PRAYER REQUEST

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | Uncategorized | 23 Comments

Legendary MCJ commenter Ed the Roman got let go today.

THIS JUST IN

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | Uncategorized | 27 Comments

Not only am I a hateful bigot, I’m also destroying the entire world:

The rising number of fat people was yesterday blamed for global warming.

Scientists warned that the increase in big-eaters means more food production — a major cause of CO2 gas emissions warming the planet.

Overweight people are also more likely to drive, adding to environmental damage.

Dr Phil Edwards, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “Moving about in a heavy body is like driving in a gas guzzler.”

Do I rock or what?

REVENGE OF THE EPISCO-CLUELESS

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | Uncategorized | 13 Comments

Sometimes you don’t have to read that far to get the point:

YOU GUYS JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!!

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 29 Comments

It took me a while but I think I’ve finally figured Episcopalians out.  It’s not so much that they’re heretics, apostates or closet atheists addicted to the respect the culture reflexively gives spiritual people, although they are all those things.  Episcopalians respond the way they do for a very simple reason.

They’re the adolescent boys of Christianity.

Remember adolescence, fellows?  Sure, we all do.  What a swell time that was!  You couldn’t wait for it to start and your mom and dad couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Those funny feelings down there.  Acne.  The fact that you could sauté a couple of boneless chicken breasts with the oil on your face.  The fact that you couldn’t say “boneless chicken breasts” without either giggling, feeling those funny feelings down there or both.

Then there were the mood swings.  High one moment, in the pit of existential despair the next.  God help your mom if she told you that you couldn’t hang out at the video arcade until your homework was done.  And now and then, just about anything anybody said to you about anything at all would be taken as a personal insult.

Good times.

I thought of all that when I read what the Rev. Jim Melnyk of Raleigh, North Carolina had to say about the most recent Anglican Covenant draft:

And with the proposed fourth section of the so-called Anglican Covenant will begin the Great Anglican Inquisition of the 21st century.

Sounds like a plan.  I’ll bring the natural-casing wieners.  If any of you get there early, sharpen some sticks, will you?  Thanks.

CASUS BELLI

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Reason #889,763 why some country needs to invade Zimbabwe, pop a cap in Robert Mugabe and recolonize the place.  Bob jails two-year-olds:

A Zimbabwean two-year-old boy dubbed the world’s youngest “terrorist” has dropped out of kindergarten school as he is struggling to copy up with normal life after his abduction at the hands of state security agents.

Nigel Mutemagau was abducted by state security agents together with his mother Violet Mupfuranhewe and his father Collen Mutemagau, both members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from Banket, Mashonaland West last October for allegedly plotting to overthrow President Robert Mugabe’s government together with other MDC and human rights activists.

Upon their release into police custody last December Nigel was detained for almost a month together with his parents at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Prison before he was released in January. Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, WHERE NIGEL WAS KEPT IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, is notorious for its atrocious conditions even during Zimbabwe’s better days. Now, the conditions are much worse as prison authorities do not have enough food to feed inmates.

Nigel’s parents told Religious Intelligence that their son, who turns three next month had quit attending kindergarten sessions in Banket as he is finding it difficult to cope up with life at the pre-school following months of detention at various torture centres around the country where his parents were subjected to rigorous torture.

Collen said Nigel’s brother Allan is also failing to cope with life after the abduction of his parents. According to Collen, Allan who is six years old and turning seven on 05 May 2009 is refusing to stay at his parents’ home in Kuwadzana Banket, where they were forcibly seized by state security agents.

Last week High Court Judge Justice Charles Hungwe castigated the police for violating children’s rights by abducting and holding incommunicado the two-year old minor.

THE LAST BEST HOPE OF 815

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 10 Comments

This is starting out well:

British delegates joined a dramatic diplomatic walkout today when President Ahmadinejad of Iran told a major UN conference against racism that the state of Israel had been founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering” during the Second World War.

Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Nine Western countries including Israel and the United States had already decided to boycott the conference entirely because its draft declaration endorsed the conclusions of an anti-racism conference in South Africa eight years ago in which Islamic nations pushed through a text equating Zionism with racism.

Even before the walkout, Mr Ahmadinejad’s speech had been interrupted by three protesters dressed as clowns who where quickly bundled from the vast conference room at the Palais des Nations by guards.

There’s some video at the link.  Looks to me like a lot more than twenty people bailed out of this turkey.

CAPTIVES

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 27 Comments

A new “Chris Johnson, Anglican Investigator” adventure

Chapter One

“What the hell do we do?” Dale finally said in a low voice, staring at the floor.

“First thing, I guess,” I told him, “is to see what that guy on that mountain across the lake wants.”

“He’s been there at least three days,” Price said. “I thought he was just some kind of naturalist or something. But I’m way more concerned about his friend back in the timber. Pull that back window open about a half inch, will you?”

After I reached over and opened the window, Dale stared across the lake for a few moments. Then he took out his binoculars, looked across the lake through them, motioned me over, handed me the binoculars and pointed.

As I stared at him, pretending to say something to Dale, the man radioed somebody, frantically gathered up his belongings and ran away. In back of the cabin, off in the distance, Dale and I heard an engine start up and someone in the woods drive off.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Price. “Have you got access to your jack?”

