Author Archives: David

Queer hymns for a peculiar people

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The mission of the The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada “is to encourage, promote, and enliven congregational singing.”

Not content to remain in an obscure, irrelevant corner of unambiguous heterosexuality, the society has produced a volume containing hymns “affirming the LGBTQIA2S+ Community”.

If you choose to download it, you will find such timeless titles as: “Queerly Beloved”, “Quirky Queer and Wonderful”, “We Are a Rainbow”, “Who Is the Alien” and, my favourite, “God of Queer Trangressive Spaces” in which you will find the gem: “God’s own deviance is Jesus, born of virgin, Word made flesh”.

I don’t know how we’ve managed to do without this for so long.

From here:

Queer hymn collection offers ‘much-needed’ resource for LGBTQ+ Anglicans and allies

On July 16, three days after the vote at General Synod, the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada released a new hymn collection, Songs for the Holy Other: Hymns Affirming the LGBTQIA2S+ Community. Produced by a volunteer committee from the Hymn Society, an ecumenical non-profit association that seeks to promote congregational singing, Songs for the Holy Other includes almost 50 “queer hymns” by and for individuals who identify with the LGBTQ+ community and their allies.

Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador to ignore marriage canon vote

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At its latest synod, the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador has voted to marry same-sex couples or, as the article below would have it “has voted in favor of marriage equality.”

The Anglican Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador has voted in favor of marriage equality.

Last July, the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada voted against marriage equality within the Anglican marriage canon. However, the motion can be voted on at the provincial level as well.

The vote happened during NL Synod 2019 at the Sheraton Hotel in St. John’s earlier today.

In total 88 per cent of Anglican delegates in attendance voted in favor of affirming marriage equality.

127 votes were cast, with 112 people in favor and 15 against.

Reverend Dr. Geoffrey Peddle, Bishop of the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland & Labrador, says that in voting for marriage equality they have made the church bigger and inclusive for everyone.

He says the Diocese has made it very clear that this is who they are now and how they want to move forward.

At least Peddle is clear that “this is who they now are”. They are not the Bride of Christ, not the Body of Christ, not the ecclesia – a called out assembly, not members of the church universal. They are a group of people who marry same-sex couples: this is who they are now.

Here is an updated list of dioceses that will marry same-sex couples:
Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador
Diocese of Western Newfoundland
Diocese of New Westminster
Diocese of Toronto
Diocese of Niagara
Diocese of Montreal
Diocese of Ottawa
Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island
Diocese of Rupert’s Land
Diocese of Kootenay
Diocese of Edmonton
Diocese of B.C.
Diocese of Huron

Bishop Susan Bell is doing more to respond to climate crisis

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That means she is throwing away her iPhone which is made in China, the most profusive polluter on the planet.

Just joking, that would be going too far.

From here:

Although the climate crisis is not news, nor our lack of a speedy and effective response, the rising voices of our young people demanding that we take action on the most pressing issue of our time is striking.  I cannot help but respond to the urgency that is being expressed in the climate strikes, inspired by Greta Thunberg, happening around the world this week, including here in our own diocese.

[…]

The Anglican Church of Canada recognizes that there is a climate emergency and we are called to do more to live up to our responsibility as the protectors and of God’s earth.

Church seeks female identified person to represent women at the UN

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The Anglican Church of Canada is looking for a “female identified or non-binary” individual to take part in a UN Commission on the status of women. That means men who, in defiance of their genetic underpinnings, claim to be women can apply. They may even be given preferential treatment.

Just when you think the Anglican Church of Canada cannot become more daft – it does just that.

From here:

Delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women – Expression of Interest
The Anglican Church of Canada has been asked to nominate one young woman (female identified or non-binary), age 18-30 years old to take part in the Anglican Communion delegation to the sixty-fourth session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York City, March 9th-20th, 2020.

The main focus of UNCSW64 will be on the review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action to assess current challenges that affect the implementation of the Platform for Action and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The vanity of youth

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I was a teenager in the ‘60’s when Bob Dylan decided that the times were changing. I believed him. I thought my generation was going to make everything different. I suppose I was right to some extent: things are worse now.

Bob Dylan put it this way:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly aging

Bishop Susan Bell, having fallen under the spell of Greta Thunburg, says much the same thing. The Bishop is old enough to know better and, unlike, I suspect, Bob Dylan, believes the tripe she is peddling.

