Calgary’s mayor is straight but not narrow

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That’s what his tee-shirt proclaimed as he led the Calgary gay pride parade.

Language is often an indicator of a cultural climate. In this case “straight, not narrow”, a play on “straight and narrow”, has been blazoned across the mayor’s chest as a very public declaration of virtue: he may not be a homosexual (to be so and advertise it would be an even greater declaration of virtue), but he is not so narrow as to be intolerant – unlike Toronto’s mayor – of those who are; and he is proud of it.

The original phrase “straight and narrow” means “the way of proper conduct and moral integrity” and is itself a variation of “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life” (Matthew 7:14). No mayor is likely to win approval by advocating  “proper conduct and moral integrity” at a gay pride parade, so Mayor Nenshi did the next best thing: he used a phrase which has accumulated centuries of cultural resonance and turned it into the opposite of its intended meaning.

A fitting tribute to a parade bearing a rubric whose meaning has suffered a similar inversion: pride.

 

 

Christian counsellors not allowed to pray for those they counsel

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From here:

A Christian organisation has been ditched by a national charity for offering to pray for people with debt problems.

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) has been forced to leave AdviceUK, an umbrella group representing the interests of thousands of advice workers, after it was judged that praying was ‘incompatible’ with membership.

[…..]

Yesterday, Steve Johnson, chief executive of AdviceUK, described the offer of prayer by CAP as an ‘emotional fee’. Asked to explain what he meant, Mr Johnson replied that CAP was effectively expecting clients to ‘pay’ for their advice by agreeing to pray with the counsellors. ‘Advisers must not offer or impose their values,’ he added.

How is a debt counsellor supposed to counsel without imposing at least some  values?

Counsellors wouldn’t be debt counsellors unless they thought being debt free is better than being debt ridden. This is a “value”; if the counsellors give advice on reducing debt they are imposing a value. Going by the rules of AdviceUK, all debt counsellors should be disqualified as counsellors unless they are also willing to counsel people to increase their debt. Absurd? Of course it is, but so is the ban on prayer.

AdviceUK is imposing its values on who can counsel and who can’t: one of the values is anti-Christian bigotry.

A call for the church to take on the new atheists

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From here:

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

It expresses concern that Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.

The rallying call comes amid fears that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for sharing their beliefs.

I agree.

However, if the church is to create a bulwark against the onslaught of God hatred from the ilk of Dawkins and Hitchens, it will have to ensure its own belief is robustly Christian. The kind of wishy-washy liberal Christianity of someone like Tony Blair will not withstand the typical diatribe of the anti-God brigade, as evidenced by the Hitchens vs. Blair debate in Toronto.

William Lane Craig, has sent Dawkins and his cohorts scurrying for the hills, whimpering excuses, although Dawkins says he is quite happy debating a bishop or archbishop. This is not surprising; since many bishops and archbishops dither on what the resurrection is or what the gospel is, they aren’t going to stand much of a chance defending something whose truth they themselves doubt.

 

Australia: BC not PC enough

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From here:

A DECISION to use politically correct terms – which do not mention Jesus Christ – for dates BC and AD in the new national history curriculum was an act of Christian cleansing, church leaders said yesterday.

BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era) are the new neutral terms to replace the historical terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini).

Removing BC and AD from the curriculum was an “intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history”, Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen said yesterday.

“It is absurd because the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating and because the phrase ‘common era’ is meaningless and misleading,” he said.

It was akin to calling Christmas the festive season, Archbishop Jensen said.

All of which is BS: a civilisation that is determined to expunge any reference to its foundations from public discourse will shrivel and die – deservedly so.

Israel Philharmonic Orchestra disrupted by louts

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The Palestine Solidarity Campaign , an organisation committed to “the principle of self-determination of the Palestinian people”, thought they would further their cause by disrupting a performance of the exquisite Bruch violin concerto number 1 at the Royal Albert Hall by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. What they actually made plain was that their political stupidity is exceeded only by their philistinism.

From here:

The BBC was forced to pull a live Proms performance off air on Thursday night after a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was disrupted by protesters.

