Posted on 08/21/2019 5:17:51 PM PDT by marshmallow
Norwich's Anglican cathedral installed a helter-skelter in its nave to try to bring people to church
A controversial amusement park ride erected in Norwich Cathedral has come down after an 11-day installation.
Rt. Revd. Johnathan Meyrick, the Anglican bishop of Lynn, delivered a sermon midway down the helter-skelter slide during the final liturgy held in the cathedral with the ride present.
“God is a tourist attraction,” Meyrick said, claiming that God would be “revelling” in the joy it brought to visitors. During the time the helter-skelter was installed, over 20,000 people came to visit the nearly thousand-year-old cathedral.
While an estimated 10,000 people rode down the 50-foot-high slide, the move drew criticism from Anglicans and Catholic alike.
The Right Reverend Dr Gavin Ashenden, former chaplain to the Queen – who is supreme governor of the Church of England – called the event a “mistake,” and misjudged “what a cathedral is good for.”
“For such a place, steeped in mystery and marvel to buy in to sensory pleasure and distraction, is to poison the very medicine it offers the human soul,” Ashenden told the BBC.
In the sermon, Meyrick defended the decision to place the retro carnival ride in the cathedral, saying, that God wants to be “attractive” for humanity, and “for us to enjoy ourselves, each other and the world around us and this glorious helter-skelter is about just that.”
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicherald.co.uk ...
Does that make the Bishop a barker for a thrill ride?
(*) a person who stands in front of a theater, sideshow, etc., and calls out to passersby to attract customers.
(**) late Middle English: from bark1 + -er1. The original sense was ‘a person or animal that barks; a noisy protestor’, hence the current sense (late 17th century).
>>God wants to be “attractive” for humanity, and “for us to enjoy ourselves, each other and the world around us and this glorious helter-skelter is about just that.”
“I don’t understand you. I really don’t. You have nothing better to do at three o’ clock in the afternoon? I go out for a quart of milk, I come home, and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park!” < /seinfeld >
The Book of Daniel comes to mind.
Are you thinking of “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN”?
I don’t like it. It is turning houses of worship into circuses.
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