Normal service will resume as soon as possible.
Summer hiatus
1
The Diocese of Toronto responds to Canada’s Anglican crisis
The Diocese of Toronto has recognised that the Anglican Church of Canada is in trouble:
The Anglican Church of Canada has been experiencing decline in its membership for some time. A report to its House of Bishops in 2005 showed that between 1961 and 2001, Anglican parish membership dropped from 1.36 million to 642,000, a decline of 53 per cent. The decline was quickening. Membership fell by 13% between 1981 and 1991 and by a further 20% from 1991 to 2001. The report
warned the House that the Anglican Church was currently losing 2% of its members per year and that ‘if you take that rate of decline and draw a line in the graph, there’ll be only one person left in the Anglican Church of Canada by 2061. The Church is in crisis. We can’t carry on like its business as usual.’……
The diocese of Toronto faces a stark reality: grow or die.
It is about to adopt the same solution as the Diocese of BC:
A report from the diocese of British Columbia, which faces similar issues to Toronto and is also seeking to stimulate new growth, notes that: ‘The Achilles heel of organizational transformation is resource allocation’ and so ‘the Diocesan Council will need to demonstrate fierce resolve if the Diocese is to shift financial resources from marginal activities to mission-critical initiatives’.
The italicised section is easily recognised for what it is: a euphemism for closing marginal parishes, selling the buildings and using the money to prop up more promising – or diocesan compliant – specimens. As this admits:
There has been a general welcome within the diocese for the sustainable and strategic policy. The diocese has been applauded for finally doing something about the subsidy of declining parishes and there was widespread acceptance that ‘growth requires pruning’.
Perhaps foreseeing a future exodus to more orthodox pastures, the diocese has pronounced by fiat:
° All church property in the diocese is held for the purposes of the whole Church, irrespective of the name of the registered owner, and the proceeds realized from any sale or other disposition of surplus property or any land by any parish are to be shared with the diocese for the purposes of the Church.
° On disestablishment of a parish, all proceeds are designated as diocesan share.
° It is inappropriate to use proceeds for ongoing operating expenses of the diocese.
° The diocesan share of any sales proceeds shall be placed in the Ministry Allocation Fund.
So, no matter what the deeds say, the diocese is laying claim to building ownership.
My favourite part is:
The conclusion is that self-funding Churches are essential. St Paul was self-funding and the primitive Churches were largely financially independent.
Who could argue with that? Bishops, you had better take some tent-making classes.
Just as in any secular enterprise, there is a great deal of tergiversation about “mission”, but entirely absent from the document is any recognition of the importance of bringing people to salvation and reconciliation to God the Father through Christ: it is all about surviving as an institution – somehow – anyhow.
Is a church that is so preoccupied with its own welfare worth preserving?
Annoying words
Leaving aside the obvious “diversity”, “inclusion”, “listening” and “conversation”:
“birth” as a verb. We are constantly “birthing” things in church: I wish we wouldn’t.
“disrespect” as a verb. It may be in the OED, but it shouldn’t be.
“empower” – usually we “empower” women. Let’s not, they already have enough power. As James Thurber noted: “Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.”
“passion” – a vague itch somewhere.
“holistic” – used by doctors when they have no idea what’s wrong with you.
“glass ceiling”, the breaking of which has become an excuse for lady bishops.
“stay at the table” – I insist you stay here and let me talk until you die of boredom.
“intentional” – not the opposite of accidental, rather the art of deception while creating the illusion of agreement.
“holy spirit” – the feeling of certainty a person experiences when he simply must have his own way.
“discernment” – ignoring everyone else’s opinion.
“openness” – ignoring everyone else’s opinion.
“vulnerability” – ignoring everyone else’s opinion while crying.
“deep sadness” – ignoring everyone else’s opinion while pretending to cry.
“transparency” – ignoring everyone else’s opinion while seated comfortably above the glass ceiling.
“missional” – no such word. When used by a church it means communist subversion.
More on the de-baptising hair driers
For someone who enjoys mocking, Edwin Kagin manages to take himself and his overweening pretensions dreadfully seriously.
William Blake summed up this kind of nonsense 200 years ago; although, unlike Edwin Kagin, his targets had a modicum of intellectual coherence:
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau:
Mock on, mock on: ‘tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.And every sand becomes a Gem,
Reflected in the beam divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking Eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.The Atoms of Democritus
And the Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.
