Liberals love form without substance

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During the heyday of the Charismatic renewal in the Anglican Church, staunch liberals turned their collective noses up at the idea of the Holy Spirit being alive, well and active in the church. Now, scarcely a paragraph emerges from a liberal mainline denomination without some reference to being guided by the “Spirit”. This is a convenient means of sanctifying any hare-brained scheme that pops into the homoerotically overheated minds of the clergy, and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the third person of the Trinity.

In the same way, most Christian terminology has been drained of useful content: “Gospel”, “mission”, “disciple” are all bandied about indiscriminately – to the frustration of those who still think they have objective meaning.

The liberals have stolen our words.

That is not enough, it seems. There was a time when no self-respecting liberal would be caught dead with his arms in the air during worship. Now they have stolen our gestures, too.

Here are Rev. Gary Paterson the new moderator of the United Church of Canada – who happens to be gay, a poet and a clergyman, in that order –  and former moderator, Mardi Tindal, putting on a display that appears to be a carefully posed invitation for us to admire their uninhibited enthusiasm for – uninhibited enthusiasm.

I find the image eerily disturbing:

 

Back to Church Sunday reaches out to guys – BYOG

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Bring your own gun.

From here:

In an effort to increase membership, a number of U.S. churches — including the Church of Christ congregation in this rural village 30 miles north of Columbus — are offering an unconventional public service: Concealed weapons training.

“Church has done a good job with coffee klatsches or whatever, but we haven’t really reached out to guys,” said Jeff Copley, a preacher at the church. “And guys in Morrow Country, they shoot and they hunt.”

Hundreds of students have enrolled in the 10-hour course, which meets the state requirements for earning a concealed weapons permit. The training includes two hours on a church member’s private shooting range.

“I grew up going to church, but hadn’t attended in a number of years,” said David Freeman, 52, a local engineering manager who attended a firearm safety class at the church. “Always considered myself a Christian. I came for the gun classes and have been coming back for two years.”

Unsurprisingly, the National Council of Churches disapproves, making the whole enterprise seem much more appealing:

[T]he National Council of Churches of Christ, which represents about 100,000 Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox and Evangelical churches comprising 45 million members nationwide, endorsed strict gun control in a 2010 position paper.

Conceding the need for an armed police force, the council wrote that “to allow assault weapons in the hands of the general public can scarcely be justified on Christian grounds. The stark reality is that such weapons end up taking more lives than they defend, and the reckless sale or use of these weapons refutes the gospel’s prohibition against violence.”

Is carrying a gun with the intent to defend oneself and family contrary to Christian principles? If it isn’t, is there any reason that a church should not hold classes to teach people how to do it properly?

If it is contrary to Christianity to defend oneself, then outright pacifism might be the only coherent response.

Of course, Anglican clergy would have little hesitation resorting to the ruse employed by 19-20th Century homosexual satirist and pacifist, Lytton Strachey who, when asked: “If a German soldier tried to rape your sister, what would you do”, replied: “I would try to interpose my own body.”

Thank heaven for little androgynes

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You could never get away with that today.

In Sweden you can’t even depict boys holding toy guns and girls dressed up as princesses; it is gender discrimination.

From here:

Sweden’s largest toy chain has been forced to become ‘gender neutral’ by picturing boys holding baby dolls and girls brandishing toy guns in the pages of its Christmas catalogue.

Top Toy – which holds the franchise for Toys R Us – made the move after being reprimanded by the country’s advertising watchdog for ‘gender discrimination’ in a previous catalogue, which featured boys dressed as superheroes and girls playing princess.

 

Atheists against Charlie Brown

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Well, not exactly: atheists don’t want to be that offensive. It’s more like: atheists against the Christ who is represented in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.

Unhappily for the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers though, Charlie Brown’s creator, Charles Schulz, was a Christian so it is no more possible to get Christ out of Charlie Brown than it is to get him out of Christmas.

Face it, atheists: you really are Charlie Brown haters.

From here:

An atheist group is accusing an Arkansas grade school of violating students’ constitutional rights by inviting them to a performance of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at a local church.

Students at Terry Elementary School in Little Rock were invited to a performance of the show at Agape Church. Teachers informed parents in letters home that a school bus would shuttle children to and from the show, which would be performed on a school day, KARK 4 News reported.

According to the station, the letter the teachers sent home indicates the play will be held on Friday, Dec. 14, at 10 a.m. at the church. Children attending will be taken on a school bus and will need to pay $2 to cover the expense of the bus rides, the letter states. Students are not required to attend the production, according to the school district.

One parent contacted the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers after receiving the letter.

“We’re not saying anything bad about Charlie Brown,” Anne Orsi, a Little Rock attorney and vice president of the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers, told KARK 4 News. “The problem is that it’s got religious content and it’s being performed in a religious venue and that doesn’t just blur the line between church and state, it oversteps it entirely.”

 

Are there any big deals left in the Anglican Church of Canada?

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A bishop announcing that he believes in the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Christ would stretch my credulity; a lesbian priest married to another woman would merely be par for the course.

From here:

Football star’s mom, a lesbian priest, no big deal in Anglicanism.

