Muslims swell the ranks of the Democratic National Convention

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As the article below notes, God was not mentioned at the DNC this year; at the next convention I expect Allah will be invoked instead.

It seems that Muslims may have stayed away from the Republican National Convention because of its anti-Sharia position. The Muslim perception of the Democratic Party must, presumably, be that it is not anti-Sharia; perhaps it is even pro-Sharia.

Welcome to Hope and Change 2012: polygamy; prohibition; criminalisation of homosexuality; dhimmitude; the death penalty for apostates and rape victims – and no bacon sarnies.

From here:

The word “God” may have been absent at the Democratic National Convention, but there were record numbers of Muslim delegates present at the Charlotte, N.C., meeting.

According to a news release from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the convention hosted more than 100 Muslim delegates from 20 states—up from 43 Muslim and Arab-American delegates at the 2008 convention and 25 four years before.

“The more than doubling of Muslim delegates at this year’s Democratic National Convention is a direct result of their hard work and grassroots organizing within the Democratic Party,” said CAIR’s government affairs coordinator, Robert McCaw. “It is also a sign of the American Muslim community’s growing civic engagement and acceptance in the Democratic Party.”

McCaw noted that only a handful of Muslim delegates attended this year’s Republican National Convention (RNC), during which the RNC adopted an anti-Sharia platform plank targeting the religious practices of Muslims. CAIR has asked the party to reject this policy.

Anglican Church of Canada archives threatened by budget cuts

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This is a shame, since the archives are just about the only parts of the Anglican Church of Canada worth preserving.

From here:

Church and secular archivists across Canada fear that funding cuts to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) will severely restrict their ability to acquire, preserve and make accessible the precious original documents that chronicle our history.

This mandate, legislated under the Library and Archives Canada Act, is considered equivalent to that of the U.S. Library of Congress or the British Library. “This constitutes an attack on one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions,” said James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) in a press release. Staff at our national archives and library are the stewards of our collective memory.”

[….]

“The impact on the local archival work of the Anglican church will be devastating,” says Nancy Hurn, General Synod archivist.

 

By the pricking of my thumbs, no prison spells on taxpayer funds

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Not yet at least.

In the name of religious freedom, incarcerated pagans in B.C., have requested a shaman chaplain to assist them in the casting of spells and double doubling their toil and trouble. Oddly enough the request has been denied.

In the interests of full inclusion, I am anticipating ecumenical intervention on their behalf by Bishop James Cowan – in time for the winter solstice.

From here:

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews appears less concerned about the quality of spells cast from behind bars than he is about a backlash from taxpayers, cancelling a Corrections Canada tender for a priest to nurture the spiritual needs of witches in prison.

Earlier this week, the federal prison agency put out a request for a proposal for a Wiccan chaplain in British Columbia who would provide about 17 hours of service a month, about an hour less service than the department says it needs for the Jewish faith.

About an hour after The Canadian Press reported on the contract, a statement from Toews’s office said it will not proceed until after a review.

 

Who’s on top at St. Matthew-in-the-city

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The Auckland Anglican church is a progressive church and, as such, supports same-sex marriage.

St. Matthew’s has a reputation for erecting strange billboards, so it is no surprise that it is at it again with this declaration of support for same-sex marriage plastered on billboards-in-the-city – what the church should really call itself.

As St. Matthew’s says: Welcome to a church like no other: a church of vertical inclusiveness:

As Chopin observed: Nothing is better than a guitar, save perhaps two

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Here are Julian Bream and John Williams playing the exquisite Suite for 2 Guitars by William Lawes.

Lawes was a 17th century composer, son of Thomas Lawes, a vicar choral at Salisbury Cathedral. He wrote quite a lot of secular and sacred music; this particular piece is probably among his best known compositions.

I saw Julian Bream in person in Cardiff in the late ‘60s; I confess, for me, the highlight of his performance was a mistake he made in something I was attempting to play at the time.

Interestingly, even though Bream and Williams are among the foremost classical guitarists of their generation, neither is a musical snob. Bream loved nothing better than to thump out some Django Reinhardt gypsy jazz with his mates and Williams has recorded many jazz and pop tunes.

