Hark, the Christians are barking again

It’s probably obvious by now I’m no tree-hugging cuddly bunny merchant. And it goes without saying I find a lot of religious ‘thinking’ ridiculous.
I’m sure both parties mean well. It’s just their priorities are a bit startling, and when they're both singing from the same hymnsheet the result is like a Christmas carol service in a padded cell.
Still, I subscribe to enough feeds from green, caring groups to make the average reader puke a bucketful, and plough my way through similar amounts of earnest religious e-sermons. All this in an attempt to be fair, though in truth I tend to stop when the Prodigy or Her Indoors complain because I’m in hysterics again.
Take the hugely important question posed on one site recently: ‘Can a dog receive communion?’
I kid not. Care2, a site dedicated to thoughts and appeals from a world community of fluffy-brained soft green campaigners, has a piece which begins: “How would you feel if you saw a dog receive Holy Communion in your church?”
Under the impression that people anywhere with an IQ in more than double figures might need to know, it then tells a tale about a rumpus in a Canadian Anglican church after the priest slipped a Jesus cracker to a mutt which accompanied one of the communicants.
Even wilder, the piece had 202 comments when I last looked! You can read it at all at http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/dog-receives-communion-at-church/ in case you think I’m spinning a shaggy dog story.
Couldn’t happen here on the Isle of Man though, could it?
I doubt anyone will be surprised to know that not only did one venerable old school theological scholar here believe animals had souls, he regarded the inmates at a local dogs home as parishioners. He even (and I have witnesses to this) took what looked suspiciously like a weekly confession at a dilapidated shed in the grounds which (in theory) he used as a quiet spot in which to compose sermons in return for an hour a day’s dogwalking. I also have witnesses to the funerals for the pets of Manx government bigwigs and UK colonial klingons conducted by a bishop within the last decade.
But are other local Christians barking too?
I think we should know.

A communion of twits

Jonathan Wynn-Jones, one of the numerous Torygraph religious commentators, has a piece this morning on a tweeted (twittered, twitted? I know not and have better things to do with my thumbs) communion service being offered by an earnest Methodist minister (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7908263/Church-minister-to-tweet-Holy-Communion-to-the-faithful.html ).
Rev. Tim Ross, instead of bothering to turn up and communicate face-to-face with the faithful, will send out a prayer in a series of Tweets. Then those who, in turn, can’t be bothered to join him (or any other priest or congregant) read each tweet out loud before typing Amen in reply.
The service hasn’t gone live yet, but Ross says hundreds have signed up already. He claims Twitter is "….. a community that's as real and tangible as any local neighbourhood and we should be looking to minister to it”, and further that "The perception of church is often that it is rusting away in antiquated buildings and not in touch with the world around us, but this is a statement that we're prepared to embrace the technological revolution."
Actually I’d say it was more evidence that the god business is in such deep dooh-doohs that now the practitioners can’t even offer the one decent service (excuse the pun) it formerly provided, i.e. a place for the socially isolated to see another friendly face on a Sunday morning.
Curious that almost everywhere else in the press church leaders grumble that individualism has caused a decline in religion, yet quietly they’re trying to tap into technology that enables ersatz ecumenicism for spiritual geeks. Or perhaps the real target is just all the sad middle managers who go to every pretentious marketing conference and love psychobabble, not to mention taking a Blackberry on holiday and texting the office every 30 minutes to prove how ‘committed’ and ‘indispensable’ they are.
At the other end of the scale is one of Living Hell’s regular shindigs (see http://www.livinghope.im/Articles/205245/LHCC/Events/Special_Events/Unite.aspx ), based on Nuremburg rallies and the kind of torchlit mass screamfests their mentor, Ian Paisley Senior, used to tell the world (or at least any passing TV camera) that ‘Ulster Says No To…….’, well, just about anything that involved being human or exercising more than two braincells really.
Although on the surface this is about ‘community’, beneath that it is quite exploitative. An office colleague comes under extreme pressure to attend from a housebound relative who got the Living Hell plague via Southern Befrienders. In theory SB is a social outreach scheme heavily subsidised by government for the elderly, housebound and otherwise socially isolated in the South of the island. In practice it’s another scam run by Living Hell, where wild-eyed Baptists get access to the vulnerable at home , then, rather like the Krays, ‘suggest’ that if they don’t come to church or join in their various protection schemes, life could get very, very lonely. Suggestions on the lines of ‘If, for example (and we really hope this will never happen) you should fall over in the bathroom one day nobody will hear you scream’ have been made, so I gather. In turn, because the SB team are so “busy”, the victims are given the suggestion that they could, say, ask a younger relative to take them along to the rally.......oh, and they could bring the family, it would be a nice day out……
I think you see how it works.
Not so much a growing Christian community, more of an evangelical pyramid scheme, made more practical because it has enough well placed members to ensure government never puts money or resources into real community building.

