To celebrate Easter, Father Phil Ritchie recommends staying in bed, eating chocolate and copulating – because going to church isn’t “cool and funky”; whether this has to be done simultaneously is unclear.
I must have missed something: that’s what I used to do before I was a Christian. I am completely indifferent to the “funkiness” of Christianity and its institutions: what I care about is whether it is true or not. If it is, no other reason for attending church is needed; if it isn’t, no amount of “funkiness” could persuade me to attend.
To be fair to Father Phil, this does have one redeeming feature: if at some point I need a self-caricaturing vicar to illustrate how the Church of England submersed itself beneath a morass of trendy irrelevance, I need look no further.
From here:
This could be one religious commandment that a congregation might find very easy to follow.
Father Phil Ritchie from All Saints Church in Hove, East Sussex, has said Easter Sunday is the perfect time for staying in bed, eating chocolate and having sex.
The vicar gave the alternative suggestion for a way to celebrate the resurrection of Christ after admitting that church just isn’t ‘cool and funky’.
Father Ritchie said: ‘The problem with the church is that we stay inside our building and occasionally come out and say “Why don’t you come to our church, it’s cool and funky”.
‘To be honest, it’s not.
‘I would love more people to come at 10am on Sunday and I would welcome them to All Saints.
‘For Christians this is the most important day of the year.All life and all hope flows from it.
‘But there are plenty of ways to celebrate without coming to a draughty Victorian building. So why not stay at home, have a lie in, have sex and eat some chocolate.’
Wow – just when you thought you’d heard it all. The most sacred day of the Christian year and this is how a clergy man feels it should be observed. How very, very sad.
Has he ever considered vocational counselling? From the All Saint’s website:
Born in Coventry he went to university in Manchester where he read Politics and Religion. He taught for a while at Little Lever School near Bolton and then spent two years in southern Tanzania with VSO. Not sure what to do next he took an MA in Renaissance English Literature at Sussex University – which brought him to Brighton (Hove actually: we lived on Clarendon Villas).
I can certainly understand the third sentence!
It sounds neopagan to me. After all, in pre-Christian times, the northern hemisphere Spring Equinox was the time for Fertility Rites to ensure that crops etc thrived through the following season.