Malcolm Muggeridge, in the title of his essay Tread Softly for you tread on my Jokes, was referring  to the difficulty of parodying an institution which, through its own self-parodying, was already surpassing all possible outside efforts.

Thus I realise the futility of attempting to compete with the nescient witlessness – blind to irony or inadvertent allusion – of a contributor to the rag of a post-Christian Anglican denomination in writing this phrase about Christ: “there’s a mystery about him the moment we try to nail him down”.

The Diocese of Niagara’s September edition of its paper arrived on my doorstep this morning; as of this writing, it isn’t online. The same article goes on to note that the Nicene Creed is so fourth century:

I have to admit that I don’t find the traditional Nicene formula of the 4th. Century a good fit in the 21st. I’m thankful that in our church, St. George’s, Guelph, we seldom use the Nicene Creed.

Let’s all stand and sing John Lennon’s Imagine.

The Good News, the Gospel, is that God is in everyone so he is really, really inclusive and we’re all reconciled to him, like it or not; take that Christopher Hitchens:

the good news, as I see it is that God is in the world, in everybody. Thank God we’re an inclusive church, but how inclusive is inclusive? I believe as Paul said, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. That’s our good news to the world. Heaven is on earth. God loves everyone. He lives in and among us, as Our Father. We’re all reconciled to Him. This was Jesus’ message, misunderstood by the Pharisees and many today.

There is no Fall, no sin, no need for a Saviour, no future heaven or hell, no transcendence and, so…… no point:

But what is the good news? Is it the tradition that if we’re good girls and boys we’ll go to heaven? Or, if we believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior? Lord perhaps, but savior? Savior from what? He does say that if we believe in Him (God who so loved the world, or Jesus himself?) we shall not perish, but have eternal life. But there’s no past or future in eternity, only a perpetual present, the eternal now. If this be so, the present should be our chief, and only, concern, not after we die. Heaven and Hell are present realities.

Apparently, we don’t actually know who Jesus was, so we might as well let everyone decide for himself – after all, we wouldn’t want to exclude someone (the only sin left) who thinks he is the reincarnation of the Easter bunny – that would lead to confusion and conflict:

God is chiefly drawn from his [Jesus’] life, as recorded in the Scriptures. But there’s a mystery about him the moment we try to nail him down. Why not dispense with creed making, and let each person find out who Jesus is for her or himself? Orthodoxy leads only to confusion, conflict and exclusion.

So, welcome to church where nothing is real, transcendent or believable but at least you will feel  included in the gibbering crackpot collective known as the Diocese of Niagara.