Monthly Archives: November 2013

The Diocese of New Westminster has elected a new bishop

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Melissa SkeltonThe Reverend Canon Melissa M Skelton.

In this video, Skelton declares that she wishes to bring “restoration of a sense of feeling and reality of unity in the diocese.” Clearly, she supports the Ingham decisions that split the diocese, since she believes that the diocese was “called” – presumably by God – to go “down that road.”

Her recipe for “the re-unification of the diocese” is listening by using circle processes. I’m not sure what she means by circle processes – other than going around in circles, an activity at which Anglicans have had plenty of practice, particularly when pretending to listen. Doubtless, a veneer of unity won’t be too hard to manufacture since the most vigorous dissenters from diocesan dogma have already left. Those who remain will be too timid to make much of a fuss, contenting themselves, instead, with their appointed role of token conservatives: evidence of diocesan diversity.

Earlier this year, Skelton was hoping to be bishop of New Jersey; New Westminster, with its “difficult 20 years”, must have been her second career choice.

The Anglican Church of Canada does a Hunger Games Eucharist

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The Hunger Games, from which the book gets its title, is a fictitious annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death. The book was inspired by gladiatorial games and reality TV.

While some think there is Christian symbolism in the book, I think the connection is somewhat tenuous.

The transcendent having been carefully excised from Anglican Church of Canada’s gospel, it – ever striving to be relevant – sees the temporal battle between the poor and wealthy in the book as a fitting centrepiece for a Eucharist.

What next after the U2charist and the Hunger Games Eucharist? I’m surprised we haven’t already seen a Matrix Eucharist, a Harry Potter Eucharist and a Hobbit Eucharist. There is still time.

From here:

About 130 young people gathered in a heavily fortified bank vault in the depths of the ‘Diefenbunker’ near Carp, Ont., on Nov. 17, 2013. They were there for a Eucharist and sermon comparing the pacifism of Christ and the “redemptive violence” of the bestselling novel and movie The Hunger Games.

The once-secret underground bunker near Carp, Ont., was built more than 50 years ago to protect the Canadian government from nuclear attack.

“The Hunger Games is a book about juxtaposition,” said the Rev. Monique Stone, organizer of the service and incumbent of the Anglican Parish of Huntley, in her sermon. “It’s a book in which we see a community in dire poverty pushed up against a community of privilege­—in which we hear about a community that is starving, and [another] that has so much excess that at times they actually want to make themselves sick so they can fit in more food.”

Diocese of Niagara emphasising community over truth

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An Oakville church has been distributing flyers designed to entice the unwary into its sanctuary. The main selling point is that you can make new friends and join a community without having to believe anything in particular. I doubt that this strategy will work since it faces strong competition from the Oakville Lawn Bowling Club: you can make new friends there, too, get more exercise when bowling and – there is “No Need to Believe!”

The flyer points out: “If you come away believing…. hey, that’s a bonus!” As in lawn bowling, it doesn’t matter what you come away believing because it’s the community that is important, not boring doctrinal trivia.

Social-Club

Two Anglican Church of Canada bishops attended GAFCON

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Bishop David Parsons and Bishop Darren McCartney from the Diocese of the Arctic attended the recent GAFCON conference. Since it hints at betrayal of the ACoC’s culturally inspired faux-gospel of indiscriminate inclusion and woolly diversity, this has created “a lot of angst and frustration.” If the ACoC’s tacit demotion of Jesus from God Incarnate to Middle Eastern social worker is not recanted, perhaps it is also a harbinger of the future defection of an entire ACoC diocese.

From the December Anglican Journal describing events at the October house of bishops meeting (not online yet):

News that Bishops David Parsons and Darren McCartney of the Diocese of the Arctic attended the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Nairobi in the hopes of creating partnerships to help with the diocese’s debt crisis and shortage of priests met with some consternation. “As one of our bishops put it, when the stated purpose of GAFCON is evangelistic revival in the life of the church, who could argue with that? But when there’s another kind of agenda going on that says the church in the West or North America preaches a false gospel…. then that creates a lot of angst and frustration,” said Hiltz.

As the Anglican World Turns

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In 2007, the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada decided that blessing same sex unions is consistent with the core doctrine of The Anglican Church of Canada. I’m not sure I could present a convincing argument against that: the core doctrine of the ACoC meandered away from Biblical truth a few decades ago, so embracing something explicitly forbidden in the Bible fit’s quite comfortably within the increasingly porous confines of what passes for core doctrine in the ACoC.

Still, resolution A186 provoked considerable debate, much of it bitter. As a result, the 2010 General Synod, rather than restarting the debate on same-sex unions and their place within the ACoC, came up instead with a sexuality discernment statement. In seven paragraphs, it manages to use “conversations” six times, “dialogue” six times, “discernment” six times, “diverse” and its variations four times and “transparency” twice; “Christ” was mentioned twice as well, but I expect that was an oversight. “Sex”, ostensibly what the document was about, was mentioned just once, thus confirming the obvious: the statement was prophetic propaganda from the ACoC’s department of missional disinformation. It was designed to obfuscate and divert attention away from the issue.

The 2013 General Synod unravelled much of the sterling work of its predecessor. Resolution C003 asked the Council of General Synod to go a significant step further than same-sex blessings and “prepare and present a motion at General Synod 2016 to change Canon XXI on Marriage to allow the marriage of same sex couples” (my emphasis).

