Yesterday saw the twentieth anniversary Pride Cymru parade through Cardiff streets, supporting the LGBT+ community on the pretext of raising awareness of equality and diversity,
Away from the hype the reality is different. LGBT+ fully permeates Church and State.
The last bastion of Christianity in the media, the BBC's Songs of Praise, has been eased out of prime time viewing to a short lunch time slot. It has further alienated viewers after it featured a same-sex wedding.
This is pure propaganda in a process turning this
into this
After 20 years of 'being proud and together', the LGBT+ community still insists on raising "awareness of equality and diversity" as if they have not noticed the rainbow flags on government buildings and in shop windows.
The rainbow flag is displayed everywhere from the
vote catching First Minister of Wales
university chaplaincy
police
and Church
culminating in a full circle preparing the next generation
aided by the Church, 'where love matters', allegedly.
Equality and diversity? Pull the other one.
Images from Wales on Line, Church in Wales and Twitter
Postscript [29.08.2019]
Question put down for Church in Wales Governing Body meeting 11 - 12 September 2019:
"During August the Diocese of Llandaff and the Church in Wales actively supported and promoted the Faith Tent at Pride Cymru via social media, various press releases and the presence of a number of clerics at the event. As part of the event there were three sessions of "drag queen storytime". The drag queen in question has YouTube videos entitled "Good Christian bitches" and "the most underrated type of gay sex" as well as a number of other videos containing explicit material contrary to the Christian faith. Despite this speaker being a "third party" - the Church in Wales support for the entire event was unequivocal. Does the Church in Wales affirm the lifestyle this speaker promotes or is the Church prepared to simply overlook the usual high moral standards expected of speakers at events it promotes?"
Thank God somebody is prepared to stand up for the Church at GB saying what needs to be said to defend the Christian faith instead of simply 'going along to get on'.
Postscript [11.09.2019]
This bland response from the bishop of Llandaff tweeted from Governing Body:
@ChurchinWales @BishopJuno of @LlandaffDio answers a question about @PrideCymru, saying the Church had a duty to minister to the whole community and support such major events. "We are seeking to engage with a section of society which the Church has not always treated well in the past" #govbody
If that is all she said she evaded the question put.
I have seen no evidence that the Church has treated the gay community badly in the past. Quite the contrary. By contrast traditionalist Anglicans have been treated abysmally with encouragement from the bench.
Anyone appearing at Cardiff Pride to protest about it may well have been putting their safety at risk. This is the undercurrent of intolerance which explains the compliance of businesses and the silence of the Church about LGBT. How sad to see children with their parents watching almost naked men parading in thongs, and Anglican Bishops actively supporting it.
ReplyDeleteLW
The initial press releases stated that 50,000 were expected at the Pride Cymru event. Interestingly that is 1.5% of the population of Wales - the same proportion that was recorded as being gay in the last national census. So the organisers were expecting all of the gay population in Wales to turn out. Very quickly the numbers changed. By the end of the event it was posted that only 15,000 turned out. That's 30% of the gay population of Wales. Despite the staged photo opportunities with various corporate bodies and public institutions the word on the street is that Pride Cyrmu was a massive flop. A quick walk from City Hall into and around the Hayes with the First Minister and it’s all over in a puff of smoke and a few rainbow banners. What was it all for? The world has moved on. Pride is no different from a major sporting event or a pop concert. In fact it is all rather jaded, tired and yesteryear. A bit like watching a camp Carry On film. Carry On Pride? Will it? Who now really cares? The protest movement has become dull, boring and so terribly common.
ReplyDeleteMore like a poof of smoke!
DeleteThe church intolerant of its own doctrine as received, intolerant of the Apostles' teaching, intolerant of the Scriptures, intolerant of repentance, unloving of the sinner affirming their sin, unloving of Gospel and all Christian tradition, reason and history.
ReplyDeleteIntolerant of the Church Fathers, the great Doctors of the Church, the Reformers, the great Missionaries, evangelists and orthodox theologians of the faith. Clearly these theological pygmies believe they all got it wrong and misinterpreted Scripture for the best part of two millennia?
Utter madness as they dance around the 'Golden Calf' of LGBT and pay homage.
A story which I heard from an eastern Orthodox friend.
DeleteA young guy in Syria, an Orthodox Christian in the Antiochene patriarchate and, as such, a member of a minority within a minority in a mainly Muslim society, finally acknowledged to his confessor that he was homosexual. He'd tried to hide it for some years, both from everyone who knew him and perhaps even from himself. But doing so had made his confessions less than 'honest to God', and, despite the teachings of his religion and the prevailing attitudes in Syrian society, in the end he felt driven to acknowledge, in the privacy of the confessional, that ever since puberty he had been attracted not to the opposite sex but to his own.
He did so in considerable fear of what his priest's reaction might be. And the reaction certainly wasn't the one which might have emanated from St Augustine's, Rumney. On the other hand, it wasn't in the style of the US evangelical shock/horror 'God hates faggots' either. Rather it was uncompromising, compassionate and pragmatic in equal measure.
Homosexuality isn't in keeping with God's revealed will for his people, his priest advised him. On the other hand, the reality of a fallen world is multi-faceted, and given the complete social and religious unacceptability of homosexuality in Syrian society, the priest thought it very improbable that the man had made homosexuality some sort of lifestyle choice. None of us can control the nature of our sexual attractions, but those who are in Christ have an obligation to acknowledge the demands of the Christian life, but can also expect divine assistance to live with those impulses and desires, and manage them as best they can in the context of discipleship. Each of us falls, but for a believer grace is everywhere and the God revealed in the incarnation is one 'who does not desire the death of a sonner' and 'whose nature and property is ever to forgive'.