I'm not eating that!

Anglicanism is one of the last bastions of relative religious sanity. But every time you think at least they won’t get sillier, they manage it anyway.
Yesterday Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent at the Times, reported that worshippers at Blackburn Cathedral have a two-track Communion service. This is so that fussy gits who won’t touch holy crackers consecrated by a woman can ask for one from the a la carte menu. All this because the most recent of three residentiary canons is a lady vicar, one Dr Sue Penfold.
Gledhill reports:
“Even though she is legitimately ordained and employed, it means that when she is celebrating the eucharist those who dispute the validity of her orders can make sure they receive “untainted” sacrament consecrated earlier by a man.
The special container, known as the “reserved sacrament” after practice in the Roman Catholic Church, is then housed in the cathedral’s aumbry, or tabernacle, and brought out on Sunday mornings when Dr Penfold is celebrating. It is used for those who do not recognise her ministry but many other worshippers also receive these hosts, unaware that they are different.”
You can laugh at the whole farce at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6726936.ece .
It seems that Blackburn, apparently notorious for misogynistic ministry, has gone so far over the top this time that even Backwards in Belligerence (or ‘Forward in Faith’ to people who take them seriously) disowned the practice.
Their spokesman (well, unlikely to let a woman get a word in edgeways, are they?) Stephen Parkinson said:
“I’ve never come across this before. It is pretty extraordinary. I can’t understand why the women priests put up with it.”
I can’t understand why anyone with more than two brain cells puts up with it.
(World weary sigh)
IT’S A PIGGING BISCUIT, YOU MUPPETS!!

Oh ye of little faith

In today’s Manx Independent Sentamu’s Apprentice says Anglicans have a special dispensation not to sip communion wine during swine flu scares.
Can’t help smiling. Isn’t the whole point of religion that your fictitious friend looks after those who kiss the divine butt, and didn’t this omnipotent know-all decide your fate before you were born?
If so, what is there to worry about? If the bloke with the sickle is coming for you, he’s coming. Might as well have a drink while you’re waiting.
But, of course, SA didn’t come up with this himself. Ruth Gledhill at the Times revealed at
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/07/cofe-bishops-issue-swine-flu-warnings.html that the orders came down from Mumu and Professor Unwin themselves.
Her piece, with links to various C of E diktats, is hilarious reading. And not just for the pretence that ‘government ‘ has only just come up with advice for ‘faith communities’ or the intimation that a bagful of bishops would be closely involved in all that.
Pile of old toot. I was at a DHSS briefing to Manx ‘faith communities’ way back in January 2008 where all this, and more, was explained, and that in turn was based on guidance then floating around all UK regional health authorities.
Actually, it went much further, and in effect told churches to shut up shop on Sunday in a crisis rather than spread a virus. Much the same advice as was given to all holding public gatherings, in fact.
Even funnier, when the one evangelical who could be bothered to turn up without cash being waved grumbled about the ‘impossibility’ of closing an ‘important community resource’ (a café) he was bluntly told the court sentence given for knowingly causing harm in a national emergency. Never seen him at meetings since, but that might also be because the others didn’t tell him lunch is provided.
Almost as funny as watching one senior cleric try to make a case for clergy being ‘key workers’ who should be at the top of the list when limited vaccine supplies are being passed out while the masses riot, eat each other or just pop their clogs.
It wasn’t a dignified sight, and he didn’t come across as a caring shepherd. Even his fellows looked embarrassed.
Actually, I should say that the three clergy still attending our meetings are OK when not in full drag and in front of a congregation. Caring, ask pertinent questions and make good points.
The contrast between their down to earth knowledge that science, not prayers, stops disease and their public protestations is ridiculous.
But that’s showbiz for you.