MALCOLM+ ON THE COVENANT - A FABLE

Malcolm+ at Simple Massing Priest shares an Aesop fable with us, which works well as we consider the Anglican Daft Covenant.

Count me amongst the resisting frogs. I'm just saying.

CLINT SAYS HE'S SORRY AND WILL RESIGN

From Pink News:

The US school board official who wrote on his Facebook page that “queers” and “fags” should kill themselves says he will resign.

Clint McCance, who is the vice-president of the Midland school district in Arkansas , said last night he was sorry for his “hurtful” remarks.

Speaking to the openly gay journalist Anderson Cooper on his 360 CNN programme, he said: “My posts I made that were very hurtful, very ignorant in nature. Looking back on it right now and getting to, you know, scrutinise my own self and what I did. It’s horrible. And what I wrote was horrible.”

Yes, your comments were despicable, Clint. The Midland School Board is well rid of you. Perhaps if your example doesn't teach a few other bigots to rethink their hateful attitudes, it will serve to suggest that they should keep their hateful opinions private, so that the rest of us, especially the most vulnerable amongst us, won't be plagued by them.

Thanks to Cathy for the link.

JESUS AND MO AND MORE

Click on the picture for the larger view.

From Jesus and Mo.

Quite often, I post "Jesus and Mo" comic strips, not simply because I think they're funny, but because the comics make me think about my faith and my church from a different perspective.

Today, John Chilton at The Lead links to the reports of a recent study by Empty Tomb Inc, which shows that charitable giving to religious organizations, such as the Salvation Army and World Vision, has increased, even as giving to Protestant churches has fallen. Why?

From Grand Rapids Press:

A new book, “The State of Church Giving,” says congregations have waning influence among charitable causes because their focus now seems to be on institutional maintenance rather than spreading the gospel and healing the world.

Ronsvalle called the findings “unintended side effects of the ‘seeker’ mentality” that creates a consumer mindset within U.S. churches, one that says “‘We’re here to serve you,’ not ‘We’re here to transform you into somebody who serves others.’”

While church spending on operations has fallen 15 percent since 1968, the amount spent on benevolence has dropped 47 percent.

Lots of food for thought here. The costs of health care and energy hit congregational budgets particularly hard, and I'm not pointing a finger in this post. I don't have solutions to offer, either, but I foresee great changes approaching in how we do church, and we'd do well to be prepared for the changes, rather than be blindsided by them. However, I think we've seen enough already, and if we are blindsided, then the fault is ours because we look away from the reality.

AUSTIN AND HIS EPISCOPUMPKIN

Austin Hays carved the pumpkin. He is a member of The Episcopal Church of St. Simon & St. Jude in Irmo, South Carolina, which has had a pumpkin patch for 17 years.

H/T to John Chilton at The Lead.

FRIDAY JOKE

A Doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa.

'The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. However, there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have eaten, or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?'

After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, 'Wedding Cake.'

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

TIMELY WITCH

Have a happy

~doug~

SIGN THE PETITION TO NBC ABOUT KETK

From Courage Campaign:

Demand that NBC Universal take action to end its affiliation with KETK now
KETK-NBC news anchors ask: “Will the acceptance of homosexuality in this society be the downfall of America?”

Yes, that was a question actually posed to viewers by a Texas-based NBC affiliate TV station, both on the air and online. But it didn’t end there. The station then went on to broadcast responses from viewers -- some of the most vitriolic attacks on LGBT people that you will ever ear on a network affiliate.

The video is shocking. But the lack of response from NBC Universal -- KETK's parent network -- is even more shocking. That's why we need you to watch the video now and then sign our petition to NBC Universal executives Jeff Zucker and Steve Burke asking them to end NBC's affiliate relationship with KETK immediately:

We are shocked by the segment aired on KETK-NBC in Texas in which the anchors asked viewers if the acceptance of gays would lead to the "downfall of America." As President of NBC Universal, we demand that you take action now to end your affiliate relationship with KETK immediately.

