The United Church of Canada transmitting "healing love to Creation"

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If present trends continue, the United Church of Canada will only have around 250,000 members in 13 years’ time. But who cares about people when there’s Creation to worry about?

“Creation” is the predominant obsession of the United Church: it wants a carbon tax, no Northern Gateway oil pipeline, no oilsands; in fact, no fossil fuels at all. An irony that is lost on it is that it is about to become a fossil itself.

Not unlike prissy puritans of yore, the United Church of Canada seems to enjoy defining itself by what it wants to suppress; although it would love to impose its carbon puritanism on absolutely everyone, it unlikely to succeed since very few listen to or care about the tarradiddles that ooze like noxious secretions from the deliberations of its governing body.

And if that isn’t enough to warrant consigning the United Church to the ecclesial junk-yard, it presses home its case by having a venomous hatred of Israel.

From here:

As the United Church of Canada struggles to fill many of its pews, the denomination will delve into contentious political issues at its 41st General Council in Ottawa this week.

“An appropriate price put on carbon, such as a carbon tax, would penalize the use of fossil fuels and could generate revenue for sustainable energy,” a group of high-ranking church officials from Toronto argues in its submission to delegates.

The 130 proposals up for debate also include a ban on oilsands expansion, opposing the Northern Gateway oil pipeline proposal and a partial boycott of Israeli products.

Other proposals call for improvement of the world’s oceans through the transmission of “healing love to Creation” and for the inclusion of the gay rights activists’ “rainbow symbol” in church offices and websites.

However, the United Church of Canada also has to deal with a dramatic decline in membership: membership has dipped from more than a million in the mid-1960s to less than 500,000 now.

Retired United Church minister David Ewart estimates that by 2025 membership will drop to around 250,000.

Ontario government is keeping abortion statistics secret

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From here:

Judging by the explanation for its decision to restrict public access to abortion figures, Ontario’s government should now be preparing a lengthy list of other statistics that are too dangerous to be shared with the public.

Questioned as to why it had begun making it harder to obtain figures related to the number of abortions performed in the province, a practice that has been increasingly evident to researchers for some time, the provincial Ministry of Health responded in a statement to the National Post: “Records relating to abortion services are highly sensitive and that is why a decision was made to exempt these records.”

The exemption referred to is an amendment last year to Ontario’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). The act is intended to “increase the financial accountability of organizations in the broader public sector,” in part by making statistics publicly available. Abortion figures are excluded from the act.

Why? Well, because they’re “sensitive.”

If abortion is merely the expulsion of a group of cells from a woman’s womb, there is really no reason to conceal the number of expulsions.

If abortion is the terminating of a person’s life, then there should be a law against it.

The Ontario government can’t have it both ways: either publish the figures or have an honest parliamentary debate on limiting abortion – I would like it gone, but let’s start with “limiting”.

Diocese of New Westminster has Pride Day service

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To coincide with Vancouver’s Pride Day, Christ Church Cathedral has a “Pride Day service”. It managed to draw 80 people this year – in a facility that will hold 600. So you can see by the numbers it is attracting how successful the Diocese of New Westminster has been in tapping in to the spiritual pulse of the nation.

And they even used the Book of Common Prayer.

From here:

For the past few years the 8am Celebration of Holy Communion from the Book of Common Prayer at Christ Church Cathedral on the first Sunday of August has been slightly modified and extended in order to mark Pride Day in the City of Vancouver.

On August 5th, 2012, close to 80 worshippers gathered in the sanctuary of the diocesan cathedral to participate in this annual celebration of Holy Eucharist on what was to be the hottest day of the year.

Prior to the singing of the opening hymn and the Collect, the Service of Light was celebrated.

Clergy, servers and lay representatives gathered around the Altar and in a brief yet moving liturgy 8 candles were lit signifying: light in the face of fear, light in the face of violence, light in an age of AIDS, hope, healing, courage, community and resurrection. At the beginning of the interactive Service of Light, the presider says these words, “The Lighting of a candle is a simple act yet becomes a powerful sign. For when we don’t have the words or don’t know how to pray, a small candle burning brightly expresses our prayer that is always with us –and becomes more powerful with each candle lit.”

Keeping Canadian airports safe from monolingualism

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Canada’s language police are going undercover in eight airports to ensure that passengers will hear their flights are delayed in both English and French.

After these taxpayer funded linguistic stakeouts, monoglots will have absolutely no excuse for leaving their bags unattended.

From here:

Canada’s bilingualism watchdog is going undercover at eight major airports to see if travellers are served equally well in English and French.

Official Languages Commissioner Graham Fraser says his office will conduct more than 1,500 anonymous observations this fall at airports in Halifax, Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver.

He says audits of some of those airports have been done in the past, but this will be the first time so many are done at once.

Church of England dumps News Corp shares

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From here:

The Church of England has sold its shares in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. over its handling of a phone hacking scandal at one of its newspapers.

Anglican leaders said in a statement Tuesday that they were not satisfied that News Corp. was likely to show a commitment to reform its business practices following evidence of illegal eavesdropping at the defunct News of the World newspaper.

Church official Andrew Brown said the decision to sell the 1.9 million pounds (US$3 million) in News Corp. shares followed a year of inconclusive dialogue between News Corp. executives and members of the church’s ethical investment committee.

