After a diligent search for a Director of Lost Causes, the Anglican Church has found its woman:
Canadian woman priest appointed to prestigious Communion position.
Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan has been appointed director for Unity, Faith and Order for the Anglican Communion.
Good luck, sweetie.
How many of the Church of England’s clergy are homosexual? It appears that we may find out:
A national survey is set to take place to reveal the number of gay clergy within the Church of England, the Guardian newspaper has reported.
The survey is being backed by the Inclusive Church network, which aims to prove that homosexuals perform an important role in the regular running of the Church body.
Canon Giles Goddard, Chair of the Inclusive Church told the Guardian: “It’s very early days but we need realistic information on how many LGBT clergy there are. It’s about demonstrating to people that we’re here and we need to be respected and recognised. We want to play our full role in the life of the church.
What will be even more interesting is what the ratio of homosexuals to heterosexuals in the clergy is. If it is considerably higher than in the general population – and I have a suspicion that it is – it would go a long way to explain why the Anglican church leadership is so determined to legitimise gay sexual activity and allow – even encourage – more senior homosexual ordinations: they have an axe to grind.
The Bishop of Wales, Barry Morgan wants compulsory worship to continue in British schools:
A law allowing 16-year-olds to opt out of prayers in assembly devalues and marginalises religion in schools, Dr Barry Morgan, the Archbishop of Wales, has warned.
Dr Morgan warned that by degrading the status of faith, schools risked becoming obsessed with “personal attainment”.
He said that group prayer offered pupils a rare opportunity for “recognition, affirmation and celebration of shared values” and should be encouraged.
“Collective worship has been branded as something that young people grow out of by the age of 16, at precisely the time when it might be the best way of feeding both their minds and their hearts as they start to explore the responsibilities and consequences of adult life,” Dr Morgan said.
“I am concerned that this is the thin end of the wedge and could be just the start of a process that devalues and ultimately marginalises the provision of collective worship in schools”.
His warning came after Wales joined England by passing a law allowing pupils aged 16 and over to withdraw from collective worship without parental consent.
This comes from the same Barry Morgan who was all for compelling those in his church who disagree with women’s ordination to submit to the authority of a woman bishop – even if it went against their consciences. Liberal Anglican bishops peddle diversity to all and sundry, employing compulsion when necessary.
Barry Morgan is also in favour of gay bishops: when Gene Robinson was not invited to Lambeth, Barry- in a fit of pique –hosted his own meeting of liberal Anglicans with Gene as a guest.
Given this context, what does he mean by rare opportunity for “recognition, affirmation and celebration of shared values”? He means what any pseudo-Christian Anglican bishop would mean: we must indoctrinate the young with the western liberal elitist dogma of diversity, inclusion and relativism so that they grow up like us.
I went through high school in Wales when attending “morning assembly” was compulsory. The predominant effect of watching bored teachers, who evidently did not believe in what they were doing, go through the motions every day was to engender in me a revulsion to Christianity: as far as I was concerned Christianity was an exercise in hypocrisy and tedium. Interestingly, a couple of teachers who partially reversed this effect were a chemistry teacher who was an evangelical Christian – and a prim fusspot – and a math teacher who quietly subverted the establishment efforts to Christianise the school population. The former was not afraid to engage in debates with students about his faith and the latter – who called himself a “seeker” – tried to make us think about the consequences our beliefs.
I wonder whether Barry Morgan would object to students absenting themselves from his form of bogus Christian worship to attend a Bible study run by Evangelical Christians.
How is this relevant to the Anglican Church?
Well, an unwary church shopper wanders into an Anglican Church run by the Diocese of Niagara. The spiritual pilgrim has the following conversation with the rector:
Pilgrim: Do you believe in the Virgin Birth.
Rector: No.
Pilgrim: Do you believe that salvation comes through Christ alone?
Rector: No.
Pilgrim: Do you believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ?
Rector: No.
Pilgrim: Do you believe that every person is sinful and falls short of God’s requirements?
Rector: No.
Pilgrim: Do you believe that Christ is the propitiation for our sins?
Rector: No.
Pilgrim: Do you believe that Christ will come again in glory and before him every knee shall bow?
Rector: No.
Pilgrim: Not much of a church really, is it?
Rector: Oh yes sir, finest in the district; we welcome everyone here.
This idea was inspired by a rector who, I suspect, would prefer to remain anonymous.
Astonishingly, the crumbling of Anglicanism is still of enough interest to find a place in the secular press:
The Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said profound differences among the world’s 77 million Anglicans over gay clergy and same-sex unions could divide their church into a “two-track model” yielding “two styles of being Anglican.”
The formula could avert a formal breach between liberals and conservatives but bring new strains in the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and American Episcopalians who resolved this month to open the door to ordaining openly gay bishops and to start the process of developing rites for same-sex marriages.
Personally, I am all in favour of a two-track Anglican church. It would be just like everyday life: God whispering in one ear and the devil in the other. The only remaining question is, will two-track Anglicanism last as long as 8 track tape?
The reputation of the Western Anglican church is hovering between irrelevant and international laughingstock.
The Guardian conducted a poll on whether holding the Anglican Communion together matters:
The Anglican communion’s foundations are looking shaky in the wake of a controversial Episcopal vote. But does it really matter if this church fragments? Is it time to ditch the idea of a coherent, single Anglican communion? In short, is the Anglican communion worth it?
The Anglican Church in the West, having largely abandoned the gospel of the bible, has settled on Global Warming and same-gender copulation as worthy replacements. So much attention has been given to the latter, that global warming tends to receive short shrift.
