The Anglican Church of Canada, social services agency

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The Anglican Church of Canada, having spent many decades trying to persuade us that man’s yearning for transcendence can be satisfied by installing a solar panel and buying a Prius, is continuing to transform itself into a social services agency by converting its buildings into apartments. The latest effort hails from Winnipeg where St. Matthew’s is, so we are told, excited by the fact that it worships in a small corner of the former church building. This must be what revival means in the ACoC.

Fittingly, Fred Hiltz was installed as Primate at St. Matthew’s; clearly he has taken St. Matthew’s decline to 80 parishioners as inspiration for the direction of the entire denomination.

From here:

The congregation at St. Matthew’s Anglican Church is excited to worship in what is only a small corner of the grand brick edifice that once was the largest Anglican church building in Winnipeg.

That’s because the remainder of St. Matthew’s Anglican Church has been converted into 25 low-income apartments, a $7.3-million project under construction for nearly three years.

For recalcitrant Anglicans who remain unmoved by these stirring tales of the Soviet style conversion of churches into apartments, there is this magnificent Hiltzian denunciation of all things not green. An unnamed source high in the Chinese Politburo – they are keen observers of ACoC policies – told me, on the condition of remaining anonymous, that the Standing Committee is so moved by this panegyric to renewing the face of the earth (heaven and hell having long ago been extirpated from the ACoC) that they immediately plan to stop building smog spewing coal fired power plants – currently expanding at the rate of two per week.

Sydney

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A few photos from Sydney. There are many more that will have to wait since my Aussie Internet connection seems to be running on wet string and tin cans.

The view of Sydney harbour from our friends’ apartment where we stayed for a while:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe obligatory opera house shots:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Bondi Beach:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASome colour from the Botanic Gardens:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAResting in the Botanic Gardens:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASt, Mary’s Cathedral:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABuskers:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAPeople walking across the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge. No, I didn’t try it:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

An Anglican church with a resident imam

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From here:

Anglican ImamCALGARY – A unique Imam in Residence program is being launched at St. Martin’s Anglican Church in October in conjunction with the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Assembly.

“This type of program does help us understand each others’ beliefs and traditions. There’s more misunderstanding and misinformation (out there),” says Imam Syed Soharwardy, with the Muslims Against Terrorism group and with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, who is the Imam in Residence for the program.

“We are bringing congregations together. It’s not just the imam and pastor talking. It is the grassroots congregation coming together to have food together, to be together. It’s a very good thing that even children participate, families participate, women participate. It removes the barriers between people.”

The Imam in Residence program takes place October 17-19.

[…..]

“It was just a really enriching experience to see what we had in common and to learn things about each other – to have a chance for us in a very intentional setting to sit down and really learn about other faiths,” says Brubaker Garrison.

The program includes:

Friday, October 17th, 1:15 p.m. – Services at Genesis Centre of Community Wellness (gymnasium) with conversation afterward.
Saturday, October 18th, 10:00 a.m. – “Qur’an and Its Different Interpretations” & 1:00 p.m. – “Islamic Sharia and Muslims in the Western World: Issues, Limitations, and Enforcement” at Knox Presbyterian Church
Sunday, October 19th, 10:00 a.m. – Worship at St. Martin’s with the sermon offer by Imam Soharwardy

It’s hard to overlook the fact that the “learning” is all one-sided: Rev. Brubaker Garrison and her congregation seem to be hearing a lot about the Koran and Sharia law but the imam isn’t being told much at all about Jesus, his divinity, atoning death upon the cross, resurrection and the fact that he is the only way to God the Father. If Brubaker Garrison actually believed that herself, she would probably be less eager to encourage her congregation to absorb the finer points of Sharia law.

Syed Soharwardy, whose sensibilities were outraged by the Western Standard ‘s publishing of the  Mohammed cartoons, filed a human rights complaint against Ezra Levant. As a result, Ezra, unlike Rev. Brubaker Garrison, doesn’t get along too well with the imam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9ErIT2wyng

Islam is not a religion of peace

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Given current events, this is not a particularly startling assertion. What is somewhat surprising, is that a Muslim is making it. Tarek Fatah, a Muslim, reckons that the antics of ISIS are inherent to the teaching and tradition of Islam and a continuation of the received understanding of the activities of its founder.

From here:

We Muslims need to acknowledge the beheadings by ISIS are part of Islamic tradition, text and history, not some fringe interpretation of our faith.

None other than the grandson of Prophet Mohammed was slaughtered and his head paraded through the streets of Damascus on a spike.

The ISIS jihadis are doing exactly what we Muslims are taught our Prophet did during warfare.

Here is a quote from the voluminous biography of the Prophet of Islam, Sirat Rasul Allah by Ibn Ishaq, popularly known as the Sira:

“Then they (Jews) surrendered and the apostle (Prophet Mohammed) confined them in Medina. Then the apostle went out to the market and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for them (Jews) and struck off their heads in those trenches … There were 600 or 700 in all.”

In my book, The Jew is Not My Enemy, I disputed this account of mass murder, but was assailed for having challenged what many, if not all Muslims, consider absolute truth.

Islam is not a religion of peace.

The Diocese of Nova Scotia lost in a maze

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While some of us have been distracted by the mass beheadings of Christians in Iraq and Syria, the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island has kept its ever vigilant eye on what really matters: it is fearlessly battling a corn maze that has a “conflicted history of corporate interests”.

