Tag Archives: barmy vicars

Vicar dons miniskirt and gold tights

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From here:

A vicar who outraged his parishioners when he dressed as a ‘tart’ for a fundraising costume party has retired from the Church.

The Reverend Martin Wray left his position at St Lawrence the Martyr Church in Horsley Hill, South Shields, after being on sick leave for several months following his part in the charity bash.

The 59-year-old was photographed at the  ‘vicars and tarts’ party wearing a mini-skirt, gold leggings and high heels at the town’s Steamboat pub on the Mill Dam in August last year.

What was meant to be a fun event though caused a stir at the church, with some of the congregation believing the published photograph of the vicar as a ‘tart’ brought his  parish into disrepute.

But friends of Mr Wray, who entered into a gay partnership last May and who continues to live in the town, said the whole episode had ‘a whiff of homophobia’ about it.

 

 

It brings home just how muddled the Church of England has become when a vicar has to don a miniskirt and gold tights in addition to having a homosexual lover before his parishioners suspect something untoward is going on.

A Church of England vicar, the Devil’s Interval and the “liberative theology of darkness”

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Just when you thought you’d heard everything from the CofE:

The Rev Rachel Mann claims that the much-maligned form of music [heavy metal] demonstrates the “liberative theology of darkness”, allowing its tattooed and pierced fans to be more “relaxed and fun” by acknowledging the worst in human nature.

She says that by contrast, churchgoers can appear too sincere and take themselves too seriously.

The priest admits that many will be “concerned” about metal lyrics praising Satan and mocking Christianity, but insists it is just a form of “play-acting”.

Miss Mann, priest-in-charge of St Nicholas’s, Burnage, writes in this week’s Church Times: “Since Black Sabbath effectively created it in 1969 by using the dissonant sound of the medieval ‘Devil’s chord’, heavy metal has been cast as dumb, crass, and on, occasions satanic; music hardly fit for intelligent debate, led alone theological reflection.

For more information on the “Devil’s Interval” take a look here. And here it is as a diminished 5th in a distinctly non-devilish snippet (the dissonance in the 2nd and 4th bars):

Sad to say, Rev Mann can’t seem to make the distinction between the silly demonization of a musical interval and integrating Satan, darkness, violence, destruction and death into one’s Christian life. I suppose it’s just the next step in inclusion:

Miss Mann says that heavy metal songs, characterized by distorted guitar sounds, “intense” beats and “muscular” vocals, are “unafraid to deal with death, violence and destruction”.

Its “predominantly male and white” fans “generally like tattoos and piercings” but are “graceful, welcoming and gentle”.

“The music’s willingness to deal with nihilistic and, on occasion, extremely unpleasant subjects seems to offer its fans a space to accept others in a way that shames many Christians.

“Metal’s refusal to repress the bleak and violent truths of human nature liberates its fans to be more relaxed and fun people”.

She goes on to claim that “metal has no fear of human darkness” and while some Christians are similarly unafraid, “many are yet to discover its potential as a place of integration”.