“Of course. You?”

“Yup.”

Dale threw some stuff together and the pilot flew us into Fairbanks. We visited a gun store where, thanks to all the “arrangements” we’d had made over the years on this and that computer database, we were able to sidestep the five-day waiting period.

So I bought myself a new Heckler-Koch, Dale bought himself a new Beretta and we loaded up with ammo, knives and other essentials. Then we visited a computer store where Price picked out a new laptop.

“We’ll need wheels,” Dale said.

“So we can see them coming,” I replied.

We wandered a Ford dealership across the street for an hour or so before picking out an F-150 extended cab pickup. We decided to register the thing in Alaska(under one of Dale’s pseudonyms) and pay all the taxes then and there so we were licensed and ready to go by the end of the day.

After staying the night at a Ramada Inn, we hit the road the next morning. Initially and during most of the trip south, neither of us said much beside when to stop for meals, when to switch driving and where to sleep.

At the Canadian border, we were stopped and the truck was casually searched. But as soon as the guard realized who we were, he asked us to pull the truck to the side of the road and stay there.

He then went over to a small building and conversed with another guard. Every so often, I could see the two of them look in our direction. Then one of them went inside the building and seemed to be entering something on a computer.

Price stared intently at the other guard. “They’re worried.”

“Or they were asked to keep an eye out for us.”

“What the hell is going on?”

After no more then ten minutes, the second guard came over, pleasantly welcomed us to Canada and told us that we were free to leave. The rest of our trip down the Alaska Highway through the Yukon and British Columbia was uneventful.

The scenery, of course, was spectacular and we both lost ourselves in it, stopping more than once just to admire or take pictures of it for quite a long time. Conversation was, as before, kept to a minimum.

But somewhere in the middle of BC, Dale suddenly blurted out, “She didn’t look anything like her?”

“Nothing like her at all,” I replied. “Kathleen told me that she looked like the first woman I showed you.”

“How is that possible?”

“I‘ve got a theory but that‘s all it is right now.”

“You know what else it means, don’t you? I may not know everything about NFD but I do know that only one person in the government is authorized to make changes to it. The President of the United States.”

“Which means that our previous employers may or may not be on our side this time.”

“We’ll find out when we get to the border, I guess.”

At the US border, we were allowed to cross but, once again, told to pull over and park. This time the guards were abrasively rude bordering on openly hostile. “The two of you get out of the car! Now!” one of them brusquely ordered.

Dale and I picked up our bags and stood next to the truck, our hands on our guns. “Hand over your weapons and your bags right now!“ another guard barked at us.

“As soon as we see your warrant,” I quietly replied. “This is the United States of America, assmaster.”

At least thirty armed guards suddenly surrounded the truck. One of them demanded, “Listen, hotshots, either hand over your weapons right now or…”

“OR WHAT?!!” Price shrieked as the two of us instantly drew our guns at exactly the same time. Every guard there pulled out his piece.

“You‘ve got three choices,” Dale continued. “Charge us with something, get the HELL out of our way or we have it out right here and now.”

“We are WAY better than all of you,” I added, “even when we’re drunk off our asses and we both stopped giving a damn a little over a year ago. So this is as good a place to die as any. ARE WE CLEAR?!!”

The guards withdrew about thirty feet away. While the rest kept their weapons trained on us, one female guard talked to someone over a walkie-talkie.

After about fifteen minutes, she holstered her gun and calmly walked back over. “Mr. Price, Mr. Johnson, we won’t need either your guns or your bags. But would you mind parking your truck in front of that building over there?” she said, pointing to her left.

“Why?!” I demanded.

“Someone wants to talk to you. That’s all. I‘m sorry about what went down just now, we’re really nervous, but please trust us.  Please.” She looked scared to the depths of her soul.

Several minutes of silence followed during which Dale and I looked at the guard, at each other and then back at the guard before Price looked at me and nodded once. We holstered our own guns, I drove over to the building, we were accompanied to a small room and asked to wait.

Almost immediately, two men and two incredibly hot young women entered the room. “Mr. Johnson, Mr. Price, it’s a great honor to meet both of you,” said one of the men.

“And you are?” I asked.

“David Trimble, acting co-director of CETU. This is the other acting co-director, Mark Sullivan.”

“It’s an incredible honor for me as well,” Sullivan said. “You don’t know how much I’ve admired both of you for all of your…”

Dale impatiently cut off the hero worship. “Some other time!  Would you mind telling us what this is all about?!”

Trimble walked to the other side of the room, trying to choose just the right words. “Mr. Johnson, Mr. Price. We all know of your great service to this country and to the Church…”

“Get on with it, Trimble! Who the hell are they?!” I demanded, pointing at the women.

“This,” said Trimble, pointing to a black-haired young woman who looked like she was no more than twenty, “is a British agent whose code-name is Fuinseoig. That‘s all I‘m authorized to tell you.”

“MI7, Britain‘s special counter-ecclesiastical terrorism branch?”

Staring intently at me, Fuinseoig replied in that low Ulster monotone in which everything you say sounds like a threat, “There is no such thing.”

I smiled back at her. “Yeah. Sure.”

