Warlord of Chaz to be new Archbishop of Canterbury

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After a great deal of soul searching, Justin Welby has decided that black lives matter so much that a pasty white-supremacist ex oil executive should not be the first among equals in the Anglican Communion.

He is resigning.

Raz Simone, rapper, self-appointed warlord of the independent nation of Chaz (in desperate need of vegan food, incidentally), is a natural for the job because Raz doesn’t care about white-supremacist equality tripe: he is first among equals because he has a large supply of every variety of automatic weapon at his disposal. That’s diversity, baby.

As Justin says:

“I come back to the fact that, in the New Testament, Jesus says be angry about injustice”

Raz is angry all the time. A true follower of Jesus.

Anyhow, you only have to do is look at these two photo-ops of Raz and Justin to see who is really in charge, cool and relevant.

Archbishop Raz:

Archbishop Justin:

Need I say more.

When questioned about the Church of England’s financial situation and the difficulty of collecting, diocesan assessments, Raz said, “No problem, man. Like, it’s the same as the stores in Free Chaz: they pay us and we don’t smash their windows. And you know, like, stained glass windows are so expensive.”

Good riddance Michael Coren

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Michael Coren is a newly minted priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. He is supporting the current fad of tearing down statues of people who did not live up to contemporary standards of what is acceptable or not acceptable. I’m not using “right” or “wrong” in case it triggers someone.

Naturally, this amounts to whether the person was a racist or a slave trader. Hence we have Coren’s article applauding the casting of Edward Colston’s effigy into the the sea. I confess, although I am indifferent as to whether Edward Colston spends quality time with the fishes, I am uneasy of the impulse to expunge the parts of history that don’t live up to the expectations of contemporary mores.

Still, back to the headline. The Anglican Church of Canada has admitted that it is riddled with systemic racism. Michal Coren has joined the ACoC. That means he is, at the very least, drawn to a racist organisation; he is simpatico with it – it’s no good, I can’t bring myself to call it a church.

And to think he might have joined ANiC. Good riddance Michael Coren

From here:

Good riddance Edward Colston

Bristol, Liverpool and London were the three main slave ports of Britain in the 18th and early 19th century. It was an inconceivably lucrative business, and financial failure was virtually impossible. Ships sailed off to Africa, loaded up on human cargo, exchanged men, women and children in the West Indies for sugar or in America for cash and goods, and then returned home to sell what they had. Countless people made fortunes, and if slaves died on the voyage—and many did—there were plenty more to steal. And rape, beat and torture.

One of those profiteers was Bristol’s Edward Colston, who in the late 1600s as a prominent member of the Royal African Company transported more than 80,000 people, making what today would be tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars. He was also a moneylender. When he died in 1721 he left a substantial amount to local charities, perhaps out of a guilty conscience. There were oceans of blood on his hands.

It was the statue of this man that was torn down and thrown into the harbour last week in Bristol, and became a pulsating image throughout the world as those protesting against racial inequality had their long overdue say. Ten thousand people demonstrated in the western city of Bristol in a peaceful show of defiance, and when they disposed of the repugnant Colston the local police not only refused to intervene but also explained that they understood.

The Anglican Church of Canada confesses it is systemically racist

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The bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada want to make sure that we know they are “horrified by the public murder of George Floyd.” They’ve issued an Episcopal Statement to that effect. If they hadn’t, we might all have assumed they were pleased about it.

They are not horrified by the murder of David Dorn, though, a black, retired policeman, shot by Black Lives Matter rioters. We must assume the bishops’ horror is, if not entirely absent, at the very least somewhat muted because David Dorn doesn’t rate a mention in the Episcopal Statement.

The statement goes on to lament that “Systemic racism exists in every part of Canada” and in the church.

Merriam defines “systemic” in this context as something that is:

fundamental to a predominant social, economic, or political practice

In other words, the ACoC believes Canadian society, economy, and politics and, indeed the church itself, have racism built into them; it is fundamental to their existence. Much as, say, South Africa did during the years of apartheid. That must be why people of every race, creed, and complexion from all over the world are so eager to immigrate to Canada: it is a hotbed of racism.

What is to be done? The bishops have no idea: they are still looking for the racism on/off switch.