Atheism and the body/mind problem

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A recent article about Christopher Hitchens quotes him saying: “I don’t have a body, I am a body.” This is a proposition that all atheists would affirm, but how rational is it?

Alvin Plantigna argues for dualism – that the mind and body are separate entities. The argument goes along these lines:

I can imagine a possible scenario where my mind exists separate from my body. I can even imagine that it is possible that my mind continues to exist if my body is destroyed.

I cannot imagine the possibility of my body existing separately from itself; if my body is destroyed, it is gone and I cannot imagine the possibility of it continuing to exist.

Therefore, my mind cannot identical to my body because I can imagine something is possible for it that I cannot imagine is possible for my body.

You can see Alvin Plantigna discussing the argument below and for a formal presentation of it go here.

St. Matthias, Victoria saved by armchairs

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When the congregation of St. Matthias voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and join ANiC, they left behind more than the building: two armchairs worth between $180,000 and $250,000 were also abandoned.

The rector of the 30 or so people who remained in the Diocese of BC, Rev. Robert Arril, is rubbing his hands in glee, since the sale of the chairs will enable him “to carry on the work we do”: subverting the Gospel.

St. Hilda’s Church in Oakville also has hidden treasures generously donated by the ANiC congregation that vacated the premises in June. If the Diocese of Niagara searches diligently, it will uncover an antique sump pump secreted in a hole in the basement: it doesn’t pump that well – if at all – but it is a fine early example of F. E. Myers engineering and, as such, could fetch a few needed dollars  for the impoverished Niagara coffers.

From here:

They’d been there, in a quiet spot along the back wall of Victoria’s St. Matthias Anglican Church, for decades — possibly since the parish opened the doors of its new home in the B.C. capital nearly 50 years ago.

But two elegantly designed wooden armchairs, their origin unknown to clergy or even the eldest members of the congregation, may prove to be the salvation of the financially-challenged church — nothing less than a “godsend,” according to St. Matthias’s rector, Rev. Robert Arril.

An antique-furniture buff’s fortuitous visit to the church two years ago for a Bible study session has led to the identification of the chairs as rare and valuable Qing dynasty treasures, expertly crafted in 17th-century China before making their way somehow — thanks to a long-forgotten donor evidently unaware of their significance — to the Vancouver Island parish.

Now, a church, which has struggled to survive since a damaging schism over same-sex marriage in 2009, is poised for a potential windfall when the chairs are auctioned next month in New York, where Sotheby’s expects the matching set to fetch as much as a quarter of a million dollars at a Sept. 11 sale of Chinese ceramics and works of art.

“It’s a remarkable discovery — such a fantastic turn of events,” Arril told Postmedia News. “It’s very significant for us as a struggling congregation, very meaningful. It will allow us to carry on the work we do.”

[….]

The two-chair set has an estimated value of between $180,000 and $250,000 US, according to Sotheby’s. A similar pair of 17th-century chairs from China sold earlier this year at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong for $282,000.

Diocese of Montreal ordains two men, both married to other men

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Rev. Robert Camara and Donald Boisvert were ordained by Bishop Barry Clarke in June, Camara as a priest and Boisvert as a deacon; both Camara and Boisvert  are married – to men.

Anyone still labouring under the misapprehension that the Anglican Church of Canada is not being consumed by an obsession with homoerotic sex, need look no further for illumination than to the preoccupations of those whom it is ordaining. Here is an extract from “Holy Sex” by Deacon Boisvert:

Anyone who has ever publicly cruised other men, or participated in some of the more arcane rituals associated with S/M sex, for example, will understand the powerful, almost overwhelming pull of the masculine and the unspoken codes with which we surround and protect it. Masculinity represents many things for gay men: potency, dominion, authority, abandonment, protection. As the dominant masculine symbol, the phallus acquires many characteristics of the holy. This is not a particularly modern interpretation. Phallic worship is as old as human civilization, and perhaps as controversial today as it was in the past. It has always been transgressive, associated with disorder and excess, with rioutous freedom and wanton sex. …. I call gay sex “holy sex” because it is centred on one of the primal symbols of the natural world, that of male regenerative power. The rites of gay sex call forth and celebrate this power, particularly in its unknown and unknowable anonymity. Gay men are the worshippers paying homage to the god who stands erect and omnific, ever silent and distant.