All done with no Listening Process, no Continuing Indaba and no Generous Pastoral Response.

Sorry, I forgot: they don’t apply to shady business practices, only shady sexual perversions.

Whence comes the church’s hope?

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As the psalmist said:

And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you. Ps 39:7

A number of recent articles in secular papers have chronicled the decline of liberal Christianity. In Canada, the Globe and Mail, hardly a bastion of theological conservatism, explains that the United Church and Anglican Church have largely replaced God with the NDP; the resulting avalanche of fleeing members betokens their imminent demise. Church liberals, ever reluctant to connect cause with effect, are obstinately staying the course: they are convulsed in an orgy of post-theistic openness, inclusiveness, egalitarianism and progressivism.

For example: the Anglican Church of Canada has placed its hope in the advice of Phyllis Strupp, a brain fitness coach. She, in turn, has placed her hope in a better tomorrow with regard to the environmental crisis, a tomorrow where no brain will be left unmolested by Strupp callisthenics; every brain will be a fit brain. Fit for what, I wonder: fit for little other than conformity.

So is there any hope for liberal Christianity? Evidently not.

“Thirty years ago, I thought that with enough good science we would be able to solve the environmental crisis. I was wrong. I used to think that the greatest problems threatening the planet were pollution, bio-diversity loss and climate change. I was wrong there too. I now believe that the greatest problems are pride, apathy and greed. Because that’s what’s keeping us from solving the environmental problem. For that, I now see that we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we in the scientific community don’t know how to do that. But you [in the faith community] do. We need your help.”

Is the Episcopal Church nurturing seeds of hope for better tomorrow with regard to the environmental crisis and secular venues where hopelessness persists? Are church-going Christians more hopeful than the fast-growing “spiritual but not religious” crowd? Hope is contagious. Hope is the best yardstick to use for benchmarking the church’s performance and prospects. Hope opens our minds to the things of God—no matter what the current numbers say. All things are possible with God.

50 Shades of Grey in the Diocese of Huron

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I know none of the antics of the Anglican Church of Canada should really surprise me, but they continue to try. The Bishop Cronyn Memorial Church in the Diocese of Huron has plagiarised the title of popular pornographic pulp to entice people into its pews. As the rector says: “Have you read the Bible lately? Very sexually explicit at times.”

I understand that next Sunday’s reading is from chapter 3 – not the Bible.

 

From here:

A local church marquee is turning heads in London with a racy reference to the popular erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey.

For the past week, the sign outside Bishop Cronyn Memorial Church has read “50 shades of grace”—a play on the title of E. L. James’s breakthrough book.

“The intention is that as the book talks about intimate relationships with an unusual twist, so the sign talks about an intimate relationship with God that has a twist,” said Rev. Raemond Fletcher, who got the idea for the sign from a fellow Anglican priest in town. “God’s grace is not only of one shade.”

Fletcher said he hoped the sign would also send a message that the church was not out of touch. “The church (or at least some churches) are not afraid to recognize that sexuality plays a significant role in modern society, but that it should not be a matter of grey areas but of grace.”

Crosspost from the AEC blog

Men matriculating in skirts at Oxford University

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From here:

The University of Oxford has relaxed its rules on formal academic attire in deference to the transgender community. As of Aug. 4, Oxonian men can attend formal occasions, write exams and matriculate in skirts, blouses and stockings, while women can do the same in suits and bow ties.

We have real men in Canada:

The Lord’s Prayer causes an atheist to suffer “anguish, discrimination, exclusion, rejection and loss of enjoyment of life”

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Well good, you might be thinking, serves him right for being an atheist. The atheist in question, Pete the Atheist, has persuaded Secular Ontario – I’m sure they didn’t need much persuading – to sue Grey County council for $5000 to soothe his excluded, rejected, anguished ego and restore his “enjoyment of life.” It’s well known that recitation of the Lord’s Prayer has been cutting a swathe of excruciating angst through its hearers for centuries: it’s time someone put a stop to it.

As he points out:

He said councillors are infringing upon his Charter right to freedom of conscience and religion, referencing a 1999 Ontario Court of Appeal decision that ordered the town council in Penetanguishene to stop reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

“I don’t like politicians who break the law, and our county council is breaking the law,” said Mr. Ferguson Tuesday from his home in Kimberley — one of nine municipalities within Grey County. He said if he wins the case, he’ll donate the $5,000 to Canadian Civil Liberties Education Trust.

“I don’t really care about religion that much, I care about the law. I care about being fair.”

So it’s a matter of the Law. But as one of Pete the Atheist’s probable heroes, Sam Harris has pointed out in his book Free Will, the councillors had no choice but to recite the Lord’s Prayer. What appears to be choice is actually rigid determinism disguised as choice: their chemicals made them do it. They were not responsible, so there is no point in punishing them.

As a corollary, Pete the Atheist has not chosen to be an atheist because if he is right, according to Sam Harris – and I agree with Harris on this – there is no such thing as choosing.

Thus, if Pete the Atheist’s views are correct, they are little more than the inane divagations of an automaton to which no-one should feel obliged to listen. And that’s where we came in.