Here is the earnest Greta giving an impassioned – nay, hysterical – theatrical diatribe   demonstrating the veracity of Ecclesiastes 1:9:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.

A church climate strike

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St. Nics in Durham, UK is going on a climate strike apparently. For a church, I’m not sure what that entails but perhaps the vicar will stop preaching sermons, so it won’t be an entirely bad thing.

It’s also rebelling against impending extinction, which is odd for a church since, if humanity is about to become extinct, the eschaton and Jesus’ return must be upon us, an event which should be the cause of rejoicing.

On the other hand, St. Nics having lost all sense of the transcendent may, in a fit of temporal desperation, just be jumping on the fashionable Thunberg bandwagon.

The art of conspicuous repentance

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To become a practitioner, look no further than to emulate the high bar set by Justin Welby, a master of eye-catching diversionary irrelevance.

All the right ingredients are in his recent India performance:

Lay on your face in a public venue where all can see. Cameras should be present. And the press.

Apologise for something that happened 100 years ago and had nothing to do with the organisation you are affiliated with but is a part of your country’s colonial past. The contrition will echo with righteous resonance in the empty skulls of the Woken everywhere.

If done with sufficient flair, this will divert attention away from the practitioner’s own failings which, although they may be as numerous as the stars in the Eye of Sauron Nebula, will be forgotten in the spectacle of Ecclesiastical Theatre.

Make sure you imply a connection with Christianity, especially if there isn’t one. You can’t go wrong: everyone hates Christianity. Especially clergy.

From here:

The archbishop of Canterbury has apologised “in the name of Christ” for the 1919 massacre at Amritsar in India, when hundreds of people were shot dead by British forces.

Prostrating himself at the memorial to the Jallianwala Bagh killings, Justin Welby said: “The souls of those who were killed or wounded, of the bereaved, cry out to us from these stones and warn us about power and the misuse of power.

“I cannot speak for the British government … but I can speak in the name of Christ and say this is a place of both sin and redemption, because you have remembered what they have done and their names will live, their memory will live before God. And I am so ashamed and sorry for the impact of this crime committed here.”

Hindus, Christians, Muslims and Sikhs were killed in April 1919 when they gathered in Amritsar, in Punjab, then part of British India. They were protesting peacefully after earlier riots over the arrest of pro-independence leaders.

Major Canadian drug dealer is losing money

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It takes government scale incompetence to lose money selling recreational drugs.

I’m using the word “recreational” loosely since self-induced mental illness and psychotic violence are not usually chosen as an amusing diversion by those who have not been brainwashed by big-dope companies.

From the CBC:

The Ontario government lost $42M selling cannabis in the last year
Ontario Cannabis Retail Corp. lost $42 million in the latest fiscal year, according to newly released public documents.

The provincial Crown corporation tasked with online sales and wholesale distribution of recreational pot reported revenues of $64 million for the year ended March 31, 2019.

Ripples of Anglican angst

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The Anglican Church of Canada has placed itself in the odd position of protesting that not everything it does is coloured by obsessive homoerotism while at the same time claiming that the entire province is reeling in shocked disbelief that the marriage canon change failed to pass at synod.

The reality is that dioceses that want to marry same sex couples are doing so regardless of the vote so it makes no practical difference, and the average person in the pew is indifferent to the all the theatrical antics because he is too old and set in his ways to contemplate whether copulating with someone of the same sex is even possible or worth the attempt, let alone whether the church approves of it.

From here:

Marriage vote failure ripples through church

General Synod’s failure to pass a resolution to amend the marriage canon to expressly allow solemnization of same-sex marriage, followed by a communiqué from the House of Bishops effectively commending diocesan-based decisions on the matter, has triggered a wave of responses across the Anglican Church of Canada. Bishops, priests, laity, officers and deacons alike have weighed in with concerns about the decision. Some bishops, including then-Primate-elect Linda Nicholls in her capacity as bishop of Huron, have outlined plans to exercise a “local option” for same sex marriage in their dioceses.

[…..]

The initial announcement of the vote results left many synod members visibly in shock, with some crying. Almost immediately, delegates approached the microphones and asked about the process by which General Synod could reconsider a vote. But Primate Fred Hiltz, acknowledging the “pain in this place,” soon moved to dismiss synod for the night.

The emotional upheaval caused by the results led to official statements from all levels of the church. First to respond on July 15 was the House of Bishops, whose members had played the decisive role in voting against the motion.