Author Archives: David

Trump induced Anglican hand-wringing

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From here:

A coalition of seven mission agencies within the Church of England said:  “We understand President Trump’s desire to protect America from extremism but we do not accept that it is ever right to discriminate against people simply on the basis of their ethnicity, religion or country of origin. We call on the British and other governments not only to seek exceptions for its own citizens but justice for all. We call on the US Government to reverse its current policy and to renew its commitment to freedom for all.”

The statement follows criticism of the immigration measures from  church leaders.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, issued a statement expressing shock at the new restrictions:  “It is extraordinary that any civilised country should stigmatise and ban citizens of other nations in the matter of providing humanitarian protection. In Christ, we are called to welcome the stranger especially when in desperate need,” he said.

In the United States there have been statements from a number of Episcopal dioceses. In Massachusetts, a joint letter from 17 church leaders, opposing the executive action, received the backing of three Episcopal Bishops :  “We grieve this decision to limit refugees, as it will cause further suffering, not just to our fellow Christians escaping persecution, but all refugees fleeing violence.”

In a statement, Bishop Marc Handley Andrus of California said: “We must honour the contributions of immigrants who are here to seek peace and stability for their families. Please join me in praying for our nation and for a change of heart for President Trump and his administration.”

Bishop James Mathes of San Diego wrote : “the last nine days have been a disquieting and dizzying display of presidential action in Mr Trump’s first days in office. The executive order is an affront to our sense of fairness and equity…President Trump’s actions are unacceptable and un-American. They do not represent who we are as a people. We must recover our senses. It is time to speak out in the name of all faiths and our national identity as a people united in our diversity. That is our gift to the world.”

In Washington, Bishop Mariann Budde wrote: “The list of alarming actions and statements from President Trump’s first week in office takes our collective breath away.”

Bishop Robert Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire said: “The Executive Order tightly restricting immigration and refugee resettlement based on religious identity has done very little but intensify global tensions while worsening human suffering among those who honour and admire this nation. What is called for is competent diplomacy, informed statesmanship and a clear commitment to the biblically informed ideals of hospitality to the stranger and the oppressed. That these values are being so cavalierly rejected in favour of rash and fear-based edicts not only violates the dignity of those immediately affected, but also damages our own reputation.”

In contrast, here is another view from Franklin Graham:

There have been a lot of protests and discussion about President Donald J. Trump’s executive action on immigration. Some people seem to have forgotten that the priority of the president of the United States is protecting the Constitution and the safety of Americans. That’s exactly what President Trump is trying to do. Taking action to secure our borders had to start somewhere. Is it perfect? Maybe not, but it is a first step. As they work on solutions during this 90-day travel ban, unfortunately there are some innocent families caught in this time of transition.

I think that a thorough vetting process really needs to apply to people coming into the U.S. from all countries—not just 7. We have to be sure that the philosophies of those entering our country are compatible with our Constitution. If a person does not agree with our principles of freedom, democracy, and liberty, which we cherish, they should not be allowed to come. Without question, Sharia law is not compatible.

Some are also criticizing Christians who support the president’s position on immigration—and I’m one of those being criticized. But we have to realize that the president’s job is not the same as the job of the church. As Christians we are clearly taught in the Bible to care for the poor and oppressed. At Samaritan’s Purse we have been working in the Middle East for over 30 years. We’ve provided things like food, heaters, blankets, coats, shelter plastic, and more for tens of thousands of refugees there and in other places around the world. We just opened a 55-bed field trauma hospital in northern Iraq where we’re treating Muslims who are being wounded by other Muslims in the fight over Mosul. As Christians we are commanded to help all, regardless of religious background or ethnicity, like the Good Samaritan Jesus shared about in the Bible. Our job is to show God’s love and compassion. I believe the best way to help is to reach out and help these people in their own countries. I support the establishment of safe zones inside Syria and Iraq that would be protected by the international community until a political solution is found. We need to pray for political solutions that would bring peace and allow them to return to their homes as they desire.

It strikes me that, as is so often the case these days, the Anglican church, having parted ways from the Gospel of Jesus sometime ago, has nothing left to occupy its time and dwindling resources but political agitation; leftist political agitation.

Consequently, Anglican bishops when dealing with their own organisation engage in endless conversations and indabas which are rarely, if ever, punctuated by any action at all; but when giving the state the benefit of their collective wisdom, howl stridently for – action.

