Bishop Melissa Skelton is fully supportive of same-sex blessings

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Rev. Melissa Skelton is being installed as Bishop of the Diocese of New Westminster today, replacing Michael Ingham.

For those who may be nursing a hope that the diocese’s policy on blessing same-sex unions might change, this interview should disabuse you (my emphasis):

Q. Since Bishop Ingham was a controversial figure in the 70-million member global Anglican communion, how will you handle his legacy?

A. I intend to listen and learn a lot about what this experience has been like for the diocese — the positive parts of this and the more difficult parts. I’m trying to come to this with a real beginner’s mind, not making assumptions about people’s experience. By the way, I’m fully supportive of offering blessings of covenantal relationships between same-sex couples in the Anglican Church.

What Skelton has already learned from her predecessor is that she can glibly ignore the wishes of the majority in the Anglican Communion and be complacently secure in the conviction that she will not be censured by the Anglican Church of Canada, its Primate, Canterbury or the Archbishop of Canterbury. What God thinks about it, as revealed in the book Skelton claims to follow, might be an entirely different matter; but who cares about him when Fred Hiltz is on your side.

Fred Hiltz thinks churches should have a smudging ceremony every Sunday of Lent

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Yes, another peculiar way of keeping Lent, this time from the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Smudging – the burning of various herbs and immersing oneself in the resulting smoke (doesn’t sound very green does it?) – is supposed to drive out evil spirits, negative energy and balance energies. As such, the kindest thing one can say about it is that it is harmless nonsense, the unkindest, but perhaps more accurate, is that it is linked to the occult.

Still, at least it proves that the Anglican New-Age Church of Canada still believes in something other than inclusion and diversity.

From here (page 5):

In recent years I have come to deeply appreciate the rites of smudging conducted by indigenous peoples.

[…..]

This entire act is a rite of purification of body, mind and spirit in the service of the Creator.

As I think about this rite, I ask: isn’t that what Lent is all about—a clearing of our eyes, an opening of our ears, a renewing of our minds, a cleansing of our souls and a reorienting of our lives as stewards of God’s creation, followers of Jesus and ambassadors of the compassion and peace he wills for all people?

While I appreciate the significance of imposing ashes at the outset of Lent, I have come to wonder if smudging might not be an equally powerful reminder of the true character of these 40 days. I wonder what the impact might be if there was a ceremony of smudging on each Sunday in Lent….

Diocese of Montreal Lenten study: “It’s not all good”

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After months of prayerful discernment, the Diocese of Montreal has developed a Lenten series that provides new and penetrating insights on what Lent is not about. Never before has the church presented a Lenten study that is this irrelevant to Lent.

A proud moment:

diomontreal

Anglican Church of Canada’s Africa relations co-ordinator claims GAFCON is engaged in a campaign of misinformation

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IsaacMukasaRev. Canon Kawuki Mukasa is the ACoC’s new “Africa relations co-ordinator” and he is about to perform a similar function for TEC. It would appear that he has been given the rather ambitious task of rebuilding the reputation of the Anglican Church of Canada in Africa. The diminishing of the ACoC’s standing in Africa has, according to Mukasa, nothing at all to do with the blessing of same sex marriages, the ordination of openly active homosexual clergy, the numerous lawsuits launched to acquire buildings that others paid for or the diminishing of the centrality of Christ.

No! It is all GAFCON’s fault for launching a “campaign of misinformation”. Mukasa isn’t entirely clear what the heinous calumnies GAFCON has ingeniously concocted are that could possibly appear worse than the things the ACoC has actually done.

From here (page 4, my emphasis):

In a letter read out by Bishop Barry Clarke at the January meeting of the Montreal Diocesan Council, Rev. Canon Kawuki Mukasa, global relations officer for Africa, says the Anglican Church of Canada would like to build on the good will that Montreal has helped to sustain in relations with Africa. He invites the diocese to work collaboratively with other Canadian dioceses that have companion links with African dioceses “to explore ways of reclaiming the reputation that Canada used to enjoy in African Provinces” before a “campaign of misinformation” by an international group called the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

An Anglican Lent: welcome to your Carbon Fast

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You may be under the impression that Lent is a time of spiritual and mental preparation for Easter. Not according to contemporary Anglican dogma; Lent has a “deeper challenge” than preparing for such trifles as the atonement and resurrection. What it’s really about is using less fossil fuel so that we can create a “sustainable world”, the only world left to clergy who have ceased to believe in the next.

From here:

The Anglican Communion’s Environmental Network (ACEN) is encouraging Christians around the world to take part in a “carbon-fast” this Lent.

The network is calling on Anglicans to take a deeper challenge than fasting from coffee, alcohol or chocolates this Lent, by reducing the use of carbon based fuels on which we all depend.

“We will take small steps for a more sustainable world, and by doing so rediscover a different relationship with God, with Creation and with one another,” the group says on its website, adding: “I can change the world a little in 40 days, but I can change myself a lot!”

For the truly green, terminal Anglican there is the Eco Container, as advertised in that bastion of anti-transcendence, the Niagara Anglican. In my Angligreen house there are many mansions – they all look like boxes, though.

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St. Hilda’s: the denouement

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St. Hilda’s building when it had a flourishing congregation; we have a lot of artists:IMG_2148

St. Hilda’s once the Diocese of Niagara acquired it:
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St. Hilda’s once the Diocese of Niagara had sold it for a handsome profit:
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St. Hilda’s flattened:
_29U4712The demolition company did leave just one thing behind in addition to the welcoming, inclusive concrete barrier: the church sign!_29U4708It seems that someone has attached a poster advertising where St. Hilda’s went. Fancy that:_29U4703

The Church of England does believe in demons after all

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The Church of England doesn’t talk that much about demons during its General Synod. Since the church is removing the devil from baptismal liturgies, it isn’t too surprising that his minions don’t get much time at Synod. Until now.

