More on Stephen Sizer

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Stephen asks some questions here and comes to the conclusion that we are besieged by Christian Zionists. I’ve answered the questions in the spirit of Occam’s razor rather than Sizer’s conspiracy paranoia:

Unanswered Questions?

Why is there such a close relationship today between the Christian Right, the political establishment and the State of Israel?

Because Israel is the only functioning democracy in the region.

Why after 40 years, does Israel continue to occupy territory in Lebanon (the Sheba Farms), Syria (the Golan Heights) and Palestine (the West Bank) while Syria has been pressured to withdraw from Lebanon?

Because it is beset on all sides by those who wish to destroy it.

Why is Israel able to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons disregarding every international agreement while Iran is threatened with pre-emptive attack for seeking nuclear technology?

The same reason Western democracies are able to: they have the technology. What Sizer probably means is why is Israel permitted WMDs and Iran isn’t: because Israel is interested in defence, Iran in destruction.

Why has Israel been the subject of more UN Resolutions than any other country in the world?

Why ask such a stupid question? The UN is notoriously biased against Israel.

Why has the USA vetoed virtually every one of them?

The USA still has a remaining vestige of sanity.

Why have Britain and America become the focus of so much hatred from the Islamic world?

Because they have democracies that work and they are not Islamic.

Why are our countries the target for Islamist terrorism – despite our commitment to the rule of international law, democracy and human rights?

Islamist terrorists don’t care about any rule of law other than Sharia.

The answers to these questions remain inexplicable unless we factor in what is now probably the most influential and destructive movement amongst Christians today – Christian Zionism.

They are perfectly explicable; what is inexplicable is why a Christian has to resort to Zionist conspiracies to explain the obvious.

Are you listening, Fred?

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When I first saw Fred Hiltz ask for opinions on what Canadian Anglicans would like to see in the ACoC in 2019, I thought the results would be extremely dull. I was wrong: so far, they are rather amusing.  Here is one response:

Dear Anglicans,

I was interested to see on your national church website that you are engaged in something called “Vision 2019″, and that you wish to hear from church members about “your community, your local church, your theology, your worship, your passions, your dreams, your nightmares”.

I am no longer a church member, although that fact in and of itself might be of interest to you.

Let’s start.  “My community”.  I was raised in the diocese of Caledonia, but have since then lived in the dioceses of New Westminster, British Columbia and Edmonton (but have never been a church member during the time I’ve lived in Edmonton).

“My local church”.  Well, the parish in which I was raised was dissolved and the property sold by the bishop of the day in order to raise money to (I swear I’m not making this up) repair the dry rot afflicting his cathedral in Prince Rupert. The Anglicans in my home community have dispersed, variously to the United Church, Catholic Church or (in many cases) have abandoned faith communities altogether.  Nice work.

The parish I attended in the diocese of New Westminster has been consolidated into other parishes.  I do not know what has happened since.

The parish I attended in the diocese of British Columbia has spent the past five or six years recovering from a dangerous demagogue of a priest who was variously coddled and ignored by two successive bishops who are, let’s just say, administratively challenged.  In the meantime, parishioners were seriously wounded by this priest (and his wife), and are now nursing their wounds in other settings or privately.

“My theology.”  I humbly submit your inquiry should be directed to the church’s theology.  Very little of the teachings that were conveyed to me in my upbringing seem to matter very much anymore.  The church seems to see itself as something of a NGO, and a purveyor of moral relativism (except when it comes to rooting out anything that has a vaguely conservative sniff to it).  There is a reason your parishes are closing, and it is that none of us who used to frequent your pews did so in order to hear your priests urge us to recycle, write to our MP’s to urge settlement of aboriginal land claims, or to hear try to find the spiritual component of U2 music.  While one can (as I have) do all those things on one’s own volition, we went to church, simply put, to find some sublime, transcendent connection with God.  In your quest to make the church “relevant”, then, you stripped for many of us its purpose.  Really, some of the crap I was reading in diocesan newspapers and the Anglican Journal smacked of facile, “summer of love” ideological nonsense.  I can attend my employee bargaining unit meetings for that kind of stuff – why bother going to church?

“My worship”?  Not Anglican, anymore.  Thanks very much for abandoning your flock in the way you have – both metaphorically (in your theology) and in actual fact (shutting down my former parishes).

Lessee, what’s next.  Right – “My passions”.  Used to be church.  Used to be church music.  Used to be serving the church.  All gone, for the reasons explicated above.  (On the bright side, I now have more time on weekends to spend with my kids skiing, skating, etc.)

