Diocese of BC: building ambivalence

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Mary Ruth Snyder, the editor of the Diocese of BC’s newspaper, the Diocesan Post is all for sloughing off church buildings in the interest of following Jesus:

Jesus never had a building, that is about as outside as you can get and he is our example, is he not? Let’s show God and Jesus that we have actually been paying attention to their words and their actions and follow the example set by the Son of God.

Let go … and let God.
Let go of the buildings
Let go of the books
Let go of our fears
Let go of our comfort
Let go of our humanistic expectations
Just let go, get outside the lines and see what happens!

Perhaps she didn’t consult the diocese’s bishop, James Cowan before expressing such enthusiasm for a cavalier abandoning of buildings. He seems pretty determined to hang on to them:

Victoria – The Anglican Diocese of British Columbia (Vancouver Island & the Gulf Islands) has asserted its ownership of buildings at 4125 Metchosin Road, in the District of Metchosin, by securing the property with a change of locks and the installation of a monitored alarm system. The property is known as St. Mary of the Incarnation Anglican Church.

The Bishop’s need to “protect and preserve” people and property is a result of the Episcopal and the synodical make-up of Anglicanism in Canada.

The truth of the matter is, when the diocese wants to close down a church in order to sell it, parishioners are reminded that “Jesus never had a building”; when a parish joins ANiC, Cowan feels a sudden need to preserve the “property of the institution in my care”.

At least one thing is consistent in the ACoC: the application of the ethics of self-interest.

Diocese of Toronto: a Good Friday exclusive

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The Diocese of Toronto is sponsoring a walk for the excluded:

Good Friday Justice Walk focuses on exclusion.

A creative Good Friday “Walk for Justice” on April 2 through downtown Toronto will connect a core event of Christian faith — Good Friday — with a key issue of modern life: exclusion.

The Walk for Justice starts at 2 p.m. at Holy Trinity, beside the Eaton Centre. Walkers will attend three stations on nearby streets, then return to Holy Trinity at 4:30 p.m. for the closing station and fellowship. Music, mime and prayer will explore the theme of “Ubuntu:  Who is Excluded?” An African term, Ubuntu is all about knowing our identities through our relationships.

For some people, the horror of exclusion goes back to childhood: for example teams are selected by picking individuals out of a group and you find yourself part of an ever dwindling remnant that nobody wants. The good news is, those of us in that boat usually get over it and now take our revenge by ridiculing team sports at every opportunity.

The irony in Anglicanism’s devotion to its new substitute god, inclusivity, is that the only thing those who are not excluded have in common is that they are with a bunch of other people who are also not excluded. An ego boost for those left out of childhood sports teams, perhaps, but a pathetically vacuous association for everyone else.

Islam is a religion of peace – hang on, no it isn’t

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According to a Pakistani Muslim scholar, Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, blowing innocent people up in the name of Islam earns you a ticket to hell not to nuptial bliss with 72 virgins:

An influential Muslim scholar has issued a global ruling against terrorism and suicide bombing.

Dr Tahir ul-Qadri, from Pakistan, says his 600-page judgement, known as a fatwa, completely dismantles al-Qaeda’s violent ideology.

The scholar describes al-Qaeda as an “old evil with a new name” that has not been sufficiently challenged.

The scholar’s movement is growing in the UK and has attracted the interest of policymakers and security chiefs.

In his religious ruling, delivered in London, Dr Qadri says that Islam forbids the massacre of innocent citizens and suicide bombings.

“They [terrorists] can’t claim that their suicide bombings are martyrdom operations and that they become the heroes of the Muslim Umma [global brotherhood]. No, they become heroes of hellfire, and they are leading towards hellfire,” he said.

Anjem Choudary, living in the UK courtesy of British taxpayers, is unconvinced:

CBN News traveled to London to talk with Anjem Choudary, a leading Muslim radical who says Islamic teachings are what shaped his pro-jihad message.

Although both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have declared that Islam is a religion of peace, Choudary begs to differ.

A Religion of Peace?

“You can’t say that Islam is a religion of peace,” Choudary told CBN News. “Because Islam does not mean peace. Islam means submission. So the Muslim is one who submits. There is a place for violence in Islam. There is a place for jihad in Islam.”

Choudary is the leader of Islam4UK, a group recently banned in Britain under the country’s counter-terrorism laws. He wants Islamic Sharia law to rule the United Kingdom and is working to make that dream a reality.