“And this,” said Sullivan, indicating an equally hot brunette, “is an American agent code-named Little Myrmidon.”

“Let me guess,” said Price. “Special Committee, Special Consultation, X group, blah, blah, blah, deeper than CETU but so secret, it doesn’t even have an official name.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Little Myrmidon who wouldn’t look Dale in the eye.

“Thought so,” said Price who walked over to the bar, made two bourbon-and-sodas, and handed one to me.

“All of us,” continued Trimble, “are a small part of an international Christian investigation task force put together specifically to deal with this…situation.”

I sipped my drink. “Mr. Trimble, Dale and I have places to go so if you’d proceed directly to your point and stop wasting our time, we’d really appreciate it,” I said.

Trimble made himself a vodka martini. “All right. For the good of the country, for the good of the entire world, for the good of existence itself as we all know it, we’re going to need the two of you to back off.”

Dale immediately pulled me aside. “They don’t know what we have,” he said under his breath. “They think we know. Don’t give them anything yet.” I nodded.

We slowly walked back to the others. “Why?” I asked.

“If you don’t,” came a third woman’s voice from the door at the far end of the room, “it’s the collective judgment of the task force that this reality will be emptied of all its life.”

I recognized that voice. I had worked with it once before.

Diane.

She hadn’t changed a bit. Still smoking hot. “Mr. Johnson, Mr. Price, it’s good to see you both again,” she told us in that painfully sexy voice of hers.

“Am I correct in assuming that I’m dealing with my other self, the one I fought last time?” I asked.

“No, you‘re not. We are dealing with versions of you…”

Dale looked at me. “Dude, you have got to stop pissing you off.”

“…and Mr. Price,”

“Never mind.”

“…who we think come from someplace that…well, let me just ask you if you can imagine a Spongian universe.”

“Good Lord,” I whispered.

“What we know, ” Diane continued, “is sketchy. I wasn’t able to study it for very long. But it seems to go something like this.

“That reality, whatever it might actually be, we’re not sure about that at all, progressed pretty much as this one did. Until what they call the Time of the Prophets.”

“Prophets?” asked Dale. “Who were they?”

“John Shelby Spong, Matthew Fox, Joan Chittister, Gene Robinson, Andrew Sullivan, Katharine Jefferts Schori, Richard McBrien, Elizabeth Kaeton, Katherine Ragsdale, John Chane, Borg, Crossan etc. Every Episcopal leftist and liberal Catholic you have here.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Let’s just say that their versions were a lot more ruthless than yours. Ruthless enough to eventually prevail and to make their reality as ruthless as they were with the help of two really good Christian investigators.”

“Chris and I,” said Dale.

“Correct. These ‘prophets’ are revered in that reality and your opponents are starting to be counted among their number. When you refer to them, I think the formula you have to use goes, ‘The holy prophets, eternal blessings be upon them.’”

“They’re so revered that it’s a capital offense just to utter their names. While I was there, I saw them…”–Diane shuddered–”…publicly execute someone for that.” She suddenly looked away in terror, ran to the bar, poured herself a stiff bourbon and sat back down.

“A five-year-old boy,” she continued, her voice near breaking. “The most horrible thing I ever saw. Drawn and quartered, all televised. He kept screaming for his mommy but the bitch just stood there smiling.” Then Diane broke down and cried for a minute or so.

After she composed herself, I asked her, “What were you doing over there?”

Diane looked at me with red eyes. “Following your murderer. Those rounds you took from him in New York and the stuff you told him seem to have had an effect on your old adversary. He repented. He changed sides.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. He worked on his own for a while. Figured we wouldn’t trust him. But suddenly we started winning fights we always used to lose and we couldn’t figure out why.

“Until he personally and publicly took down our John Chane. After that, the liberal church there hated him infinitely more than the one here hates you and they put a gigantic price on his head.

“Everything turned around after that. We got stronger and stronger to the point where we were becoming dominant. It was right about then that we officially took him on. At the insistence of my best friend.”

“Nicky? I thought they hated each other.”

“I thought so too. Right up until the time she told me that she’d been seeing, him, you, whatever, off and on. He’d pulled some strings and helped out her family over and over, behind the scenes of course, until she found out about it.

“This was how much he‘d changed things. Their wedding was the social event of the year, covered by all major TV networks worldwide.

“It was glorious. Westminster Abbey. I was her maid of honor and I‘d never seen Nicky happier. She was in heaven. Right up until the time the two of them were leaving the Abbey and walking toward the limo.

“Just before they got there, the version of you that you’re currently up against materialized in front of them, blew your alternate’s brains out and instantly disappeared.”

With more than a little fear, Dale asked, “What about my counterpart?”

“He’s never hurt your family but he‘s capped quite a few of you,” said Diane. “In my reality, he just broke up your marriage. Knocked you out, replaced you, verbally abused your wife, ignored your kids, was seen around town with other women, stuff like that.

“After you came to and came home, you didn’t remember anything and at first Heather thought you were having mental problems. Until it happened again. And a third time.

“Once the details of the divorce came out(and your rival made sure that they did), you were a pariah everywhere. One night, they found you frozen to death on the East St. Louis riverfront. Things like that have happened more than once.

“And that seems to be the plan. Kill the two of you, save everyone else.”

