Posted on 03/26/2005 5:57:05 PM PST by sionnsar
In a way, bishops aren't really the problem in the Episcopal Church. Worrying about Anglican bishops is rather like painting the walls and doing nothing whatsoever about the mold that is eating away at them. The Few, the Apostate didn't emerge in a vacuum; ECUSA pulpits all over the country are filled with practical atheists who would quit their jobs and sleep in on Sunday mornings if they were honest.
One of these is Harry Cook, rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Clawson, Michigan near Detroit. The Detroit News gives Harry column space every so often(I've had at him here a time or two) and the old fraud's got a lot on his mind these days. For a start, there's all those flat-earthers down in the Confederate States of America:
Conservative Christians, primarily in the South, have caused Imax theaters to suspend the showing of science documentaries because their managers fear a backlash from those who insist that Earth cannot be more than 6,000 years old. Then there is Darwin’s theory of natural selection -- evolution -- which such Christians angrily dismiss as "merely an opinion" that is naturally wrong because it contradicts Holy Writ.
The age of Earth -- and of the universe -- is bound to sneak into science films along with evolutionary biology that has so enhanced medical research.
The documents that constitute the Bible come to us from times when stories were the means by which human beings strove to explain the world. After the onset of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, such stories were quite desirably discarded as explanations.
Now only the uneducated think of those stories as representing the truth. While the content of religious texts has remained the same, their meaning has changed over the course of history,
For example, Genesis 1:1-2:4 -- one of two biblical creation stories -- was clearly meant to enshrine the "day of rest" as divinely ordained. Now, some 2,500 years later, it is taken by some to be an index to the emergence of planetary phenomena.
I've been kind of busy lately and I haven't been able to keep up as well as I'd like so could somebody help me out here? Did Jesusland HQ send a memo saying that we were supposed to give Imax theaters a hard time for programs about an old earth and evolution? If not, it doesn't seem terribly Christian on Harry's part to blame somebody for something he thinks they might do. But I guess for a Spongian like Harry, it's any port in a storm. And, of course, there's Terri Schiavo.
Then there is the war over Terri Schiavo into which conservative Christians eagerly parachuted, weapons of righteousness at the ready. One member of Congress who voted to transfer the Schiavo case to federal jurisdiction was asked why he would participate in an unprecedented demolishment of his party’s cherished dogma of federalism by voting to negate 15 years of deliberative Florida jurisprudence.
"Why, it’s what God wants," he replied in astonishment that the reporter wouldn’t have realized that. How can anyone -- never mind a congressman -- know what "God" wants? Propositions concerning a deity are at best inconclusive and certainly debatable. Thus any person who claims to know what a deity wants should be ignored.
Sauce for the goose, Harry. Your Presiding Bishop went on and on about how consecrating a practicing homosexual as a bishop was a "movement of the Spirit" that was arrived at "prayerfully." So I guess you'd have no problem whatsoever if somebody walked into a New Hampshire church next Sunday, knocked Robbie's pointy hat off his head, grabbed his hooked stick and hit him over the head with it until he passed out. How do you know God didn't want the guy to do that? After all, "propositions concerning a deity are at best inconclusive and certainly debatable. Thus any person who claims to know what a deity wants should be ignored."
Other baggage being toted to church on the morrow includes the near-impasse into which the worldwide Anglican Communion has gotten itself with some of its top-level prelates essentially inviting the U.S. Episcopal Church to leave the fold over its audacity in allowing an openly gay man to become a bishop -- all, of course, against what the Bible allegedly says.
The archbishop of Canterbury, who is not a character from Chaucer but even less relevant to the American church than if he were, has said the Episcopal Church will simply have to apologize for its boneheaded mistake or a schism may well ensue.
The random and muddled biblical texts that may or may not refer to homosexual love and behavior are as few and far between as texts that require priests to maintain full beards and lay people to remit to those priests a tenth of their earnings. (I was thinking of growing a beard, and I could certainly use a raise in pay.)
Meanwhile, schism actually sounds like a pretty good idea for American Episcopalians. As for the flat-earthers, I pity their children who won’t be allowed to learn about the wonders of geology and evolutionary biology. And to those who have stolen the dignity of Terri Schiavo’s dying with their 24/7 tent revivals, I say, "Enough already."
Buddhism’s looking better all the time.
Do it, Harry. Drop the act and make the jump. For once in your life, display a little integrity.
Thanks to Greg Hlatky.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Ol' Harry Cook is by no means alone in his blatant and persistent unbelief.
Quite a few denominations have a preponderance of pastors who are not in any way Christian in the first place. Nowadays, it's the mainline denominational preachers, not the villiage atheists, who demand that the lighted cross be removed from the hiltop overlooking the town because it supposedly makes unbelievers into second-class citizens.
You can tell the real Christian by the fact that he/she has a DESIRE to do things God's way, not make excuses for why not. I wonder if they realize, for example, that the Bible does NOT teach that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. In fact, there is a passage in the Bible that talks about a creation, containing man, that was wiped out completely long before Adam even entered the scene.
Jesus was right when He said that he did not bring peace on Earth, but rather a sword that would divide people. Today, it's the preachers who are the real enemies of Christianity.
"In fact, there is a passage in the Bible that talks about a creation, containing man, that was wiped out completely long before Adam even entered the scene."
Do you happen to have a reference on this? I'm curious-- I don't doubt you, but this is the first time I've ever heard of such a thing. If you even have just the book, I'm sure I can find it. Thanks!
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