According to the Right Reverend Stephen Croft, the “great demon of our day” is climate change – what else – and the damage it will do is “unimaginable”. A couple of thousand years ago it took a whole legion of demons to throw a bunch of pigs over a cliff; such has Mephistophelian potency burgeoned since Rowan’s retirement, now all it takes is one demon to destroy the entire planet.

And people say the Church of England has lost touch with the pulse of modernity.

From here:

“The issue of climate change is real and it is happening.”

Canon Goddard pointed out the moral case from a Christian point of view: “Care for the Earth, as a gift of the Creator, is in many ways foundational for the Gospel. We have the responsibility, expressed for example in the Genesis story and in the covenant with Noah, to care for God’s creation.”

He added: “Climate Change is a moral issue because the rich world has disproportionately contributed to it and the poor world is disproportionately suffering.”

Many members of the General Synod supported this motion with the Bishop of Sheffield, the Right Reverend Stephen Croft saying: “The threat of climate change is a giant evil, a great demon of our day. The damage this great demon will do to this beautiful earth if unchecked, is unimaginable.”

Rowan, Justin and Either/Or

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Justin Welby’s recipe for holding the Anglican Communion together was elucidated in his address to synod:

Already I can hear the arguments being pushed back at me, about compromise, about the wishy-washiness of reconciliation, to quote something I read recently.  But this sort of love, and the reconciliation between differing groups that it demands and implies, is not comfortable and soft and wishy-washy.  Facilitated conversations may be a clumsy phrase, but it has at its heart a search for good disagreement.

[…..]

We have received a report with disagreement in it on sexuality, through the group led by Sir Joseph Pilling.  There is great fear among some, here and round the world, that that will lead to the betrayal of our traditions, to the denial of the authority of scripture, to apostasy, not to use too strong a word. And there is also a great fear that our decisions will lead us to the rejection of LGBT people, to irrelevance in a changing society, to behaviour that many see akin to racism. Both those fears are alive and well in this room today.

We have to find a way forward that is one of holiness and obedience to the call of God and enables us to fulfil our purposes.  This cannot be done through fear. How we go forward matters deeply, as does where we arrive.

In attempting to resolve the disagreements in his church about sexuality, Rowan Williams tried to find a middle ground between the opposing views. He used Indaba groups to do this. He didn’t succeed partly because there was no middle ground to find and partly because, even if it had been found, anyone with any common sense knew that once the mythical entity was spotted, it would immediately start to drift leftward.

Justin Welby has astutely noticed that Rowan’s efforts were a dismal failure so, rather than look for a half-way point between opposing views, he is seeking, through the odious tedium euphemistically known as “facilitated conversations”, to convince polar opposites to coexist within one organisation – he calls it “good disagreement”. What will prevent the whole thing flying apart is “love” – it’s all you need, after all.

At heart, I am a simple minded computer technician and, through bitter experience, I have been forced to reach the conclusion that if I write a program in which false and true propositions are compelled to coexist, disaster will ensue. Programmers are renowned for being sentimentally attached to their creations but, no matter how much love I pour into it, a routine whose rules of logic include (1 ∨ 0  =  0) ∧ (1 ∨ 0 = 1) = 1 is destined for spectacular failure.

Now, you may say, that’s all very well for computers; they are by nature binary, almost Kierkegaardian in their Either/Or obsessiveness. When it comes to sexuality and the Church one must expect diverse opinions, differing interpretations, loving disagreement. Complete nonsense. If the church can’t come up with a unified view on a subject which it has been pondering for 2000 years, something whose boundaries are clearly prescribed by the book it claims to follow, something – morality – in which it supposedly specialises, then it is time for the clergy to call it day, dissolve their institutional church and find more useful employment.

The Anglican wave of the future: composting toilets

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In a flash of rare brilliance, the Church of England has found a new way to entice the next generation of Anglicans into its churches: the opportunity to do number two in a church supplied composting toilet. It doesn’t get any more seeker friendly than that.

I do think the church might still be able to go one step further, though; especially parishes with adjacent allotments.

From here:

In our office we have a large map entitled ‘Devon’s Green Churches’ which contains a series of dots and stars covering the county from Ilfracombe to Ivybridge. Each symbol represents a church with a composting toilet or solar panels, or has completed an energy survey, or is registered as fair-trade or an ‘eco-congregation’, or runs a wood-burning heating system, and so on. They are examples of church eco projects. In total there are more than 200 coloured symbols and we add more each few weeks.

Is Atheism Irrational?

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In a recent interview, Alvin Plantinga suggests that if, as atheists claim, materialism is true, our beliefs, including the belief that God does not exist, are unreliable. The real reason for the popularity of atheism amongst those who should know better is that refusing to believe in the existence of God is, as Peter Hitchens agrees, simply a choice  – and not a particularly rational one – made by atheists because they don’t want God interfering with the way they live.

The whole interview is well worth a read:

Thomas Nagel, a terrific philosopher and an unusually perceptive atheist, says he simply doesn’t want there to be any such person as God. And it isn’t hard to see why. For one thing, there would be what some would think was an intolerable invasion of privacy: God would know my every thought long before I thought it. For another, my actions and even my thoughts would be a constant subject of judgment and evaluation.

Basically, these come down to the serious limitation of human autonomy posed by theism. This desire for autonomy can reach very substantial proportions, as with the German philosopher Heidegger, who, according to Richard Rorty, felt guilty for living in a universe he had not himself created. Now there’s a tender conscience! But even a less monumental desire for autonomy can perhaps also motivate atheism.