The official New York ad promoting mask wearing:
And now for two things not completely different
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Author Archives: David
Diocese of Huron in rapid decline
From the diocesan paper:
Between the years of 2007-2017 Huron witnessed the disappearance of more than fifty congregations. Each of these was a mission light that has gone out in our Diocese.
[….]
Statistics that show that between the years 2007-2017 Huron’s membership declined by 15,771 baptized members, with 5,037 fewer worshippers on Sunday, seeing 10,846 fewer participants for Easter celebrations and witnessing the disappearance of 2,346 children who had previously been learning God’s story through Sunday ministries. Trends that document that 85% of congregations in Huron were marked by membership decline in that decade, while roughly 10% were holding steady.
The article goes on to note that some may find it consoling that the rest of the ACoC is also evaporating at a similar rate. There are few things as comforting as all gurgling down the toilet together.
Some in our Church find consolation in these changing times knowing that most Anglican dioceses in Canada are in the same boat together – that widespread membership trends of decline are being experienced across the country. Researchers Brian Clarke and Stuart MacDonald have calculated that the annual decline of national Anglican membership to be roughly 22,700 members per year!
The same edition of the paper invites us all, on October the 11th, to celebrate:
National Coming Out Day. Celebrate with your queer and trans* friends and parishioners. Honour their journeys; hear their stories; lift up the voices of queer and trans* people within your community.
The author goes on to explain that ney (that’s nem’s pronoun – or perhaps it’s the other way around. It gets confusing), over the years has:
… gone by many different terms for my sexuality – lesbian, pansexual, demisexual, gay, and now the all-encompassing “queer”.
That’s a lot to celebrate.
If that hasn’t convinced you to come back to church, this workshop, described in the same newspaper, will:
A total of four workshops on allyship and the place of queer and trans* identities within the church were offered online on August 22 and August 29 by the newly-formed Proud Anglicans of Huron.
I still don’t know what the asterisk affixed to “trans” means. Perhaps it’s another pronoun for those yet to come out with more arcane, hitherto undeclared, sexual inclinations.
If, for some inexplicable reason that doesn’t halt the diocesan slide into oblivion, this video is sure to do the trick.
After watching that, I am experiencing an irrepressible urge to move to Huron myself. Just so I can attend an Anglican church there.
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Lily of the Valley
A song I wrote in 2001.
For those interested in such things, yes, it does have some strange chords. Here are the words:
Lily of the Valley David Jenkins
Jesus Christ, Son of God, glory of the Father.
Name above every name, seated on the throne.
Behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world:
Chorus
He’s the lily of the valley, he’s the fairest of the fair.
He is beauty uncreated, he’s majestic beyond compare;
Beloved of the Father, Jesus Christ.Jesus Christ, Son of man, loves us like no other.
Emanuel, God with us, closer that a brother.
Behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world:
© 2001 David Jenkins
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New Anglican anti-racism task force
The Anglican Church of Canada has formed a task force that is supposed to dismantle racism within the church. Having already dismantled Christianity, the clerics have decided to take a break and try something a little easier.
Naturally, there are some new acronyms to learn and inwardly digest: BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour), ACIP (Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples) and BlAC (Black Anglicans of Canada). This will be bad news for those of you still struggling with LGBTQQIP2SAA. To avoid confusion, it might be worth lumping them all together to form LGBTQQIP2SAABlACACIPBIPOC.
Incidentally, any children reading this who want to find out more about LGBTQQIP2SAA can go to Kids Help Phone. It’s a Canadian registered charity that will explain more than your parents want you to know.
But back to our topic. In spite of the reservations of some, CoGS (Council of General Synod) will be employing certain aspects of Critical Race Theory. This, in a nutshell, tells us that all white people are racist. It’s innate: we are born that way. A pale person who claims otherwise is doubly racist for not recognising it, confessing, donning sackcloth and ashes and self-flagellating over her white racist privilege. There is no way out.
Unfortunately for CoGS, most of its members are non-BIPOCs, and thus riddled with racist bias, so the whole project is a bit of a non-starter.
Still, it’s good to see that in this time of contagion, the clergy are hard at work trying to entice congregations back to church by telling them they are loathsome racists in dire need of anti-racism training. That should work.