While Islamic radicals in the United States usually prefer to speak in more moderate tones while in public, masking their true agenda, Choudary has no such inhibitions.

He has praised the 9/11 hijackers and has called for the execution of Pope Benedict. He also stirred controversy recently when video emerged of him converting a 10-year-old British boy to Islam.

Dr. Qadri is a Muslim who likes to promote interfaith dialogue and to play down extreme forms of Islam. He concentrates on the social and cultural teachings of Islam, and would like to portray Islam as rational and scientific.

In other words he is Islam’s Rowan Williams and, one presumes, has just about as much influence on the course of Islam as Rowan does on Christianity.

Anglican Church of Canada. General Synod 2010: doing the Indaba?

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The Journal reports:

Issues of sexuality: At its last meeting, CoGS appointed a working group to recommend a process to discuss issues of sexuality. “I think…people feel the process should be driven more by conversation and discernment than by resolution and debate,” Archbishop Hiltz said.

These conversations will begin, he added, with updates from a Faith, Worship and Ministry committee as  well as the Primate’s Theological Commission and the House of Bishops.

This probably means that Hiltz will use some kind of Indaba-style diversionary tactic to prevent attendees addressing the same-sex blessing problem directly: more conversation, more discernment, more listening, more slipperiness. Since a number of dioceses are already blessing same-sex unions, they will continue and others will probably follow; and Hiltz will be able to claim he has not actually given them permission. This is known as leadership in the ACoC.

One might hope that the few conservatives still in the ACoC will see through the ploy and force the issue; a vain hope, I fear.

Richard Dawkins apologises

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For his prior emotional outburst. The apology is here:

The controversy caused by our decision to close the forums on RichardDawkins.net has greatly upset me. It has been raging for several days now and I have spent that time – frustratingly hampered by long haul flights, jet lag and the need to consult people in several different time zones – talking to colleagues and trustees, and reading a multitude of emails as well as open letters, blogs, internet comments and even newspaper articles, and I am now finally in a position to respond publicly. Please forgive me for replying collectively rather than individually. I am engaged in a strenuous book promotion tour of Australia and it would take too long to write separately to everybody who has written to me.

I would like to start by apologising for our handling of this situation. We have not communicated well with our forum volunteers and users (for example in my insensitive ‘Outrage’ post, which was written in the heat of the moment). In the process we have caused unintended hurt and offence, and I am very sorry about that. In a classic case of a vicious circle, some of the responses to our announcement also caused considerable hurt and distress to us, and in the atmosphere of heightened emotion that followed, some of our subsequent actions went too far. I hope you will understand the human impulses that led to this, and accept my apology for them. I take full personal responsibility.

Someone in the comments to this post in Dawkins’ forum pointed out that Dawkins Deniers have been making hay with the Dawkins Debacle; and I confess to having experienced a satisfying sense of schadenfreude. The rest of the comments are devoted to expressing a strange sycophantic gratitude – reminiscent of the Stockholm syndrome – to the One who has revealed to his disciples that life is entirely pointless.

There are but few dissenters. Here is one:

What a hypocrite. At first he called the whole thing a ‘storm in a teapot’, now he’s changed his tune? And everyone here wants to drink the kool-aid that he did this for noble reasons?

Of course he didn’t. It’s because he stood to lose money, pure and simple, because the most offended where his hardcore fans that contribute to his living. He didn’t want to damage his marketable brand name.

He’s the equivalent of politician who gets caught with his pants down. Like Harold Ford, all of a sudden changing his tune about gay marriage, for the sake of winning votes in a place where the gay vote matters.

It’s all a pathetic show.

Yes, I’m well aware that this comment is going to be deleted, but I have no shame in speaking the truth.

It couldn’t really be all about the cash, could it?

Homosexuals protest that the Roman Catholic Church is too Roman Catholic

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From the BBC:

Hundreds of Dutch activists have walked out of a Mass in protest at a Roman Catholic policy of denying communion to practising homosexuals.

On this occasion, the church, in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, had already decided not to serve communion, so the protesters left, shouting and singing.

The dispute began earlier this month when a priest in a nearby town refused communion to an openly gay man.

This dispute began during Dutch carnival celebrations earlier in February, when the man chosen to be carnival prince in nearby Reusel was refused communion because of his open homosexuality.

