An iPodless Lent

Posted on by
2

Anglican bishops suggest we turn off our iPods for Lent. I didn’t think the average bishop knew what an iPod was:

The bishops of Liverpool and London have called on us to give up our iPods for Lent, which starts today, Ash Wednesday. That’s a sacrifice of which most of us, of a certain age, can heartily approve, since we don’t actually own iPods. But we might wonder what the point of it all is.

It’s appears to be one of the Church of England’s seasonal flurries of post-modern rubrics, like being told which carols are politically incorrect at the start of Advent. When it comes to Lent, we’re cutomarily told that it’s about a whole lot more than giving up booze and chocolate, that we should take up worthwhile activities too and, in the techno age, that some central Church Deep Thought will text us a daily scriptural bon mot if we just ask for it.

And where could that glimpse lead? One destination could be a church like mine, where this evening the choir will sing Allegri’s Miserere, its repeated soprano refrain like an angel’s wail from heaven and the transcendental beauty and spiritual re-assurance of which moves the undistracted listener to tears. It’s certainly worth turning your iPod off for.

Unless, like me, you have Allegri’s Miserere on your iPod; presumably that is worth turning your iPod on for.

Turning off your iPod during Lent is all part of the CofE’s batty bishops contingent Carbon Fast plan. It includes not flushing the toilet – something that fits nicely with no iPod since you won’t be tempted to sit listening to Allegri’s Miserere while sitting on a pile of yesterday’s unflushed poop.

Another suggestion from our technically astute bishops is to:

Eat by candlelight. How many rooms do you light in the evenings? Turn out the lights and have a meal by candlelight.

which will fill the air with benzene, styrene, toluene, acetone and particulate matter. At least it will take everyone’s mind off the unflushed toilets.

I do like the idea of the carbon averse bishops being as disconnected from the Internet as they are from reality, though; perhaps they should also switch their microphones off while delivering sermons.

Where are the Anglican protests over homosexuals killed in Iran?

Posted on by
2

The Anglican Church is in the West is falling all over itself to condemn the homosexuality bill before the Ugandan government. Here is the screech of outrage from the Anglican Church of Canada:

COGS passed a resolution that expressed its dismay and concern over the draft proposed anti-homosexuality bill currently before the parliament of Uganda. COGS resolved to call upon the church of the province of Uganda to oppose this private member’s bill, and called upon the Government of Canada, through the Minister of External Affairs, to convey to the government of Uganda a deep sense of alarm about this fundamental violation of human rights and through diplomatic channels, to press for its withdrawal; and asked the Primate to send this message to the appropriate bodies.

The bill as it stands is draconian and has been opposed by the Anglican Church of Uganda.

What is strange, though, is Iran has been routinely hanging homosexuals for the last 30 years with no real trial except an appearance before a sharia judge; and the Anglican Church in the West has not protested at all.

Where is the deep sense of alarm, the dismay, the message to the appropriate bodies? Entirely absent.

Does Fred Hiltz only care about Anglican homosexuals? Perhaps the Anglican Church is not as diverse and inclusive as it would like people to think.

How to hit the headlines with a sermon

Posted on by
1

Tell women they should submit to their husbands.

This goes so much against the Zeitgeist, is so politically incorrect and seems so outrageous to contemporary sensibilities that the Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph and Times all carried the story.

Something that was not mentioned in any of the articles is the fact that it was Christianity that elevated women from being the property of a man to being his equal, a child of God. From a review of Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History:

Stark produces impressive evidence that Christianity was deeply appealing to pagan women, for within the Christian sub-culture, women held a much higher status than did women throughout the Greco-Roman world. Women were recognized by Christianity as equal to men, children of God with the same superantural destiny; moreover, the Christian prohibition of polygamy, divorce, birth control, abortion and infanticide contributed to the well-being of women substantially, securing them dignity and rights within both Church and state. One effect of this higher status was to increase the number of Christian women, which in turn led to a superior fertility rate for Christians, another factor in the growth of the faith.