“My dreams”?  Well, I could be short-sighted and suggest that I dream of going back in time and avoiding a parish that was served by a megalomaniacal demagogue, but I think I need to dream big.  Maybe I dream of going back in time and arranging that one of my ancestors marry Jewish?

“My nightmares”?  My wife insisting we return to the Anglican church.  Fortunately, the chances of that are zippo, since you’ve managed to turn her off just as completely as you have me.

There you have it.  Just one disaffected member of your former flock, who happily turned in his baptism certificate some years back.  I tune in with interest to your website every now and then to snigger at the typical Anglican silliness.  (This time I see the English church is purporting to ban its members from joining some loonie fringe British anti-immigrant party.  Sigh – whatever happened to just letting loons be loons?  Ah well, trust the Anglican church to never miss an opportunity for politically correct pedantry.)

Yours no longer,

Russ B

I await more with anticipation.

Update: this comment has been removed from the Vision 2019 site, supposedly at the “author’s request.“

Even Evangelicals can be barmy

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Particularly when they are Anglican. Stephen Sizer is an evangelical Anglican priest; he is a member of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, formed at the Global Anglican Futures conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem in June 2008. He has endorsed the Jerusalem Declaration and supports the Third Province Movement.

Unfortunately, like so many Anglican clergy he cannot resist the temptation to tie his faith to politics; the difference with Stephen is that he is an evangelical who is anti-Israel.

Last weekend the Revd Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water appeared at an anti-Israel meeting with an Islamist called Ismail Patel. Patel has not only accused Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’ but considers Disney to be a Jewish plot and supports Hamas, Iran and Syria.

Sizer is a virulent opponent of Christian Zionism and of Israel, which he has said he hopes will disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa. He has also applauded Iranian President Ahmadinejad for having ‘looked forward to the day when Zionism ceased to exist’.

Nevertheless, the appearance of an Anglican churchman on a pro-Islamist platform in Britain is a new and significant development. The Church of England recently banned its clergy from joining the BNP; should it not equally ban them from siding with the forces of Islamofascism?

Anyone is entitled to a political opinion, even an Anglican. The problem is, when a church leader makes political pronouncements, the implication is that his faith is informing his politics: in this case, it isn’t. It is even worse when an evangelical – someone who believes that decisions made in this life determine a person’s destination in the next – subverts an important message by supporting a less important one.

Even more idiotic, Sizer has aligned himself with Islamism, a barbaric, hate filled death cult.

It is bad enough when the blatantly left wing ACoC and TEC spout this sort of nonsense, but when it comes from within FOCA, it shows that the unhinged can be found just about anywhere.

Primate of Canada, Fred Hiltz is engaged in cross border intervention

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As the Anglican Journal reports:

Delegates from the Anglican Church of Canada recently met with their counterparts from other Anglican Communion provinces for the first Conference of the Anglican Churches in the Americas in Mutual Responsibility and Mission in San José, Costa Rica.

Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said, “It was just a wonderful opportunity for all of the provinces in the Americas to come together and talk about mission.” Primates from the provinces of the Anglican Church of Brazil, the Anglican Church of the Central Region of America (IARCA), The Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Church of Mexico were all in attendance along with other clergy and lay representatives. The primates of the West Indies and the Southern Cone of America did not come to the conference but gave their permission for individual dioceses to attend

The ultra-liberal Hiltz is visiting the Province of the Central American Region to disseminate his version of the five marks of mission, the first of which is to proclaim the Good News, something the Anglican Church of Canada has been actively suppressing in its own province for the last 30 years.

When Greg Venables showed up in Canada to have a chat with orthodox Canadian Anglicans who have taken refuge from the draconian legal antics of Hiltz and his minions, he was told by Hiltz to shove off.

THE Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Most Revd Fred Hiltz, has protested strongly against a visit to Canada by the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Greg Venables, this week.

“Stop interfering in the life of this province,” are his blunt words to Bishop Venables, who is attending the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) conference in Vancouver.

Hiltz was invited to attend this meeting, of course; but then, Greg Venables was invited to Canada.

An example of Hiltz style Gracious Restraint.

Words that have become repulsive: Gracious Restraint

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One comes to expect pharisaic phrases from the Anglican hierarchy, but none can set the teeth on edge quite as effectively as “gracious restraint”. It is one thing to bend words to make them convey something slightly different from their natural meaning; it is quite another to make them mean the exact opposite. “Gracious restraint” has become “graceless abandon”.