“Save everyone else? For what?” I asked.

Diane refreshed her drink. “Remember how I told you before that if you open portals between two different realities that both would cancel each other out? They seem to have found a way around that.

“We began to see realities empty one after another so we investigated. They were still there, there were just no people in them. Then we got to the void.

“Do you know what’s left when a universe ceases to exist?” I shook my head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Then why do it?” asked Price. “Malice?”

“Partially. You have to remember that you’re dealing with a reality that considers any dissent from its ‘prophets’ to be the ultimate evil, something to be rooted out and vigorously eradicated.”

“So if you happen to find yourself in a different reality from theirs,” I remarked. “You’re fair game.”

“Precisely. But they’ve only destroyed one universe and have shown no interest in doing the same thing again. They‘ve simply emptied others of all their people and left everything else intact.”

“Why?” I wondered.

“Literally unlimited resources,” said Price. “Oil, timber, natural gas, agricultural land, you name it. A empty place to colonize if the need arises.”

“Exactly,” said Diane.

“But what do they do with the people?” I asked.

Diane hesitated for a long time. “Do you know what a dead universe is good for, Mr. Johnson?” she asked in a voice I could barely hear.

“No.”

“Storage. You have an infinite amount of storage space for an infinite amount of whatever it is that you want to store there.”

I felt a rising feeling of dread. “And that’s where they put the people? But…why?”

“People are a resource too, Mr. Johnson.”

Dale was aghast. “You…you don’t mean…”

“Beasts of burden to work all that new land.”

“S…slaves?”

“If they‘re fortunate. I heard that some men and women are hunted for sport. But most people are just left there in that emptiness.

“People in the void are conscious but in some kind of stasis. Nothing happens, nothing changes. I was told that you know and feel what they’re doing to you but you can’t do anything about it.

“Your heart going out? Go find your duplicate in storage and take his. He knows that you‘re taking his heart but he can‘t die so his agony never stops. Uterus won’t give you a baby? Find one of your counterparts and take hers. Same with her.”

Dale was as horrified as I was. “And when they‘ve harvested all the vital organs from you that they can possibly harvest?” he whispered.

“I only spent a small amount of time in that reality, if that‘s what it was. But if you should ever happen to find yourselves there, beef, chicken and seafood aren’t the only kinds of meat that that universe really enjoys barbecuing.”

I can‘t begin to describe the terror I felt. “And their…church…is all right with that?!!” I stammered.

“There’s one sin there and only one. Everything else is up to you. Disagree with their ‘prophets’ and you need to die anyway. And God created resources for his people to use so why not use them?”

For the next five minutes, no one spoke. Dale and I refreshed our drinks and paced silently around the room trying to get a grip, trying to grasp it all. Then I looked at Trimble and said a low voice, “How long have you known this?”

“A…uh…considerable length of time.”

“And how long might that be?!!” Price snarled at Mark Sullivan.

“A, uh…uh…a little over a year,” Sullivan fearfully replied, staring at the floor.

“A little over a year.” Dale looked at Sullivan with a murderous stare. “Chris and I have been through hell and you people knew THE WHOLE TIME?!!”

“Would either of you happen to know,” Fuinseoig quietly interjected, “how many Christian investigators from different realities Diane has worked with to fight these two? Twenty, most of them Johnsons and Prices. All failures. All dead.”

“Lots of Johnson and Price corpses lying around. At least twenty realities, empty” added Little Myrmidon. “At least twenty realities of people enduring God only knows what.”

“Including my own,” said Diane. She looked down as her lower lip quivered. “So you bastards can go complain someplace else.”

“Dale and I lost our families,” I said.

“I LOST MY ENTIRE WORLD!!  I barely made the jump ahead of them. Went back once. Ever been on a totally empty planet? Nobody there but you and every friend and family member you have just waiting to be…” She couldn’t finish.

“But we’re no closer to understanding these two than when I started, never mind coming up with a plan to fight them. For one thing, we have no idea where the portals here are.”

Sullivan, who wanted nothing to do with Price at that moment, came over to me and said, “So you see, Mr. Johnson, this was why we wanted to keep this as quiet as we could.”

As Dale sat down and stared at nothing in particular and Diane busied herself with her laptop, I silently paced the room for several minutes, angrily cutting off anyone who tried to say anything. “The wreckage. Was it real?” I asked Trimble.

“The ID numbers we found checked out,” he said.

“So two really smart versions of Dale and I are on their way here, two guys who are hostile to everything that we understand as morality and who seem to be able to change their physical appearance whenever the mood strikes them.”

Dale didn’t even look up. But Diane, Trimble, Sullivan, Fuinseoig and Little Myrmidon looked at me in shock. “How did…how did…how in the world did you know that?!!” Diane whispered.

“I’ll tell you what you told Dale and I a year ago. Nothing. You’ll learn that when you need to.” Diane stared suspiciously at me before returning to her lapper.

Price stood up and began to pace along with me. “So versions of Chris and I are coming to kill Chris and I. Right now, that’s the strongest hand we’ve got.”

He looked at Fuinseoig and Little Myrmidon. “Have you two ever been in the field before?”

“That depends on what you mean by ‘in the field,’” replied Myrmidon.

