On the rocks

The Church in Wales is foundering.

Having accepted that people are doing 'different things on a Sunday which means that they are not going to turn up at Church', the Archbishop of Wales, John Davies, told BBC Wales that he has brought in a PR company to help deliver its message.

He said it is "a way of engaging people's minds and hearts with what lies at the very centre of the Gospel and that's about bringing life and purpose and compassion and goodness into the communities where we live....Social media explaining that message, social media expressing something about the compassion that lies at the heart of the Gospel, I think is very, very worthwhile indeed."

The compassion that lies at the heart of the Gospel has been perverted in the Church in Wales resulting in a message that seeks to give people what they want now rather than what they need for the promise of eternal life.

Will social media provide the answer? I doubt it. Many of the Twitter messages I see are self-promoting, ingratiating or simply promoting a secular cause.

Take this blatant feminist tweet from Llandaff diocese: "Worth mentioning again....@ChurchinWales  will now have gender parity on the Bench of Bishops...and we're extremely proud of this!"

That is an entirely secular view of equality of opportunity in the workplace, completely devoid of any spirituality.

A tweet from Archdeacon Sue: "Special day as our new Bishop @cherry_vann is Consecrated at Brecon Cathedral. Praying that God will bless Cherry, her partner Wendy and all the people of the @MonmouthDCO. May we be a faithful people praising God, proclaiming the Good News and serving with love @ChurchinWales.

The Church in Wales refused to comment on Cherry Vann being in a same sex partnered relationship when she was appointed bishop-elect of Monmouth. Now her same sex relationship has become a matter for celebration as though the office of bishop were some sort episcopal duo.

Not to be outdone an Area Dean in the diocese of Monmouth tweeted: "Definitely an occasion for white SCP stole today for consecration of  @cherry_vann. The prayers & love of the Llandaff & Monmouth Chapter of SCP are with Cherry & Wendy today. Look forward to spotting other SCP clergy #wearthebadge @scpeurope @MissionMonmouth @MonmouthDCO."

Having recently celebrated a same sex civil partnership anniversary of his own the Area Dean cocked a snook at the Church of England when the House of Bishops issued their pastoral statement on Civil Partnerships – for same sex and opposite sex couples.

He tweeted: "My response to CofE latest pastoral guidelines and my expression of solidarity on the day of Cherry’s consecration as a bishop in the Church of God!"

Source: Twitter

Is this "the compassion that lies at the heart of the Gospel" we can expect to be reading about on social media? It is nothing more than an extended ploy driven by self interested parties to push through same sex marriage in church.

After Bishop Pain retired, it was reported that clergy and laity had expressed hopes that his successor would be someone from outside of the Diocese of Monmouth. Not only did they get their wish but Cherry Vann just happened to be on site for the announcement of her appointment giving the impression that the appointment of the first lesbian bishop had been carefully choreographed in secret.

At her consecration Cherry Vann invited a friend, the Rev'd Robert Lawrence, a member of the Society of St Francis from the Diocese of Newcastle, to preach. 

"A bishop is a point of unity," he said, "(or so I was always told), except that in the church today we seem to find disunity when (say) the bishop is a woman in a church where not everyone accepts the leadership of women, or when the bishop is in a same sex civil partnership in a church where not everyone accepts gay relationships, and where the bishop is English in a Welsh diocese."

 In other words, you are on the wrong side if you disagree with the ordination of women, do not accept a bishop who is in a same sex civil partnership or, oddly, a bishop who is English in a Welsh diocese!

Many clergy will not have heard Mr Lawrence's admonishment. They have already left along with tens of thousands of Anglican laity leaving a compliant rump to do it their way.

Piloted by an incompetent bench of bishops it is no surprise that the Church in Wales is foundering.

Postscripts

[28.01.2020]

The Church in Wales is wasting no time in using social media to spread its message of the gospel according to LGBT. Tweeted this morning: "Watch out for this interview with the new Bishop of Monmouth, Cherry Vann, on @BBCWalesToday at lunchtime and 6.30pm today @cherry_vann."

Early morning viewers will have already seen the recently consecrated bishop of Monmouth explaining on BBC Wales News that she will not campaign for same-sex marriage in the Church in Wales and hoped her supporters would not be disappointed.

The former Archdeacon of Rochdale said she was “overwhelmed by the warm welcome her and her partner Wendy had been given and hoped to send a positive message to people who feel rejected by the church.”

She was not speaking of the thousands of Anglicans abandoned by their Church but for gay people who she claims feel rejected. Bishop Vann continued: "I hope that it is a sign of hope. There are a lot of gay people in our schools, in our colleges and universities, out there in society who think that the church is against them, that they don't have a place in the church.