So, the priest advised, the young man must never try to deceive himself that sin isn't sin; but at the same time he should seek to avoid falling into despair because 'even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us'. He suggested a pattern of more frequent confession on which confessor and penitent would try to evolve a rule of life by which the 'occasions of sin' and the opportunities for it were minimized; but that both of them would acknowledge that, as sinners yet unperfected, no rule of life is so all-effective as to ensure that we don't fall sometimes. In that respect, sexual attraction is no different from any other sin - neither more or less culpable.
In regular confession. counsel and absolution, the priest suggested, the young man would have a friend and counsellor on the road towards sanctification, and though he would almost certainly never lose his homosexual inclinations, he could discover a way of coming to terms with them and coping with them as well as possible in his daily life, picking himself up again spiritually when, as he almost inevitably would, he sometimes 'fell'.
Anglicanism in my lifetime has moved from a prim and prissy puritanism in matters of sex - I recall a Welsh priest of my acquaintance forty years ago, who was put under a sort of episcopal censure by his bishop for no better reason than that his wife left him to move in with a work; something of which he had no foreknowledge whatever - to a position where it appears desperately to bend with every wind of secular fashion.
But there aren't just two polarized alternatives - puritanism or going with the flow of secular trends. There's also the alternative of a realistic and pastoral option which doesn't compromise the traditional teaching of the church yet still manages to comprehend the reality, this side of heaven, that 'because of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright'. But contemporary Anglicanism seems to have entirely lost hold of that.
Penultimate paragraph above: 'moved in with a work colleague'.
DeletePity there's no facility for corrections on this website!
Perhaps one of the few places where all seven Deadly Sins are glorified
ReplyDeleteIt's deeply sad that such a group have been able to monopolise the words "love" and "welcome." With no conservative bishop, with bishops spending more time with people of other faiths than orthodox anglicans, is it a surprise that conservative anglicans in Wales feel pushed out and unwanted? Where is the love and welcome in that?
ReplyDeleteMark my words, it won't be long before the numbers attending Church on a Sunday in Wales will dip below 25,000.
ReplyDeleteAll churches or just CinW?
ReplyDeleteSome churches (independent/charismatic) do seem to be thriving - although one must always wonder if it's at the expense of other congregations.
If the numbers are declining so alarmingly (and I'm not disputing the fact) surely that is the signal to be spending our time and energy in evangelism - a dirty word for some, I know! - rather than on endlessly bickering among ourselves?
"at the expense of other congregations"?
DeleteYes and No
'Yes' because many young people who like guitars choose independent / charismatic churches over churches full of old people and an organ (apologies for my bluntness, but I'm sure that's what young people would say)
But also 'No', because as an alternative to a church full of other young people and guitars, they would (and most do) choose to go nowhere at all
Baptist Trainfan, how can the Church evangelize when those in authority have robbed the Gospel of its power? John Evans quotes the Good Friday collect: "God desires not the death of a sinner"; and then stops at that point. The collect goes on to say, "God desires not the death of a sinner, but that the sinner should turn from their sin and live". Only then can we find the forgiving nature of our heavenly Father.
DeleteI suspect that shortly, the Liturgical Commission will be ordered to remove all prayers of confession from the Anglican liturgies because, if you listen to the bishops, there is no such thing as sin; so why waste time with the confession and absolution? The message these days is: Eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we die, ..and then we can all live happily ever after in heaven because God is so loving, he allows everybody in. What then is the point of evangelism?
We live in an age where people see themselves as busy, so why waste time on Christianity when heaven is free anyway?
Seymour
I think you're right on both counts. However, as someone involved in a moderately thriving and reasonably modern church, I'm saddened when other Christians "set up shop" nearby with no reference to the wider Body of Christ, instead of finding out how they could be strengthening and invigorating existing churches which could really use them.
ReplyDeleteListening to Sky's Press Preview tonight, it appears that same-sex couples are to be allowed to dance together on 'Come Dancing'. What was significant was that there was no discussion of it, just 'This is a good idea, isn't it?' Sad, sad, sad!
ReplyDeleteRob
Excuse the dangling participle.
DeleteRob
A question for clarification re. the Postscript: was the "drag queen storytime" something which happened in the Faith Tent, or simply part of the wider Pride event?
ReplyDeleteBT, the Christian Concern article 'God of pride' referred to in my entry under the same heading is explicit. I quote:
Delete"Which spirit?
It’s interesting that the faith tent seeks to celebrate ‘the spirit of acceptance’, since it doesn’t appear to embrace the spirit of holiness.One act lined up for the faith tent is self-described goth flower princess ‘Bella Tempus’, who’ll be reading LGBT+ propaganda to children during three performances of Drag Queen Story Time. ‘Bella’ (real name Bradley), is a social media influencer and activist both in his drag queen persona and as a gay man.
It truly baffles me why any professing church would consider promoting someone who says “I like taking Christian mythology and iconography and turning it into drag” in a video they named ‘Good Christian B*****s’, also joking about drinking babies’ blood and celebrating queer paganism within the space of a minute.
But the Bishop of Llandaff is unashamed, perhaps even proud of such associations:
“I’m so very proud that many of our clergy and people of faith will be taking part in Pride Cymru. It is an opportunity to give witness to a core Christian belief – that Jesus calls each individual to know their own worth and identity, to know themselves blessed by God, and he bids all relationships to be built on love and acceptance.”
The full article is at https://christianconcern.com/comment/welsh-diocese-worships-the-god-of-pride/
Thank you.
ReplyDelete