Most bishops in the Anglican Church of Canada have signed the Statement. Since they have only just noticed this rampant, long-standing racism and have admitted to being complicit in its thriving, the only honourable thing for them to do is resign en masse.

Read it all here:

The Anglican Church of Canada has committed itself to confronting racism in its own life and to acknowledging the place of racism and colonialism in our own nation. That commitment needs to be renewed daily.We have been horrified by the public murder of George Floyd. We are deeply distressed and profoundly disturbed by the images, rhetoric, violence, division, and chaos that has followed. We offer our prayerful support and solidarity with our sister church, the Episcopal Church, as it prays and guides its people while it simultaneously repents of, and protests the sin of racism. Our own house is not in order. Systemic racism exists in every part of Canada. The words of the Anglican Church of Canada’s 2004 Charter for Justice remind us:
“The assumption of racial difference and inequality was the basis of much of Canada’s social legislation. For example, as a result of the Indian Act, First Nations people were confined to their reserves and their lands, and made susceptible to exploitation and take over. Immigration policies restricted Black, Asian and Jewish immigrants. Canadians of Japanese and Ukrainian descent were rounded up and interned during World War Two. Labour legislation dictated who could and couldn’t work for whom, and who could do what kind of work.”
We repent of our complicity in the continuing structures of racism and oppression in our church and in our culture, for racism is not of Christ. It is sin.

Diocese of Algoma will perform same-sex marriages

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With all the excitement about contagion and racism, it almost seemed as if the Anglican church had forgotten that which is most dear to it: sex.

Fear not, the obsession still lives! Archbishop Anne Germond has announced that the Diocese of Algoma will start conducting same-sex marriages.

Things are finally returning to normal.

From here:

I have weighed the matter of same sex marriage in the church carefully and prayerfully, only too aware of the heavy burden that lies on me as the time arrives to make a decision for the Diocese of Algoma. I believe that the decision I have made is the result of my prayerful and attentive listening to Algoma’s corporate discernment over many years and reflects the position and desire of the majority of people in this diocese. I am,therefore,granting permission for duly qualified same sex couples who are part of ecclesial communities and who intend to live in faithful and committed relationships to celebrate the sacrament of marriage in our diocese.

Here is an updated list of dioceses that will marry same-sex couples:
Diocese of Saskatoon
Diocese of Algoma
Diocese of Ontario
Diocese of Central Newfoundland
Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador
Diocese of Western Newfoundland
Diocese of New Westminster
Diocese of Toronto
Diocese of Niagara
Diocese of Montreal
Diocese of Ottawa
Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island
Diocese of Rupert’s Land
Diocese of Kootenay
Diocese of Edmonton
Diocese of B.C.
Diocese of Huron

The photo that redefined blasphemy and idolatry

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It has upset every right-thinking clergyman in the cosmos; or should I say clergy{Insert Your Gender(s) Here}?

A politician holding a Bible in front of a church!

Oops, sorry, wrong one. No one was upset by that.

This is the photo that caused ripples of angst to reverberate through Christendom:

I, myself, was so traumatised by this that I had to spend the rest of the day alone in a safe space.

Diocese of BC supports Black Lives Matter

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Well, of course they do: black lives do matter:

From the diocesan website:

Let me be clear, I support the Black Lives Matter movement.  My dear beloved friends, in the name of Jesus, the Liberator, let’s do our work.  We are all formed by racism – our psyches are constructed by it from birth.  Let’s free our souls so that we can love as Jesus loved.

The fly in the ointment is that included in the aims of the Black Lives Matter movement are the following gems of the most crypto-Marxist, family destroying, misandrist, anti-civilisation, gender-confused drivel you are ever likely to encounter when out of earshot of an Anglican Church of Canada pulpit:

We are guided by the fact that all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location.

We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.

We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.

We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered.

We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work “double shifts” so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).

Taking a knee

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When I first heard of taking a knee, I thought to myself: “whose knee? Take it where?”

And I was reminded of Spike Milligan’s version of, “I left my heart in San Francisco”:

I left my heart in San Francisco,
I left my knees in old Peru.
I left my little wooden leg
Hanging on a metal peg,
And my eyeballs I gave to you.
I left my teeth on Table Mountain,
High on a hill they smile at me.
When I come home to you, San Francisco,
There won’t be much left of me.

