Satanists want their own monument on steps of Oklahoma’s Statehouse

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Oklahoma Satanists want to erect a monument to Satan, claiming that they are entitled to equal time with Christians. The monument will be tasteful – at least to Satanists – and will portray the “historic/literary Satan”. Here’s a “literary” version of Satan in the Ninth Circle of Hell from Dante’s Inferno, although I doubt that that is what they have in mind. They may settle on the historical interpretation instead: a snake.

Gustave_Dore_Inferno34

For children, there will be an interactive display: push a button to see an animated depiction of Satanic child ritual abuse, perhaps.

Such is the price of indiscriminate religious equality.

From here:

“We believe that all monuments should be in good taste and consistent with community standards,” Greaves wrote in letter to state officials. “Our proposed monument, as an homage to the historic/literary Satan, will certainly abide by these guidelines.”

Greaves said one potential design involves a pentagram, a satanic symbol, while another is meant to be an interactive display for children. He said he expects the monument, if approved by Oklahoma officials, would cost about $20,000.

The Diocese of B.C. has elected a new bishop

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From here:

The Very Rev. Dr. Logan McMenamie, Dean of Columbia, and rector of Christ Church Cathedral has been elected as the 13th Bishop of the Diocese of British Columbia.

It goes without saying that the Very Rev. Dr. Logan McMenamie is a liberal; even more liberal than his predecessor, James Cowan.

He is presently rector of Christ Church Cathedral and in March of 2013 began to perform same sex blessings in the cathedral:

The congregation at Victoria’s Christ Church Cathedral voted overwhelmingly last week to allow same-sex blessings in the church, more than a decade after Vancouver-area Anglican churches did the same.

“The Anglican church has been talking about this for more than 30 years,” Rev. Logan McMenamie says.

“In some ways it’s disabled us, but it’s an important decision. It’s really a justice issue.”

McMenamie reckons that his parish has lost members because it has been too slow in allowing same sex blessings – that, after all, is what Canadian Anglicans have been clamouring for:

McMenamie laments the parish members he has lost because of the slow changes, but said more progress will be made at upcoming diocese gatherings.

He worries that the diocese he is about to inherit is falling apart, due, he believes, to the insufficiently enthusiastic application of blessing that which the Bible says should not be blessed:

“I know the issues in this diocese and the challenges we face,” he said, citing finances, closing parishes and a lack of young people.

When not pre-occupied with blessing same sex marriages, he concerns himself with other pressing matters such as the environment, homelessness and “spiritual paths” – whatever they are:

He said he has faith in the gifts and skills of the church community to address important issues such as the environment, a focus on relationships with First Peoples, homelessness and spiritual paths.

His agenda appears quite uncontaminated by quaint, outdated and, frankly, embarrassing concepts for those on “spiritual paths”, such as: man is born a sinner, is separated from God by his sin, his only remedy being the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, without which he is destined for hell – the actual Gospel of Jesus Christ.

An Anglican panegyric to Nelson Mandela

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From Fred Hiltz:

Today the world mourns the passing of one of the greatest men of our times.  Nelson Mandela’s life is the story of the prisoner who became the president of his beloved country.  He is the icon of South African’s long road to freedom from apartheid.  He is “the father of our nation”, writes Desmond Tutu, “the pride of our people.”

[….]

Mandela is destined to be remembered in the calendar of holy men and women through the ages.   To give ourselves to the work of “transforming unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind, and to pursue peace and reconciliation among all people,” (the Fourth Mark of Mission) will be to truly honour his life and his labours.

During the 1950s, Mandela was appointed commander in chief of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – Spear of the Nation. This organisation was responsible for blowing apart men, woman and children in places like shopping centres, cinemas and government buildings. Torture and executions were routine at ANC detention camps, a favourite of Mandela’s wife, Winnie, being to put a gasoline filled tire around someone’s neck and set fire to it.

It’s all part of “transforming unjust structures of society”.

Diocese of Niagara has AIDS vigil

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There will be an AIDS vigil at Christ Church Cathedral tomorrow. The reason appears to be not so much to encourage the prevention of AIDS but to “honour those living with HIV and those we have lost to AIDS – Honour. Celebrate. Be with us.” All that remains is the instituting of the Order of Niagara, HIV edition.

