Anglican Samizdat

Having no rational argument to support their belief system, atheists in Fort Bragg are resorting to a video that celebrates church and book burning to advertise an atheism festival. Christians, being considerably more civilised, intelligent and emotionally secure are not advocating burning The God Delusion or this in retaliation.

From here:

Atheists are using a music video that celebrates the burning of churches and synagogues to promote an upcoming atheist-themed festival at Fort Bragg.

“Rock Beyond Belief” is scheduled to be held on the parade field at Fort Bragg in March. The event was created in part as a response to a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event that was held last year.

Here is the video (notice, I didn’t call it a music video):

Since the Diocese of New Westminster won the court battle for the buildings of parishes that left the diocese and joined ANiC, St. John’s Shaughnessy, once the largest Anglican parish in Canada, has gone downhill a little. Sunday attendance has dropped from 850 to between 3 and 13; the parish is running a deficit of $20,000 per month and in the week, the building, according to the treasurer, is like a mausoleum.

This was discussed is a parish meeting in November 2011.

Here is the mausoleum remark:

And the $20,000 per month deficit:

Who is paying for this deficit, you might be wondering? The well known philanthropist, Bishop Michael Ingham:

You can listen to the whole meeting here:

A triumph of Pyrrhic proportions for Bishop Michael Ingham.

Alain de Botton wants something awe inspiring in his life, something to foster love, friendship, and goodness. Something transcendent one might be tempted to think if it were not for the fact that Botton is an atheist and so is compelled to reach the obtuse conclusion that his longing for transcendence is evidence that it doesn’t exist.

Not to be deterred, he has decided to build a temple to his god: atheism. It purports to be a celebration of life on earth, culminating in the human genome sequence inscribed in binary on the outside walls – a tribute to man’s ego as much as atheism.

Botton’s atheism purports to be a more positive form of atheism than that of Richard Dawkins, but adopting the aesthetics of religion while denying its truth doesn’t seem to me to be much less misguided than rejecting both.

Rev. George Pitcher seems to think it is a good idea – a sure indicator that it isn’t

From here:

Plans to build a £1m “temple for atheists” among the international banks and medieval church spires of the City of London have sparked a clash between two of Britain’s most prominent non-believers.

The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is proposing to build a 46-metre (151ft) tower to celebrate a “new atheism” as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins’s “aggressive” and “destructive” approach to non-belief.

Rather than attack religion, De Botton said he wants to borrow the idea of awe-inspiring buildings that give people a better sense of perspective on life.

“Normally a temple is to Jesus, Mary or Buddha, but you can build a temple to anything that’s positive and good,” he said. “That could mean a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective. Because of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens atheism has become known as a destructive force. But there are lots of people who don’t believe but aren’t aggressive towards religions.”

I have to admit, the evidence from his own lips suggests not.

From here:

“We still don’t know what exactly happened at the time of the Big Bang, 13.72 billion years ago. Cosmologists and physicists now have good ideas which are yet to be proved definitely, that the whole universe came into being as a quantum event out of literally nothing,” he said, according to the Times of India.

“This leaves religion with nowhere to go. Because however difficult it may be to explain the origin of the cosmos, it would be even more difficult to explain the origin of a designer who made the cosmos.

“So you have absolutely nothing to gain by postulating any kind of intelligent designer, because that simply evades the question we’re trying to solve. If you want to believe in some kind of god, don’t look to science.”

There are three problems with this.

First, it confuses the categories of things that have an origin – like the universe – and things that don’t – like God. God, by definition is a necessary not a contingent being: he does not depend on something else for his existence. To look for a cause for the universe’s coming into being makes sense, to look for a cause for God’s coming into existence has no meaning because, in order to be God, he must have always existed.

Second, saying: “the whole universe came into being as a quantum event out of literally nothing” doesn’t solve the problem of how something that requires a cause for its existence arrived, apparently, without a cause: what caused the “quantum event”?

Third, since Richard Dawkins’ atheism is a presupposition not something that has been demonstrated logically or empirically, it isn’t surprising that science can’t help him find something he is already convinced isn’t there. Scientists who do not start out with a belief that God does not exist see a great deal of evidence for a universe that has been designed.

An Anglican priest in the UK wasn’t happy with the liberal drift of the Church of England, so he has converted his garden shed into a church.

His new church is part of the Orthodox Church, but the idea could be adopted by displaced Anglicans who have lost their buildings in Canada. We’ve exhausted  the fads of the Emerging Church, the Missional Church, the loony fringe Prophetic Social Justice Making Church, now we have finally arrived at the Garden Shed Church.

From here:

St Fursey’s is so small the holy processions carried out during each service only take worshippers ten steps along and two steps across.

There is no room to sit and after services the congregation step through a door into the priest’s living room for a cup of coffee.

