bombings London and surrounding countryside nearly every night. At this point in the war, it looked very much like Hitler would win. When its authors use the expression “these iron times”, they are referring these grim, often gruesome facts, and in particular calling for a courageous life of faith even in these, the worst of times.

 

The letters were first published in an Anglican weekly magazine called “The Churchman”. After the war was over (1948) Mary Strong took this treasure trove of Judeo-Christian wisdom, edited the sequence of them to provide an orderliness of topics, and published them in a book entitled the “Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood”. In this case, the word “brotherhood” is a non-gendered concept similar to ‘siblings’. As such, it naturally includes both genders as sisters and brothers in the family of humankind and equal in the eyes of our Creator.