Please add your name now to this urgent petition to NBC Universal executives Jeff Zucker and Steve Burke:

I should post the video, but it's ugly, and I couldn't bring myself to do so. Please go to Courage Campaign and watch over there and sign the petition.

AND EVEN MORE COLLECTOR BOOKS

 

This Marcy? I hope not. She's frightening. What about the children?

 

Gilbert is sweet. I don't know about the baseball cap. Gilbert may need advice from some of his friends with better fashion sense.

 

I'm beginning to wonder if there are any other kind.

 

What IS it? I don't have the answer.

 

And now for something completely different.

Note: I will never forgive MadPriest for introducing me to Little Marcy.

HOW TO MOUNT A COUP

In his post titled "How to mount a successful coup in Anglicanism" at Not the Same Stream Paul Bagshaw reminds us that there have always been theological conflicts in the church. I offer 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 as an example of an early controversy amongst Christians:

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.

We Christians quarreled amongst ourselves from earliest days. We quarreled throughout our history over two thousand years. In the midst of our present Anglican controversies, Paul reminds us that it was ever thus.

Along with being ever-present, church conflicts are complicated. In five sections and a conclusion, Paul explores both the distinctive and the common characteristics of church conflicts as related to the present controversy in the Anglican Communion.

Since Paul's words on the second characteristic of staging a coup struck me with force, I quote them here.

Second, select your focal point
Because of this complexity, the occasion of conflict is often a relatively small matter, perhaps the actions or teaching of a particular individual. Conflicts take the form of synecdoche in which small matters encapsulate and represent much greater underlying differences.

Homosexuality is a synecdoche for the big things in conflict. It was deliberately chosen (at least in the UK) as a battle ground because it united conservatives, and especially evangelical conservatives, who had been deeply divided over the ordination of women. It is an emblematic issue of the US's culture wars.

I'm not just now learning of the complexity of conflicts and that what we see on the surface does not tell the whole story, but I had an "Ah ha!" moment when I read Paul's words. The strands came together in my mind in relation to the Anglican conflicts as they had not previously, and I said, "Oh yes!".

Now please read the post in its entirety.

HATE SPEECH OUT OF ARKANSAS

From Max Brantley at the Arkansas Blog in the Arkansas Times:

A timely announcement from the U.S. Education Department yesterday. It says school districts that fail to protect gay students can lose federal dollars.

The letter said schools “must take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any hostile environment and its effects, and prevent the harassment from recurring.”

I'd hope that the Midland, Ark. School District would conclude that "eliminating any hostile environment" would include an explanation/apology from School Board member Clint McCance, whose Facebook page wished death to gay kids and who vowed to run off any gay kids in "his vicinity." Also called for would be a rejection of such a view by other members of the School Board and an assurance from the school superintendent that such a hostile view isn't tolerated in the schools. I should add that if it develops that McCance's words and feelings are exactly as they seem to have been expressed, of course he should resign from the School Board.

Exactly! A school board member who would post such a hateful language must go, and the sooner, the better.

UPDATE: I reached McCance on his cell phone this morning. "I really can't comment right now," he said. He said he planned a meeting with a lawyer this morning and didn't want to say anything further until he'd had that meeting. He did comment that the matter had "been blown out of proportion." He said he'd received several hundred phone calls. Did he regret the comments on the Facebook page? "I can't comment on that right now." He promised an update after the meeting with a lawyer. "I have a family to consider," he said.

Too bad McCance didn't think of his family before posting such venom on his Facebook site. Before he writes or says anything further, he needs expert legal advice or the affair will be further "blown out of proportion". Hate speech is hate speech.

From WYNT:

"The Arkansas Department of Education strongly condemns remarks or attitudes of this kind and is dismayed to see that a school board official would post something of this insensitive nature on a public forum like Facebook," the department said.

Thanks to Arkansas Hillbilly for sending the link.