The refusal offended many in the local community.

Several hundred demonstrators, dressed in pink wigs and clothes, left the church in protest.

The man at the centre of the row has said he just wants equal treatment – if he is regarded as a sinner, he wants the priest to refuse communion to all other sinners too.

The man at the centre of the row, rather than come to the Lord’s table as a penitent sinner, wants to argue with God about his particular sinfulness which, presumably, he thinks is so special that it deserves to be affirmed rather than forgiven. That is equal treatment?

Toxic TV

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Leo Tolstoy in his later years was taken to see a film by a friend. His response was, “why would anyone watch such rubbish?”

Malcolm Muggeridge, after a lifetime of making his living from television, retreated to a small English village and had his television aerial removed. I met him in the early 1980s and mentioned how much I enjoyed his writing. He said that that was music to his ears; I doubt he would have responded similarly had I said how much I enjoyed his TV appearances.

Theodore Dalrymple isn’t swayed favourably by the pernicious twaddle that emanates from the electronic purveyor of mental pollution either:

Shortly before Mr Blair was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, a newspaper discovered that I had not had a television in my home for about thirty years. This struck the editor of the newspaper as an extraordinary circumstance; so extraordinary in fact, rather like having been an anchorite in the Syrian desert subsisting on locusts and honey, that he contacted me to ask whether I would agree to having a television installed in my home so that I could tell readers, after a week of watching it, what I thought of it. This I consented to do on one very firm condition: that the newspaper took the television away at the end of the week. The newspaper agreed.

When the television arrived, I plugged it in and turned it on. The picture was grainy, for something else was required, evidently, to have a good reception. But it was good enough to know what was going on.

The programme was one of those in which a degraded family, or perhaps I should say a group of human beings who have lived in close association for some time or other, airs its appalling behaviour in public in return, I should imagine, for money, and for the prurient delectation of a voyeuristic audience.

A fattish woman approaching middle age was complaining in a monotonously high-pitched voice, halfway between a harangue and a wail, about her three daughters who were aged twelve, thirteen and fourteen respectively. According to her, they ‘did drugs’ and had left home to be prostitutes.

At this point, the presenter of the show interrupted her and asked the audience to give a warm welcome – with, of course, a round of applause – to the three young trollops in question, who came tripping down the steps to the television set with smirks of self-satisfaction on their faces. No lack of self-esteem there, I thought; rather too much, in fact.

Of course, mother and daughters began at once to trade high-pitched insults and accusations, and generally behaved like a dog and a cat enclosed in a sack. There was undoubtedly a morbid fascination in all this, though the spectacle was disgusting; suffice it to say that I was not encouraged by it to take steps to ensure that the television had a permanent presence in my home.

The newspaper had given me a timetable of programmes to watch, though it did not inform me as to the criterion it had used in their selection. Whether what my wife – who likewise had had no exposure to television for years before I met her – and I watched was better or worse than the average that was on offer to viewers, we could not say; but it seemed terrible pabulum to us, having approximately the same effect on our consciousness as a food-mixer on vegetables. It turned it into a kind of soup.

Apple using child labour

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Apple’s Steve Jobs believes in trendy causes like equality and fundamental rights and, for that reason, donated $100k to support homosexual marriage in California:

Steve Jobs’ company Apple Inc. released a statement in October 2008 opposing Proposition 8 and donating $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Said Apple, “[We] strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation.”

Oddly enough, until the prospect of bad publicity loomed large, Jobs’ enthusiasm for fundamental rights did not extend to avoiding the use of child labour in the making of iPods and iPhones:

Technology giant Apple has admitted that child labour has been employed at some of the factories that build its iPods, computers and mobile phones.

An audit found that at least eleven 15-year-old children were found to be working in three factories that supply Apple in the last year.

It said that child workers were now no longer being used at the sites, or were no longer underage.

High-tech piety is no match for profit.

Rifqa Bary: a few more twists in the plot

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US law enforcement adroitly illustrates the Mr. Bumble Principle.