“We’ll take that as a no,” I said. “Welcome to graduate school, ladies. Gather up your stuff and get ready to head out. I assume you brought guns.”

“Just a minute!” declared Sullivan. “You can’t just walk in and take over. This has to be a team effort and Director Trimble and I are going to need to see…”

“NOTHING!!“

All of us instantly looked over at Diane. Her pale and sweating face wore a look of horror and she seemed to be trembling. “It‘s academic now, directors. Doesn‘t much matter what they do,” she said in a quivering voice, turning her lapper around.

“They’re here.”

INCLUSIVITITIOUSNESS

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Remember.  Liberal Anglicans are civilized and reasonable.  It is only conservative Anglican rhetoric that is excessive and over-the-top.  Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark Cathedral, recently said some stupid crap:

The Very Rev Colin Slee, the liberal Dean of Southwark has publicly attacked the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, and said that he was one of three bishops whose position was now “open to some debate”.

The Dean’s broadside, delivered in the introduction to the annual report for Southwark Cathedral, will infuriate evangelical supporters of the Bishop, 59, and further widen the gulf between the traditional and liberal wings of the church.

Don’t forget to refight the English Civil War, you little bitch.

He wrote: “One reason why peace broke out at the Lambeth Conference was that the Puritan fringe stayed away, they boycotted the Conference – and they included the Bishop of Rochester, Lewes and Willesden in the UK. It is my view that any bishop who engaged in the boycott has placed himself outside full communion and his status as a bishop of the Anglian Church must be open to some debate.”

Oh and this business about working for Christians in majority-Muslim places?  Colin basically just called Nazir-Ali a liar.

“The Bishop of Rochester has just announced his resignation, whatever he may say, it is clearly a move towards a sectarian alternative church intentionally designed to create turbulence in the Anglican Communion,” Mr Slee said.

We’re well rid of those Roundheads anyway.

In his annual report, Mr Slee likens Dr Nazir-Ali and other traditionalists within the Church of England to puritans ‘who live like a cuckoo’ in the ‘nest of a generous and accommodating Anglican tradition’.

He also condemns the “bullying conformity” of the Global Anglican Futures Conference in Jerusalem, an alternative event to the Lambeth Conference which was organised by traditionalists.

He says those who attended the conference ‘flouted the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury’ and were essentially sectarian.

So what should be done about it, Colin?  Should Nazir-Ali be deposed?  One assumes so since he’s being all sectarian and stuff.

Not that Nazir-Ali would care at this point.  I assume I’m still on the rolls of the Episcopal Organization diocese here so if I ever got a letter of excommunication from that ridiculous entity, I’d frame it and hang it on my wall. 

Because considering Colin’s childish name-calling on display here, that “generous and accommodating Anglican tradition” of Slee’s is nothing more than a hallucination.

ACCEPTANCE IS FUTILE

Saturday, April 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 37 Comments

Reason #379,465 why that Søren Kierkegaard quote is at the top of this page.  Two prominent theologians, one Episcopalian, the other Catholic, recently visited my hometown:

When Eden Theological Seminary leaders booked the Borg-and-Crossan Show for the spring convocation, they knew they were inviting two of biblical scholarship’s most controversial rock stars to campus.

Eden, the Webster Groves-based seminary of the liberal-leaning United Church of Christ, has 225 students registered in its degree programs.

Marcus Borg, professor emeritus at Oregon State University, and John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus at DePaul University, are prolific authors — each, most recently, of a book they published together, “The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon.”

Besides long careers as respected academics in their own rights, both men also have been involved in the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars that meets twice a year to debate the historical accuracy of the sayings and events attributed to Jesus in the Gospels.

One Episcopal visitor got all weak in the knees.

The Rev. Lydia Speller, rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis Hills, sat in the seminary’s crowded chapel Tuesday waiting for the scholars’ first lecture to begin. She said she was familiar with the work of both men, some of which she’d used for adult Christian formation classes. She called their visit to Eden “inspiring and exciting.”

You use their stuff for adult Christian formation, do you, Lyd?  Seeing as how Marc and J-Dom aren’t down with the whole Cross thing, why not just have your people call 1-800-UNITARIAN and get it over with?

Both scholars rejected the common Christian notion of “substitutionary sacrificial atonement” — that Christ died in the place of God’s creation as a substitute payment for human sin. That theology, they said, was first conceived of in the 11th century by Anselm of Canterbury, and has nothing to do with the message of the Gospels.

Borg offered the alternative term “participatory sacrificial atonement,” explaining that Christ willingly gave his life as a gift to God, and died because of his love for others (but not in place of them.)

Everyone reading this could take out their Bibles and effortlessly demolish that idiocy and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest.  Marc and J-Dom would just say that Jesus never said that or Paul’s views were distorted by the early church or that Peter was obviously hallucinating.  You know the drill.

But I’ve just got one question.  Who in their right mind finds Marc’s Jesus the least bit compelling?  “Christ willingly gave his life as a gift to God, and died because of his love for others?”

What, was Jesus nothing more than some first-century Jewish performance artist?  Did Jesus ask Himself, “How, oh how, can I demonstrate to everyone how much I love them?  I’ve got it!  I’ll get Myself killed!  What a perfect way to show My love!”

