Sunday, June 29, 2008

bisect the sects

Update: I initially refrained from mentioning the other vile belief of these people, that women are less human than men, on the grounds that quite a number of Anglican dioceses across the world have female priests and deacons, and some have bishops, and I didn't want to be any more open to charges of generalisation than I already am. However, reading further about the defecting (defective?) group, they are also ambivalent-opposed to ordaining women. Oh, and I liked that in response to Williams' comment about their legitimacy, being self-selected, they responded that they are selected by god. hee hee. But scary, so not funny.
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After many years of talking about it, the scriptural purists/anointed bigots in the Anglican church have finally done it, and struck out on a righteous path toward spiritual rebirth and the (multiple) repression of gayness. They won't formally call it a schism, for the most practical and material of reasons (division of the churches etc), but they will no longer accept the authority of that most confused of loving, little-bit-liberal archbishops Rowan Williams.

The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (or Nambla) is sick of the anti-Christian tendencies of their ex-fellows in USA and Canada (and England). These heretics have too long been allowing that gay people are capable of forgiving God his slanders and staying part of the CofE club despite the option of leaving to join a nice non-judgemental corps like the Quakers. As the Telegraph commentator points to, it might be easier for the less indecent-minded Anglicans if these pure souls simply left, instead of hanging around to make (even more!) protracted trouble for the leaders. But faced with a highly fertile Islamic enemy, splits in the Church may be seen as weakness... what to do?

Of course, my two pennies-worth are not usually taken on board by archbishops (or any bishops), but I suggest these folk make union with the Roman Catholic church. They can surely leave aside their childish standoff about whether the wine becomes blood and whether Mary is a deserving object of superstition - return to the original, Henry VIII Anglicanism - and enjoy enthusiastically accepting the need to do away with intrinsic moral evils. (Except when these occur within the church, in which case the acceptance should be a little more low key.)

Some sort of prisoner swap could perhaps be negotiated, in which the Catholics who don't agree with the pope could be taken under Rowan's grizzled wing, and the Anglicans yearning for authoritarianism and sexual obsession could come under the sway of Rome. Archbishes Akinola and the Ugandan one could reach an accommodation on division of leadership roles, which given the impressive record of the Anglicans in Uganda might mean the RCC was less likely to say nothing when moral evils do in fact occur. But only some.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've always suspected that all the homophobia implanted in the sacred texts is a clear suggestion that God is probably gay... he just won't admit it to himself... like all those hardcases who called me gay at school.

(Sadly most of them probably aren't gay, which may make the time that some of them are spending in prisons much less fullfilling.)

I am always reminded of this when I hear anything about religions and gayness.

Thanks for your mix tape. They are like buses and loads of people have given me mix tapes at the same time so absorbing them (especially considering my hectic life) will take some time (I haven't even been able to convert one of them to the fitting-in-with-never-being-actually-at-home format of the MP3 yet, but its on my (constantly elongating) list of things to do.

As is posting you an apples CD. Which I hope to do tomorrow.

It amused me muchly that Jen did read the note, just as you said, although she still read the later bit which you said she would have stopped reading before. Amusingly she managed to feel guilty about reading the note, despite you actually saying in it that it was alright.

Looking at the track list for the CD I'd say its the best fucking introduction to un-crap western-centric music I've ever seen. Nice one.

chris said...

Well, as My Ruin sang to us, God wants a piece of my ass... but she was a woman, I think. Still, Brokeback Mountain has precedent.

I recall flagging up that Jerusalem interfaith gaybashing initiative, too. It's what scares me about the outreach to the pope from muslim leaders - that Xtn-Islam relations are "the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world".

Which all sounds very nice, but imagine if they go beyond loving god and thy neighbour to other areas of common ground... But Israel-US bombs Iran, and we can stop worrying about this particular scenario for a while.

As for the non-religious fuckers, Delhi just had a peaceful first gay pride march, but there were a load of skinheads around at the equivalent in Bulgaria. At least the (also highly homophobic) police managed to protect the marchers better than in Russia last year.

Calling that mix a 'world' mix was a bit much, I think, but I don't even know that they will listen to it : ( I should post something about the end of my teaching career.

Unknown said...