Actually helping to prevent AIDS rather than treating it once it has taken hold seems to me to be a better strategy. Regrettably, since AIDS is spreading predominantly through men having sex with one another and the concept of restraint is one that will be entirely foreign to those participating, this will probably be the only taboo topic at the vigil.

In 2010, MSM [men having sex with men] accounted for 63% of estimated new HIV infections in the United States and 78% of infections among all newly infected men. From 2008 to 2010, new HIV infections increased 22% among young (aged 13-24) MSM and 12% among MSM overall.

To lighten the mood, the Hamilton Gay Men’s Chorus will be on hand for musical entertainment. 01-12-2013 6-53-13 PM

The Diocese of New Westminster has elected a new bishop

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Melissa SkeltonThe Reverend Canon Melissa M Skelton.

In this video, Skelton declares that she wishes to bring “restoration of a sense of feeling and reality of unity in the diocese.” Clearly, she supports the Ingham decisions that split the diocese, since she believes that the diocese was “called” – presumably by God – to go “down that road.”

Her recipe for “the re-unification of the diocese” is listening by using circle processes. I’m not sure what she means by circle processes – other than going around in circles, an activity at which Anglicans have had plenty of practice, particularly when pretending to listen. Doubtless, a veneer of unity won’t be too hard to manufacture since the most vigorous dissenters from diocesan dogma have already left. Those who remain will be too timid to make much of a fuss, contenting themselves, instead, with their appointed role of token conservatives: evidence of diocesan diversity.

Earlier this year, Skelton was hoping to be bishop of New Jersey; New Westminster, with its “difficult 20 years”, must have been her second career choice.

The Anglican Church of Canada does a Hunger Games Eucharist

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The Hunger Games, from which the book gets its title, is a fictitious annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle to the death. The book was inspired by gladiatorial games and reality TV.

While some think there is Christian symbolism in the book, I think the connection is somewhat tenuous.

The transcendent having been carefully excised from Anglican Church of Canada’s gospel, it – ever striving to be relevant – sees the temporal battle between the poor and wealthy in the book as a fitting centrepiece for a Eucharist.

What next after the U2charist and the Hunger Games Eucharist? I’m surprised we haven’t already seen a Matrix Eucharist, a Harry Potter Eucharist and a Hobbit Eucharist. There is still time.

From here:

About 130 young people gathered in a heavily fortified bank vault in the depths of the ‘Diefenbunker’ near Carp, Ont., on Nov. 17, 2013. They were there for a Eucharist and sermon comparing the pacifism of Christ and the “redemptive violence” of the bestselling novel and movie The Hunger Games.

The once-secret underground bunker near Carp, Ont., was built more than 50 years ago to protect the Canadian government from nuclear attack.

“The Hunger Games is a book about juxtaposition,” said the Rev. Monique Stone, organizer of the service and incumbent of the Anglican Parish of Huntley, in her sermon. “It’s a book in which we see a community in dire poverty pushed up against a community of privilege­—in which we hear about a community that is starving, and [another] that has so much excess that at times they actually want to make themselves sick so they can fit in more food.”

Diocese of Niagara emphasising community over truth

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An Oakville church has been distributing flyers designed to entice the unwary into its sanctuary. The main selling point is that you can make new friends and join a community without having to believe anything in particular. I doubt that this strategy will work since it faces strong competition from the Oakville Lawn Bowling Club: you can make new friends there, too, get more exercise when bowling and – there is “No Need to Believe!”

The flyer points out: “If you come away believing…. hey, that’s a bonus!” As in lawn bowling, it doesn’t matter what you come away believing because it’s the community that is important, not boring doctrinal trivia.

Social-Club

Two Anglican Church of Canada bishops attended GAFCON

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Bishop David Parsons and Bishop Darren McCartney from the Diocese of the Arctic attended the recent GAFCON conference. Since it hints at betrayal of the ACoC’s culturally inspired faux-gospel of indiscriminate inclusion and woolly diversity, this has created “a lot of angst and frustration.” If the ACoC’s tacit demotion of Jesus from God Incarnate to Middle Eastern social worker is not recanted, perhaps it is also a harbinger of the future defection of an entire ACoC diocese.