I’ve never been married but I have to think that coming home from work on the evening of our anniversary and declaring, ”Honey, I didn’t get you an anniversary present this year but just to show you how much I love you, I’m going to blow my brains out,” might not be the most romantic move in the world.   

If I continued, “My pointless suicide will not benefit you in any way.  In fact, it may make your life much worse what with the money I’ll no longer be contributing to the support of you and the kids but at least you’ll always have the memory of my everlasting love for you,” I have to think that Mrs. Johnson wouldn’t take it at all well.

Of course, I don’t understand women and never have so I could be wrong.

The passage from which the Kierkegaard quote above was taken runs as follows:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Men like Marc and J-Dom are not trying to figure out what Jesus really said.  They’re trying to decide what Jesus shouldn’t have said.  And these scholars are not trying to get at the truth.  They are trying to get as far away from the truth as they possibly can.

ICHABOD

Friday, April 17th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 57 Comments

Do you know why the Episcopal Organization isn’t Christian any more?  It has nothing to do with same-sex marriage or giving a pointy hat to Gene Robinson.  As revealed by this Arkansas Democrat-Gazette piece on Kevin Genpo Thew Forrester, TEO isn’t Christian because it refuses to stop ordaining non-Christians to serve as its ministers:

The Rev. Kevin G. Thew Forrester denies that Satan exists. He doesn’t believe God sent his only-begotten son to die for the sins of the world. He says that the Koran is sacred, he has taken a Buddhist middle name and he teaches that many paths lead to the divine.

As an Episcopal priest, Thew Forrester altered the denomination’s prayer book, including its baptismal vows and the words of the Apostles’ Creed. Now he’s been elected to become a bishop – a successor to the Apostles – by the Diocese of Northern Michigan.

Instead of accepting Jesus “as your savior,” they confirm that they “accept him as the way of life and hope.”

In the Apostles’ Creed, an ancient and ecumenical statement of faith, Jesus Christ is no longer referred to as God’s “only son.” (Thew Forrester has stated, elsewhere, that “each and every one of us is an only-begotten child of God.”)

Instead of thanking the Father “for the water of Baptism,” baptismal participants thank the Mother.

Thew Forrester said he does not accept atonement theology that portrays Christ as a sacrificial lamb whose death paid the debt for humanity’s sins.

“God did not send Jesus here to be killed or be crucified by the Romans, which is a brutal murder. But Jesus has become incarnate to reveal to us who God is. He’s a God of love and forgiveness and mercy. … Jesus’ death itself was not the will of God. God did not desire Jesus to be killed.”

Asked if the Koran is the word of God, Thew Forrester said: “If God is the creator, which I believe and know, then there’s only one source of truth, beautyand goodness and that is God. And that truth and beauty and goodness can be found in all the religions and their texts and if those texts somehow refract or embody God’s truth and beauty and goodness, then they are sacred, and they are holy and they deserve to be listened to and engaged with.”

Of course, KGTF is not alone.  Far from it.  Liz Kaeton on the Resurrection:

If Christ Jesus wasn’t crucified because he was being true to his authentic self, so that we, like him, might be able to live our lives with integrity, then I have completely misunderstood the message of Jesus and I have no right to call myself a Christian, much less an Episcopalian in the Anglican tradition.

If what Jesus taught does not challenge us to find authenticity and integrity and live our lives – indeed, risk our lives – for those values, then why bother being a Christian? Jesus is right. We ought to hate and abhor any thing that keeps us from embracing that high calling.

Let’s take a closer look at all that, shall we?  Why did Jesus die?  Because he was “true to his authentic self” and so that we “might be able to live our lives with integrity.” 

Which I guess we couldn’t do unless Jesus died that unbelievably agonizing death of His.  I’m not sure how Lizzie got from Point A to Point B but the K-dog is ordained and stuff.

And the Creator of all that exists, according to Genpo, didn’t want Jesus to die anyway.  But the Creator of all that exists couldn’t prevent Jesus from dying that unbelievably agonizing death of His.

Here’s a question.  Why would anyone in the world think that I or anybody else would be impressed by, never mind worship, such an impotent pansy of a deity?

FACT ON THE GROUND

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 11 Comments

GAFCON recognizes ACNA:

Following three days of closed-door talks in London, the primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, the Southern Cone, Tanzania, Uganda, and West Africa, along with the Archbishop of Sydney, have endorsed the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as being “authentically Anglican.”

The approach seems to be recognize first, ask questions later.  The GAFCON primates recognize ACNA as a province right now and Lambeth Palace will have to accomodate itself to that fact.

The council said that recognition of the ACNA as a province will first come from the other provinces of the Communion, sidestepping the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). They recommended that “Anglican provinces affirm full communion with the ACNA,” adding that they looked “forward in real hope to a positive response amongst the churches and diocese and provinces of the Communion.” By going first to the provinces for support, rather than approaching the ACC, the primates suggested a lasting structural and political base of support for the ACNA would be established that will end “cross-border incursions” and restore a “measure of peace” to the church.

And the GAFCON primates don’t particularly care what Irrelevance-on-the-Thames thinks.

