Anglicans on the trailing edge

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The Anglican Church of Canada has largely abandoned thousands of years of Biblical wisdom, tradition and theology in favour of the latest secular fads.

So far, we have galloped through gay equality, global warming, fossil fuel divestment, Indigenous rights, transgender mayhem, obsessive/compulsive pronoun selection disorder, ancestor condemnation, Israel excoriation, to arrive finally, panting with exhaustion, at Dismantling Systemic Racism. This week, at least. Next week a new fad will undoubtedly assault the malleable affections of our senior Anglican clerics.

One of the problems with all this is the puzzling question of why the keepers of our moral boundaries do not notice all these abject ethical failures before the secular world points them out? Could it be because, having abandoned the faith once handed down, the Anglican Church of Canada finds itself wandering aimlessly in a wasteland of witless ideas, staggering helplessly from one stupidity to the next? Yes.

Thus, we have the Council of General Synod busily engaged in Dismantling Racism:

In its latest meeting, the general secretary said, CoGS had been challenged to learn how to see something that is very obvious for people not in the dominant culture, but which may be less so for those in the dominant culture: the reality of racism. “We had some very moving revelations of those realities,” Perry said of Saturday’s panel discussion on dismantling racism. “I hope that we will all learn how to see those very difficult realities so that we can address them effectively.”

CoGS has also been invited to see what God has been doing in the pandemic, he added, “in ways that perhaps we’ve not been open to seeing because we’ve been tied up just trying to get through it.” Perry described Surprised by the Spirit as an invitation to the Anglican Church of Canada “to see what God is doing and will be doing.”

I think I have seen what God is doing: He is dismantling the Anglican Church of Canada.

St. Alban’s Ottawa is too inclusive

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St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Ottawa used to house a thriving orthodox congregation that left the Anglican Church of Canada to join ANiC in 2008. A small, less than entirely orthodox ACoC congregation now meets in the building. Naturally, they pride themselves on their commitment to inclusion:

It is the policy of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa that no one be excluded from any ministry or leadership position, including ordination, on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. All are welcome in our Spirit-Led, Christ-Centred, Contemporary Urban Church.

It is, therefore, a source of considerable embarrassment to have to admit that the notorious racist, colonizer and misogynist Sir John A. Macdonald used to attend the church. To make atonement, the parish is displaying a page of self-flagellation, Uriah Heep humility, and faux remorse on behalf of their ancestors’ flagrantly wicked wrong-inclusion.

Read all about it here:

Sir John A. Macdonald and his wife, Agnes Bernard of Jamaica, were early parishioners of St. Albans. While Sir John A. Macdonald is rightly remembered as the first Prime Minister of Canada, he is also remembered by First Nations as an architect of the residential schools, and by Métis for the execution of Louis Riel. Many decisions integral to Canadian nation building undermined the rights and needs of Indigenous peoples, who were the first to make this land their home.

[…..]

St. Albans is the oldest Anglican church building in downtown Ottawa, and we are proud of our Church’s longstanding commitment to inclusion. As Ottawa’s first free church, parishioners of St. Albans did not have to pay for the right to sit in a pew; Sir John A. Macdonald and other government leaders and officials worshipped alongside carpenters and labourers. However, we are not proud of the dispossession, mistreatment and exclusion of Indigenous peoples in Canada, and we acknowledge and repent of our sins in that regard. Through our prayers and our actions, we are working towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. We invite you to join us on this journey.

Pastor arrested for inciting church attendance

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No, not in China, in Alberta.

Pastor Artur Pawlowski has been arrested for inciting people to attend church.

It took a heavily armed squad of brave police officers to subdue the dangerous ecclesiastical criminal who can be seen in the video below in his Sunday best being made to kneel on a wet motorway.

Luckily, the constabulary was fully masked up – as North Americans like to say just to irritate me – to protect themselves from any deadly projectile sneezing that the unmasked pastor may have secretly weaponised. It goes without saying that if the pastor had had the forethought to wield a Black Lives Matter placard, it would be the police who would be kneeling on the wet tarmac.