Anglicans take note: Franklin Graham is correct, God has different purposes for church and state. That, of course, presumes Western Anglicanism is still a church.

Another terrorist attack, another candle

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Candlelight vigils will be held in numerous cities in wake of the terrorist attack at a Quebec mosque.

As Theodore Dalrymple put it about a prior attack:

A moment used to be defined as the amount of time between a Mexico City traffic light turning green and the sound of the first car horn, but now it might be defined as the period between a terrorist attack in a Western city and the first public appearance of a candle.  Every terrorist attack, including the latest one in Berlin, is immediately followed by the public exhibition of lighted candles.  It is almost as if the population keeps a store of them ready to hand for this very purpose.

[…..]

The candles, then, are a manifestation of modern paganism, a striving for transcendence without any real belief in it.  They are also a somewhat self-congratulatory symbol of our own peaceable temperament: the violent are not great candle-lighters.  We cannot, for example, imagine Genghis Khan lighting many candles for the souls of the departed (not that we really believe in souls).

I think Dalrymple is correct when he says the candles signify a striving for transcendence without any real belief in it. It is only fitting, then, that Anglican bishops and lesser clergy will be well represented in Quebec, London (Ontario), Halifax, Edmonton, Toronto, Hamilton and, no doubt, many other locations.

Katharine Jefferts Schori to speak at Diocese of BC Cathedral

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Katharine Jefferts Schori spent much of her time as Presiding Bishop of TEC embroiled in lawsuits against ACNA parishes and dioceses who were trying to hang on to their buildings. I met her in 2010 at the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada and asked how a Christian denomination could justify launching so many lawsuits. Her response was that she had a “fiduciary responsibility towards TEC”. The implication that, in her view, it was her most important responsibility, was not lost on me.

Having so much experience in promoting harmony and good-will must have been what prompted the Bishop of BC, Logan McMenamie to invite Jefferts Schori to the Diocese to impart her timeless wisdom – distilled over many years of acrimonious litigation – about Truth and Reconciliation.

I’m not sure if Logan is paying her or not, but I can only assume she is not neglecting her fiduciary responsibility to herself.

From here:

Truth and reconciliation is a response to colonialism but for individuals it’s a chance to enlarge our viewpoints by hearing experiences of others, a pioneering clergywoman says.

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S., the first woman to be elected a primate in the worldwide Anglican Church, said truth and reconciliation at its most basic, is about listening and respect.

“It’s really an anti-colonialism response,” said Jefferts Schori in a telephone interview from her home in Nevada.

“It encourages people to hear each other’s stories and perspectives and to respect their differences rather than imposing your own view.”

Jefferts Schori is speaking Thursday at the University of Victoria and will be at Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria for a forum on Sunday.

Jefferts Schori was American Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop from 2006 to 2015. She has served as Bishop of Nevada and is currently a visiting professor at Church Divinity of the Pacific.

She has degrees in biology and a PhD in oceanography, serves on the Earth and Life Studies board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was a member the Council on Neighborhood and Faith-Based Partnerships when Barack Obama was president.

Bishop Logan McMenamie, of the Diocese of British Columbia, said Jefferts Schori has demonstrated incredible leadership in the church and community.

“It wasn’t easy for her with some of the other primates throughout the world,” McMenamie said.

“But she has always demonstrated amazing leadership, and stood tall during some very difficult times in the life of the [Anglican] communion.”

Jefferts Schori said: “A founding principle of Anglicanism is the Gospel, the faith, is supposed to grow and develop in unique ways in different contexts.

But Anglicans haven’t always thought so, she said. In particular, those working as colonial missionaries thought only their views and contexts were correct.

“But it’s core to what it means to be an Anglican today,” she said.

“[Faith] takes different shapes in different contexts.”

For example, she said the U.S. Anglican community has experienced a new creative experience listening to how the Christian Gospels have found new contexts in indigenous societies.

“You begin to develop a more creative community as a result,” Jefferts Schori said.

“There is an ability to see truth in different contexts and find a larger picture than any one individual can find on their own.”

Torturous times

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I must admit, I have been listening to the news more in the last few weeks than I have for the last 8 years. Whatever one’s opinion of Donald Trump’s numerous and conspicuous character flaws, no-one can accuse him of being boring.

