The ACoC’s Vision 2019 site has been attracting some interesting comments.

I thought I’d join in the fun and leave a few comments of my own: sadly, my comments are languishing in comment moderation purgatory unable to find their way either to the light of day or to be buried irretrievably in darkness. I feel quite hurt: other people’s comments are being published.

Looking on the bright side, this must mean that the ACoC knows who I am and is avidly absorbing the unvarnished truth by reading what yours truly has to say here. Hi Fred!

The bishop of Toronto, Colin Johnson and his liberal henchmen took a day off from preparing same-sex blessing liturgies to instruct God on how He should be influencing Canadian Provincial politics. In pursuit of this dubious endeavour, the reverends exercised their uncanny knack for reading a passage of Scripture and teasing out of it meaning that isn’t there.

Archdeacon Patterson’s reading of the Biblical account of the healing of the blind man Bartimaeus sparked a lively dialogue. Since he had no way of earning a living, he was poor, noted Bishop Johnson. “At first he’d been told to be quiet. Yet he asks Jesus for healing, to be restored to active community. Jesus gives us an example. He heals the whole person. Today we call for dignity for all people.”

The story of Bartimaeus is about overcoming isolation, commented the Rev. Paul MacLean. “Poverty isolates people,” he said.

In these tough, uncertain economic times, it’s easy to be gripped by fear, said the Rev. Beth Benson. “Maybe this wonderful story (of Bartimaus) has an echo for us about fear.”

A normal reading of this passage would note things like: Bartimaeus recognised Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah; he asked for mercy – perhaps in recognition his own sinfulness; in spite of Bartimaeus’ obvious need, Jesus asked him what he wanted, giving Bartimaeus a chance to exercise his faith; Bartimaeus did demonstrate his faith and Jesus healed him; Jesus commended Bartimaeus on his faith. The supernatural reached into the natural and changed it: a miracle was performed.

Colin and his compatriots, groping for political relevance see:

Someone who is poor; someone who wants to be ‘restored to active community’; the isolation of poverty; fear similar to that which we are experiencing in our current economic troubles.

It is one thing to allow Scripture to speak to our circumstances today; it is quite another to conform Scripture to suit one’s own cultural preconceptions.

As part of the ACoC’s Vision 2019, Fred Hiltz has asked people to “tell their stories”. The stories are being published on the Vision 2019 site. Oddly enough, the one I commented upon here has mysteriously vanished, to be replace by “story removed at authors request”. The author didn’t sound as if he were in the mood to have his post removed; not to worry, you can still read it.

In the meantime, here is another interesting comment;

Where is my Church now?

It is lost in the wilderness of secular society, trying to fit in. It has forgotten that Jesus Christ is not of this world, and neither is His Church. By trying to fit in to this world, the Anglican Church of Canada has moved away from Jesus Christ. Like the tree that bears bad fruit, it is being cut down and cast into the fire. Like the worthless servant, what treasure it was trusted with is being taken away.

What would I like my Church to do?

1. Get rid of the Book of Alternate Services, and use exclusively the Book of Common Prayer.

2. Remove from the Priesthood all homosexuals and women. Put an end to woman ordination. Require all Clergy, Priests, Deacons, and Bishops to be “a man of but one wife”, along with all of the other requirements given in 1 Timothy 3.

3. Remove from the Priesthood any and all persons who do not publically acknowledge Jesus Christ to be Devine, Resurrected (and that includes in body), and the one and only way to salvation.

4. No longer recognize any so called “marriages” or divorces performed by the courts of the secular government. Recognize only the marriages that were performed by a Priest in a Church, and only those divorces in which one of the spouses committed a sexually immoral act.

5. Define marriage as “an Act of God in which God Himself joins a man to his wife”.

6. Concentrate on following and obeying the Teachings of Jesus Christ and the Holy Word of God (that being the Holy Bible in its entirety). Spread His Holy Word to all who might hear it. Stop wasting time, effort, and resources on the Millennium Development Goals.

Read the surviving stories quickly before they evaporate.

If it does, it has done a remarkable job of concealing it from prying eyes.

One of the commentators to this post pointed out, with some justice, that when Fred Hiltz was asked what he understands by the Gospel,  he responded by giving examples of activities that proclaim the Gospel – but he never got around to saying what he thinks the Gospel is.

Here is the clip again:

Fred’s own explanation of why he didn’t give a straight answer seems to be that he didn’t have enough time to think about it (so much for 1 Peter 3:15) before giving an answer.

I have my own theories:

1.       He doesn’t know what the Gospel is. For an Anglican Primate in charge of an entire Province, this seems unlikely, although not impossible.

