The Diocese of Toronto has taken a sad step backwards from full inclusion. In a recent tweet, the diocese – and I’m sorry if this triggers someone, those of a sensitive disposition should avert their gaze now – rashly assumed that the Holy Spirit’s preferred pronoun is “her”. For all we know, it could be “zir”.
Antediluvian throwbacks like me who have always thought of the Holy Spirit as “He” had no idea that the third person of the Trinity had undergone a gender transition.
Thus blazes an Anglican Journal headline for an article about the Anglican Church of Canada’s new trial liturgies for gender transition.
Apparently, the mistake we’ve been making for the last 6,000 years or so is to fall into the trap of thinking that men and women actually exist. They don’t. There is only humanity. Now we’ve finally realised that we have taken “an amazing step forward into full inclusion.” Or, depending on your perspective, confirmed Sophocles’ warning: “those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”.
Read all about it here:
“Although [Christianity] has followed cultural norms about gender wherever it’s been lived and expressed, there is in its theology and its foundation documents in the New Testament a considerable focus on our humanity and not on our gender,” Beardsley said. This focus on humanity rather than gender find reflection in one of the liturgies CoGS commended for trial use, “A Blessing Over the Process of Gender Transition”. This blessing states that according to Scripture, the “first human’s gender is more poetic than clear cut—this first human embodiment included maleness, femaleness, and more than these—all of this was affirmed as very good.” The Rev. Theo Robinson, a transgender priest at Interlake Regional Shared Ministry and consultative body member, called approval of the liturgies for trial use “an amazing step forward into full inclusion.”
Anna Greenwood-Lee bishop, of the Diocese of BC, likes to tweet. She had this to say about the Ottawa protest against vaccine mandates:
There is nothing particularly surprising – or accurate – about her opinion; it is a quote from the left-leaning Guardian newspaper. If you would like to see for yourself just how biased, deceptive and dishonest journalism can be, you can read the entire article here. It’s no wonder it merited a quote from Greenwood-Lee.
I’ve been waiting for the Anglican Church of Canada to say something about the protestors congregating in Ottawa. The church has no hesitation lobbing opinions into the ether to support BLM, Indigenous rights, LGBT activities and so on. Even in the face of universal uninterest. Why the reticence here? It can’t be that hard to pick a side since the bishops’ mentor, our illustrious Prime Minister has already blazed the path of righteousness by denouncing the protesters as racists, misogynists, homophobes, Nazis and probably a few other things I’ve forgotten. Surely the church should find itself prophetically harmonising with this wave of heady invective?
At least one clergyman has finally stepped into the fray. The ex-Catholic, ex-Evangelical Rev. Michael Coren.
“At the trucker protests, the political hard right is co-opting Christianity” blazes the headline, omitting the fact that anyone to the right of Joseph Stalin is “hard right” in Rev. Coren’s book.
What seems to upset Coren most is that the protestors recited the Lord’s Prayer. How dare they! They aren’t allowed to because they are not making obeisance to Coren’s idols of inclusion and tolerance – which makes as much sense as the rest of Coren’s analysis.
There is a video circulating on social media of a group of truckers in Ottawa discussing their plans. They exchange views in a quite heated manner, and then suddenly one of them begins to recite the Lord’s Prayer. In direct obedience and observance, all of the others remove their caps and follow suit. It’s being posted by supporters of the convoy who see the enterprise as God’s work and want to emphasize the piety of all concerned.
[…..]
I’ve no idea of what was in the hearts of those men who suddenly turned from bellicose plotting to telling God they “forgive those who trespass against us,” but judging by the ubiquity of vulgar anti-Trudeau signs and images of nooses, I’m a little cynical. I’m a priest – the Lord’s Prayer is central to my very being – but it’s more than just a collection of words. It’s what Jesus taught us to say. Jesus – who owned nothing and lived communally – reserved his harshest words for the wealthy and legalistic, redistributed food and preached tolerance, inclusion and grace. He could be as gentle as a watercolour in his love and compassion, but fierce as a lion of Judah in his demand for social justice.
There’s nothing new of course about the politicization of Christianity; it’s been happening ever since church and state began to mingle 1,700 years ago.
Admittedly, the Anglican Church of Canada does not politicise Christianity. It can’t because it has ceased to be Christian.
The diocese has restarted in-person worship with rigorous restrictions, including demanding vaccination certificates from worshippers without an “approved medical exemption”. Good luck finding a doctor willing to risk his career by writing a medical exemption.
Next step: vaccine passports needed to enter the Pearly Gates.
