Monthly Archives: March 2009

The Mocker Mocked

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Although I support free speech, I also support the right of a community not to display something that it deems to be offensive. Apparently that’s just what Aberystwyth – a university town in Wales – did with the Life of Brian 30 years ago. But now, all the hitherto deprived inhabitants of Aberystwyth will have their chance to see it.

“When the film came out, a number of councils wouldn’t have it, fearful that it might deal a mortal blow to Christianity,” says Palin who will be attending the belated premiere on March 28 with his co-star Terry Jones. “That did not, of course, happen. A faith that is strong and confident can take a certain amount of ribbing.” The event is being organised by Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian’s girlfriend in the film, and is now – ironically – the local mayor.

I confess, I have not watched all of Life of Brian; as a Christian, I found the snippets I did see too irritating to regard it as entertaining or particular funny.

On the other hand, I do see the funny side of this:Add an Image

JOHN CLEESE has reportedly called off his relationship with younger lover BARBIE ORR – just a week after she lifted the lid on their love life. The Fawlty Towers star met Orr at an audition in October (08) while he was in the midst of divorcing his third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger.

He was reportedly left red-faced after the aspiring actress told the British press intimate details about their romance last week (19Jan09), describing the star’s naked body and recalling their first sexual encounter.

Come on John, where’s your sense of humour?

Sex, drugs and rock and roll, Muslim style

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The Civil Rights Coordinator of CAIR recommends the Muslim Sex Shop among other things:

CAIR-California’s Affad Shaikh is a rebel Islamist. While he performs the normal extremist activities, like obsess over Israel, rail against American troops, and defend militant Islamic groups overseas, he also does many things that could be considered unbecoming of a CAIR leader, at least by CAIR’s disjointed standards of conduct. Yet the group still keeps him on board.

On October 24, 2008, Shaikh wrote of his fondness of a blog which goes by the name Muslim Sex Shop. On his own blog, he stated, “Here I was cooking Macaroni [sic] Bashamel, for a friend, who wanted to get some of my good grubbing, when low and behold someone out in the cyber world sent over a link to the ‘Muslim Sex Shop.’  This American Muslim highly recommends that you visit it.”

And this:

On February 3, 2009, Shaikh discussed the possibility of legalizing prostitution and pot. He wrote, “Thinking creatively might for some mean legalizing some sin taxes – like Nevada, our brothel oriented neighbor – and even things like marijuana. If it works lets take a look at it seriously…”

The Muslim Sex Shop eloquently suggests, Now That Ramadan Is Over, You Can Do It In The Daytime and I expect Affad Shaikh does. Of course, when he has sex and gets stoned, it is a little different from the 13 year-old girl who was stoned because she was raped in Somalia, an Islamist hell masquerading as a country.

What we've all been missing: Womanist Theology

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The Anglican Journal, ever on the bleeding edge, has illumination on Womanist Theology.

‘Womanist’ theologians examine faith from black female prism

I take that back: how do you see through a black prism, even if it is female? But wait, there’s more:

Womanist theologians – female African American theologians who view the Christian faith from the prism of the experience of black women – are celebrating two decades of work of a movement that has gained increasing prominence in U.S. religious and academic circles.

I must live a sheltered life, because up until now I had never heard of Womanist Theology. It seems that “womanist” was coined by Alice Walker:

What then is a womanist? Her origins are in the black folk expression “You acting womanish,” meaning, according to Walker, “wanting to know more and in greater depth than is good for one — outrageous audacious, courageous and willful behavior.” A womanist is also “responsible, in charge, serious.” She can walk to Canada and take others with her. She loves, she is committed, she is a universalist by temperament.

Her universality includes loving men and woman, sexually or nonsexually. She loves music, dance, the spirit, food and roundness, struggle, and she loves herself. “Regardless.”

To any womanist reading this, rest assured there is a place for you in the Anglican Church of Canada where the bishops are universalists too, loving men and women sexually and non-sexually. Like you, they love food and roundness; they struggle – often with their trousers because of the roundness – and they definitely love themselves. They have little regard for anything other than their own culturally insular preoccupations – mostly sex and roundness – so one could certainly call them “Regardless”. You will fit right in.