The council’s statement comes as a challenge to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who has sought to confine debate to the structures of the four “instruments of unity”: the ACC, the Primates Meeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference. These instruments were first articulated in 1997 by the Inter-Anglican Doctrinal and Theological Commission’s Virginia Report, but they have not yet gained official status. The ACC declined to endorse the report at its 1999 meeting, and individual provinces are bound by the report’s statements only to the extent that they adopt them within the terms of their constitutions and canons.

I’m not going to get excited about this just yet.  Not long ago, both Gregory Venables and Henry Orombi poured cold water on the idea of a new North American Anglican province any time soon. 

So what has changed?  Or has anything changed?  What does GAFCON recognition of ACNA actually mean in practical terms?

As a price of their attendance, will the GAFCON primates demand of the Archbishop of Canterbury that Bob Duncan be invited to the next Primates Meeting?  If their demand is refused, is GAFCON willing to go it alone?  Or has Duncan just been made a member of the GAFCON Primates Council and nothing more?

It’s way too soon to say definitively what any of this means or if it means anything at all.

CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER PRESIDENT

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 10 Comments

You’ve got serious problems when the French think you’re a lightweight:

[French President Nicolas] Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama’s efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Mr Sarkozy’s irritation at the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Mr Obama on his Europan tour earlier this month.

The American President’s call “to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare” was hot air, Mr Sarkozy’s diplomatic staff told him in a report. “It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States,” they said. Most of Mr Obama’s proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.

REUNION TOUR

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Back when rock ‘n’ roll meant something, I guess just about everybody had a favorite band.  You bought all their albums(look it up, punks) or cassette tapes(ditto) and wore them out.  When your boys visited your town, you put yourself in hock to see them live.

Then they broke up.  You were, of course, devastated.  You had no idea what to do with yourself for a while.  Maybe you found another favorite band, maybe you didn’t.  Maybe you got into classical music or jazz and started to consider pop music beneath you.

Years passed.  Then you picked up the newspaper one morning and read that your favorite band was getting back together.  Boy, did that put a spring in your step. 

You were first in line to buy their new recording and maybe you even took out a loan to see them in concert.  You bought a T-shirt at the show and everything.

But it wasn’t the same.  Maybe the guitar player had gone on to a huge solo career, thought of this as a one-shot deal, his heart really wasn’t in it and he played like it.

Maybe the less-successful members of the band thought this reunion might be permanent.  Whatever the case, it didn’t last and the music wasn’t anywhere near as good as you remembered it.

It was then that you realized what only the passing of the years can teach you.  You can’t step in the same river twice.

That’s kind of how I feel about this interview with Frank Griswold.  Granted, Frank and I have had a lot of good times together and Frank and I will always be close.  But the Anglican world has moved on, I’ve moved on with it and I’m not sure there’s a place for Frank and I any longer.

Frank and I just don’t fit in anymore.

But having bitchslapped that lame concept into unconsciousness, let’s see what Frank’s been up to lately.  Seems the former Presiding Bishop recently returned from his favorite Caribbean location:

The idea of religion prospering in a communist country defies credibility, but, according to Bishop Frank T. Griswold III, the former head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, that’s exactly what’s happening in Cuba.

Griswold, who from 1998 to 2006 was the 25th presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, has made three trips to the island nation in the past few years and finds that “there’s no overt hostility to religion.”

Frank knows that because people who are overtly hostile to religion told him.

“The first time I was there, when I was the presiding bishop, I had two and one-half hours of private conversation with Fidel Castro. That was provoked in large measure because when I arrived and preached in the cathedral, I said the Episcopal Church was opposed to the [United States] embargo on humanitarian grounds.”

He found Castro, who was educated by the Jesuits, a fascinating character.

Leftist dictators tend to induce mahogany in guys like Frank.

Griswold described Castro as a very relational kind of person.

As opposed to what?  A guy who stayed in his room all day and never saw or talked to anybody?

He was so taken with the Pope that he wanted to have a statue erected in his honor. Apparently that upset the Cuban Protestants who, Griswold said, didn’t realize that it “had to do — not with theology — but with Fidel’s personal relationship with John Paul.”

Either Fiddy was off his meds or Frank was hallucinating.  Although I guess both could be possible.

Because the revolution was 50 years ago, there really isn’t a tradition of dissent and multiple perspectives on political issues and the like, he said. He was asked to help the seminarians learn how to engage in lively debate. That’s a skill, he said, that has to be learned in Cuba.

“The tradition there is you’re either right or wrong. The whole idea that you may have a perspective that counterbalances my perspective and that I need to listen to you and maybe the truth is somewhere between our two perspectives, that kind of respectful debate and argumentation is not a skill common in Cuba because, in terms of society, there’s essentially one way.”

Oh.  Dear.  Lord.  This is why I love the man.  Any idea as to why that might be, Frank?  Might that have something to do with the fact that those Cubans who might have nurtured “a tradition of dissent and multiple perspectives on political issues and the like” ended up six feet under a long time ago?

For all that, Cuba has a very lively and accepted religious life.

“There is no persecution of any kind,” Griswold said.

Because Frank didn’t see any, that’s why.  And because atheist government officials told him that there wasn’t and that’s good enough for Frank.

He said that while local church leaders don’t challenge the government, that doesn’t mean “they don’t press on the government in various ways.”