The Islamic Flat Earth Society
[flv:https://anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Flat-Earth.flv 600 400]
Muslim bus and taxi drivers refuse to let guide dogs on board
From here:
Blind passengers are being ordered off buses or refused taxi rides because Muslim drivers or passengers object to their ‘unclean’ guide dogs.
One pensioner said he had twice been confronted by drivers and asked to get off the bus because of his guide dog, and had also faced hostility at a hospital and in a supermarket over the animal.
The problem has become so widespread that the matter was raised in the House of Lords last week, prompting transport minister Norman Baker to warn that a religious objection was not a reason to eject a passenger with a well-behaved guide dog.
National Federation of the Blind spokesman Jill Allen-King said the problem was common, and ‘getting worse’.
The tension stems from a strand of Islamic teaching which considers a dog’s saliva to be impure.
George Herridge, 73, a retired hospital maintenance manager, said he was ‘stunned’ to be twice asked by bus drivers to leave their vehicles because of his guide dog, a black labrador.
Miss Allen-King said she had been repeatedly left on the kerb by Muslim taxi drivers who refused to take her dog.
How about if the dogs wore burkas?
Atheists de-baptising with hair dryers
From here:
American atheists lined up to be “de-baptized” in a ritual using a hair dryer, according to a report Friday on U.S. late-night news program “Nightline.”
Leading atheist Edwin Kagin blasted his fellow non-believers with the hair dryer to symbolically dry up the holy water sprinkled on their heads in days past. The styling tool was emblazoned with a label reading “Reason and Truth.”
Kagin doned a monk’s robe and said a few mock-Latin phrases before inviting those wishing to be de-baptized to “come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water.”
Baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inner and invisible grace; these atheist antics are, I suppose, an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible disgrace. In addition to being superstitious and not particularly funny.
Desmond Tutu distorting Christianity – again
Desmond Tutu spoke recently against one of liberal Christianity’s – using the word in its loosest possible sense – favourite whipping boys: globalism. Amidst the ritual bromidic meanderings on “equality”, the environment (did you know the Icelandic volcanic ash eruption was a result of our not working together – I didn’t) and greed, we find this from African theologians Rev. Allan Boesak, and the Rev. Johann Weusmann:
The Evangelical Reformed Church in Germany in 2007 embarked on a project to study the effects of globalization in the context of the Accra Confession, a 2004 statement of the then World Alliance of Reformed Churches that critiqued neoliberal economics. The German church worked with the church in South Africa to gain the perspective of a developing country.
Much of the “very activist” report, as Boesak described it, is devoted to economic issues, and is explicitly meant as ammunition in what is seen as the battle against the domination by a financial elite using “empire logic.”
Just as Christ rose up against the Roman empire, it is the duty of Christians to resist the “lordless powers” of the global capitalist empire, the report says. It looks at issues such as the global food crisis, financial markets, ecology and militarism. It sets out a detailed programme for “breaking the dominance of financial markets over the real economy.” The report distinguishes between globalization and globalism.
Have these theologians read the Bible? Any of it? Christ didn’t rise up against the Roman empire; some of his followers wanted him to; so did Satan in the three temptations in the wilderness (Matt 4:8-9). Nevertheless, he explicitly said his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).
Archbishop to host imams and clergy at Lambeth Palace
From Christianity Today:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is to host an event at Lambeth Palace which will bring together 50 imams and clergy from 25 local areas to encourage and strengthen local inter faith relationships.
Let’s hope Rowan sticks to encouraging inter faith relationships and doesn’t try to convert the imams to Christianity; we wouldn’t want that – very un-Anglican.
The Anglican Church of Canada has a new consultant for its Department of Philanthropy
From here:
The Primate has appointed Suzanne Lawson consultant to General Synod’s Department of Philanthropy and Philanthropy Committee. Ms. Lawson, a former Executive Director of Program at General Synod, will help assess current philanthropic initiatives and refocus the work of philanthropy at a national level.
Corporate sponsorship didn’t work; Anglicans who tithe are scarcer than bishops who believe; no-one wants their money to be used to pay for the litigation happy ACoC lawyers – so what’s to be done?
Here’s an idea – although convincing Paul Allen that the ACoC won’t die before he does might be tricky:
The co-founder of Microsoft Paul Allen has pledged the majority of his estimated US$13.5bn fortune to philanthropy following his death.
Allen set up his own charitable foundation, the Paul G Allen Family Foundation, 20 years ago.