The bishop of Ottawa, John Chapman is the beneficiary of the usual liberal seminary indoctrination and has executed a perfect parisologist’s pirouette  to subvert meaning, make black white and apply Anglican Alchemy to make sense nonsense.

Thus, in a spasm of tangled antimony he manages to say:

I must be committed to honouring the church’s need to observe gracious restraint and as well, honour the prayer and discernment that has unfolded in the Diocese these last many decades. With these concerns in mind, I proposed to Synod 2008 that I would bring before the Canadian House of Bishops the following intention: That, we, in Ottawa, begin to explore experientially, the blessing of duly solemnized and registered civil marriages between same-sex couples, where at least one party is baptized.

Chapman is in the malodorous company of Ingham and Bird (whom, for Lent,  I have forsworn calling short) and I would be equally critical of all three, if it were not for an impulse to exercise gracious restraint.

The Mocker Mocked

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Although I support free speech, I also support the right of a community not to display something that it deems to be offensive. Apparently that’s just what Aberystwyth – a university town in Wales – did with the Life of Brian 30 years ago. But now, all the hitherto deprived inhabitants of Aberystwyth will have their chance to see it.

“When the film came out, a number of councils wouldn’t have it, fearful that it might deal a mortal blow to Christianity,” says Palin who will be attending the belated premiere on March 28 with his co-star Terry Jones. “That did not, of course, happen. A faith that is strong and confident can take a certain amount of ribbing.” The event is being organised by Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian’s girlfriend in the film, and is now – ironically – the local mayor.

I confess, I have not watched all of Life of Brian; as a Christian, I found the snippets I did see too irritating to regard it as entertaining or particular funny.

On the other hand, I do see the funny side of this:Add an Image

JOHN CLEESE has reportedly called off his relationship with younger lover BARBIE ORR – just a week after she lifted the lid on their love life. The Fawlty Towers star met Orr at an audition in October (08) while he was in the midst of divorcing his third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger.

He was reportedly left red-faced after the aspiring actress told the British press intimate details about their romance last week (19Jan09), describing the star’s naked body and recalling their first sexual encounter.

Come on John, where’s your sense of humour?

Sex, drugs and rock and roll, Muslim style

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The Civil Rights Coordinator of CAIR recommends the Muslim Sex Shop among other things:

CAIR-California’s Affad Shaikh is a rebel Islamist. While he performs the normal extremist activities, like obsess over Israel, rail against American troops, and defend militant Islamic groups overseas, he also does many things that could be considered unbecoming of a CAIR leader, at least by CAIR’s disjointed standards of conduct. Yet the group still keeps him on board.

On October 24, 2008, Shaikh wrote of his fondness of a blog which goes by the name Muslim Sex Shop. On his own blog, he stated, “Here I was cooking Macaroni [sic] Bashamel, for a friend, who wanted to get some of my good grubbing, when low and behold someone out in the cyber world sent over a link to the ‘Muslim Sex Shop.’  This American Muslim highly recommends that you visit it.”

And this:

On February 3, 2009, Shaikh discussed the possibility of legalizing prostitution and pot. He wrote, “Thinking creatively might for some mean legalizing some sin taxes – like Nevada, our brothel oriented neighbor – and even things like marijuana. If it works lets take a look at it seriously…”

The Muslim Sex Shop eloquently suggests, Now That Ramadan Is Over, You Can Do It In The Daytime and I expect Affad Shaikh does. Of course, when he has sex and gets stoned, it is a little different from the 13 year-old girl who was stoned because she was raped in Somalia, an Islamist hell masquerading as a country.

What we've all been missing: Womanist Theology

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The Anglican Journal, ever on the bleeding edge, has illumination on Womanist Theology.

‘Womanist’ theologians examine faith from black female prism

I take that back: how do you see through a black prism, even if it is female? But wait, there’s more:

Womanist theologians – female African American theologians who view the Christian faith from the prism of the experience of black women – are celebrating two decades of work of a movement that has gained increasing prominence in U.S. religious and academic circles.

I must live a sheltered life, because up until now I had never heard of Womanist Theology. It seems that “womanist” was coined by Alice Walker:

What then is a womanist? Her origins are in the black folk expression “You acting womanish,” meaning, according to Walker, “wanting to know more and in greater depth than is good for one — outrageous audacious, courageous and willful behavior.” A womanist is also “responsible, in charge, serious.” She can walk to Canada and take others with her. She loves, she is committed, she is a universalist by temperament.