The papers also made little mention of the fact that in Ephesians 5, just after the “wives submit to your own husbands” verse, we find:  “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” While women submit to their husbands, husbands have to love their wives as Christ loved the church: in other words, a completely selfless love: the husband would die for his beloved.

Islam makes an interesting contrast: women are considered inferior to men and the Koran encourages a Muslim husband to beat his wife – an activity that is so common it ceases to be news:

When I first began to study the topic I did not realize that an Islamic marriage is not equivalent to a Christian marriage. Its rules, roles, and requirements are different. In a Christian marriage the husband is given the role as head of the household and the wife is expected to submit to the husband’s leadership. However, she is his equal in terms of social status; she is not inferior to him. In Islam the husband is also the head of the marriage, additionally he is his wife’s manager. Women are considered to be “in-between a slave and free man”. Slaves are not equal to their masters, rather they are subservient, managed, and controlled. Similarly, Muslim wives are inferior to their husbands and are managed and controlled.

As for, “If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” women have the advantage of being able to sleep through the sermon and ask their husbands about what happened later; husbands have to be wide-eyed in rapt attention.

The Church of England votes to give homosexual clergy hookups full benefits

Posted on by
5

At its recent synod, the Church of England voted to extend pension benefits to clergy in homosexual civil “partnerships”:

Prior to the vote, surviving civil partners of deceased gay clergy could claim pension benefits, but only back to 2005 when the Civil Partnership Act was introduced.

But now the Synod has voted to extend their pension benefits by offering surviving civil partners a pension based on all of their deceased partner’s pensionable service, equating them with widows and widowers.

The change means the Church of England will go beyond the requirements of the Civil Partnership Act 2004.

One Synod member, who asked to remain anonymous, said conservative Synod members had deliberately withheld from taking to the floor to speak against the motion for fear of reprisals.

“They didn’t dare to. There would have been screams of homophobia if anyone had dared oppose it,” he said.

It’s good to know that the CofE is an inclusive church where all are free to speak their mind – as long as they maintain the harmony of the zeitgeist.

The Times, notes:

The Church allows gay clergy to register their civil partnerships, but requests that they remain celibate.

Nudge nudge.

How many homosexual clergy are there in the CofE?

In the London and Southwark dioceses, up to one in five clergy is thought to be gay, according to Canon Giles Goddard, co-founder of the lobby group Inclusive Church.

In Britain as a whole, the percentage of homosexuals is just 6%:

Six per cent of the population, or about 3.6 million Britons, are either gay or lesbian, the government’s first attempt to quantify the homosexual population has concluded.

So in the dioceses of London and Southwark, 20% of priests are homosexual, whereas in the general population, 6% are homosexual.

Why are there so many homosexuals in the leadership of the Anglican Church? Is it a deliberate recruitment drive by the church; are the robes particularly alluring; is it the funny hats?

Or is it a plot to subvert the only denomination that consistently preaches the true Gospel? No, that can’t be it.

Perhaps it’s the judgement of God as described in Romans: Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Rom 1:28. The ultimate punishment: letting people have their own way.

Carbon evangelism

Posted on by
3

Or how to be a Christian pain in the arse.

Kairos is suggesting a Carbon Fast for Lent; it even has a calendar of suggestions.

Among them are (with helpful study notes):

Observe heat use at school or work and make a suggestion for increased energy efficiency.  Don’t mess around with underlings: take your concern straight to the top. When you go to collect your weekly dole, make sure you walk.

Reduce the idling time of your vehicle to a minimum or speak of your concern to someone who is idling excessively. Make sure you point out the excessive carbon footprint of the next idling police car you see.

If you have two cars, discuss becoming a one-car family. Resolve not to travel in a car for one day or one full week, whatever is a challenge for you. Convince your wife that she doesn’t need her car.

If you have children in your life, inventory their toys with them. How many do they actually use? Discuss, at an appropriate level, the negative effects of over-consumption.  Good plan: blame global warming on your children. They’ll thank you for it later.

Arrange for KAIROS to give a Carbon Sabbath Initiative (CSI) workshop at your church. This will stimulate church growth: by comparison, it will make the vicar’s sermons seem really interesting.