I don’t know why the saying irritates me so profoundly, but it does. Why can’t people say, “I knelt”? Is it because “I knelt” evokes echoes of Christianity which today, as everyone knows, is a thinly disguised euphemism for white colonialism?

Like or not, though, those who take their knees are performing an act of religious obeisance to a god: the god of conspicuous righteousness in this case.

Here we have some police men and women who have taken their knees, not to old Peru, but downtown Toronto to show everyone that social distancing isn’t as important as they claimed when they handed out tickets to people getting together for reasons other than demonstrating on behalf of black lives matter.

It’s a lovely image: heads bowed in reverence, cameras clicking, fists raised, CBC microphone at the ready, poised to capture any whispered pieties.

ACNA becomes Politically Correct

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It was probably inevitable: the pull towards surreptitious halo polishing thinly disguised as righteous breast-beating was too strong to resist.

A group of ACNA clergy has published a letter lamenting the lack of diversity within its ranks, a promise to do better and an acknowledgement that Man’s real problem is not sin, it’s racism.

Read the whole thing here:


A Letter to Fellow ACNA Clergy: On Anti-Racism and a More Diverse and Just Anglicanism

[….]
We see and grieve the racism and discrimination that exists and has a deep cultural and structural influence in our society, in our communities, and in our churches. The recent tragedies of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd are simply the latest in a long line of harrowing examples of these deeply embedded systemic realities. We see and grieve that our brothers and sisters of color, including many in our own dioceses and parishes, have been and continue to be profoundly affected by these realities.

Against this backdrop, we offer the following confessions and make the following commitments.

Confessions

We confess that we have failed to see, understand, and address the expressions of racism, both personal and systemic, that plague our society, communities, and churches.

We confess our slowness to listen to the dismay and discouragement of our brothers and sisters of color, especially those in our own province, and have neglected to cultivate hospitable spaces for them to flourish.

We confess that our ignorance, complacency, and silence have undermined our fidelity to the Great Commandment to love God and love our neighbor (Matt. 22:36-40), which fundamentally calls us into disciplines of anti-racism.

Liberals experience epiphany: suddenly decide to take Bible seriously.

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Theological liberals try not to take the bible too seriously, so they don’t particularly care when, as an art project, someone rips it up and plasters satanic images over an image of Christ. No Anglican bishops denounced this; after all, it’s only a book and there is nothing you can do to it that rises to the level of blasphemy.

Except when Donald Trump uses it as a political prop. Then, suddenly, blasphemy!

This was blasphemy. In the most authentic and repugnant sense, it was blasphemy.

If only Susan Bell and Michael Coren would pay attention to what it says instead of who is holding it.

Anglican Church of Canada Primate announces she is a racist

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She is a racist, she tells us, because she is white.

Let’s examine this heartfelt confession. The OED defines a racist as:

A person who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized

Linda Nicholls believes, sincerely we must assume, that anyone who has the misfortune of being born with a skin colour that is white, off-white or merely pasty is innately biased against his or her more fortunate brethren who have been endowed with a less pink complexion. She believes that bias against another’s race is itself determined by race. And Linda Nicholls is a member of the benighted race that is cursed with that bias.

That really does make her a racist.

From here:

Last year, in the months before General Synod and the primatial election, an acquaintance told me that she had heard someone publicly share that I am racist. My initial response was to be deeply hurt and to try to find out what I had said or done that would lead to those remarks. How had I acted? What had I said? How could this be when I abhor the thought of racism?

Since then I have recognized that I am racist. I am a white, privileged Canadian who is enmeshed in the cultural expectations and assumptions of the society in which I was raised. I have benefitted because I was born into the class and colour of those who have systemic power. As someone with power I unconsciously participate in and collude with racism and have absorbed attitudes deep within me. I am as enmeshed in racism by the benefits I have received as is the person enmeshed in racism by discrimination. The only aspect of disempowerment I have experienced directly has come from my gender as a woman. Even there, others had begun the battle for rights and recognition over the past one hundred years, and I enjoy the fruit of their hard-won justice.