2.       He does know, but is ashamed to explain it. This is a distinct possibility: to explain the gospel in simple terms would expose Hiltz as a closet fundy and would provoke a great chorus of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

3.       He really does think the Gospel is so complicated that it can’t be explained in 6 minutes. A liberal such as Hiltz would be a man of the people, able to communicate at the pedestrian level of the vulgar masses, would he not? He could not be a member of the species of liberal elitist that populates academia, closeted at stratospheric heights in Orthanc-like towers, peering down at the miserable ants scurrying around below, could he? Surely not.

4.       He  believes the gospel is a mish-mash of social policies and knows that admitting it would cause an uproar. This is my favourite.

5.       He is so muddled, that he thinks that the gospel is actually doing stuff to disseminate something no-one either understands or is able to articulate. This is my second favourite

Eager to discover the truth behind Fred’s embarrassed evasion of a simple question, I diligently scoured the Anglican Church of Canada’s website looking for a coherent explanation of what it believes the Gospel to be. Nothing.

The closest I came was at the Vision 2019 page, where To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom is touted as the First Mark of Mission. Surely the answer will be here, I thought. It isn’t; instead, we find anecdotes of the spreading of this mysterious and unidentified Gospel, not an explanation of what it is.

If anyone does find the pearl of great price buried somewhere in the ACoC’s website, please enlighten me.

When I first saw Fred Hiltz ask for opinions on what Canadian Anglicans would like to see in the ACoC in 2019, I thought the results would be extremely dull. I was wrong: so far, they are rather amusing.  Here is one response:

Dear Anglicans,

I was interested to see on your national church website that you are engaged in something called “Vision 2019″, and that you wish to hear from church members about “your community, your local church, your theology, your worship, your passions, your dreams, your nightmares”.

I am no longer a church member, although that fact in and of itself might be of interest to you.

Let’s start.  “My community”.  I was raised in the diocese of Caledonia, but have since then lived in the dioceses of New Westminster, British Columbia and Edmonton (but have never been a church member during the time I’ve lived in Edmonton).

“My local church”.  Well, the parish in which I was raised was dissolved and the property sold by the bishop of the day in order to raise money to (I swear I’m not making this up) repair the dry rot afflicting his cathedral in Prince Rupert. The Anglicans in my home community have dispersed, variously to the United Church, Catholic Church or (in many cases) have abandoned faith communities altogether.  Nice work.

The parish I attended in the diocese of New Westminster has been consolidated into other parishes.  I do not know what has happened since.

The parish I attended in the diocese of British Columbia has spent the past five or six years recovering from a dangerous demagogue of a priest who was variously coddled and ignored by two successive bishops who are, let’s just say, administratively challenged.  In the meantime, parishioners were seriously wounded by this priest (and his wife), and are now nursing their wounds in other settings or privately.

“My theology.”  I humbly submit your inquiry should be directed to the church’s theology.  Very little of the teachings that were conveyed to me in my upbringing seem to matter very much anymore.  The church seems to see itself as something of a NGO, and a purveyor of moral relativism (except when it comes to rooting out anything that has a vaguely conservative sniff to it).  There is a reason your parishes are closing, and it is that none of us who used to frequent your pews did so in order to hear your priests urge us to recycle, write to our MP’s to urge settlement of aboriginal land claims, or to hear try to find the spiritual component of U2 music.  While one can (as I have) do all those things on one’s own volition, we went to church, simply put, to find some sublime, transcendent connection with God.  In your quest to make the church “relevant”, then, you stripped for many of us its purpose.  Really, some of the crap I was reading in diocesan newspapers and the Anglican Journal smacked of facile, “summer of love” ideological nonsense.  I can attend my employee bargaining unit meetings for that kind of stuff – why bother going to church?

“My worship”?  Not Anglican, anymore.  Thanks very much for abandoning your flock in the way you have – both metaphorically (in your theology) and in actual fact (shutting down my former parishes).

Lessee, what’s next.  Right – “My passions”.  Used to be church.  Used to be church music.  Used to be serving the church.  All gone, for the reasons explicated above.  (On the bright side, I now have more time on weekends to spend with my kids skiing, skating, etc.)

“My dreams”?  Well, I could be short-sighted and suggest that I dream of going back in time and avoiding a parish that was served by a megalomaniacal demagogue, but I think I need to dream big.  Maybe I dream of going back in time and arranging that one of my ancestors marry Jewish?

“My nightmares”?  My wife insisting we return to the Anglican church.  Fortunately, the chances of that are zippo, since you’ve managed to turn her off just as completely as you have me.

There you have it.  Just one disaffected member of your former flock, who happily turned in his baptism certificate some years back.  I tune in with interest to your website every now and then to snigger at the typical Anglican silliness.  (This time I see the English church is purporting to ban its members from joining some loonie fringe British anti-immigrant party.  Sigh – whatever happened to just letting loons be loons?  Ah well, trust the Anglican church to never miss an opportunity for politically correct pedantry.)

Yours no longer,

Russ B

I await more with anticipation.

Update: this comment has been removed from the Vision 2019 site, supposedly at the “author’s request.“