Just what the doctor ordered for ailing Canadian Anglicanism: phallic worship.

Here, in his book “Sacred Space”, Boisvert describes his life’s most “spiritual moments” in – where else – gay bars and bath-houses:

Because I am a gay man, my first time in a gay bar, my first visit to the baths, and most poignantly, the first time I stepped into the Stonewall Inn in New York City have also been uplifting, spiritual moments in my life.

I am looking forward to the gradual transformation of Christ Church Cathedral into a “Sacred Space”; my bet is that it will be a gay bathhouse – once the baptismal font has been enlarged.

Boisvert used to be a Roman Catholic, an affiliation that proved unsympathetic to his yearning to worship penises. Unsurprisingly, he has received a warm welcome in the Anglican Church of Canada as it sinks inexorably into Boisvert’s murky world of cruising other men looking for a spot of “Holy Sex”.

From here (page 4):

To say that Donald Boisvert has come out as a gay man would be an understatement. You could almost say he wrote the book (or books).
His ordination as an Anglican deacon by Bishop Barry Clarke June 3 is another event in his distinguished and public career as a scholar and activist concerned particularly with sexuality and the relation between sexuality and religion.
In a note for The Montreal Anglican in 2009, on the occasion of his being received into the Anglican Church by Bishop Barry Clarke, he wrote:
“I was raised a Roman Catholic; I studied for the Catholic priesthood; and I am a scholar of Catholic religious culture. I have a great deal of affection for the Catholic Church, in large part because it marks my cultural heritage and it guided me through my youth, but also because it still has a great deal to offer. But I am gay, and I have more and more difficulty with the Vatican’s archaic teachings on human sexuality, including its position on women and their place within Catholicism.
More broadly, however, the Catholic Church remains a deeply entrenched patriarchal institution, with an authoritarian and rigid governing structure.

It is difficult to refrain from speculating on why Bishop Barry Clarke would ordain someone whose chief interests lie in the exploration of the ritualistic aspects of sadomasochism and the holiness of male genitals. Is the bishop a witless lunatic, a closet adorer of phalluses, a neophyte practitioner of wanton sex looking for instruction?

Who can say – perhaps he just picked up Boisvert in a bathhouse.

Note: I’ve updated this article since Robert Camara and Donald Boisvert, while married to other men, are not married to each other as I had previously stated.

Anglican Church of Canada demographics

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The Anglican Journal conducted a survey to find out who is reading the paper. The age of those who read the Journal and who are, therefore, interested in the Anglican Church of Canada’s version of Christianity is revealing. You can view all the results here. These are the age groupings:

 

Let’s make the not unreasonable assumption that the age demographics of those who read the Journal are an accurate reflection of the age of church attendees. If we do, it means that unless things change and the church manages to attract younger people, in around 20 years, there will be 42% fewer Anglicans, in 30 years 72% fewer and in 40 years 94% fewer. That’s assuming the 6% currently between ages 18 to 49 don’t leave in the meantime.

The average Sunday attendance in the Anglican Church of Canada is around 320,000. If the above figures are any indication, in 40 years the average attendance will be 19,200.

Scarborough Fair

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I used to play the guitar in boozy smoked-filled folk clubs in the ‘60’s. One of the songs that was popular was Scarborough Fair, a 400 year old English ballad, arranged by guitar player Martin Carthy. Paul Simon pinched the arrangement to use on one of his albums – well, we all did, but Paul Simon committed the cardinal sin of being successful and making money out of it.

Here is the delectable Sarah Brightman singing the song with echoes of Martin Carthy’s arrangement still wafting through the lush orchestration. I have to confess, she looks a lot better than any of us.