No, it’s not another Indaba meeting, it’s a Halloween service at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral; it is intended to “engage with people’s fear of death and fascination with the spirit world”.
It seems that the Church of England’s desperation to entice people into a church has sunk to the level of titillating their dangerous fascination for the occult.
More here:
Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral will stage a Halloween service tonight that will “engage with people’s fear of death and fascination with the spirit world”.
Canon Richard White will lead ‘Night of the Living Dead’ at 8pm in the main space of the Cathedral.
The first service like it took place in 2010, with more than 200 people attending.
Canon Richard said: “Halloween is now the second biggest commercial event of the year.
“While lots of churches offer positive alternatives for children, teenagers and young adults can often see the church as irrelevant or condemning at this time of the year.
“Our stunning Gothic cathedral is the perfect place to seize the opportunity to connect with people’s fascination with the ‘spiritual world’.
“It will be creative, fun and will have Christ at its centre.”
What a dreadful thing! The more the Church has striven to be “relevent” the more it loses the fact of its absolute necessity, the more it loses its real message: salvation. “Relevant” is truly the Devil’s word. And to think that the scores of people who built Liverpool Cathedral – a truly wonderful building, and one of the greatest things Christianity has produced in modern times (at least in Britain)- thought they were producing a beacon of Christian hope in a place of darkness (the world we live in)! The fact that the Canon claimed this is a ‘Christian event’ is really no good …
Hard to imagine how he will have ‘Christ at the centre’ of something like that. He’s playing a very dangerous game.
“Halloween”, or All Saints’ Eve, was, of course, pinched from the European pagans (now Wicca).
But then, if one wanted to nitpick, so was Easter(“Eostre”), which was the (northern hemisphere) Spring Equinox. Also the Christian festival of Candlemas, at the beginning of February, has a pagan (Wiccan)origin.
That is just two examples of what could be called “adaptionism”. There are others.
Yes, but when Easter was “pinched” it was thoroughly Christianised. Halloween is thoroughly pagan (some would say Satanic), and when Christians try to “use” it to become “relevant” (as at Liverpool) it’s the Christians who get paganised – a big difference. The “adaptionism” thus takes two very different forms.
Erm, I think at least some of these statements are factually dubious.
For instance, the festival of Easter originates in the Roman world, related to the passover, and has nothing to do with the supposed pagan goddess Eostre. The “spring equinox” stuff is rubbish; the term “Eostre” exists in the historical record in one place only: in Bede’s “De ratione temporum”, where it occurs in the form “Eosturmonath”, the old name for the month in which the festival of Easter tends to fall. Thus the name adopted in England — there is no other reference to this — in the christianisation of England.
I don’t know about Halloween or Candlemas, but be very wary. Any amount of nonsense is confidently repeated, unchecked, by people on the web and in books. Always ask to see the primary sources which specifically state the “borrowing” alleged. If none appear, it is usually safe to presume that a lie is in progress.
Much of this stuff originates in anti-Catholic rhetoric of the 16-18th centuries, designed to show how paganism had taken over Catholicism. In modern times this stuff was adapted by atheists to attack all Christians, with much less logic and learning. Be sceptical!
If you were talking about trick or treating, I’d agree with you, but I think this is a different case. (Wicca is a reinvention of European paganism – there’s no direct connection. It was founded by Gerald Gardner in the 1950’s, and he made a lot of it up out of whole cloth). Candelmas may or may not have a pagan ‘origin’, but it’s got nothing to do with Wicca.
Frankly, if they merely used this as a “hook” to get people in the door and then delivered a strong gospel message, I wouldn’t mind it at all.