From here:
Those 12 years old and over must be fully vaccinated (or have an approved medical exemption) and provide proof of the same, in order to attend the gathering.
The Diocese of Niagara’s bishop Susan Bell recently had a chat with Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York. Cottrell, we are told, is “an engaging and sophisticated leader, theologian, speaker, and writer”. The best that the Church of England has to offer; in which case, at least we now know why the CofE is in drastic decline.
Naturally, Susan Bell asked Stephen Cottrell to give us the benefit of his learning on climate change. Cottrell, we can only assume, is a renowned climatologist in addition to being a sophisticated leader and theologian. Here is part of his reply (my emphasis):
What a good question. Is there a more important question facing the world?
I think I would start by…two things…on the big picture level I think we need to teach much more about this. This needs to be not a kind of add-on to the Gospel; this is the Gospel…how we inhabit the world in the way of Christ…this is the Gospel. So, I’d want to preach and teach about it much more… good to hear that Canada is ahead as usual…it’s even in your Baptismal liturgy. It’s those things that start to impress it into our consciousness. This is what it means to follow Christ.
So there you have it: the good news of Jesus Christ is fixing climate change. This is why Jesus died on the cross. This is the cause for which countless Christians have been martyred. This is what gives meaning and purpose to life. This is incoherent tripe.
And Canada is at the forefront in peddling it.
On St. Matthias Anglican Church’s website, you will find this aphorism:
It takes courage to walk through the door of a church for the first time.
It takes a little more than courage to attend St Matthias, though: you must also present your vaccination documentation:
You are welcome at 8am & 10am.
Please mask, distance, and bring documetation (sic) of vaccination.
A letter from the rector was also sent to all parishioners stating, among other things:
Beginning This Sunday January 9th, please bring your proof of vaccination to attend worship (kids excepted) Our goal is to be able to clearly reassure anyone who asks that, yes, everyone who comes to worship is vaccinated.
Like so many things that would not long ago have seemed profoundly bizarre to find in a church, this intrusive medical questioning and resulting division and segregation is liable to become not only accepted and routine but demanded by rule-loving parishioners.
I am waiting for the first church to announce that such actions are prophetic and inclusive.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen as performed by the Proud Anglicans of Huron – with the words slightly altered.
I was shocked to notice the missed opportunity, however: “merry” remains unmolested, despite what surely must have been an overwhelming temptation to unburden the gentlemen of their heterosexuality and make them gay.
The Anglican Church of Canada is more of a crypto-Marxism cabal than it is a Christian denomination, so it isn’t surprising to find a bishop writing this in the Anglican Journal:
The intimate connection of individual lifestyle and global economic and political practices has been revealed in forceful detail. Yes, there are big actors that enflame this crisis—governments and corporations—but it is very clear that the tolerance that lets such deadly misbehaviour continue arises from our personal captivity to comfort, luxury, and wealth. And this tolerance is not just for what is overwhelming our planet. We have also accepted, with no major protest that I can see, the hideous damage that our present greed-related practices have inflicted on the poor, Indigenous peoples, and on the creatures that share Creation with us.
[…….]
Jesus showed us how to make this world and its relations sacred through the ceremony he gave us. This ceremony looks and acts towards his coming again, a time when God “will be all in all.” (1 Cor 15:28) What humanity has done through the global culture of money is the opposite, with the poor bearing the consequence. To make no choice in regard to these realities is an act of violent moral consequences. We must engage in a spiritual revolution, based in Eucharistic discipleship, and move in concert with and activate public policies and practices that will change these things. We must, in a hallowing of the Name of God, choose life.
A few pages further on in the paper we learn that clergy are rejoicing in how much profit (sorry, budget surplus) the church raked in in 2021:
Archdeacon Alan Perry, general secretary of General Synod, said the church was running a surplus for the year, to date, of more than $600,000. “That’s really extraordinarily good news,”
This is peanuts in the overall picture, though: The Anglican Church of Canada has around $1.2 billion invested in church pension funds, diocesan investments and trust funds. Shameless Capitalism.
Presumably, these considerable sums are somehow cleansed of the global culture of money and greed-related practices by virtue of Eucharistic discipleship. Whatever that is. To put it more simply, the ACoC is a major player in ecclesiastical money laundering.
Further on in the paper, we find the new ACoC treasure intoning these words that were clearly inspired by Squealer’s speech in Animal Farm:
“We don’t look at the work we do [as] bringing money for profit,” she says.
“We’re bringing money to help others. This is not the organization’s money, to be honest with you. We look at it as God’s money, and God gave it to us so we can utilize it to the best interests of everyone and to the benefit of everybody.”
Admittedly, it could have ended better.
