The Covenant / Communion web pages has a feature article by Bennett Jones titled, "Draw Near: Holy Communion for the Contemporary Church," in which he says, "It is my goal to say “The Lord our God,” five times a day from the HoD floor while drinking commercially bottled water held in a foam insulator that says, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD."
Here at PRELUDIUM we are not at all opposed to people saying "The Lord our God," one, three, five, or fifty times a day. We are not as sure of drinking commercially bottled water held in a foam insulator that says, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD." This is not a matter of theology, or even of ecology, but of symbolic mush.
I generally think that demonstrations on the floor of the House of Deputies get out of hand and go weird pretty fast, and that from a critic who loves the weird. Sometimes it gets awful, as in the salt caper at the 2000 Convention.
Why in particular would one want to say "The Lord our God" five times a day while drinking commercially bottled water held in a foam insulator that says, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD." I'm not against it, I am puzzled by it. Is this somehow a witness to those at GC who do not believe in the Lord our God, or that all we do is through Jesus Christ our Lord? If it is not, then who is it addressed to? Is it simply a witness to one's own holiness? What gives?
Unlike the salt business this does not appear on the surface to be an exorcism sort of activity. But it does appear either to be self-righteous or silly. Covenant-Communion. net seems to be a serious site. This seems either frivolous or simply fluff. Either way is fine. But it also seems like an incantation to keep the terrible sinful liberal Episcopal Church in line. Incantations are, like spreading salt, sacramental acts gone mad.
Why is Covenant-Communion publishing this?
6/06/2009
9 comments:
OK... Comments, gripes, etc welcomed, but with some cautions and one rule:
Cautions: Calling people fools, idiots, etc, will be reason to bounce your comment. Keeping in mind that in the struggles it is difficult enough to try to respect opponents, we should at least try.
Rule: PLEASE DO NOT SIGN OFF AS ANONYMOUS: BEGIN OR END THE MESSAGE WITH A NAME - ANY NAME. ANONYMOUS commentary will be cut.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Three words, Mark:
ReplyDeleteOne. Sick. Puppy.
If he didn't have a ticket for a GC seat, I bet he'd be at an Ernest Angley Miracle Service. Sheesh!
P.S. The word verification is "phowy." Substitute one consonant, and you have a profile of this Deputy.
Mark, I frequent the Covenant Forums as a lurker and I would guess that this protest is a response to the manufactured controversy over the "Holy Women/Holy Men" resolution.
ReplyDeleteMuch conservative ink has been spilled over the fact that the new proposed collects for all but one of the new calendar entries omit the Lord designation and this is seen as yet another proof of TEC becoming a godless, pagan hullabaloo instead of a traditional, orthodox church and PC has gone too far again, etc.
The CF was created as a place for the differing voices in TEC to come together in support of the Anglican Covenant but in practice it is dominated by conservative, orthodox voices by far and there is little in the way of Via Media taking place I fear.
It it much less offensive that SFF and T 1:9 so I continue to go there hoping to bridge differences but I rarely post to avoid the same old arguments. I respect what they are attempting to do though and so I continue to support it in the hopes that real dialog can someday take place.
A Friend of Jake
I don't think the symbolism of "Through Christ Our Lord" written on commercially bottled water is mushy at all. Taking a cool drink of water, which was always God's free gift to all humanity, and selling it back to us with an accusatory religious slogan is perfectly emblematic of all that is truly morally decayed these days. The American plutocracy, which wants as little real political and social reform as possible (because the status quo is always to their advantage), meets the religious right, those most enthusiastic aspiring enforcers of all that is "normal". Greed and Hypocrisy have risen up and kissed one another.
ReplyDeleteAs Karl Marx once remarked, the priest is the landlord's best friend.
Code word is "poings." Who makes these things up?
I vote for self-righteous AND silly
ReplyDeleteUgh. Perhaps he needs to do some reading on styrofoam and the huge parking lots of it near ocean gyres in the pacific and elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is that his proposition should garner little reply other than... "Holy crap!"
Well, he may be One. Sick. Puppy. It may also be silly and self-righteous.
ReplyDeleteMostly, it's just pathetic.
Do you remember the demonstration by the AAC crowd the year their big campaign was "God's Love Changed Me". They came through the floor of convention, just before the start of business for the day, carrying signs with pictures of people whose sexual orientation had been 'changed by prayer'?
Some of us Integrity types scooped up a bunch of their buttons that said, "God's Love Changed Me" and put Pink Triangles right under neath them. The next day, a whole bunch of us went to an AAC luncheon (they were daily and open that year), and Louie Crew got up to 'witness' how God's Love changed him from someone who 'sinfully entered into marriage with a woman' - even though he knew himself to be homosexual.
"But, God's love changed me," he testified, into someone who has accepted who I am and just as I am, without one plea".
Within three days, the AAC buttons were as scarce as hen's teeth. The only ones you could find were the one's worn by LGBT and straight people which had the pink triangle underneath.
I expect we'll have an equally creative and effective counter-strategy to this pathetic attempt to move the 'moveable middle'.
That's the pity it - it's so easy to thwart their . . . um . . .'strategy'. . . that it's almost embarrassing.
Sad. Sad. Sad.
It sounds to me like the commercially bottled water and styrofoam cooler are a statement against green policies, global warming, etc, in addition to whatever other statement(s) they may be making .
ReplyDeleteDoug
Dear Lord, but don't politics sure bring out the stupid in the most well-meaning people! I wonder if there are kids in the Episcopal Diocese of Dominican Republic who would like access to clean drinking water through Jesus Christ our Lord (and his hands on earth, you know, us).
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, and it is not all conservatives, some people think God is on their side in secular politics.
ReplyDelete;;sigh;;
FWIW
jimB