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