Prior to this, Pastor Artur had not endeared himself to the local constabulary. He tossed them out of his church, hurling the epithet “gestapo” at them. Not at all inclusive but, then, they were trying to shut down his church service and only the most intrepid or foolhardy will interrupt a preacher when he is in full swing.

I make no claim that the Pastor was right to continue church services in person – my church isn’t – but the police cannot imagine that this episode will do anything but heap ridicule and derision on any attempt to maintain the illusion that their job is to serve and protect. As PR people like to say: “the optics are bad.”

How to make a muddle of the Resurrection

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All it requires is an Anglican archbishop.

Here is Archbishop Linda Nicholls taking a simple historical fact and miring it in mushy obfuscation.

This starts well but quickly descends in treacly vagueness:

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the event that defines Christian faith. It is the unique event that affirms Jesus’s identity; and confirms, with power, all that Jesus taught about the love of God. It changes everything for the disciples, who must reframe all they expected through the lens that God is acting in life and even through death into new life. Without the resurrection, as St. Paul says in 1 Cor 15:13-14, 19, our faith is useless and we are to be pitied. With the resurrection we enter the lifegiving possibilities that God opens to us through Jesus Christ in every situation and moment of our lives. We share in the resurrection as the principle of God’s life in and through us.

[……..}

The gift of the resurrection of Jesus is the promise that—whether embraced slowly or quickly—the power of God’s love is stronger than the pain, sin and sorrows of what we see. Since Jesus lives, we will too, by entering into the reality that God is both with us now and waiting for us in the future, even if that future looks very different from what we have known in the past.

After emerging coughing from the fog of “entering into the reality that God is both with us now and waiting for us in the future, even if that future looks very different from what we have known in the past”, I consoled myself with the thought that I am a simple soul and, as such, merely cling to the hope that Jesus came back to life along with a real, improved body as evidence that he had overcome sin and death and reconciled us to the Father. Not only that, He a demonstrated that we, too, will rise from death with real bodies to join him. Just like it says in 1 Cor 15:13ff in the bits that Nicholls missed out.

“Take your vaccine” says the World Council of Churches

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Before I start, let me be clear: I am not trying to convince anyone not to take a vaccine. The choice is yours and I have no wish to influence anyone.

The WCC, however, does think it’s the church’s job to convince people to be vaccinated:

Is the new term for clergy “faith actors”? I didn’t know that. We can only assume it’s because Christian clergy see themselves as thespians playing a role rather than the genuine article.

We all suffer from a fatal disease. It’s called “sin”. There is no vaccine against it. The solution is Jesus. The church has forgotten that that is its primary message.

Bishops do strange things sometimes

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Sam Rose, Bishop of the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador is sleeping on the floor of his art studio to end furniture poverty. I didn’t know furniture poverty was a thing.

I have no objection to this if it makes the bishop feel better. Once he has furniture poverty under control, I hope he addresses art studio poverty; I wouldn’t mind having one.

Anglican Primate offers prayers of thanksgiving to St. Pfizer

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It was only a matter of time before the latest religion – the Cult of the Covid Vaccinated – was appropriated by the Anglican Church. Primate Linda Nicholls experienced a flood of emotion when she was injected with her first dose of Pfizer. I suppose we could call this cultural appropriation. She makes no mention of tongues of fire or a rushing wind, but she is probably just being modestly reticent in the Anglican fashion.

Since Nicholls feels guilty under the burden of her vaccine inequitable western white privilege, there was no vaccine selfie. Apparently, battling vaccine inequity has become one of our baptismal promises.

Nicholls warns us that rumours and misinformation are rampant. I have to agree with her on that. For example, just the other day, I overheard someone make the preposterous assertion that the organisation Nicholls runs is a church!

From here:

The gift of a COVID vaccination

Last week, I received my first vaccine dose for the novel coronavirus. As I did, I felt a flood of emotions.

A vaccine is a promise for a future without all of the restrictions we may be living under, so I was delighted and relieved at taking this first step. But even in that moment, I felt guilty that I have this privilege and sense of security, in a world where many may never see a COVID vaccination at all, or at least not for several years.