Sports reporters preparing for the Grey Cup game on Sunday could hardly believe it this week when Calgary Stampeders star Jon Cornish revealed his mother, a veteran Anglican priest, has a “wife.”

But stories like that of Rev. Margaret Cornish, who has been vicar of St. Alban’s Church in Richmond for almost seven years, are becoming commonplace in liberal Christian churches in Canada and the United States.

There are hundreds of women in the ministry in the Anglican Church and United Church of Canada who have either always been in lesbian relationships or have moved into them in their middle years.

As of this writing, St. Alban’s website is down, but the cached version of its welcome page contains the words “inclusive” and “diversity” – enough to confirm a lingering suspicion that the fictitious bishop of the first paragraph would not feel at home there.

Radical inclusion in Southern Ontario

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We spent a weekend away in Kingsville:

 

Amherstburg, a little further west on the Detroit River boasts an inclusive playground:

 

I have no idea what makes this particular playground more inclusive than any other playground; perhaps adults are allowed to use it. Or, more likely, the inclusivity virus has now infected everything, even playgrounds.

Amherstburg  has not quite reached the pinnacle of euphoric inclusion that would induce it not to continue pointing its cannons across the Detroit river at the U.S. in commemoration of the war of 1812 – a war which even US historians now reluctantly concede, Canada won.

 

The trip even included snow:

 

Microsoft: running on flatulence

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If you are frustrated by quirks in Windows, you will now be able to console yourself with the thought that the next blue screen crash dump you see was brought to you courtesy of – a human dump.

From here:

Data center Microsoft researcher Sean James used to think that a sewage treatment plant would be an inhospitable place for a data center professional. Now when he smells methane at a wastewater plant, he smells free energy.

Microsoft today said it has gotten approval to test a modular data center run from a biogas-powered fuel cell located at a wastewater treatment plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Local officials approved a 18-month trial of Microsoft’s Data Plant research program at the Dry Creek Water Reclamation Facility in a $5.5 million project funded by Microsoft, FuelCell Energy, and the state of Wyoming.

[….]

“A person is consuming data and that person’s waste is going to power the data center,” says James, who is a research program manager with advanced data center development at Microsoft.

Putting something new in the Anglican Church of Canada

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The Anglican Church of Canada has a $600,000 deficit, churches are closing, buildings are being sold, and employees are being laid-off. Even the Anglican Book Centre is no more.

All this leads the ACoC’s general secretary, Michael Thompson to muse that “God is putting something new in the church.” Yes, he is: judgement.

Michael Thompson turned up at St. Hilda’s one Sunday a number of years ago; he was supposed to dissuade us from fleeing the Diocese of Niagara. He wasn’t entirely successful and, although I thought he was a nice enough well-intentioned fellow, he flatly admitted he didn’t quite know what he believed and he envied us our “certainty”.

To put it another way: he is an amiable but clueless cove; that’s how he ended up as general secretary to the ACoC.

From here:

Amid the fiscal challenges facing General Synod, Archdeacon Michael Thompson urged Anglicans “to be patient and kind with ourselves in this time of transition and transformation.”

“God is putting something new in the church,” Thompson told the Council of General Synod at its meeting Nov. 15 to 18.

Reflecting on his first year as general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, Thompson noted the “change in ecosystem of the way the church lives.” He likened it to the trail that he and his wife hike near Lake Superior, where land burnt by a forest fire is now home to healthy blueberry bushes. Could the church adapt to a similar challenge? he wondered. “We don’t have trees anymore, so God doesn’t expect us to be in the lumber business,” he said. “Can we figure out what to do with the blueberries?”

The national church is “being called by God into a bunch of new futures, not just one,” said Thompson, adding the goal is to discover what ministries it is being called to develop.

 

Diocese of Uruguay wants to join a liberal province

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The liberal Diocese of Uruguay wants to leave the Province of the Southern Cone because the Province of the Southern Cone is conservative and the diocese thinks it is “adrift, as if condemned to stay in a province where it doesn’t fit.” Sound familiar?

It does to ANiC parishes in Canada who, for a while, took shelter under the Province of the Southern Cone because their dioceses were not just liberal but teetering on heresy; it was a unilateral decision roundly condemned as “cross-border intervention” by the hierocracy.

At least the Anglican Consultative Council is consistent in telling the Diocese of Uruguay that it must stay put. Personally, I think collecting all the liberal dioceses together into liberal provinces is not such a bad idea: they could shrivel up together without contaminating genuinely Christian dioceses.

The rainbow stoled Michael Pollesel, former general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, was elected as bishop by the Diocese of Uruguay, only to be turned down by the province, an act of exclusion that galled both the Diocese of Uruguay and the Anglican Church of Canada. And, to my considerable satisfaction, he was rejected twice.

From here:

The diocese of Uruguay says it feels “abandoned and unsupported” after the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) turned down its request to change provinces.

The diocese, which is part of the province of the Southern Cone, has asked that it be transferred to the province of Brasil, which it says is “more compatible” in terms of theology, mission and philosophy.

It appealed to the ACC standing committee to review its decision, saying it feels “adrift, as if condemned to stay in a province where it doesn’t fit.”