Now he has again brought up the fact that he condones torture in some circumstances. Below, there is a characteristically apologetic admission by a British MP that he not only agrees that torture is permissible but he, himself, used to be a torturer.

One of the arguments against torture is that it doesn’t work. Well, does it?

I can personally attest that it does. In 2009 someone whom I had regarded as a friend deliberately lured me into an Anglican church where Fred Hiltz was to deliver an address. At the half-way point, I was ready to confess all my sins of commission and omission to make it stop. Mercifully, before the end I had passed out.

I had secretly smuggled in a voice recorder; you can listen to Hiltz’s attempt to explain what he understands by the word “gospel” here. No-one will blame you if you can’t listen to it all.

Diocese of Fredericton considering multi-million dollar church sales

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The Diocese of Fredericton has a plan – or in Anglispeak jargon, a vision – to sell millions of dollars worth of church buildings, mainly because it has become too expensive to maintain them.

Interestingly, the diocesan bishop, David Edwards is one of the bishops who signed a document expressing disagreement with the general synod vote to approve same-sex marriages. As one of the few theologically conservative bishops still precariously clinging by his fingernails to what is left of the institutional remains of the Anglican Church of Canada, it seems rather sad that his diocese is being sucked into the sinkhole of doom created by the chaotic sexual obsessions and inclusive, yet diverse heresies of his liberal comrades.

Perhaps it is time for the bishop to shake the dust of his disintegrating buildings from his feet and align with a more simpatico version of Anglicanism.

From here:

The bishop of Fredericton has put forth a proposal for the possible sale and development of millions of dollars’ worth of historic church property in the heart of New Brunswick’s capital city.

Last November, Bishop David Edwards presented a “vision” for Christ Church Cathedral and several nearby church properties to the congregation of the cathedral. Church officials are reported to have met with Fredericton city staff earlier that month to discuss the plan and ensure it fit the city’s vision for the area.

The proposal, available online, includes the sale of two church properties—Cathedral Memorial Hall, which contains offices and rooms used for meetings and other functions; and Odell House, the former deanery of the cathedral. It envisages the construction of a new building encompassing the existing Bishop’s Court (the former residence of the bishop) and the synod office building next door. Plans for the building include institutional and possibly residential space—condominiums or rental units—providing income to both the diocese and the cathedral.

Driving the possible changes is the high cost of maintaining the five properties currently held by the diocese and cathedral. The cathedral itself, a National Historic Site of Canada that Edwards calls the architectural “jewel in the crown” of downtown Fredericton, is nearly 170 years old. It was restored in the 1990s, but “many of its parts cry out for another multi-million dollar restoration project,” the proposal says.

Cathedral Memorial Hall is unused most of the time, but also needs “extensive and expensive renovations.” The synod office, too, needs renovations, according to the proposal.

Churches were open for prayer on Inauguration Day

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When I saw the sign “Church open for quiet prayer”, I thought at first it was merely a safe space where the Episcopal faithful could curl up in foetal positions, cry and suck their thumbs.

But there was more to it than that, as is evidenced by this church which has not quite grasped the concept of democracy, let alone the idea of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s or upholding one’s rulers in prayer. For All Saints Church in Pasadena, opening the church for the weekend was an opportunity to indulge in Sacred Resistance.

I expect the individuals who removed the rainbow fish from the Port Perry church thought they were engaged in Sacred Resistance, too.

A Weekend of Prayer & Sacred Resistance

January 20-22, 2017

At All Saints Church we will enter this new era in our nation’s history with prayers for our country and a recommitment to sacred resistance. We will stand in resistance to the systemic evils that oppress and marginalize any member of our human family – including but not limited to racism, sexism, nativism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Grounded in our baptismal promises, our resistance to public policies that perpetuate those evils is how we put our faith into action in the world.

A new era of Christianity dawns in the Diocese of Niagara

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The diocesan rag (page 6) lays before the Niagara faithful the path of progress and enlightenment.

Original sin is out, as is propitiatory sacrifice and substitutionary atonement – what is there to atone for, after all? Gone is the Fall, the uniqueness of Christ and, it seems, theism itself. What is left, you might be wondering – evolution.

Change, of course, is difficult so for those feeling a little queasy about tossing out every major tenet of our belief system, the authors of this recipe for interfaith advancement, Rev Wayne Fraser and ACoC Partnership in Mission Officer, Dr Eleanor Johnson, offer the comfort of Missa Gaia. If that doesn’t do it for you, try listening to John Lennon’s Imagine: its emetic properties will induce the inevitable and help quell the waves of theological nausea.