Diocese of Ottawa: making wrong things right by doing them

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The Bishop of Ottawa has decided to begin blessing same sex unions. The reason given is:

Just as the Church was not able to come to a clear mind regarding the benefits of the ordination of women to the priesthood until it experienced the priestly ministry of women, Bishop Chapman has taken the process of discernment with regards to same sex blessings to a place beyond discussion.  Bishop Chapman believes that moving forward in the spirit of experiential discernment will allow parishes and congregations to observe and learn; allowing the Church to be better informed moving forward in preparation of next steps at General Synod 2010.

“While the issues are many, the solutions complex and the timelines demand our patience, it is my intention to move forward in our ongoing spirit of discernment,” stated Bishop Chapman. “We must “experience” the issue as a Church before clarity of heart and mind might be attained” adds The Bishop.

This new piece of Angli-jargon,  experiential discernment, gives the game away: the Diocese of Ottawa has abandoned its Christian heritage in favour of mock existentialist soup.

An atheistic existentialist such as Jean-Paul Satre would claim that, since there is no God, humanity does not have a predetermined essence that controls what we are or conditions our views of right and wrong. Rather, through making his own free choices, a person creates his essence – and his own right and wrong – by what he does. We create our own nature; existence precedes essence.

This only makes sense if you assume there is no God; but that has not stopped the Diocese of Ottawa from using the same principle in “discerning” whether same-sex blessings are the right thing to do. Instead of looking in the bible to find out God’s design and plan for humanity,  the diocese is saying “we will create our own moral laws by engaging in a questionable practice until it seems right.” This goes beyond pragmatism: the pragmatist does things and is content if they work. An atheistic existentialist does things to create their “rightness”.

Yet more evidence to show that the Anglican Church of Canada has ceased to be a Christian Church.

The Anglican Church gets no respect

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And it’s little wonder.

Michael Coren points out that:

Just as it’s usually only beautiful people who pretend that good looks don’t matter, it’s generally the rich who tell us that money isn’t particularly important. Well, it is if you don’t have any. And those drowning or swimming for their lives in the current economic storm know that unemployment, pay cuts and evaporating savings are more than mere dents in their hobbies. So when, for example, various Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders in Britain said recently that there were in fact “positive aspects to the recession” they were dismissed as religious clowns and out-of-touch dreamers.

And goes on to say:

The sudden realization that material wealth is transitory and that earning, spending and saving are as much symptoms as they are solutions should lead us to grapple for the greater and grander things in life. Such as God, faith, family, community, the spiritual and the knowledge that this is the land of shadows and that real life hasn’t begun yet.

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Bishop of London impersonating Jack Nicholson

This is entirely true; such worldly enticements as wealth and power are a distraction from life’s important questions: why are we here and what happens when we die? Once the distractions are removed, we are often forced to confront that which we have been assiduously avoiding. Regrettably, the buffoons in charge of the Anglican Church are ensnared in the very net from whose clutches the vulgar masses have been freed – accompanied by a chorus of clerical rejoicing.  The bishop of London, Richard Chartres

is paid a stipend of £57,040 a year. However, he and his family live for free in the Old Deanery, a Grade I-listed Wren house next to St Paul’s Cathedral. The apartment was refurbished for him at a cost of £300,000 in 1995. At the time, Dr. Chartres, a father of four, said the accommodation used by his bachelor predecessor was inadequate and that he needed a larger residence fit for “a public person involved in public life”, rather than a “suburban villa” for an “office wallah”.

And with nary a blush had these words of comfort to offer the “office wallas”:

he suggested that some of those who lost their jobs “seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill” and to consider the other things in life. Dr Chartres suggested that the credit crunch could give Britons a chance to “reboot our sense of what a truly flourishing human life consists of”. The bishop, the third most senior figure in the Church, added: “It is difficult to know whether to sympathise more with those who have lost their jobs or those who are left carrying even greater loads with higher targets and fewer colleagues.”

The sooner the bishop of London is relieved of his ecclesiastical treadmill, the better. Perhaps he would gain some perspective.

Bruce almighty

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The Venerable Bruce Bryant-Scott from the Diocese of British Columbia displays, once again, his tenuous grip on reality and shallow understanding of human nature in the latest diocesan newsletter.