There are quite a few eco-maze zealots in the diocese. Much as a rotting log is crawling with woodlice, the diocese, apparently, is “crawling with environmentalists”:

Through a network format, Lucas-Jeffries drew the circle wide. Now more than eighty committed Anglicans from Nova Scotia and PEI “encourage and support each other around caring for creation,” she says. Lucas-Jefferies is thrilled with her new role and the abundance of committed Anglicans she meets along the way. “The church is crawling with environmentalists,” she exclaims.

As an example of both the pervasiveness of environmentalists and her skills as a networker, Lucas-Jefferies recalls a happenstance meeting in a corn maze in Truro, Nova Scotia. There, among the groomed rows of corn the environmentalist priest met a kindred Anglican woman from down the road in Dartmouth. The two forged a strong bond when they discovered, with dismay, that the maze had a conflicted history of corporate interests and genetically engineered corn.

It didn’t take long for Lucas-Jefferies to recognise the limited interest the rest of us have in the corporate contamination of corn mazes: she quickly moved on to the much trendier evil of fracking, a subject about which she confidently claims to know nothing:

Lucas-Jeffries spoke from the heart. She also spoke not as an expert, but as someone committed to listening and learning and discerning the movement of the Spirit in this space. With her time at the mic, she put to the room questions she thought essential for the fracking conversation, “Why do we need to do this? Who is going to benefit? What about the pitfalls?”

She ends on the high note of declaring Creation rather than Jesus as the reason for her relationship with God:

“It is because of the existence of Creation that I have this particular relationship with God—and with others—that is enhanced by the beauty of it.”

New Satanic Temple in Detroit

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From here:

The Temple says its mission is to “actively provide outreach, to lead by example, and to participate in public affairs wheresoever the issues might benefit from rational, Satanic insights.”

It didn’t expand on those “insights” on its website.

Blackmore said the temple’s plans for Michigan include offering same-sex wedding ceremonies and advocating for women’s rights — in particular, opposing on religious grounds the informed consent laws requiring that women receiving abortions be given certain information.

Delete the word “Satanic” from the first sentence and replace it with “Anglican Church of Canada” or “TEC” and you will note that the article is just as believable; that is because they appear to have much the same mission.

Keeping Anglicans Talking

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Keeping Anglicans Talking – KAT – is a series of videos by the Anglican Church of Canada to promote, once again, the opposite of what is needed: I have been waiting in vain for Shutting-up Anglicans Talking, the far more apposite, SHAT.

The first videos concentrate on collecting more money; that’s a real shocker.

From here:

Keeping Anglicans Talking (KAT) is a new online video resource featuring short, compelling talks by notable Anglicans. Each talk touches on a different aspect of how Anglicans are living out the Marks of Mission locally and globally.

The first round of ten videos is now live at the KAT website and focusses on stewardship, giving, and mission.

All women should try lesbianism

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The Guardian’s Julie Bindel thinks lesbianism is not something you are born with or, as the Anglican Church would have it, something God created you to be, but a choice. She thinks all women should give it a try. That must mean that Vicky Beeching should give heterosexuality a try.

From here:

Feminist writer Julie Bindel has claimed that all women should “try” lesbianism.

In an interview with Talking Shop, the Guardian columnist said: “Look at the conditions in which women live under patriarchy – women gain by leaving heterosexuality behind.

“I think lesbianism can be a great liberation for women… why would you not try it?

The Camp of the Saints

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I read Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints in the late 1970s. It is the type of book that excites vigorous emotional opposition from liberal and leftist Westerners because it posits the idea that excessive immigration from the Third World could lead to the destruction of the West. The bookseller in the store where I ordered it was a weasel faced – not that I held that against him – self-appointed intellectual who didn’t want to sell me the book: he thought it would corrupt me. Alas, his fatherly concern came too late. It did lead me to ponder the truism that today’s book burners tend to be on the political left; that is only fitting, I suppose, since they think they know what is best for the rest of us.

Modern Britain is a testament to Raspail’s warnings; we in North America, as yet lacking much of the UK’s immigration nightmare, are probably going to do the job ourselves by aborting ourselves into extinction. The unfortunates that do survive will be secularised into despair over the meaninglessness of their existence, leading them to voluntarily hasten their departure from this vale of tears through euthanasia or suicide.

To my surprise, the book is seeing something of a revival. Here is a recent review of it:

All those engaged in the debate over illegal immigration should find Jean Raispail’s The Camp of the Saints a challenging summer read. Otto Scott calls it “one of the most famous of the underground books.” Lionel Shriver believes it is a “novel both prescient and appalling.” The book became so notorious that the December 1994 issue of the Atlantic Monthly investigated many of the questions it raised.

The Camp of the Saints was published first in 1973 in France as Le Camp des Saints. An English translation by Norman Shapiro was published by Scribner in 1975. Since then, the book has been republished and described as a “controversial and politically incorrect novel,” and “a Fascist fantasy.”

[….]

The Camp of the Saints presents a reader with an alternate apocalypse from the one found in the Biblical book of Revelation. Even though Raspail’s title is taken from Revelation 20:9, “And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints,” the book has very little to do with a biblical interpretation of events.

Instead, the title is a sarcastic reference that shows to the Western reader the end of the world in secular terms. In Raspail’s book, liberalism marches steadfastly to its demographic doom.

[….]

Jean Raspail’s vision in The Camp of the Saints is an imaginary one of how the secular order in the West may end. It is a vision seen through the right eye. According to Raspail, the West “has no soul left” and “it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles.”

The secular world truly is in need of salvation, a salvation Jean Raspail believes Christian charity will prove itself powerless to effect. So, he warns us during our summer of immigration discontent, “The times will be cruel.”