The concept of Original Sin is the key to obsolete beliefs including propitiatory sacrifice and substitutionary atonement.

Likewise, to blame afflicted people for their personal torments is presumptuous in the extreme. God did not create us evil and prone to diseases as punishment for our fallen state.

Humanity is not fallen. Original Sin is not a concept even mentioned in the Bible. Original Blessing, its opposite, is, yet we allow ourselves to be “guilted” about Jesus dying for our sins. Instead, we see the Bible’s claim that God created the human race, all other species, our habitats and “saw that they were very good.”

The God we worship and serve is not an old man living above the clouds. We can call ourselves “a-theists,” people who do not worship a human-like, a human-made God. Many who have left church have done so because of the traditional image of God. Non-theism for most of us still attending church is uncharted territory, a new theological creation. Who or what do we worship?

We must start with a humble reading of the New Testament, with the brilliant hope, peace, joy and love put before us by Jesus. We experience God as an evolving Ground of Being, and the key word is evolution. Here’s where the most radical concept comes in: God is Love, is giving and receiving. God plunges into the breakdown of humanity’s connection to creation as Love in our loving.

We seek the wisdom and faith to explore our human understandings of God, for kindred spirits of other world religions and for this fragile earth, our island home. We see the destruction of the ecosystems and the mass extinctions of fellow creatures as crimes against God and all creation. We believe in caring for all species of creatures and their habitats. We welcome interfaith peace and inclusive justice for all.

A new era of Christianity is here and now but many are afraid to acknowledge it. It is here in our ecumenical and interfaith worship. We must give up our fantasy that Christianity is superior to other religions.

People of all faiths have in common an evolving experience of the Divine. True worship does not care a whit for the forms of our rituals. God gives no one the right to be militant. Jesus commands us to love God, our neighbours and ourselves. Change is difficult, in anything we do. It seems especially challenging in matters of faith.

We must, however, change or atrophy. Instead of condoning all the fears, threats and guilt induced in the past, let us rejoice in the complexity, beauty and mystery of all creation. All people come from God, we are imitators of Emmanuel and we are co-workers with the Holy Spirit.

For the beauty of the Earth,
sing oh sing today.
Of the sky and of our birth,
sing oh sing today.
Nature human and divine,
all around us lies.
Lord of all, to thee we raise
grateful hymns of praise.

—Paul Winter, Missa Gaia

Rainbow fish vandalised on Port Perry church sign

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The Church of The Ascension in Port Perry likes to think of itself as a church that welcomes same-sex couples and to advertise that fact – so rare today in the Anglican Church of Canada, after all – it placed a couple of rainbow fish on its sign.

Someone is systematically removing the fish. The rector sees this as a sign of intolerance towards same-sex couples, although it could just as easily be a sign of intolerance towards a church that encourages acts of which the Bible is intolerant. A newspaper article bills it as a “hate crime”. However satisfying these pilchard pilferers find their protest, it is almost certainly giving the Church of the Ascension more free advertising than it deserves and it could result in prosecution under Canada’s Section 319 “hate crime” law. If the vandals are so frustrated they feel they simply must destroy something, they should join an anti-Trump women’s march in their area and smash some windows; there they will be immune from prosecution.

From here:

In two separate incidents, new signage at the Church of the Ascension (Anglican Church of Canada) has been vandalized. We are concerned the vandalism is an act motivated by intolerance towards the LGBTQ community.

Each side of the church sign features a decal of the rainbow fish symbol. This symbol is intended to show that the Church of the Ascension welcomes all people, irrespective of their sexual orientation. Two weeks ago someone damaged one of the decals. It was hoped this was simply a random act of vandalism. However, on Saturday, January 14th, one decal was completely removed and left on the ground and the other decal was damaged. It was clearly an intentional act of vandalism.

Over the last five years the parish has striven to be a place that is open and inviting to everyone. The Ascension community has made a public statement that it welcomes everyone who has ever felt excluded by the Church or their community because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental challenges, financial resources or family status. The rainbow fish is an important symbol of who we are as a Christian community and a reminder that emphasizes God’s grace and reconciliation with all people.

The parish considers that these acts of vandalism, while minor in terms of dollar value, are a significant demonstration of intolerance and hatred.