But the Antiochian Orthodox church – very similar to the Greek Orthodox but English speaking – is an official place of worship after it was blessed by a bishop.

[….]

Father Weston served as an Anglican priest with the Church of England for 20 years before he became disillusioned with its ideals at the age of 50.

He says he was upset with the direction the Anglican Church was heading and admitted the ordination of women to the priesthood was ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.

Stephen switched to the Orthodox Church and short of an English-speaking venue, decided to build his own in the village of Sutton, Norfolk, in 1998.

From here:

Alaska Airlines is ending a decades-long tradition of handing out prayer cards with their in-flight meals because an increasing number of passengers were offended by them.

Offended because the inflight meals were so bad that one had to pray in order to digest them? Offended by the implication that the aeroplane needed prayer in order to land safely?

Of course not: offended because the cards contained a Christian message, Christianity makes some exclusive claims on truth and, today, there is nothing quite so offensive as announcing that everyone can’t be right.

In their zeal to be frugal, it seems that some Niagara parishes are considering firing their clergy. Bishop Michael Bird isn’t happy with this and has sent out a letter scolding parishes tempted to subvert his vision of a Generous Culture of Stewardship in this way:

We have heard of several parishes that are considering a motion at their Annual Vestry meeting to reduce the level of clergy staffing to save money in the parish budget. We want to remind clergy and churchwardens that the appointment of licensed clergy and lay workers and the conditions of their employment are under the purview of the Bishop (not the Vestry). To entertain such a motion has ethical and legal implications, reaching far beyond budgetary concerns.

Impecunious parishes need not despair, though: the letter goes on to offer a vague hope of diocesan assistance. I expect the bishop will be donating a portion of his $112,000 stipend to flagging congregations. Those wishing to apply for grants should send an email to: bishop@niagara.anglican.ca.

Presumably, this is an attempt by the Occupy movement to further ingratiate itself with The Episcopal Church.

Oddly enough, even though any minute I’m expecting to read a statement from an Occupy admiring bishop explaining how this furthers the church’s mission in some obscure way, it hasn’t worked.

The Occupiers have been asked to leave within two weeks. This gives them plenty of time to come up with new mischief with which to tax the limits of the gracious pastoral response that benighted clerics feel compelled to extend to anyone muttering the incantation “poor and marginalised”.

The Occupiers also stole part of a baptismal font; still, what more could they do in two weeks?

Arson.

From here:

There’s no longer room at the inn at a Manhattan church that’s sheltering Occupy Wall Streeters after a holy vessel disappeared from the altar last week.

When the Rev. Bob Brashear prepared for Sunday services at West Park Presbyterian Church on West 86th Street, he noticed parts of the bronze baptismal font were gone.

In a fire-and-brimstone message to occupiers later that day, he thundered, “It was like pissing on the 99 percent.”

In Brooklyn, at another church housing OWS protesters, an occupier urinated on a cross, according to Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who has angrily abandoned the OWS movement.

In a letter last week to OWS obtained by The Post, the rabbi fumed, “The Park Slope church housing occupiers was desecrated when an occupier peed inside the building and the pee came into contact with a cross.”

The pastor of the church did not return calls.

At West Park, Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl.

[….]

The pastor has given protesters two weeks to vacate the church.

From here:

A video showing fifteen Pakistani soldiers being lined up and shot dead by a firing squad has been released by the Taliban.

The paramilitary troops were abducted on December 23 in what the terror group described as an operation to avenge the deaths of insurgents in Pakistan.

The release of the horrific video is intended to serve as a warning to Pakistan’s 600,000-member army, which has failed to break the back of the insurgents despite superior firepower and a series of offensives against their strongholds in mountain regions.

Someone should explain to these Taliban chaps that they really shouldn’t go round kidnapping people and shooting them in the back of the head because it will be used as a recruiting tool by the U.S. military.

The event is actually billed as a “Dialogue” – a mini-indaba, no doubt – and will take place on February 23rd at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. That’s the same venue where Dawkins didn’t debate William Lane Craig.

The fact that Dawkins has agreed to this “Dialogue” is a measure of his confidence that he will make mincemeat out of Rowan Williams.

Judging by this clip, I suspect his confidence is not entirely misplaced:

My favourite part of this exchange comes at the point where Rowan tries to explain miracles, specifically the Virgin Birth:

Rowan: Here you have a long history of preparation for the coming of God in a new way, here you have a particular life, that of Mary opening itself up to the action of God in a certain way and then there is an opening. Something comes through, something fresh happens which is not – if you like – a suspension of the laws of nature but nature itself opening up to its own depths – something coming through.

Dawkins: I’m not sure what that means.

Rowan:  It’s poetic language.

It sounds to me more like a description of a cosmic bowel movement than “poetic language.”