Judging by its 40th General Council, the United Church of Canada has become a concoction of self-loathing:

Apologies were offered first to aboriginals forced to attend residential schools in Canada

There was formal recognition this week of an apology made in June, for the church’s confiscation of Japanese-Canadian property during the Second World War.

We confess that the church, too, was tainted by the prejudices and fears of that era, and that even best intentions were warped by often-subtle forms of racism.

I’m sorry,” offered a church official. “If I said something that sounded like an accusation, I apologize for that.

anti-Christian – no, make that anti-God:

Gretta Vosper is the minister at West Hill United Church in Toronto and author of With or Without God: Why the way we live is more important than what we believe. She explains that she doesn’t refer to God anymore “because there is no single meaning for the word.”

lunatic-fringe, gaia worshipping, gobbledygook spouting eco-bigots bent on making David Suzuki look moderate:

The kind of old assumptions of the United Church are falling away,” answered Russell Daye, an ordained minister from the Maritimes. “New archetypes are starting to emerge,” he added. “I think we’re finding a language that is grounded in Earth and some kind of eco-feminism, in a way…I think our new paradigm, if you want to use that, is going to be ‘wholographic.’

thinly disguised anti-Semites:

Hoping to stop a fire from spreading through their ranks, delegates at a major United Church of Canada conference decided on Thursday to put on hold a proposed boycott of Israel and to side-step anti-Israel resolutions put forward by church activists.

What is truly baffling, though, is that the United Church is dwindling, having lost half its members since 1965; why is that, one wonders.