Celebrating Israeli apartheid week

Well, I’m not, but for those who are, read this:

Police suspect armed terrorist entered house in West Bank and stabbed couple along with 3 children; 2 other children escape unharmed.

Five family members were found murdered in their residence in the West Bank Itamar settlement Friday overnight, after a suspected terrorist broke and entered the house and stabbed the five to death. Two children managed to escape and survived the attack, Army Radio reported.

A Magen David Adom team that arrived at the scene at 1:00 a.m. announced a couple, their 11-year old child, 3-year-old toddler, and a one-month baby girl dead from stabbing wounds.

Other than the devil himself, I have no idea what could possess a person to stab 11 and 3 year old children: for those of you who do happen to support Israeli apartheid week, it’s time to reboot your brains.

Lent in the Anglican Church of Canada

After the Anglican Church of Canada’s 2009 Lenten reflection debacle where it claimed Jesus was a racist, it has decided to let the PWRDF do Lent for 2011.

The PWRDF mentions CIDA funding, Indigenous language recovery, KAIROS, AIDS, HIV, social justice, an Ecumenical Women’s Network, poverty and injustice, Cuba, maternal health care, Girl Power and Natural Disasters –  of which the Anglican Church of Canada is a leading example.

The only lack is a mention of Jesus – after all, what’s Lent got to do with him?

George Galloway: liar, hypocrite and cat person

UK failed politician, buffoon, thug-lover and cat impersonator, George Galloway offers 1000 pounds – or poonds as he would say – to anyone who finds him supporting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

That isn’t too hard, but how does one collect the 1000 poonds?

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Galloway.flv 720 500]

Galloway is about as convincing as a cat as he is as a human:

And now for something completely different

Giant underwear used by granny smugglers:


From here:

They are the type of underpants even Bridget Jones would baulk at.

But if you’re going to try and smuggle $170,000 through customs in your underwear, they’re exactly what you’d want.

The huge pair of knickers were used by pensioner Claire Abdeldaim, 64, to smuggle thousands of $100 bills through JFK airport so that she could avoid paying taxes on the sale of her property in Sudan.

Let’s hope that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab doesn’t get any ideas from this.

 

 

The Anglican Church of Canada hopes to become an abuse-free church

Does that mean “welcome back ANiC, you can stay in your buildings”? Probably not.

From here:

In June, the second international conference of the Anglican Communion Safe Church Consultation will ask some hard questions about social and religious structures that perpetuate abuse. Partnering for Prevention: Addressing Abuse in Our Communion & in Our Communities, scheduled to take place at the University of Victoria, June 24 to 26, will explore the legacy of church abuse and how to prevent it and foster healing.

“Abuse happens in the church because we perpetuate structures of clericalism that place clergy in unrealistic positions of power and adulation among the faithful,” said Rev. Mary Louise Meadow, past canon pastor of the diocese of British Columbia and a conference co-coordinator.

I must admit, I am well past the stage of adulating clergy. Come to think of it, for most ACoC clergy, I seem to have passed rapidly from indifference to contempt with no intervening period of adulation.



Boxcutters on a plane

A few years back I found myself about to wander through airport security in Paris with a Swiss army knife in my pocket. I had meant to put it in my checked luggage, but had forgotten; groaning inwardly, I stuck it in a pocket of my carry-on bag.

After a ritual removing of my shoes, losing my pants through having to undo  my belt and being prodded in undignified places, I sailed through security – so did my Swiss army knife.

Sadly, a year or so later, I lost it to a paranoid Russian ex-commissar at the entrance to a museum in St. Petersburg.

The moral of the story is that you are more likely to be stabbed by a Swiss army knife on a plane than in a Russian museum.

From here:

Boxcutters on Flight From JFK — No, We’re Not Safer Than Before 9/11.

Recently a passenger brought box cutters through a passenger screening point and on to an airliner. In response to this, the Transportation Security Administration announced that the screeners responsible would get “remedial training.”

There’s been a lot of coverage of this event, including legitimate outrage that the sloppy TSA employees weren’t fired. What most people don’t realize is that tolerating failure and outright sloppy work has been a hallmark of U.S. aviation security from the beginning. The truth is nobody has ever been held accountable for aviation security failures – nobody. From top to bottom, the TSA arrogantly claims it does nothing wrong.

BBC uses an atheist to present the Bible

From here:

The BBC’s new face of religion is an atheist who claims that God had a wife and Eve was “unfairly maligned” by sexist scholars.

Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou has been given a primetime BBC Two series, The Bible’s Buried Secrets, in which she makes a number of startling suggestions.

She argues in the programme that Eve was not responsible for the Fall of Man and was not even the first woman, as the story of the Garden of Eden did not belong in the first book of the Old Testament.

“Eve, particularly in the Christian tradition, has been very unfairly maligned as the troublesome wife who brought about the Fall,” Dr Stavrakopoulou said. “Don’t forget that the biblical writers are male and it’s a very male-dominated world. Women were second-class citizens, seen as property.”

The idea that God had a wife is based on Biblical texts that refer to “asherah”. According to Dr Stavrakopoulou, Asherah was the name of a fertility goddess in lands now covered by modern-day Syria, and was half of a “divine pair” with God.

Dr Stavrakopoulou is a senior lecturer in the Hebrew Bible at the University of Exeter, and gained a doctorate in theology from Oxford. Born in London to an English mother and Greek father, Dr Stavrakopoulou was raised “in no particular religion” and does not believe in God.

Atheism is itself a religion, one which is gradually gaining ground in the West. Stavrakopoulou, like most atheists, exhibits tedious political correctness – even worse, though, is the BBC’s use of a member of one religion to ridicule the beliefs of another. If the BBC wanted to be fair – an unlikely turn of events – it would air a second program, hosted by a Christian, poking holes in atheism; too easy, perhaps.

How does the Anglican Church of Canada plan on attracting people?

By lowering the standards for membership. Of course, by doing so, everyone will catch on to the obvious fact that by requiring little from its followers, the church has little of value to offer: the lower the cost, the lower the value, the less the desirability of the merchandise, the fewer people interested.

In its ceaseless striving to become worthless, the Anglican Church of Canada is considering offering Communion to those who don’t believe in it. From here:

Should we invite persons who are not baptized to receive Holy Communion? The church is discussing this question today. Anglicans traditionally have believed that the eucharist is a family meal, reserved for members of the church through baptism. Those who are not baptized are not members of the church; therefore, they cannot participate in the family meal.

This exclusive view of the eucharist has a long history. St. Paul warns against eating and drinking in an “unworthy manner” (I Cor. 11:27), though he seems to leave the decision whether to partake in the meal to each person’s conscience (I Cor. 11:28). Closed communion is standard practice in some Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic and Orthodox. However, many Anglican churches throughout the world now practice open communion. There are good reasons, both missional and theological, for doing so.

 

Diocese of New Westminster demonstrates ADS – ANiC Derangement Syndrome

The diocese continues to try and make a case that it has a vibrant and emerging congregation at St. Matthew’s, Abbotsford, a parish that left the diocese for ANiC  because of its heretical drift. Here is a photo of the emerging congregation:

Funnily enough, while occupying St. Matthews with fifteen squatters, the diocese has been busy closing what it sees as non-viable parishes with a far higher number of parishioners.

Here is the fond farewell from St. John’s, Burnaby:

 

And here, from St. Peter’s:

Notice the difference? It’s hard not to conclude that the Diocese of New Westminster is only prepared to maintain a small – minuscule, actually – parish when, by doing so, it furthers its plan to deprive a thriving ANiC parish of a building .