Posted on 12/16/2009 7:38:57 AM PST by PanzerKardinal
A "Progressive" Anglican church in Auckland New Zealand paid to have this billboard placed near their parish.
Here are some excerpts written by the Vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy on the church's website touting what he did.
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To make the news at Christmas it seems a priest just needs to question the literalness of a virgin giving birth. Many in society mistakenly think that to challenge literalism is to challenge the norms of Christianity. What progressive interpretations try to do however is remove the supernatural obfuscation and delve into the deeper spiritual truth of this festival.
Christian fundamentalism believes a supernatural male God who lived above sent his sperm into the womb of the virgin Mary. Although there were a series of miraculous events surrounding Jesus’ birth – like wandering stars and angelic choirs – the real miracle was his death and literal resurrection 33 years later. The importance of this literal resurrection is the belief that it was a cosmic transaction whereby the male God embraced humanity only after being satiated by Jesus’ innocent blood.
Progressive Christianity is distinctive in that not only does it articulate a clear view it is also interested in engaging with those who differ. Its vision is one of robust engagement. If every Christian thought the same not only would life be deadly boring but also the fullness of God would be diminished. This is the consequence of its incarnational theology: God is among us; even among those we disagree with or dislike.
(Excerpt) Read more at stmatthews.org.nz ...
No - that would be Mormonism.
Given recent trends, we can expect this “Progressive” Anglican to last maximum 5 more years before he loses all his flock and his church is forced to close.
St Matthews-in-the-City is a beautiful, old-style landmark church. I often Patrol that part of town at night.
In part, it caters to an “alternative” sort of parishioner, as well as your “Typical Anglican”. They also hold classical music concerts there because the acoustics are lovely. My wife and I attended “The Marriage of Figaro” there about 10 years ago — unforgettable.
It’s easy to bag this particular church because they *do* push the corner of the envelope quite hard, particularly on issues of social justice. This billboard is in really poor taste. But amongst their catchment are people who *really do* need Christianizing, and St Matthew’s does that, where other churches don’t. So I won’t criticize them for doing that.
The sort of people who would find this billboard Hell-Funny are the sorts of people who would attend service at St Matthew’s — and arguably would be the sort of people who need church the most. Mission accomplished? End-justifies-the-means? Dunno. But there is some logic to it.
Here is a link to their site: http://www.stmatthews.org.nz/index.php
You expect him to know what he is talking about?
That is no church if they did that.
If you search “Fear the Lord” in the Bible you will find 130 references. I don’t suppose the author of this tripe pays much attention to those passages.
Sounds like the way most Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and mainline Protestants interpret Genesis.
I wonder what the good "progressive" bishop thinks of the supernatural obfuscation of Maori creation myths. Suppose he'd ridicule them?
Christian fundamentalism believes a supernatural male God who lived above sent his sperm into the womb of the virgin Mary. Although there were a series of miraculous events surrounding Jesus’ birth – like wandering stars and angelic choirs – the real miracle was his death and literal resurrection 33 years later. The importance of this literal resurrection is the belief that it was a cosmic transaction whereby the male God embraced humanity only after being satiated by Jesus’ innocent blood.
This forum is crawling with militant "orthodox chr*stians" who believe all the above but who insist that cannot be "fundamentalists" because they do not believe Genesis is literally true.
I'm still trying to figure out why a literal six day creation that concluded just 5769+ years ago is any more irrational than a virgin birth.
That is not a church, its an anti-Christian faux church if it does stuff like that. Those are definitely not Christians.
Incarnationism--every "progressive chr*stian's" favorite concept (just so it's not meant literally).
Hey, I took a dig at the Maoris too!
The good "progressive" bishop is right, though, you know. If you're going to believe in a literal virgin birth, you have no valid excuse to de-literalize Genesis. And if yo de-literalize Genesis then you ought to think that billboard is funny as The Bad Place.
Actually, church isn’t for non-believers, it is for believers to worship and hear the Word of God. If non-believers attend and are drawn to God, that’s great. But churches should not “cater” to seekers, especially by diminishing and mocking God’s Word.
“Progressive” = liberal, emerging church, New-Age, unbiblical muckety-muck. Makes me want to puke.
> What’s the point of such’ Christianizing?’ It’s all pretense.
I think in some cases it is better to start somewhere than not at all. It’s sorta like a dancing bear: the point is not how well the bear dances, but that the bear can dance at all.
If they never get started on walking the straight-and-narrow, they may never see that Christianity has so much more to offer than the shallow stuff that they have learned so far, and move on to more serious studies.
St Paul talks about the “milk” and the “meat” of the Word. You probably would not be fed any “meat” at their alternative congregation (they do have a “regular” congregation as well) because the people who attend just couldn’t digest anything stronger than just the basics.
So I guess the point of it all is to get people off the street and onto a better track. I find it difficult to criticize that.
"Progressive Christianity believes the Christmas stories are fictitious accounts designed to introduce the radical nature of the adult Jesus."
"Progressive Christianity however emphasizes behaviour above belief."
Wow. Makes The Episcopal Church seem almost traditional. For now.
This philosophy is very close to The Episcopal Church's Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's philosophy, who has called the philosophy of individual salvation through the belief in Jesus Christ "the great Western heresy", despite the fact this belief is a canon of The Episcopal Church and must be declared to be confirmed as a member of the church (BCP p415).
My friends this is pure blasphemy because it infers God and His Word are not truth. Barking out the Lords name via a heated curse filled moment is trivial compared to this depiction-—and by a so-called ‘religious’ church. Jesus reserved his most scathing judgement for the ‘robe wearing religious hypocrites’ of His day and we are witnessing the modern version of it. Good luck with that gig declaring that the Almighty is a liar come Judgement Day.
> That is not a church, its an anti-Christian faux church if it does stuff like that. Those are definitely not Christians.
On what basis do you judge them to be not Christians? They are certainly sinners, they are certainly not righteous — I guess the people who go there are much like the sinners that Christ preached to.
Their church is not something I would attend, and I certainly don’t condone their billboard. But it is a huge leap from there to say that they “are definitely not Christians.”
We should leave that assessment to God, don’t you think? He knows His own.
That is mocking Christianity.
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