Her universality includes loving men and woman, sexually or nonsexually. She loves music, dance, the spirit, food and roundness, struggle, and she loves herself. “Regardless.”

To any womanist reading this, rest assured there is a place for you in the Anglican Church of Canada where the bishops are universalists too, loving men and women sexually and non-sexually. Like you, they love food and roundness; they struggle – often with their trousers because of the roundness – and they definitely love themselves. They have little regard for anything other than their own culturally insular preoccupations – mostly sex and roundness – so one could certainly call them “Regardless”. You will fit right in.

Diocese of Ottawa: making wrong things right by doing them

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The Bishop of Ottawa has decided to begin blessing same sex unions. The reason given is:

Just as the Church was not able to come to a clear mind regarding the benefits of the ordination of women to the priesthood until it experienced the priestly ministry of women, Bishop Chapman has taken the process of discernment with regards to same sex blessings to a place beyond discussion.  Bishop Chapman believes that moving forward in the spirit of experiential discernment will allow parishes and congregations to observe and learn; allowing the Church to be better informed moving forward in preparation of next steps at General Synod 2010.

“While the issues are many, the solutions complex and the timelines demand our patience, it is my intention to move forward in our ongoing spirit of discernment,” stated Bishop Chapman. “We must “experience” the issue as a Church before clarity of heart and mind might be attained” adds The Bishop.

This new piece of Angli-jargon,  experiential discernment, gives the game away: the Diocese of Ottawa has abandoned its Christian heritage in favour of mock existentialist soup.

An atheistic existentialist such as Jean-Paul Satre would claim that, since there is no God, humanity does not have a predetermined essence that controls what we are or conditions our views of right and wrong. Rather, through making his own free choices, a person creates his essence – and his own right and wrong – by what he does. We create our own nature; existence precedes essence.

This only makes sense if you assume there is no God; but that has not stopped the Diocese of Ottawa from using the same principle in “discerning” whether same-sex blessings are the right thing to do. Instead of looking in the bible to find out God’s design and plan for humanity,  the diocese is saying “we will create our own moral laws by engaging in a questionable practice until it seems right.” This goes beyond pragmatism: the pragmatist does things and is content if they work. An atheistic existentialist does things to create their “rightness”.

Yet more evidence to show that the Anglican Church of Canada has ceased to be a Christian Church.

The Anglican Church gets no respect

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And it’s little wonder.

Michael Coren points out that:

Just as it’s usually only beautiful people who pretend that good looks don’t matter, it’s generally the rich who tell us that money isn’t particularly important. Well, it is if you don’t have any. And those drowning or swimming for their lives in the current economic storm know that unemployment, pay cuts and evaporating savings are more than mere dents in their hobbies. So when, for example, various Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders in Britain said recently that there were in fact “positive aspects to the recession” they were dismissed as religious clowns and out-of-touch dreamers.

And goes on to say:

The sudden realization that material wealth is transitory and that earning, spending and saving are as much symptoms as they are solutions should lead us to grapple for the greater and grander things in life. Such as God, faith, family, community, the spiritual and the knowledge that this is the land of shadows and that real life hasn’t begun yet.

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Bishop of London impersonating Jack Nicholson

This is entirely true; such worldly enticements as wealth and power are a distraction from life’s important questions: why are we here and what happens when we die? Once the distractions are removed, we are often forced to confront that which we have been assiduously avoiding. Regrettably, the buffoons in charge of the Anglican Church are ensnared in the very net from whose clutches the vulgar masses have been freed – accompanied by a chorus of clerical rejoicing.  The bishop of London, Richard Chartres

is paid a stipend of £57,040 a year. However, he and his family live for free in the Old Deanery, a Grade I-listed Wren house next to St Paul’s Cathedral. The apartment was refurbished for him at a cost of £300,000 in 1995. At the time, Dr. Chartres, a father of four, said the accommodation used by his bachelor predecessor was inadequate and that he needed a larger residence fit for “a public person involved in public life”, rather than a “suburban villa” for an “office wallah”.

And with nary a blush had these words of comfort to offer the “office wallas”:

he suggested that some of those who lost their jobs “seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill” and to consider the other things in life. Dr Chartres suggested that the credit crunch could give Britons a chance to “reboot our sense of what a truly flourishing human life consists of”. The bishop, the third most senior figure in the Church, added: “It is difficult to know whether to sympathise more with those who have lost their jobs or those who are left carrying even greater loads with higher targets and fewer colleagues.”

The sooner the bishop of London is relieved of his ecclesiastical treadmill, the better. Perhaps he would gain some perspective.