A North Carolina pastor was relieved of his duties as an honorary chaplain of the state house of representatives after he closed a prayer by invoking the name of Jesus.
“I got fired,” said Ron Baity, pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. He had been invited to lead prayer for an entire week but his tenure was cut short when he refused to remove the name Jesus from his invocation.
Baity’s troubles began during the week of May 31. He said a House clerk asked to see his prayer. The invocation including prayers for our military, state lawmakers and a petition to God asking him to bless North Carolina.”
“When I handed it to the lady, I watched her eyes and they immediately went right to the bottom of the page and the word Jesus,” he told FOX News Radio. “She said ‘We would prefer that you not use the name Jesus. We have some people here that can be offended.’”
When Baity protested, she brought the matter to the attention of House Speaker Joe Hackney.
Canada’s next governor general, David Johnston, is a respected academic and lawyer. He is also Anglican.
Currently the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo, Johnston will succeed Governor General Michaelle Jean when her term ends on Oct. 1.
Mr. Johnston combines a mind that has traversed securities law, Quebec separatism and emerging high technologies with the formidable diplomatic skills of someone who has served as president of two universities. And he possesses what is universally described as a personality that combines unaffected warmth with boyish enthusiasm.
He will be guided, as well, by his Anglican faith.
Everything seemed fine up until that last sentence.
Playboy magazine is to pull the plug on its Portuguese edition after it ran a photo shoot featuring Jesus Christ among topless models.
The spread was ostensibly a tribute to Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, but Hugh Hefner’s headquarters have reacted with outrage.
The pictures show a long-haired, glowing Jesus watching two models in a lesbian clinch, standing next to a prostitute and looking over the shoulder of a woman reading a book.
‘It is a shocking breach of our standards and we would have not allowed it to be published if we had seen it in advance.
Presumably Hugh Hefner doesn’t want to lose his Southern Baptist customer base.
Mr. John Pruyn, 57, of Thorold was among the protesters at the recent G20 summit in Toronto; unlike most of the protesters, he has a prosthetic leg – but, so he alleges, that didn’t stop the police mistreating him:
“‘Get the four of them!'” Pruyn recalled a police officer saying.
“One of them put a knee on my head, and pinned me to the ground [and] my arms were underneath me,” he said. “And one of them said I was trying to resist arrest, but I wasn’t… I couldn’t move.”
Police then “yanked” his arms out from underneath him, tied his wrists together behind his back with plastic ties, and ordered him to get up and walk, he alleges.
“I said I couldn’t. So then one of them grabbed my artificial leg, and yanked it off and then they ordered me to hop.”
When Pruyn told police he couldn’t hop, they picked him up by his armpits and dragged him across the ground, scraping his elbows on the rough pavement, he said. His glasses fell off at some point during the altercation and were lost.
Police took Pruyn to a police van, where he sat without his leg for more than an hour, he said. He was later transported to a temporary detention centre in the city’s east end, given a wheelchair and put in a cell, he said.
Police refused to give him back his prosthetic leg for fear he would use it as a weapon, he said.
It’s difficult not to feel sorry for someone with a prosthetic leg, so, in spite of the nagging thought that Mr. Pruyn is well aware of this and has used it to his advantage, I am trying to see his side of things and feel the outrage he obviously wants me to feel at his misadventure with the Canadian police force. At the same time, I find myself valiantly struggling (Anglicans enjoy struggling) against a rising note of comedy that would find itself quite at home in a P. G. Wodehouse story.
Here is Mr. Pruyn shortly before losing his leg: his unwillingness to move doesn’t help his case, neither does the squeaky voice do much to bolster my resolve not to see him as Wodehouse creation:
Many years ago I was in San Francisco when flag burning was a popular way of expressing distaste for something or other the US was doing overseas. As I wandered innocently along the sidewalk admiring the view and inhaling the salty air, a man sidled up to me and suggested I cross the road; he flashed a police badge. I obliged and stood to watch the scene that unfolded. After a few minutes a couple of youngish men ran to the middle of the road and ignited a flag; police and news cameras followed. Before the police actually reached the young men, they started rolling on the ground screaming “police brutality” – all recorded for public edification. As Malcolm Muggeridge used to like saying – often while in front of a camera – “the camera always lies.”
