I can only assume that this is an attempt to convince curious passers-by that Anglicans are perfectly normal; and that the intrinsic comedy in overweight middle-aged Anglican ladies flinging aside inhibition to cavort on the grass to the beat of native drums wielded by ersatz Aboriginals is an essential component of Christian worship.
Looking on the bright side, we can at least be grateful that they kept their clothes on – this year at least.
From here, where he had this to say about those speaking out against the Islamization of the West and the ground-zero mosque:
There is this idea floating around that those who are speaking up about Islamic radicalism must be bigots and therefore they must be ignorant. Ironically the loudest critics of Islam are usually the ones who have studied the fundamentals of Islam the most rigorously. Those crying “bigot” can be the most ignorant, and will come up with absolute howlers, real nonsense, spoken with a poker face as it were the most serious thing in the world. They decry accurate and reliable information about Islam as “Islamophobic facts,” just as the Soviet courts used to reject what they called “calumnious facts.”
When non-Muslims go into interfaith dialogue without a good understanding of Islam, they are severely handicapped. The dialogue can easily be manipulated to become an exercise in da’wa, or proclaiming Islam. A good example is the label “Abrahamic faith.” This is a Koranic term, and in Islam it stands for the idea that Abraham was a Muslim. According to the Koran, the faith of Abraham is Islam. Getting Jews and Christians to speak about “Abrahamic religions” has been a great coup – it is a manifestation of the Islamization of our religious discourse.
The problem of dialogue is especially acute if your Muslim counterpart subscribes to the doctrine of taqiyya, which favors the use of misleading impressions, or even direct lies. Everyone involved in interfaith dialogue with Muslims needs to understand that under certain circumstances – for example, if Muslims feel threatened – giving a misleading impression could be regarded as a righteous act. Not all Muslims will go down this track, but for some it is a real option, and there are plenty of clear examples of it happening all around us. In The Third Choice I give a very clear explanation of the doctrine of taqiyya, and explain how it arises in Islamic theology, how it is being taught by Muslims, and how it is being applied today.
So perhaps the suspicion that the cultural centre cum Anglican Ladies Tea-room is really just a cover for a victory mosque isn’t so far off the mark. Shocking.
From here:
A senior Christian leader has warned much of the aid flowing into Pakistan to help deal with massive flooding may never be used for relief.
Retired Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, a Pakistani national who has spent much of his life in Britain, is visiting Australia to discuss issues around Islam and its growth in the West.
“The misery that the (Pakistani) people are in has been caused, to some extent, by corruption and incompetence,” Bishop Nazir-Ali told reporters in Canberra on Monday.
Much of Western aid to third world nations seems to be used to prop up corrupt and despotic regimes. Short of a civilising colonial incursion, there probably isn’t a solution and, as Malcolm Muggeridge used to say, Western aid tends to earn its givers the undying contempt of the recipients.
Orthodox Anglicans in Australia are trying to forestall the North American debacle:
IN AN unprecedented linking of church and state, the national leader of the Anglican Church has asked the NSW government to stymie a move that would let the powerful Sydney diocese ”divorce” the rest of the Australian church and leave the national office impoverished.
On the eve of the Australian Anglican Church’s three-yearly synod, which opens in Melbourne today, Brisbane Archbishop Phillip Aspinall wrote to the NSW Attorney-General, shadow attorney-general and director-general of the Department of Justice, seeking their help.
Australia’s primate responded with:
AUSTRALIA’S Anglican leader launched a passionate plea for unity yesterday, saying divisions severely damaged the Christian message and risked fragmenting the church.
”How can we talk about unity, tolerance and respect with regard to the Middle East or justice if we can’t live it out in our own life?” asked Brisbane Archbishop Phillip Aspinall, the primate of Australia. ”We undermine our message if we don’t model it.”
He acknowledged the depth of divisions in the worldwide church over gay bishops, but said there could be disagreement without disunity.
Aspinall reckons there can be disagreement without disunity. Since unity in this context means: the state or quality of being in accord; harmony and this particular Anglican disagreement has been so lacking in harmony it has split the Anglican communion, Aspinall, to be even thinking this, must have fallen down a rabbit hole and be taking tea with the mad hatter.
Richard Dawkins described Pope Benedict as “a leering old villain in a frock who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part” and the Catholic Church as a “rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution. “
Dawkins is not only entitled to his opinion – however fatuous – but also entitled to publish it, something he did with a degree of relish that would probably have been absent had he been slandering a pillar of Islam.
The Pope’s visit to Britain has inflamed the pious sensibilities of numerous atheists, many of whom signed a letter to the Guardian bewailing the fact that the Pope acts and speaks like a Catholic and claiming he didn’t address the child abuse problems in the Church – even though he did.
Pope Benedict, in his address at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh pointed out that:
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives.