In religions, it's important to have Enemies. Otherwise you're a bunch of people getting together to celebrate life and your place in it, which would be way too uninteresting and kind of unsettling to feelings of self-importance.

Gays make awesome Enemies.

Anonymous said...

To be fair you could just as easily say societies or human groups as religions. Lots of non-religious people are homophobic and many (so-called) secular societies create enemies in order to weild control and power and fear over their members. Britain at the moment currently has a whole bunch of different ones, most fall under the broad heading of young people, generally those for less well incomed backgrounds (i.e. hoodies, chavs, happy slappers, knife weilding gang members etc...) and of course we have Islamic Fundementalist terrorists (see: anyone with brownish skin). Admittedly some of these groups are threatening and some members of them have behaved in ways that makes it chicken and egg like. But then again homosexuality does, arguably present a real threat to the status quo (I am resisting using the horrible phrase heteronormativity, and not just cos I can't spell it ;-)

It's not that I am trying to excuse organised religions, I just feel that we tend to bash the religions rather than the behavior quite often. And as Laura says, getting together to celebrate life and your place in it is perfectly harmless, lovely even, and so in many ways we should applaud all those who manage to do so, and who use such experiences to colour in a positive way their behaviour to other humans. So what if they are basing it on a lie? As Idlewild say "a song is a beautiful lie" but I've been moved to positive behaviour by songs and singing and fiction in general.

From the religious to some users of ecstacy, from the humanists to the scientists, anyone who engages in social and spiritual rituals that aid being nice to each other is alright with me.

chris said...

Great enemies, especially since they all dress outrageously and like to dry hump in the streets every summer.

Lumping religious bigots in with all the others is fair enough on one hand, but the god-lie matters when you're claiming your hatred to be sanctioned by it, with all the privileged social protection that goes with it. Can you imagine another employer being able to getting away with pulling all the women-are-inferior stuff parts of the CoE (never mind Catholics and Muslims) have been going for in the last few days?

But maybe it's lazy to target these particular bigots - the anti-women (and anti-men, anti-human) effects of our perverse gender roles and screwed up attitude to work are more widespread, just harder to pinpoint.

goosefat101 said...

You get me wrong. I am all for attacking stupid christians (and othe religions) for the way they use god as an excuse (see my most recent blog). I am just not for the generalisations used about Religion, where diversity is grouped into a negative collective. I am also not into the whole we are better than you atheist thing, but thats only cos as an agnostic obviously I am better than the religious and non-religious alike.

But homphobis is a social problem that, whilst effected by religion, is not only about religion and people can use political standpoints to justify their bad behavior as much as people can use religion. And sometimes when I listen to Dawkins speak or read his anti-religion drivel I can see totalitarian regimes imposing the doctrine of their is no god on the people.

It's not a God-lie. It's a god belief. It may be wrong and so a self lie, but who can say for sure? I think we need to try and engage positively, rather than saying "you are stupid wankers because you believe that homosexuality is a sin based on a bunch of bollocks, and by the way God doesn't exist!" try and argue on their terms. Even if your ultimate goal is to erradicate religion, you won't do it without changing peoples minds incrementally.

chris said...

The 'we are better than you' here is not atheism, it's secularism. Freedom of thought is of course absolute; freedom of expression is very strong, but respect for discriminatory

A thought about minorities now came to my mind - natural vs social minorities, where for example sexual minorities are 'natural', religious minorities are 'social'. Where do linguistic groups fit in? Discrimination laws, seeking to protect the weak, should err in favour of the natural, where there is a conflict. (Although taking this further, I might find a synonym for natural, as it tends to get hackles up. Maybe 'god-made' and 'human-made' minorities... ) A larger and quite interesting question, which google scholar will no doubt tell me has been done to death!

chris said...

oops, i left that paragraph hanging - respect for discriminatory beliefs, and their manifestation, should be inversely related to the legal support given to those holding those beliefs. christianity, at least in one of its sects, is not just a pressure group in the UK, it is a legally established branch of the state. That said, even with disestablishment or any other reformed legal relationship between church(es) and the state, such 'respect' wouldn't cover exemption from anti-discrimination laws, as these beliefs are just beliefs and not magic or special, and not to be treated as better than equivalents or not-beliefs.