Very probably Mr. Pruyn was treated badly by the police. In the aftermath, he does seem to be enjoying the attention, though: his photograph is popping up in newspapers all over the place – with and without leg.
In the CofE’s case, the straw that is breaking the camel’s back is not just the possible consecration of a gay bishop – Dr. Jeffrey John specifically – but women bishops.
As Ed Tomlinson points out, though, the real problem is the substitution of a subjective experience derived pseudo-faith for faith that has been revealed by God:
As an Anglican priest likely to accept Rome’s offer I urge Synod to think again. We reach a crossroads and clarity is vital if pain is to be kept to a minimum. Either the Church of England wants to profess the revealed faith or one being revealed through innovation. So set your course that your members might know where they stand.
In truth the continuing desire to consecrate women is answer in itself. So I urge no provision at all but sincere commitment to release buildings and funds to those whose future lies elsewhere. Stop fudging, it no longer works, and what you are going to do, do quickly. Amiable separation is preferable to an abusive, damaging union.
I admire that last paragraph for its invincible optimism. The fact is Anglicanism in the West has little interest in Christianity – instead, it is obsessed with power, institutionalism and money: as in North America, the lawsuits will begin as soon as those whose future lies elsewhere switch allegiance and try to stay in their buildings.
What is also quite likely is – to take a leaf out of the ACoC book – procrastination through conversation; woolliness through waffling. Or as Fred Hiltz might put it: “embracing our differences in a Spirit-led watershed moment by having more conversation – that’s an action which makes me proud to be Anglican.”
Sexuality discernment statement released in French.
General Synod’s statement on sexuality discernment is now available in French. At the General Synod 2010 meeting, members met several times in small groups to discuss human sexuality. This statement is a report from these conversations and acknowledges the differing viewpoints on human sexuality within the church as well as members’ desire to stay in conversation.
This translation will mainly be of interest to Anglicans in the Diocese of Quebec – well, and Montreal, although Montreal is largely bilingual. The average age of a Diocese of Quebec Anglican is 75 and, as you can imagine, they’ve all been champing at the bit to talk about gay sex: now they can really get down to what interests them before shuffling off this mortal coil:
The Diocese of Quebec is all but dead, its bishop told the Canadian House of Bishop at their fall meeting in Niagara Falls, the Anglican Journal of Canada reports.
The Rt. Rev. Dennis Drainville said his diocese was “teetering on the verge of extinction” according to an account given by the church’s official newspaper.
Of the diocese’s 82 congregations, 50 were childless and 35 congregations had an average age of 75. These graying congregations often had no more than 10 people in church on Sundays, he said. “The critical mass isn’t there, there’s no money anymore,” he said.
A theatrical event; breaking open deep truth and asking big questions.
Roots Among the Rocks, is a brand new play about life, faith, religion and our relationship with the church. It is written, directed and performed by a talented group of young Anglicans and Lutherans from across Canada and it’s coming to Vancouver this summer
Warning: Roots Among the Rocks is a show written for the whole church. In it, the cast confronts issues of identity, community, trust, and forgiveness.
It does not contain: violence, swearing, nudity, smoke effects, reality TV hosts, strobe lighting, an obligatory kiss scene, or robots.
It does contain: confession, dance, poetry, drug addiction, humour, cancer, biblical stories, St. Augustine, an irreverent tribute to Sunday morning worship, human sexuality, rocks, prayers, hopes, dreams and rap.
We think anyone age 12 and over will enjoy it.
I saw this at General Synod and it would be churlish of me to say I didn’t enjoy it because the young actors were very talented and presented their point well. But what was the point?
The play was an elegy to the Christianity of I’m OK, you’re OK, gay is OK. If that’s the message you would like your 12 year old to hear, go and see it.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
Obama’s Cairo initiative didn’t seem to have much effect, so the obvious next step to make Muslims feel good about themselves is – Muslims on Mars. It makes sense: ObaMars Outreach.
Although I agree with the opposition, the whole raucous, ugly cacophony of thousands of people trying to make a point simultaneously leaves me queasily thinking of something Søren Kierkegaard wrote:
When the truth triumphs with the help of 10,000 roaring people – also assuming that what triumphs in this way is itself true – because of the form and manner of the triumph a far greater untruth triumphs. Papers and Journals.