From here:
In a virtual meeting held July 25, the Council of General Synod (CoGS) voted to approve the creation of a task force charged with dismantling racism within the Anglican Church of Canada.
[……]
The motion called for CoGS to establish a dismantling racism task force that would:
“Review policies and processes to identify systemic barriers to full participation for Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) in the structures and governance of General Synod and make recommendations for redress”;• Update and promote the Anglican Church of Canada’s Charter for Racial Justice;• “Recommend a process of anti-racism education and training for the Council of General Synod as well as Coordinating Committees, Councils, Commissions and employees of General Synod”;• Develop “a plan to engage the whole church in the work of dismantling racism, including identifying and/or developing resources and training to be offered to Provinces and dioceses”; and• Report the results of its work, at the latest, to the meeting of General Synod in 2022, “including recommendations for ongoing work to dismantle racism within the Church.”
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Create in me a clean heart
A short song I wrote based on Psalm 51.
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Blessing and Honour
Extreme diversity
What happens when the church decides to worship diversity rather than God?
Jesus with breasts and beard dancing under a rainbow:
From here:
The Church of Iceland’s new ‘woke’ ad welcoming people to Sunday School has sparked outrage after it featured a bearded Jesus Christ with breasts, makeup and a dress.
The advert, which apparently shows Jesus shaking his ‘breasts’ while dancing under a rainbow, appeared on the National Church’s Facebook page on September 11.
The advert has since been deleted from the Church’s page, but will be depicted on buses in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik for at least another two weeks.
The Church of Iceland’s new ‘woke’ ad welcoming people to Sunday School has sparked outrage after it featured a bearded Jesus Christ with breasts, makeup and a dress
The Church said in a statement: ‘The 2020 Assembly of the National Church regrets that the picture of Jesus in a Sunday school advertisement has hurt people. The goal was to emphasise diversity, not to hurt people or shock them.’
Petur Georg Markan, media representative for the Church of Iceland, said that is positive for Jesus Christ to appear in different forms and that the church celebrates diversity.
The comedy in all this, if there is any, is that for years Christians have had to put up with sacrilegious tripe from halfwits posing as artists: piss Christ, Madonna in elephant dung, and so on. Now we have to put up with sacrilegious tripe from halfwits posing as clergy.
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Bishops rejoice at the possibility of life on Venus
The discovery of phosphine gas in the atmosphere of Venus means there could be life there, since phosphine gas on earth is made by microorganisms that live in oxygen-free environments. This has excited Anglican Primate Linda Nicholls and Archbishop Mark MacDonald. Regrettably, no phosphine gas whatsoever has been detected in the Anglican Church of Canada, a similar oxygen-free environment.
Mark MacDonald, overcome with joy at the discovery, made this ecstatic, if incoherent, pronouncement: “It is in concert with an Indigenous-informed, Christ- and Spirit-infused view of this universe.” The Indigenous microbes of Venus have not welcomed the comment yet because they are still trying to find out what it means.
Linda Nicholls, not one to waste an opportunity provided by the discovery of galactic microbes, sees this as an excuse to promote her green crusade:
“She did, however, see the discovery announced Monday as one more cause for humans to be mindful of their place in creation and of their responsibility to it.
Nicholls goes on to muse that galactic microbes might be more important than humans made in the image of God. And they wonder why the Anglican church is in decline:
“It should also remind us that human beings are a part of that creation—with particular capacity to create and destroy—but we are not the only or best part!
Read it all here.
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Our Father in Heaven
A song I wrote for a friend in a time of trial.
Yes, I know, I know, you can’t understand the words (perhaps it’s because I don’t have an accent?), so here they are:
Our Father in heaven David Jenkins
Our Father in heaven, how holy your name,
Your love and protection to me you have given.You reach down from heaven to touch me and fill
My heart with your peace, you make my mind still.I will trust you forever, forever you will
Take my hand, guide me through life’s deepest ills.Our Father in heaven, how holy your name,
My love I will give you, for all of my days.
© 2012 David Jenkins
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The Wings of the Morning
A song I wrote when St. Hilda’s became nomadic.