Inventory the amount of time you spend with loved ones. Decide to spend at least two days a month in 2010 enjoying activities that will bring you closer together. This could be tricky: after doing all the other suggested activities you probably won’t have any loved ones.

Poverty reduction in the Diocese of Niagara

Posted on by
3

Here is a letter from Bishop Michael Bird to the Hon. Deb Matthews, June 2008:

Bishop Michael Bird, Anglican Diocese of Niagara

“In the short term, we realize that charity and compassion are essential when people are suffering and we will continue to respond to the needs of our neighbours. But for too long, faith and community groups , individuals, volunteers and social service agencies and ministries have carried a disproportionate load in meeting the needs of individuals at the local community level . . .
We recognize that we all have a role to play to reduce poverty, however, only government can accomplish the structural change to law, programs and policies that are essential for a successful poverty reduction strategy. Only government can re- allocate the resources of society more equitably through its regulatory and taxing powers and increase its funding of social programs.

Please hear our communities call for social justice.”

There you have it: the Diocese of Niagara’s plan to reduce poverty is government enforced wealth redistribution. Hasn’t that been tried before?  Oh yes:

Add an Image

Climategate: director of the Climatic Research Unit admits he “is not well organised”

Posted on by
1

What a surprise:

Phil Jones, the professor behind the “Climategate” affair, has admitted some of his decades-old weather data was not well enough organised.

He said this contributed to his refusal to share raw data with critics – a decision he says he regretted.

His colleagues said that keeping a paper trail was not one of Professor Jones’ strong points. Professor Jones told BBC News: “There is some truth in that”.

The thing is, if the data was not well-organised enough to show to critics, how could it be well-organised enough to be fed into a program and produce graphs?

In a BBC interview, Jones admits there were rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 that were essentially identical and that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming. It has been cooling since 2002, although that is not long enough to be statistically significant.

Of the now infamous email where Jones referred to a “trick”, he says it was:

“a convenient way of achieving something”, in this case joining the earlier valid part of the tree-ring record with the recent, more reliable instrumental record.

Lord Monckton points out, though, that the computer program used to process the raw data has the comment:

“These will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures.”

Liberally sprinkled through it – a bit of a giveaway. This goes to show that you should not put comments in your computer programs other than: “this code was hard to write; it’s *supposed* to be hard to understand”.

Poor Professor Jones says that his life has been awful since the emails were exposed. Based on this interview, I don’t think it is about to get much better; I found his protestations of innocence quite unconvincing.

Even if the climate is not heating up, the scandal over climategate is: Nature editor Philip Campbell was forced out of an independent panel after saying there was nothing to suggest a cover up by scientists at the University of East Anglia.

In contrast, here in Canada climate experts who question global warming are still vilified and ostracised; we are so politically correct.

A member of an independent panel to investigate claims that climate scientists covered up flawed data on global warming has been forced to resign after sceptics questioned his impartiality.

Openly Gay Episcopal Priest Receives More Nods

Posted on by
Reply

From the Christian Post:

A controversial priest who has a lesbian partner has so far received more than half the votes she needs to be consecrated as an assistant bishop.

And the 120-day consent process began just a month ago.

The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool has 29 consents to become bishop suffragan, according to a recent report by the Diocese of Los Angeles. She needs 56 to be confirmed as the second openly homosexual bishop in The Episcopal Church.

“Throughout her 30 years of ordained ministry, the Rev. Mary Glasspool has been faithful and consistent to the ministry, doctrine and teaching of the Episcopal Church,” Bishop Nathan Baxter of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania wrote in a pastoral letter indicating his consent.

“On the matter of her sexuality and life-style, the Rev. Glasspool is faithful to the spirit and prayerfully determined direction of our church,” he noted.

And there you have it: “Rev. Glasspool is faithful to the spirit and prayerfully determined direction of our church”. TEC has abandoned Biblical directives and, instead, has decided to go its own way, faithful to a spirit that is entirely unrelated to the Spirit and prayer that is entirely solipsistic.