At the recent COGS meeting, Fred Hiltz said:

When Resolution C003 passed, “the truce was broken and once again we find ourselves in the midst of chaos,” Hiltz quoted these bishops as having said.

The chaos was always there even though the 2010 GS tried to pretend otherwise; a few members of COGS, heads firmly in the sand, wish to return to the halcyon days of 2010 Anglican fence-sitting:

[s]ome wondered whether there was a way to “come up with a neutral recommendation” at General Synod.

Like it or not, same-sex marriage is coming to the Anglican Church of Canada eventually. There are only two ways of stopping it: the ACoC ceases to exist before it summons the backbone to announce a decision or God decides it is worth saving after all and brings repentance to its clergy.

Atheists force cancellation of Operation Christmas Child

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A “perturbed parent” – one parent, by the sound of it – has convinced fellow atheists in the American Humanist Association that giving Christmas presents to poor children in the Third World is tantamount to proselytising: the AMA has threatened to sue a school for taking part in Operation Christmas Child.

By preventing the giving of these Christmas gifts, atheists are engaged in their own twisted brand of evangelism: they are ramming home Richard Dawkins’ cheery view that in our universe there is “no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Surely there must be some parents “perturbed” by that?

From here:

A South Carolina charter school has canceled its annual Christmas toy drive after a group of self-described humanists complained that the project violated the U.S. Constitution and accused them of bribing children to convert to Christianity.

Renee Mathews, the principal of East Point Academy in West Columbia, S.C., said the annual Operation Christmas Child project was halted because the American Humanist Association threatened to sue the school.

“We received a letter saying we had to cease and desist immediately or they would take legal action against us,” Mathews told me.

[…..]

[T]he American Humanist Association decided to intervene on behalf of a perturbed parent.

“The boxes of toys are essentially a bribe, expressly used to pressure desperately poor children living in developing countries to convert to Christianity, and are delivered with prayers, sermons, evangelical tracts and pressure to convert,” read a letter the AHA sent to Mathews.

The AHA said a public school cannot affiliate itself with a group like Operation Christmas Child without violating the Establishment Clause.

 

The sale of St. Hilda’s

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The Diocese of Niagara is reporting selling St. Hilda’s for $1,900,000:

The Anglican Diocese of Niagara sold the former St. Hilda’s Church property to the Region of Halton on August 14, 2013 for $1,900,000.

A response from the Town of Oakville to my email inquiry on their buying price yielded:

Hi David;
The amount was $2,250,000.00 to purchase the 1258 Rebecca Street property.

It appears that the Town has the purchase price wrong:

St. Hilda's SaleAs you can see, the property has been sold twice, once in 1957 for $2 when it was effectively donated by a parishioner; the parishioner was still attending St. Hilda’s when the vote was taken to leave the Diocese of Niagara in 2008. The second sale was by the Diocese of Niagara in 2013 for a slightly larger sum.

St. Aidan’s Windsor to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada

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In the ANiC Newsletter, received via email:

St Aidan’s (Windsor, ON) has decided, after much prayer and thought, to appeal the loss of their church building and funds to the Supreme Court of Canada. Please remember the congregation, leadership, legal counsel, and judges in your prayers.

St. Aidan’s appealing the loss of its building to the Ontario Court of Appeal was not only unsuccessful but resulted in the reversal of an earlier ruling that each side should pay its own legal fees: St. Aidan’s was ordered to pay $100,000 of the Diocese of Huron’s legal costs, in addition to their own costs.

The Supreme Court of Canada may choose, like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, not to hear the appeal; that was the case in the New Westminster appeal. Even if it does, in human terms, a reversal seems unlikely. Still, God has more influence than even the Supreme Court of Canada, so we should pray.

Atheist mega-churches

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From here:

It lookAtheistMegachurchesed like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Hundreds packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational sermon, a reading and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God.

Dozens of gatherings dubbed “atheist mega-churches” by supporters and detractors are springing up around the U.S. after finding success in Great Britain earlier this year. The movement fueled by social media and spearheaded by two prominent British comedians is no joke.

On Sunday, the inaugural Sunday Assembly in Los Angeles attracted more than 400 attendees, all bound by their belief in non-belief. Similar gatherings in San Diego, Nashville, New York and other U.S. cities have drawn hundreds of atheists seeking the camaraderie of a congregation without religion or ritual.

[…..]

Jones got the first inkling for the idea while leaving a Christmas carol concert six years ago.

“There was so much about it that I loved, but it’s a shame because at the heart of it, it’s something I don’t believe in,” Jones said. “If you think about church, there’s very little that’s bad. It’s singing awesome songs, hearing interesting talks, thinking about improving yourself and helping other people — and doing that in a community with wonderful relationships. What part of that is not to like?”

In the spirit of Richard Dawkins, who regards himself as a “cultural Anglican”, these atheist churches have adopted the aesthetic of Christianity while discarding the truths that produced the aesthetic. For the most part, Western Anglicanism has done much the same thing.

Such a fraudulent, self-indulgent wallowing in feelings whose significance have been robbed of all meaning and to which one is not entitled, is an interesting testimony to the foolishness of a movement which claims to be entirely rooted in rationality.