While some countries desperately seek access to the vaccines, there is resistance among some Canadians to receiving it and, in the midst of anxiety and fear, rumours and misinformation are rampant. Every day of life contains risks. There are no guarantees in any part of our lives, so we work to reduce the risks and make the world as safe as possible for ourselves and all of our neighbours. This requires trust in those to whom we have committed the work of protecting public health and a willingness to work with them to follow protocols.

“Justice for George Floyd was essential” says Justin Welby

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Derek Chauvin has been convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and is likely to spend much of what is left of his life in prison. That may not be very long in his new surroundings: his incarceration is probably a de facto death sentence.

Did he receive a fair trial? I really don’t know, but I think earthly justice is an elusive commodity. As Blaise Pascal noted:

Love or hate alters the aspect of justice. How much greater confidence has an advocate, retained with a large fee, in the justice of his cause! How much better does his bold manner make his case appear to the judges, deceived as they are by appearances! How ludicrous is reason, blown with a breath in every direction!….. Our magistrates have known well this mystery. Their red robes, the ermine in which they wrap themselves like furry cats, the courts in which they administer justice, the fleurs-de-lis, and all such august apparel were necessary; if the physicians had not their cassocks and their mules, if the doctors had not their square caps and their robes four times too wide, they would never have duped the world, which cannot resist so original an appearance. If magistrates had true justice, and if physicians had the true art of healing, they would have no occasion for square caps; the majesty of these sciences would of itself be venerable enough. But having only imaginary knowledge, they must employ those silly tools that strike the imagination with which they have to deal; and thereby, in fact, they inspire respect. Soldiers alone are not disguised in this manner, because indeed their part is the most essential; they establish themselves by force, the others by show.

This doesn’t bother Justin Welby, who has always seemed more interested in illusory temporal justice than the genuine eternal variety. Would Welby have been tweeting his satisfaction if justice had been served by the jury finding Chauvin innocent? Almost certainly not.

Will Welby also be praying for Chauvin? Let’s hope so: Welby believes Chauvin is a guilty sinner; didn’t Jesus come to save sinners?

I fear the truth is that Welby, like most others, wanted retribution not justice.

The curious case of Rev. Robin Barrett

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Ex-reverend now.

In 2003 Rev. Robin Barret was rector of Good Shepherd church in St. John’s. He had been married to a woman for 21 years and had three children. Yes, I know that’s unusual for an Anglican priest today – most male priests seem to want to marry men, but these were early days in the homoerotic devolution of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Finally, after 25 years in the closet Rev. Robin decided that he could no longer hide who he “really was”, so he announced to his congregation that he was gay. To put it bluntly, he liked having sex with other men. To pacify his congregation, he invited them to attend a “six-week educational workshop at the church on homosexuality”. Rev. Robin declared he hoped “it helps people to understand how I can be gay and a priest at the same time … there’s no going back.” Apparently, that left some in the congregation unconvinced.  Read more about it here.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of who Rev. Robin “really was”. In 2009 he was arrested for possessing child pornography; some of the images were of babies being molested. Rev. Robin must have decided that it was not yet the right time to come out as a clerical paedophile so there was no course on helping people understand how he could continue to be a priest while enjoying watching babies being raped. In fact, this led to a period of going in: to jail, not a closet.

Elizabeth Barnes, executive officer of the Diocese of Eastern Newfound and Labrador, was disappointed by Rev. Robin’s tastes. “I’ve worked with him directly. I always found him a genuine, caring individual and his call to social causes is exemplary of the kind of man he is” she declared. And Hitler made the trains run on time.

Robin Barret is in the news again. This time because he wants evidence presented at his trial to be excluded; so much for the Anglican mania for inclusion. He believes the evidence should be excluded because the police battered his door down unannounced, not leaving him any time at all to hide the photos of the raped babies.

Barret was jailed for two and a half years and placed on the national sex offender registry for life. You can read about Barret’s appeal to have the evidence thrown out here.

God, through Christ will forgive anyone no matter how heinous the sin. But where is Barret’s repentance? Of course, he may have repented – in the closet, as it were – we have no way of knowing. I do hope so, I would not want to meet my maker with that on my conscience.

Still, at least “his call to social causes is exemplary.”