“I think that the feeling of the churches is that by working with the government, as opposed to against it, they can get further in terms of transforming the consciousness [and] by helping the government see the positives of the religious traditions,” he added.

Christian churches as obedient poodles.  That’s inspiring.  But I guess there’s not all that much point in Cuban churches challenging Fiddy when guys like Frank will instantly step in and apologize for him and that basket case of a country of his.

“The embargo has been the most incredible boon to the Castro government because it has allowed the government to focus on the evil north and to justify any number of lacks on the grounds that with the embargo ‘Well of course we can’t have this or you can’t expect that.’”

Having a symbolic enemy, Griswold said, can unify a country very easily. It is also clear, he said, that neither Castro nor the Cuban people indict the American people, “other than to note that we elect certain people.”

“The embargo was imposed to bring down the Castro government,” he said. “Fifty years later it hasn’t worked at all. Why don’t we just say it hasn’t worked, and let’s try the diplomatic route? Raul Castro, in very cautious ways, has loosened things up a bit.”

You mean things really aren’t that ji-Ha-Ha-Ha-HIM dandy in Cuba right now, Frank?  That the place might actually be a hell hole?  Seems a trifle at odds with the stuff you just said but then again, you never paid all that much attention to the stuff that comes out of your mouth before so why start now?

It’s traditional(as far back as Ed Browning anyway) for former Episcopal Organization Presiding Bishops to become leftist whack jobs once they leave office.  Frank’s not there yet; as PrezBish, he regularly said goofy stuff like this all the time.  But it’s only been three years so give Frank a chance to hit his stride.

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 19 Comments

It gives me great pleasure to announce that a new Episcopal buzzword has entered the world.  See if you can guess what it is:

Conservative Anglican leaders and former Episcopalians, meeting April 14-16 in London, have said they recognize a proposed entity composed of disaffected Anglicans in North America.

The announcement came in an April 16 communiqué from the GAFCON/FCA Primates’ Council that was created at the controversial Global Anglican Future Conference. That meeting was held in Jerusalem during June 2008, one month prior to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of bishops. (Many of the bishops attending GAFCON chose to boycott the Lambeth Conference.)

FCA stands for the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which the April 16 communiqué described as “a movement for defending and promoting the biblical gospel of the risen Christ,” but which Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has called “problematic in all sorts of ways.”

The new North American entity, which its leaders are calling the Anglican Church in North America, was proposed in December 2008 for Anglicans who have decided they no longer want to be a part of the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada for theological reasons. ACNA membership includes several self-identified Anglican organizations, known collectively as the Common Cause Partnership.

Representatives of the entity are due to meet June 22-25 at St. Vincent’s Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, to approve a proposed constitution and set of canons.

During a press conference at the early February meeting of Anglican primates, Williams acknowledged “some of the enormous difficulties around parallel jurisdictions” and underscored that the entity is “not a new province — it’s a coalition that has drafted a constitution. What its institutional relationship is with the communion is very unclear.”

The primates’ communiqué issued at the end of their February meeting acknowledged that “there is no consensus among us about how this new entity should be regarded,” and asked Williams to “establish at the earliest opportunity a professionally mediated conversation at which all the significant parties could be gathered.”

A statement from Lambeth Palace made shortly after the new entity was announced noted that “there are clear guidelines set out in the Anglican Consultative Council Reports, notably ACC 10 in 1996 (resolution 12), detailing the steps necessary for the amendments of existing provincial constitutions and the creation of new provinces. Once begun, any of these processes will take years to complete.”

Archbishop Gregory Venables of the Argentina-based Province of the Southern Cone has offered oversight to parishes and dioceses breaking away from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Venables has previously told ENS that there is a realization among the supporters of the new North American entity that they need to be patient if they wish to seek official recognition by the councils of the Anglican Communion. Such recognition would need the endorsement of two-thirds of the primates before being presented to the Anglican Consultative Council, the communion’s main legislative body, for consideration.

SAVING THE MARRIAGE

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 23 Comments

The Episcopal Organization wants to work things out in the worst way.  But if you’re going to continue to insist that TEO is going to have to stop tapping that incredibly hot woman down the street, then the split’s going to be all your fault:

The “Ridley Cambridge Draft” of the proposed “Anglican Covenant” has not improved very much from previous drafts. Section Three, “Our Unity and Common Life” (3.1), remains “episcopal top heavy.” Section Four, “Our Covenanted Life Together” (4.0), while exhibiting the celebrated English penchant for vagueness in places–especially a kind of “on the one hand/on the other hand” quality–there remain hierarchical disciplinary requirements also (and not surprisingly given 3.1 above) at odds with the ecclesiology and polity of the Episcopal Church. Aquinas said that making mistakes at the beginning (3.1) lead to even bigger mistakes at the end (4.0). Overall, the collegiality required by baptism and its prior and abiding covenant (especially, its egalitarian and servant nature) and the bicameral nature of the polity of the Episcopal Church are not adequately recognized, so that serious theological and ecclesiological problems in the covenant remain. Competing ecclesiologies are not easily resolved. The charism and indeed the genius of the Episcopal Church remain at risk.

TEO’s tried to be reasonable.