 

 

 

Eight stewardship myths

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You can read about the other seven, predictably prosaic, myths in an article by the Diocese of Toronto’s Director of Stewardship here (page 4).

The eighth myth is much more interesting:

Myth: You can expect parishioners to pay for and maintain the buildings they worship in.

Truth: In every case where congregations have had sufficiently strong theological differences with their dioceses that they realigned with another Anglican province while still hoping to use their buildings, the dioceses have gone to court to establish that they, the dioceses are the legal owners. So far the dioceses have been largely successful.

Yet, even though they claim to own the buildings, Anglican dioceses contribute nothing to their maintenance or the initial cost of building them. You can only con people for so long: no amount of weeping and wailing by stewardship directors is going to squeeze more cash out of people who have already forked out millions of dollars to pay for something they thought was theirs but, according to a spiteful, hypocritical, grasping national church can be taken from them at any time.

Welcome to the Anglican Church of Canada, the Ponzi religion.

The unsettling of global warming science

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From here:

Last week, 63 scientists from CERN, the unimpeachable European Organization for Nuclear Research, published a paper in the journal Nature that would seem to prove that the sun and not humans is the main “driver” of climate on Earth.

In short, cloud cover is the most important determinant of global warming or cooling. Tiny changes in the percentage of Earth shielded by clouds (or not) can cause a variation in global temperatures of several degrees, down or up. Cosmic rays are the main cause of cloud formation – the more rays from outer space reaching our planet’s atmosphere, the more clouds form and the cooler the surface becomes.

[…..]

the CERN team found human CO2 emissions have little or no impact, or at the very least their impact has been greatly overestimated in the computer models global-warming alarmists rely on to show dangerous future climate.

Meanwhile, Al Gore likened those who question the veracity of the anthropogenic global warming theory – and, thus, the 63 CERN scientists – to racists.

And the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, declared that “Anglicans must act” because “Creation is in crisis”. Not, of course, a crisis of too little cloud cover – after all, these Anglicans have found plenty of cloud in which to thrust their heads – but of too much capitalism, the only sin left for a religion that has replaced the dogma of transcendence with that of Marx.

Bishop John Chapman says that St. Alban’s, Ottawa is about to become "totally welcoming and inclusive”

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Obviously, until the Diocese of Ottawa took possession of the building in July 2011, the parish specialised in being unwelcoming and exclusive – which is odd, since the old unwelcoming St. Alban’s has about 100 people [correction: the number is 200] attending its Sunday services and the welcoming New St. Alban’s had absolutely nobody until the diocese moved another parish’s congregation into the building.

What the bishop really means, of course, is that the New St. Alban’s believes that active homosexuality is a Biblically approved lifestyle: the new rector, Rev. Mark Whittall, eager to reinforce the point, marched in the Ottawa Pride parade.

From here (page 13):

As you probably know, the Diocese has returned to St. Alban’s more than three years after the previous clergy resigned from the Anglican Church of Canada to join the breakaway Anglican Network in Canada. It is most regrettable that the parish felt it needed to take this step because they opposed the direction the national church was taking.

However, through mediation and negotiation an agreement was reached for the clergy to leave the church so that we could re-establish the Anglican Church of Canada here.

We should point out that only the clergy were forced to leave – the members of the congregation are most welcome to stay. We also hope to build up membership with the help of former parishioners

who were alienated by the direction taken in recent years.

We are recovering our ancient mission as an Anglican church to be totally welcoming and inclusive. That means that everyone, including the poor and the marginalized, are assured of a warm welcome here.

 

 

Anglicans in the Ottawa Pride Parade 2011

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Following the first chap in the leather skirt we have: Integrity Ottawa; St. Michael and all Angels and the “new” St. Alban’s.

Directly to the rear was a paramedic’s van, presumably in consideration of the average age of the Anglicans preceding it.

 

Coincidentally, having run out of ideas of their own, an Anglican charity is offering a reward of £1,000 to the person who comes up with the most convincing reason to remain an Anglican.

Anyone?