"I hope that being here as a gay person, in a same-sex relationship, will give those people hope and help them to see that this is something that the church embraces and is able to celebrate along with any other faithful committed relationship."

The message is clear. Cherry Vann has no need to campaign. The bench has it in hand.

[31.01.2020]

In response to a charge by Peter Tatchell of  "SELFISH HYPOCRITE!" after the bishop of Monmouth  said she won't campaign for same-sex marriage in the church, the Church in Wales was quick to respond with "Bishop Vann said she was undecided about same-sex marriage, not that she opposed it."
Tatchell claimed that she [Vann] only got to be a priest & bishop thanks to equality struggles of other LGBT+ Christians. Now she says she opposes equal marriage within the church.

Leaving Islam

This video by an ex-Muslim neatly sums up how people use religion to satisfy their human desires. It considers the basic question of why any Creator would want some of those he created to destroy others he had created. It makes no sense except when the messenger wishes to distort the message for personal gain, sucking in the ignorant and ill-informed to believe that they too can benefit from the suffering of others. How could such a cruel God be worthy of worship?

Christianity is often accused of perpetrating evil acts similar to those now being carried out by warriors for Islam today. There is no denying that, in the past, appalling acts of cruelty were perpetrated in the name of Christ but the errors were of the messenger, not the message. With Islam it is both the messenger and the message and it is not history. It is being inflicted now in the name of one regarded in Islam as the perfect man which raises the question of how much Muslims really know about their messenger.

The following video lists twenty problems with the this belief:

If Muslims know but deny these facts it raises serious questions about their honesty. If they do not, they are being used unwittingly to support jihad against non-Muslims and need to escape before they too find that they are on the list to be cleansed for being the wrong kind of Muslims.

The 2014 Memri TV clip here shows the 'right kind' of Muslim (in their eyes), a Russian ISIS fighter justifying Islamic State massacres based on texts from the Quran. Some quotes from the transcript:

"With regard to the Islamic State, the Caliphate and the numerous accusations we have been accused of by those who sit idly by instead of going on Jihad, or those who do nothing for the religion of Allah, except for praying the five prayers, believing that by doing so, they are helping the religion of Allah… You are not helping yourselves or the religion of Allah. Anyone who sits idly by and does not help the Islamic State today will be held accountable on Judgment Day.
[…]
"You accuse us of the mass killing of Muslims, saying that we are blood-shedding murderers. Didn't the Prophet Muhammad and his companions shed blood? Haven't you read his biography, written by Ibn Hisham, which says that the Messenger of Allah killed 700 people in a single battle? He slaughtered 700 people – that is our Prophet and our religion.
[…]
"I say to all our Muslim brothers and sisters: Join the Islamic State. Join your brothers. Do not wait until death comes to you. Do not wait until the path is blocked. As long as you can, perform hijra. The hijra is a duty. If you read any book on Islamic faith, you will see that it is a duty to perform hijra from Dar Al-Kufr to Dar Al-Islam. Do not procrastinate. Do not delude yourselves. Do not say to yourselves that you will perform the hijra tomorrow or the day after."

More recently there has been an obsession in the media with how 'Jihadi John' was radicalized. He didn't need to be radicalized. Based on his knowledge of Islam he simply responded to the  claim "Anyone who sits idly by and does not help the Islamic State today will be held accountable on Judgment Day". He has been following the message of the messenger without any pretence that Islam is the 'Religion of Peace' in the normal accepted sense of the word peace. Despite his heinous crimes attempts have been made to portray Jihadi John as the victim. Similar efforts were made in respect of the deluded youngsters who set off to join the IS group in Syria. Like their founder, among others, this group believes that a girl of nine is of marriageable age! The IS guide to life for female jihadis is here. Any female who wants to embrace such a regime must be severely deluded or must have been indoctrinated by an ideology which rewards the guilty at the expense of the innocent.

Islam has been at war with non-believers since the seventh century, falsely claiming that the West has invaded their lands. They are not Muslim lands. They were obtained by conquest. For years the plight of the Copts was ignored. Now we are witnessing The Twilight of Middle Eastern Christianity. The message is blindingly obvious but there's none so blind as those who will not see - something of which President Obama is persistently accused.

It doesn't have to be like this. Muslims are held captive by fear. Execution for apostasy is still regarded as acceptable in Islamic states. Apart from accepted abrogations, "No change can there be in the Words of Allah (Sura 10:64) "There is none that can alter the Words of Allah (Sura 6:34). So if the religious ideology cannot be adapted to allow Muslims to live peaceably with others in the twenty-first century, its adherents must change if the carnage is to stop.

Listen to an Ex-Muslim terrorist who has found what other Muslims seek and follow his example. Eternal life, without slaughtering the innocent.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."