From the December Anglican Journal describing events at the October house of bishops meeting (not online yet):

News that Bishops David Parsons and Darren McCartney of the Diocese of the Arctic attended the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Nairobi in the hopes of creating partnerships to help with the diocese’s debt crisis and shortage of priests met with some consternation. “As one of our bishops put it, when the stated purpose of GAFCON is evangelistic revival in the life of the church, who could argue with that? But when there’s another kind of agenda going on that says the church in the West or North America preaches a false gospel…. then that creates a lot of angst and frustration,” said Hiltz.

As the Anglican World Turns

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In 2007, the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada decided that blessing same sex unions is consistent with the core doctrine of The Anglican Church of Canada. I’m not sure I could present a convincing argument against that: the core doctrine of the ACoC meandered away from Biblical truth a few decades ago, so embracing something explicitly forbidden in the Bible fit’s quite comfortably within the increasingly porous confines of what passes for core doctrine in the ACoC.

Still, resolution A186 provoked considerable debate, much of it bitter. As a result, the 2010 General Synod, rather than restarting the debate on same-sex unions and their place within the ACoC, came up instead with a sexuality discernment statement. In seven paragraphs, it manages to use “conversations” six times, “dialogue” six times, “discernment” six times, “diverse” and its variations four times and “transparency” twice; “Christ” was mentioned twice as well, but I expect that was an oversight. “Sex”, ostensibly what the document was about, was mentioned just once, thus confirming the obvious: the statement was prophetic propaganda from the ACoC’s department of missional disinformation. It was designed to obfuscate and divert attention away from the issue.

The 2013 General Synod unravelled much of the sterling work of its predecessor. Resolution C003 asked the Council of General Synod to go a significant step further than same-sex blessings and “prepare and present a motion at General Synod 2016 to change Canon XXI on Marriage to allow the marriage of same sex couples” (my emphasis).

At the recent COGS meeting, Fred Hiltz said:

When Resolution C003 passed, “the truce was broken and once again we find ourselves in the midst of chaos,” Hiltz quoted these bishops as having said.

The chaos was always there even though the 2010 GS tried to pretend otherwise; a few members of COGS, heads firmly in the sand, wish to return to the halcyon days of 2010 Anglican fence-sitting:

[s]ome wondered whether there was a way to “come up with a neutral recommendation” at General Synod.

Like it or not, same-sex marriage is coming to the Anglican Church of Canada eventually. There are only two ways of stopping it: the ACoC ceases to exist before it summons the backbone to announce a decision or God decides it is worth saving after all and brings repentance to its clergy.

Atheists force cancellation of Operation Christmas Child

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A “perturbed parent” – one parent, by the sound of it – has convinced fellow atheists in the American Humanist Association that giving Christmas presents to poor children in the Third World is tantamount to proselytising: the AMA has threatened to sue a school for taking part in Operation Christmas Child.

By preventing the giving of these Christmas gifts, atheists are engaged in their own twisted brand of evangelism: they are ramming home Richard Dawkins’ cheery view that in our universe there is “no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Surely there must be some parents “perturbed” by that?

From here:

A South Carolina charter school has canceled its annual Christmas toy drive after a group of self-described humanists complained that the project violated the U.S. Constitution and accused them of bribing children to convert to Christianity.

Renee Mathews, the principal of East Point Academy in West Columbia, S.C., said the annual Operation Christmas Child project was halted because the American Humanist Association threatened to sue the school.

“We received a letter saying we had to cease and desist immediately or they would take legal action against us,” Mathews told me.

[…..]

[T]he American Humanist Association decided to intervene on behalf of a perturbed parent.

“The boxes of toys are essentially a bribe, expressly used to pressure desperately poor children living in developing countries to convert to Christianity, and are delivered with prayers, sermons, evangelical tracts and pressure to convert,” read a letter the AHA sent to Mathews.

The AHA said a public school cannot affiliate itself with a group like Operation Christmas Child without violating the Establishment Clause.