Today has been designated as National Coming Out Day.
There’s been so much going on recently in the media and social media about gay bishops in the Church of England.
This seems to me to say it in a more elegant way than all the letters to the press, editorials, blog posts and twitter posts by the score.
Fred and Leanne’s comments, way off the mark when it comes to St Mary’s but true to a large extent about other churches, make me realise that a vital element of the new militant atheism/ secularism (not to be confused with multiculturalism as it is totally intolerant of difference) is its online presence. Everyone likes being smug and to be a smug theist you have to spend a considerable amount of time in a good library but to be a smug atheist you need about 3 minutes online watching a video clip of someone untrained in ontology or ethics (but, say, a professor of biology) expound on Being and preach amorality. Bingo! An easy rant to borrow down the pub. It’s the Tractarian approach to evangelisation. Give it to em in byte sized chunks.
“totally intolerant of difference”? You mean the Mainline Protestant churches and semi-Churches (Unitarians and Quakers) of North America, who’ve been preaching “Celebrate Diversity” for over 40 years while still remaining over 95% White and middle/upper middle class? “We hope to represent the future of religion”; odd, you’ve somehow managed to have a median age of 57+. Barely 9% of any Mainline Protestant body is under 31 years old.
The Tea Party and Republican National Convention are more “diverse” than these groups.
About as vibrant and colorful as skim milk.
Again, why bother? You either have the worst programs to “represent our neighborhoods in our churches” or you just don’t mean it.
I think it is very clear, Fred that Alan is not talking about mainline protestant churches in North America.
It was very obvious to me that the issues over race and ethnicity there are very far removed from what we experience at St Mary’s and I think in the UK generally.
That isn’t to say all is perfect but it is to say that things are very different here.
St Mary’s is very ethnically diverse, and a heck of a lot less than 95% white and does not draw its members from one income-bracket either … nor is our median age in its fifties, I would think. Nor have I ever heard any of us suggest that one has to be religious to be moral. It would of course be wrong to be smug about these things, but then – we are all a little wrong from time to time, aren’t we?
Could you all go over and see Cliff Piper over at http://morayrosscaithness.blogspot.com/ He is obviously not getting enough attention as the Dean of Moray, Ross and Caithness so he has started a blog. He is taking his first steps in the Blogosphere and needs our encouragement and compassion. He says on twitter that its scary.…
I note the report on Sweden’s Local news-site that bishops from England and Ireland are boycotting the consecration of the next Bishop of Stockholm. (Tip of the biretta to Fr Madpriest). Does anyone know which Scottish bishop is going? We are usually quite good at turning up to things in Sweden.
I nearly preached about relics for our All Saints Festival on Sunday. No, I’m not talking about the congregation, who are far from being relics, I am talking about, you know, holy relics. (Not that the congregation are not holy, either). It was that tour of the relics of Thérèse of Lisieux that made me…
We had some theological students in church yesterday who had come as a group to observe our goings on. This is something that I got involved in last year too. They go around several churches and then invite the preacher into their class which takes place later in the week to discuss what happened. I…
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