Read it all at American Thinker:

A girl flees from her home in fear for her life — and law enforcement goes after the people who helped her. That’s the situation in the Rifqa Bary case. The Columbus Dispatch reported this about Rifqa’s friend Brian Williams: “An Ohio minister accused of driving a teenage runaway to a bus station last year has retained a lawyer as police say they’re investigating whether anyone broke the law in helping the Christian convert leave home for Florida.” And why did she flee to Florida? Because, she says, when her devout Muslim father found out she had become a Christian, he said to her, “I will kill you.” And with Islam’s death penalty for apostates, she had to take that seriously. But Rifqa’s father is not in danger of being prosecuted. Brian Williams is.

Law enforcement, in a perverse twist of reality, continues persecuting the Christians in Ohio who helped a teenage apostate escape the death threat (in line with sharia law) made by her family. They are investigating any “criminal wrongdoing with anyone involved in getting her from one location to another.” How many other runaway cases are pursued in this way? How many other teenage girls in America have this attention paid to them by law enforcement? How many teenage girls who sell their bodies for sex and drugs for an adult pimp are pursued this way? And their pimps?

Diocese of Niagara: chipping away at the divinity of Jesus

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The diocesan newspaper is a beacon of enlightenment – on how Niagara got to where it is today:

A friend recently asked me, out of the blue, “Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?” I could have simply said, “Yes,” but hesitated instead.

Of course you did: why build faith when you can sow doubt. This is, after all, what Western Anglicans mean by Evangelism.

Why? I felt that it was a simple question to which I should, as a Christian, have an immediate and satisfactory answer. Racing through my head, however, were various interpretations of these words, some more valid than others. Furthermore, what answer would be most useful to my friend at her stage of questioning? Other progressive Christians joke about being labeled heretic.

Being labelled a heretic in the Diocese of Niagara is no joke: it is a condition of employment.

Back to the question of the identity of Jesus. He called himself “the Son of Man,” a more modest label than “Son of God.” Like “Messiah,” with its overtly warlike associations, “Son of God” was an aggressive, politically loaded term from the Old Testament that some of Jesus’ followers must have pressured him to claim. They also called him “Teacher,” “Rabbi,” and “Lord.” The Christian Church has used all these titles as well as “Christ” and “Emmanuel.”

First we employ Anglican bafflegab and confuse the issue of Jesus’ divinity by focussing on the irrelevant: warlike associations and aggressive, politically loaded term[s].

By the time I had realized that this information was merely the tiniest corner of the scholarship on the topic, days had passed. I began to consider that the key word in my friend’s question was “believe.” That posed a second challenge. Have I any business expressing my ideas let alone my beliefs if I do not believe in Jesus in an orthodox way?

Then clinch the muddle by casting doubt on the meaning of common words: in this instance believe.

This is a variation on the Nicene Creed debate. Many church leaders have stopped reciting it during church services because they can no longer believe it to be literally true. No wonder many loyal Anglicans feel torn! Another friend said recently, “I like to recite the Creeds because they remind me of what I believe. If I throw out these beliefs, which I realize are limited in terms of common sense, it’s like jumping from the familiar into the unknown and I don’t know where I’ll land.”

And the coup de gras: almost no-one in the Anglican Church of Canada believes the Creed any more; if you do happen to find yourself in a parish that defies common sense and still says, “Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father”, you can always cross your fingers.

As Søren Kierkegaard, the early 19th century Danish theologian, put it, to be a Christian requires a leap to faith because of the logical absurdity inherent in orthodoxy. How else, for example, can we assert that Jesus is both God and man when our rational minds say that this, let alone the doctrine of the Trinity, doesn’t make sense? To take a leap to faith requires a leap of faith. The pervasive 20th century response to the claims of religion was the existential despair of nihilism.

It’s just as well Kierkegaard is no longer with us since he spent much of his life inveighing against clergy who lived lives contrary to their professed beliefs. His solution to this hypocrisy was for the clergy to live up to their beliefs; the contemporary Anglican solution is for the clergy to abandon them.

I called my friend and gave her my rather long answer to her question about my belief in Jesus as the Son of God. She said, “Oh, really, I didn’t know it was so complicated! I’m sorry to put you to all this bother. What matters to me is not right or wrong theology but that we are friends!” As Paul put it, “if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

Jesus’ divinity is mysterious; it only becomes complicated to those who don’t believe in it.

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus seems to have been pleased by Peter’s prompt response: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Two millennia later, the question, “Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God?” should not be asked as a test of orthodoxy. It deserves an answer only if asked in the spirit of friendship.

Who needs a test of orthodoxy? Not the Diocese of Niagara.