To set the record straight: there are protests (ironically, this one begins “Braving gusty winds, Anglicans….”), sections on web sites, and gruesome Eco-Justice camps. Not to mention excruciating liturgies, green worship, how to have a relationship with the earth, and green cleaning, grounds and meetings.
The Anglican Church, where you can’t get no calefaction:
Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites
Geologist Ian Plimer takes a contrary view, arguing that man-made climate change is a con trick perpetuated by environmentalists
Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him.
Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia’s best-known and most notorious academic.
Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of “anthropogenic global warming” — man-made climate change to you and me — and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed.
The Anglican Church of Canada has noticed that it is getting hotter: but it’s the flames of hell licking its foundations, not global warming.
The Anglican Church in the US – TEC – in resolution C061 at the 2009 General Convention, has added gender identity and gender expression to the list of otherwise predictable categories that cannot be used to exclude a person from ministering in what is left of its church.
This reinforces the strange contention that, contrary to all evidence that may be externally visible, the sex of a person internally is something that is determined by them alone, perhaps on a whim, and this determination should be respected by otherwise sane onlookers.
Were it not for the fact that we are in an age of gender chaos and have developed a degree of immunity to its ubiquitous peculiarities, I could not reasonably expect a declaration that I am a man on the outside and a woman on the inside to be take any more seriously than one that says I am a man on the outside and a duck on the inside – and I want my quacks to be treated with respect.
The muddle in the Anglican church is a pathetic reflection of what we find in secular organisations:
A transsexual jailed for strangling her boyfriend has gone to the High Court claiming that keeping her in a men’s prison violates her human rights under European law.
The prisoner, in her 20s and serving a life sentence for manslaughter and attempted rape, is legally female and her birth certificate has been amended accordingly, London’s High Court heard.
Born male, she has had hair on her face and legs permanently removed by laser and has developed breasts after hormone treatment.
Describing her as ‘a woman trapped inside a man’s body’, barrister Phillipa Kaufman said the prisoner was desperate for gender reassignment surgery but medics have refused unless she has lived as a woman for an extended period – only possible if she is moved to a female jail.
I must admit, if Katharine Jefferts-Schori were to come out and expose her inner man, I would not be that surprised.
From here:
The consecration of homosexual bishops is a matter of justice.
The Episcopal Church in the United States voted last week to overturn a moratorium on the ordination of gay bishops. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, told the General Synod yesterday that he regretted that decision.Those member Churches, including many in Africa, who conscientiously cannot accept homosexual bishops, should not have appointments forced upon them. But the issue is not one of denominational preference alone. It is also a matter of justice.
The liberal elite who run Western Anglicanism would not admit that they are consciously bent upon the destruction of their denomination – and I don’t believe they are. Subconsciously, it is another matter: to adapt an old proverb: those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad.
The reason given for the ordaining of homosexuals is that it is a matter of justice; to exclude homosexuals from holding clergy positions would be unjust. But what do liberals mean by justice in this context?
Of the various shades of meaning of justice – fair, morally right, lawful – the meaning cannot be morally right or lawful, since the bible clearly condemns homosexual activity. That leaves us with fair. But fair to whom? Certainly not fair to the homosexuals who struggle with temptation yet remain celibate, and not fair to orthodox Christians who are committed to following the bible and expect their leaders to do the same. It is also not fair to the run-of-the mill sinner sitting in the pew who, instead of trying to convince the church to bless his sins, is struggling to overcome them.
It is not even fair to practising homosexual clergy, since it confirms as right behaviour that is actually wrong.
In truth, this has nothing to do with justice: it has everything to do with selfishness wanting its own way.
As part of the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF) – the bastion of Anglican Marxist chic – Fred Hiltz is peddling Primate’s Blend Fair Trade Coffee. On first blush one might be tempted to rejoice that Hiltz has given up on theology – as it has given up on him – and gone into the more honest occupation of coffee planting, preferably near some remote and humid Colombian rain forest where he would be free to meditate on his minuscule carbon footprint. No such luck; this is more about Fair Trade than coffee.
Introducing The Primate’s Blend – a uniquely blended, shade-grown, organic, Fair Trade coffee. Shade-grown coffees trees are grown under a shade canopy that is made up of a variety of trees; there are often companion plantings of tropical fruit trees. This means the plantations use a minimum of water and support local and migrating bird populations. These coffees are certified organic.
Is Hiltz striking a blow for justice as I am sure he would like us to think, or is this an elitist liberal decoy, requiring no effort, and having little effect other than soothing the delicate consciences of effete coffee swilling bishops?
Some claim it’s worse: Fair Trade is damaging to those it claims to help:
A number of interventionist initiatives have been launched or proposed in response to the coffee
market’s perceived breakdown. The best known is the “fair trade” coffee campaign, in which roasters and retailers are pressured by activist groups to sell coffee grown under specified conditions and purchased at above-market prices.
However well-intentioned, interventionist schemes to lift prices above market levels ignore those market realities. Accordingly, they are doomed to end in failure—or to offer cures that are worse than the disease. There are constructive measures that can help to ease the plight of struggling coffee farmers, but they consist of efforts to improve the market’s performance— not block it or demonize it.
And:
Unfair Trade argues that for all its good intentions, Fairtrade is not fair. Firstly, by guaranteeing certified farmers a minimum price for their goods, it can distort local markets leaving other farmers even worse off. Secondly, only about 10 percent of the premium paid by consumers actually makes it to the producer, which makes it an inefficient way of helping the poor. Most importantly, Fairtrade does little to aid economic development, focusing instead on sustaining farmers in their current state.
Poor Hiltz, he can’t even get his coffee right.