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Venerable Bruce, ESL Candidate

Nevertheless, a radical group affiliated with the Anglican Network persuaded a majority of the parishioners that they needed to leave the Diocese and the Anglican Church of Canada. They also were determined to take the property, which were and are owned by the Diocese of British Columbia.

All of this was unnecessary. While a number of conservative groups have left the Anglican Church of Canada, with some of them engaging in property issues, the majority of evangelical parishes remain within the body of the national church. They know that the Anglican Church of Canada remains an integral part of the Anglican Communion, and that it is the only part of the Anglican Communion recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury as operating in Canada.

They know that the Canadian Church has always been a place where there has always been a diversity of opinion held, and that change under the canons, as an autonomous church, was always expected and authorized from the beginning of the Anglican experience in this country.

I’ve always thought that bad English is a sign of chaotic and illogical thought and the venerable Bruce appears to be determined to illustrate this principle.

First, the venerable Bruce is suffering under the delusion that ANiC, by holding to 2000 years of tradition is “radical” and the diocese of B.C. by breaking with it isn’t.

Second, the venerable Bruce claims that the Anglican Church of Canada is “an integral part of the Anglican Communion”. GAFCON represents the only part of the Anglican Communion that is not attempting to accommodate the demented fantasies of a civilisation that is on the brink of self-annihilation. By 2061 there will only be one person left in the venerable Bruce’s version of the ACoC; he or she will feel very isolated in the global Anglican Communion.

Third, the venerable Bruce claims that evangelicals are welcome in the ACoC: it is strange, then, that J. I. Packer, the most renowned evangelical theologian of the 20th century, is unwelcome in the ACoC. What he really means is that evangelicals who are willing to set loyalty to the ACoC over the truth are welcome. Others will be regarded as trespassers.

Fifth, the last paragraph is such meandering drivel, that the venerable Bruce should consider attending an ESL course as soon as possible.

Nazi war propaganda updated for today

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Propaganda was a major component of fighting World War 2. The Nazis, for example, would drop leaflets on cities warning civilians that resistance was not only futile, but would make things worse. Here is an example that was used in the Netherlands:

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It reads:

“Warning!

To the civilians of Holland!

Do not take part in sabotage against the German army!

You can’t stop the German Army!

Large parts of Holland are already occupied!

All resistance is of no use!

Do not take part in sabotage actions like destroying dikes, blowing up bridges, or making road blockades. These actions are of no use because the German Army has lots of technical means to avoid them.

Do not take part in a war that is not yours!

Do not destroy your own country, but stay calm!

Civilians, captured during sabotage actions will get DEATH PUNISHMENT!

Civilians of Holland, we warn you!”

The Anglican Church of Canada is waging a war against Christians who are no longer willing to go along with its agenda of making a god out of the Zeitgeist. The war is being waged largely through intimidation and in courts of law.

The Diocese of British Columbia has also begun launching propaganda salvos, similar in intent and tone to the example above: resistance is futile and is only making things worse. Here is an extract from a letter by the Venerable Bruce Bryant-Scott Commissary to the Bishop, Diocesan Executive Officer & Diocesan Archdeacon. The whole thing is here.

The Network has had a series of defeats in the courts in Canada. Recently our colleagues in the Diocese of Niagara received payment of $20,000 from the Network for the costs of the legal action there. The Diocese of Niagara will be in court again in March and are asking for costs of over $200,000, and I understand there is a reasonable probability that they will be awarded that amount. Donors to the legal fund of the Network should know that they are not only paying their lawyers’ fees, but those of the lawyers defending the dioceses of the Anglican Church of Canada.

First to set the facts straight, the Diocese of Niagara wanted $70,000 in costs but were awarded $20,000. They have now asked for over $200,000 in legal expenses: what they will be awarded remains to be seen. The contention that ANiC is further funding diocesan lawyers would only be true if ANiC finally loses the court cases.

Second, the clear purpose of this is to demoralise those fighting for what they believe to be right by insinuating that resistance is not only futile, but counter-productive. It is wartime propaganda.

We are undeterred by such nonsense because we believe what we are doing is right, even if pursuing it comes at a cost.