As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”
All perfectly true since Hitler and his Nazis were not so much atheists as anti-theists – against God – just as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are. Hitchens and Dawkins would protest that they are not Nazis, but they are unable to point to an objective standard of right and wrong that would tell them that they shouldn’t be. A Hitler Youth marching song goes like this:
We follow not Christ, but Horst Wessel,
Away with incense and Holy Water,
The Church can go hang for all we care,
The Swastika brings salvation on Earth.
Horst Wessel was a Nazi party street-fighter murdered by communists and turned into a martyr by Josef Goebbels.
Also, the 20th century leaders that have been inspired by a rejection of God: Mao, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Pol Pot have ruthlessly slaughtered more people in 100 or so years than all the tyrants that preceded them put together . This is not particularly surprising: Christianity teaches that each person is made in God’s image – they are shaped by God; atheism teaches that each person has no created essence other than that of a clever animal and therefore can be shaped and moulded by force. The fact that Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot failed is testimony to the fact that they were wrong: a person does bear God’s image.
None of this matters to atheists, who, when not occupied with hurling abuse at the Pope in fits of irrational pique that would embarrass a 3 year old, become quite hurt and hysterical when someone has the effrontery to challenge their cherished articles of unbelief:
The British Humanist Association was quick to respond to the Pope’s remarks, noting in a statement: “The notion that it was the atheism of Nazis that led to their extremist and hateful views or that it somehow fuels intolerance in Britain today is a terrible libel against those who do not believe in God.
“The notion that it is nonreligious people in the U.K. today who want to force their views on others, coming from a man whose organization exerts itself internationally to impose its narrow and exclusive form of morality and undermine the human rights of women, children, gay people, and many others, is surreal.”
Richard Dawkins fumes:
I am incandescent with rage at the sycophantic BBC coverage, and the sight of British toadies bowing and scraping to this odious man. I thought he was bad before. This puts the lid on it.
Thank you, BBC: anything that makes Dawkins “incandescent with rage” deserves all the license fees it can get.
And the Pakistani ambassador walks out of UN meeting.
Human rights activist, board member of the Muslim Canadian Congress and International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) Representative Raheel Raza confronts Tariq Ramadan and the Pakistani Ambassador representing the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
From the Herald Sun, Australia:
A plan to force families to cover up to avoid offending Muslims at a public event has triggered furious debate.
So far the Premier John Brumby has refused to weigh into the debate about the event, saying he will wait to see the VCAT ruling before making any comment.
VCAT has approved a ban on uncovered shoulders and thighs for a community event to be held at the Dandenong Oasis, a municipal pool.
“Participants aged 10 and over must ensure their bodies are covered from waist to knee and the entire torso extending to the upper arms,” a request by Dandenong City Council and the YMCA states in an exemption application to the Equal Opportunities Act.
If this spreads to the US, I am anticipating an outbreak of nudism protests during Ramadan 2011, possibly organised by Rev. Terry Jones. Barack Obama will declare that America is not about exposing shoulders, Fred Hiltz will call for prayer and a mutual respect for one another’s covered thighs and general Petraeus will warn that bare torsos create a distraction that puts our troops in danger.
I bumped into Normal Mailer briefly in the late 70’s. I was attending a conference in Miami, waiting for an elevator in my hotel standing next to a large fellow with a walkie-talkie. The walkie-talkie squawked and seemed to say “Mr. Mailer is on his way”. The elevator arrived and out stepped Norman Mailer. What I presumed was a hotel tart – with a hard face and stunning figure – flounced up, took his arm and disappeared with him into a waiting limousine. Mailer liked to take a contrarian view of many things; among them, masturbation – he didn’t approve:
“I wouldn’t say all people who masturbate are evil, probably I would even say that some of the best people in the world masturbate. But I am saying it’s a miserable activity.”
Mailer was cool, of course, so those who adopted the conceit of thinking they were too, forgave him for criticising their favourite pastime. Not so for Christine O’Donnell – winner of Republican Senate Primary in Delaware – who said much the same thing and is being roundly mocked for it by the usual twerps on the left.
I’m looking forward to the next Democratic Party slogan: Democrats, masturbating for you.
From here:
(Aurora, ON) – A last minute decision was made on Thursday, September 9 by Aurora’s Trinity Anglican Clergy – The Reverend Canon Dawn Davis, and the Reverends Stephen Kern and Dawn Leger would create a living answer to the threats of burning copies of the Qur’ans made by church members in Florida.
In co-operation with the Trinity Church’s resident Interfaith Minister, Rev. Terry Weller, a theme was decided upon – “The only burning we are interested in is a burning desire for “PEACE, RECONCILIATION AND RESPECT”.
A secondary theme presented was: “OUR GOD CREATED DIVERSITY ON THIS EARTH. WE HOLD THAT THERE IS UNITY IN DIVERSITY”.
While, as Christians, we should live peacefully with our neighbours of other faiths, if the message of the early church to opposing religions had been: “Our god created diversity on this earth. We hold that there is unity in diversity”, there would be no Trinity Anglican Church, Aurora. Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing.