“Archbishop of York”? What kind of silly, made-up title is that?
The Archbishop of York has said British Christians should see Muslims as allies in the struggle against secularism.
In a speech at York Minster, Dr John Sentamu said British Muslims were not offended by Christianity and preferred it to a secular state.
Or maybe he was just mistranslated? Apparently not.
It has often been Muslims, as well as leaders of other faiths, who have joined with Christians in refusing to accept the creeping secularisation that would replace ‘Christmas’ with ‘Winterval’, and remove references to faith from public noticeboards for fear of causing offence. It is both my view and my experience, that most British Muslims do not feel threatened by our Christian moral foundations but by the cynicism of secularised culture that denies its own foundations. What they object to is the attempt to build human society without God. And so given the choice between the two prefer a faith environment, even one which they do not share, to that of a secularist state.
Oh. It’s the War on Christmas already.
In 25 years of living in Britain, I have never once heard the word “Winterval”.
What grabs my attention is that this cheapening of life is being perpetrated on the one hand by Islamic fundamentalists and on the other hand by the government of a constitutionally Jewish state. And the bloodshed was aided and abetted by the overtly Christian leaders of America and Britain. I don’t see much secularism involved there.
The War on Christmas Season starts earlier every year…
1: I thought it was “Decemberween.”
2: It’s not about offense! It’s about MORAL AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES! …Oh wait. Forgot. Fundies wouldn’t know anything about principles.
I’d never heard of “Winterval” either. It looks like he’s referring to this,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/210672.stm
This was in 1998. Some war on Christmas.
Look, nobody’s denying that Joe Ratzi doesn’t like secularists. Nor apparently does this Sentamu fellow. In other news, Bill Gates doesn’t like Linux users. Not very interesting or surprising. But the fact is that Joe isn’t a creationist. That was what was bad translation and what you refuse to acknowledge.
Oh, man! I only just took down my War on Christmas decorations from last year!
The Archbishop of York has said British Christians should see Muslims as allies in the struggle against secularism.
Well, one does have to admit that, in the interests of the road to peace, the secularists do make a pretty good target in this particular case. We have to look at the big picture here. I think the secularists should take the bullet on this one, IMO. YMMV, of course.
We probably just need to get used to the idea that along with cheesy ads Christmas time comes with “The War on Christmas”. Kind of like a new tradition. Got the garlands up? Check. Got the hysteria? Check.
Because we all know that the Secular Athiest People’s Front has been so violent and dangerous. The damn S.A.P.F. is the biggest threat to peace known to man. Right?
I think we should call this struggle the War on Winterval. They are trying to take away our sacred atheist holidays!
I thought we were the People’s Front for Secular Atheism? ;-)
y’know, for all the whining some Muslims do about secularism in the West, they don’t seem to be complaining much about the new “dens of secular sin” at Dubai. that’s certainly not a Western project.
portions of the English translations of former Iranian president Khatama’s talk at Harvard sure sounded like parts of Pope Rat’s in Bavaria.
“I thought we were the People’s Front for Secular Atheism?”
Splitter!
I thought we were on the defensive against the Christian War on Halloween. Who initiated the War on Christmas without permission?
I wonder when the American Christofascists will realize how much they have in common with the Muslim jihadists and decide to break up with the Republicans for them. I don’t suspect any of us would make it out alive.
Oh you mean the Halloween Defense Force.
Different from the Christmas Strike Brigade.
We’re looking for volunteers for the Kidnap Baby Jesus Creche Commandos.
I refuse to fight in the War on Christmas because down that road lies the loss of an awesome paid week’s holiday.
Does it occur to anyone that atheists, agnostics and supporters of secular government in general need some holidays of their very own? Maybe we could take a leaf out of the Christian book and steal some pagan ones.
“The Archbishop of York has said British Christians should see Muslims as allies in the struggle against secularism.”
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Funny.
I’ll charge into the battle against Christmas if we can manage to destroy “The Little Drummer Boy,” my most hated song of all time.
Seculachristmahanukwanza.
I think “Winterval” is a pretty word. I hear they celebrate it with a big music festival at Winterlochen.
I liked Bing and Bowies version.
Perhaps we can celebrate festivus. WHO DARES CHALLENGE ME IN THE FEAT OF STRENGTH!?
Archbishop of York? Bah! The big girl’s blouse.
Let us know when the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells weighs in on the matter.
.
“Maybe we could take a leaf out of the Christian book and steal some pagan ones.”
Here’s a crazy idea. It just so happens that our star, the sun, is lowest in the sky around those times. Maybe we should invent something that recognizes that! I wonder what it should be called though…
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/09/reflection_by_r.html
I can’t comment of course on the fascinating goings-on over at PT. It is nice to see the discussion, though, after many earlier attempts to start it myself. ;)
I’m curious to see just how and when the Discovery Institute will start collecting Miller’s and Collins’ strangest statements and beating them, us and judges over the head with them. Thankfully, the DI employs mostly idiots so they’ll probably fuck it up anyway …
Kidnap the Sandy Claws
Throw him in a box
Bury him for ninety years
Then see if he talks
I liked Bing and Bowies version.
Bob Seger does a version that is not quite as good as if Yoko and Kenny Rogers did a duet of You Light Up My Life, but it’s the next best thing. Here’s the Bing and Bowie version.
“Let us know when the Baby-Eating Bishop of Bath and Wells weighs in on the matter.”
…And his red hot poker?
“You fiend! Never have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church?”
On the other hand:
Gotta love it when the religionists feel the squeeze:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060914/ap_on_go_ot/same_sex_marriage
Religious conservative leaders, sensing declining alarm over same-sex marriage, are warning that the debate over homosexuality has prompted attacks on religious freedom.
By expanding the discussion from marriage to religious expression, social conservatives say they will reconnect with religious voters and religious leaders who don’t necessarily view same-sex unions as a threat.
“There are a number of pastors that said, ‘Look, we don’t get involved in politics, I’m not going to get involved in this issue, I just want to preach the gospel,'” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “When they realize their ability to preach the gospel may very well be at stake, they may reconsider their involvement.”
Perkins and others are building a case file of anecdotes where they say religious people have spoken out against gay marriage only to be punished. Perkins specifically cited the decision by Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich in June to fire his appointee to the Washington area transit board after the board member referred to homosexuals as “persons of sexual deviancy.”
———————————————
Yeah. It’s about “religious freedom.” You know, the freedom to be a vile bigoted ignorant asshole in public without any fear of recrimination.
Well, maybe if the christians and the muslims recognize they’re practicing pretty much the same religion they’ll stop killing each other. That would be nice.
I guess the danger then would be in their coming to kill *us*. Crap.
And another thing: the “Archbishop of York” title should be known – the post was previously held by John Hapgood, who used to hold high-profile debates with Richard Dawkins.
It’s “War on Christmas” season already? Oy gevalt. Now where did I put that Uzi?…
Wow, Monty Python *and* Black Adder references, both on the same thread! Obviously PZ has the right kind of crowd here.
Too bad their weren’t some secularists around back in the 12th Century; perhaps that whole unpleasant “Crusades” business could have been avoided, with a convenient scapegoat to unite against.
It really takes the combined effort of two major world religions to combat the ideas of secularism, huh? What do you suppose that says about the ideas? It seems to me that only the most robust thinking could survive such opposition.
This is the word of an evil man.
I knew that the Catholic Church had never repudiated its claim to hegemony over society, but that’s a pretty overt declaration of theocracy right there.
“Too bad their weren’t some secularists around back in the 12th Century; perhaps that whole unpleasant “Crusades” business could have been avoided, with a convenient scapegoat to unite against.”
Well, the closest thing to a secularist back then would have been Emperor Frederick II, who managed to negotiate a peaceful return of Jerusalem from the Muslims, with whom he got along quite well. Of course, he got vilified for it in Christian circles (mainly because he conducted the successful negotiations on his own, whereas the Church’s prior crusades had been bloody failures, which made them look bad). As I recall, he had at least three excommunications over the course of his life, and maybe more that I’ve forgotten, and went to war against the pope at one point.
The Archbishop of York isn’t Catholic; he’s Church of England.
“The Archbishop of York isn’t Catholic; he’s Church of England.”
Is this typical of the Church of England and should I be more concerned or on the contrary relieved upon this correction?
Well, they’re just the same, aren’t they, except Henry VIII decided he rather liked the idea of getting a divorce and thumbed his nose at the Pointy Hat of Pointiness.
Didn’t they get their own Pointy Hats?
Archbishop hat:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38286000/jpg/_38286359_williams150.jpg
Pope hat:
http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/pix/pope_hat_cp_6211150.jpg
Giant Pope hat:
http://www.hatsinthebelfry.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/A3466pope-300.jpg
The options for the atheist are limited:
http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/media/H-BornAtheistTan.gif
“Well, they’re just the same, aren’t they, except Henry VIII decided he rather liked the idea of getting a divorce and thumbed his nose at the Pointy Hat of Pointiness.”
It is a common misconception that the Church of England, and Anglicanism as a whole, owes its existence to Henry VIII’s divorce. While that was the spark that lit the fuse, Anglicanism’s founding event was a sixteenth-century political fix, engineered by Elizabeth I as a means of avoiding the Reformation-era wars tearing at Europe. It is true that Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, for reasons of dynastic and connubial ambition, had broken with the Medici Pope Clement VII and declared himself the “Supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England.” However, Elizabeth’s half sister and predecessor, (Bloody) Mary I, imposed a Roman Catholic restoration upon the kingdom, in the process dispatching some three hundred Protestants to the stake. When Elizabeth ascended to the throne as a Protestant, the realm was facing the third religious about-face in a dozen years, and the prospect of civil war was real. Elizabeth’s elegant solution allowed her subjects to believe whatever they wished but insisted upon a uniform worship service.
The vehicle for this “middle way,” as Anglicanism came to be known, was the Book of Common Prayer, which blended Roman Catholic liturgy with Protestant principles. The prayer book allowed for the coexistence within one institution of distinctly different interpretations of Christianity, with the unofficial designations of High Church (those parishes inclined toward a more Roman Catholic orientation), Low Church (evangelicals), and Broad Church (those Anglicans tolerant of wide doctrinal interpretations). The Anglican way proved remarkably resilient, absorbing the shocks of the English civil war and the Enlightenment, and ultimately planting itself worldwide in the footsteps of the British Empire. In the United States, the Church of England became the Episcopal Church.
The big-tent tradition of Anglicanism–what its churchmen call “comprehensiveness”–made the faith especially hospitable to the theological innovations that moved through the Western Christian churches with particular force in the last half of the twentieth century. This new thinking tended to deëmphasize sin and salvation, favoring a progressive theology of social justice and the affirmation of the individual self.
With the advance of science and the growing acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution, key theologians and churchmen concluded by the early twentieth century that the old faith had been essentially disproved. They began to imagine a more reasonable Christianity–one less insistent on miracles, resurrections, and a transcendent God who directed human history from a heavenly remove. Higher Criticism informed a new understanding of the historical Jesus; the Hegelian dialectic shaped a new image of an immanent and impersonal God, an unknowable force whose will was worked through human progress.
The new theology met stout resistance within the churches. The “modernist-fundamentalist controversy” of the nineteen-twenties split some of the mainline Protestant denominations, and eventually gave rise to the modern evangelical movement. The Episcopal Church, because of its liturgical unity and comprehensiveness–Elizabeth’s notion: Believe what you want, just use this book–was better able to absorb the new thinking.
It is this structure of Anglicanism that allows one diocese in New Hampshire to select an openly gay bishop, while dioceses all over the world flip out over it.
Church leaders have declared themselves helpless to force any resolution on that matter. The election of Gene Robinson was a local diocesan matter. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, reminded agitated traditionalists that he was no Pope; he couldn’t intervene in the affairs of the American church even if he wished to. This institutional incapacity left some conservatives pining for the authoritative teaching and discipline forsaken by their forebears nearly five centuries ago. When many of these issues surfaced in the Catholic Church during the long pontificate of Pope John Paul II, they aroused passionate dissent, and ringing defense, of Church teaching, but all sides were clear on what the Church teaching was. John Paul’s defender of the faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, made certain of that. The “problem,” at least with conservatives, is that in Anglicanism, as presently constituted, they have no means of officially disciplining people. Some are beginning to despair that Anglicanism’s very DNA bear the seeds of its undoing.
Forgive the long lesson, but with an Episcopal clergyman in my extended family, this is all common knowledge in my family.
“Winterval”? WTF are so-called Christians smoking these days? I have NEVER heard this either. What a crock of sh!t. I’m aghast at the mental punching bags these people must erect to convince themselves that they need a purpose.
How can they possibly believe God gave them Earth if they’re so afraid of everything in it?
“Winterval” has actually been adopted by a few British councils as a way of putting up Christmas lights without getting up anybody’s nose.
The Archbishop of York is the second most important clergyman in the Church of England, which is generally seen as wishy-washy on everything. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Primate of All-England) is the head cheese, and he’s actually got a lot of sense for a head Christian.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_Williams
“However, he praised The Simpsons for its modern Christian values.”
“Williams expressed the view that creationism should not be taught in schools as an alternative to evolution”)
That’s because our media concentrates on how much Islamist radicals hate our way of life. If you read more on what these groups believe, you’ll note they hate their own rulers even more than the West. They hate secular leaders like Saddam and Syria and Egypt’s rulers, and especially hate the decadent House of al-Saud, but those guys got a pass by giving the Muslim Brotherhood a whole lot of money over the years. Basically: “Preach your jihad all you want elsewhere, just leave us in charge.”
Everyone knows the cold is God’s way of telling us to burn more Catholics!
You can tell that the Church of England is (on the whole) fairly liberal, because it acknowledges that its head honcho is a primate.
“Forgive the long lesson, but with an Episcopal clergyman in my extended family, this is all common knowledge in my family.”
And bang-bang Maxwell[64]’s silver hammer came down upon our [thread]…
… a very interesting read. Thank you!
:-)
“Does it occur to anyone that atheists, agnostics and supporters of secular government in general need some holidays of their very own?”
Don’t forget we’ve got Newtonmas…
There used to be a wiki page for this, but it seems like some *$#& has gone and deleted it. Possibly that york fellow… THIS MEANS WAR!
Well, by that standard, his Pointiness with the hats and the Star-Wars face is the Primate of Italy, so, umm, that would make Catholicism ‘liberal’.
In a wide-ranging speech, he also spoke of the recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon. He said it had been characterised by “the cheapening of human life” now taken for granted by those in power.
Those in power being “secularists,” right?
Give me a break.
The War on Christmas Season starts earlier every year…
Because the moronic Rights need to gear up for their stupid War on Halloween each year.
Wrong thread…
“Perhaps we can celebrate festivus. WHO DARES CHALLENGE ME IN THE FEAT OF STRENGTH!?”
Posted by: commissarjs
It must be Festivus year round at my house because every night my wife and kids seem to have the AIRING OF THE GRIEVENCES!
Actually, this year I AM going to put a Festivus Pole at work right up there with the other HOLIDAY stuff.
How can they possibly believe God gave them Earth if they’re so afraid of everything in it?
No no no, Blue, you’ve got the fear thing all backwards.
Atheists are afraid of God! The Pope said so!
We have a new definition of Atheism: The fear of a thing one does not believe exists.
I dunno. I don’t get it. What am I missing, here? A chip in my head, maybe?
No — this was in reference to this thread — PZ was trying to be cute by linking to Sentamu’s actual speech, showing that even if Ratzi was mistranslated, this fellow wasn’t (he spoke in English). The problem is while Sentamu echoed Ratzi’s whining about secularists, the issue of translation was in regard to Ratzi’s supposed creationism, which is not *not* echoed by Sentamu.
What gets me is that the War on Christmas is so blatantly the War on Hannukah and no one calls the whiners on it. The use of “holidays” was supposed to include everyone of every religion. What do you expect from a doofus like Bill O’Reilly though? Work up the reactionary right, make lots of money.
Oh, we have Pi Appreciation Day and there are only 39 shopping days until Mole Day (10/23)!
Atheists are afraid of God! The Pope said so!
We have a new definition of Atheism: The fear of a thing one does not believe exists.
I was part of a long discussion with a couple of dyed-in-the-wool Muslims (they kept quoting Huran Yahya as proof of non-evolution for example) and they quoted Koran verses that said the same.
I don’t think they could quite grasp that I simply had no belief at all in any God.
The options for the atheist are limited:
http://www.evolvefish.com/fish/media/H-BornAtheistTan.gif
I’m convinced that the lack of proper accoutrements is what’s holding atheists back. Let’s face it, we can’t compete with those cool hats.
Why not get back to our roots and rename xmas, “Sol Invictus Day” or “Sol Invictus Birthday”?
Hanukkah, the celebration of a military victory, hardly seems something to celebrate as a renewal of life.
As to the Archbishop, the title of his rambling is “Uncovering God’s Purpose”. What “purpose” could god possibly have? It is already omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous, omni-whatever. What more do you need?
Archie says, “In uncovering God’s purposes both for ourselves and for our society, we are involved in an act of uncovering purposes which God has already disclosed to us in creation.
In this lecture I will argue that God’s purposes can be uncovered through a threefold approach of trust and worship of a loving God, love of neighbour and caring for creation. God will be God without humanity. But without God humanity would be naught.”
Now it is “purposes”. That is even more confusing, if possible. You have to admire Archie’s rigorous approach to the investigation: trust, worship, love, caring.
Scientific terms for the uninitiated. For that matter, how are “trust” and “worship” related?
“Archbishop of York? What kind of silly, made-up title is that?”
Are you referring to “archbishop” or the slightly seedy, very historic, and rather enjoyable city of York?
Of course, this compromise approach of celebrating Christmas without beating anyone over the head with it is rejected by extremist Christians (claiming to speak for all Christians, or possibly to be the only real Christians; they don’t specify). If you’re not beating unbelievers over the head, it isn’t genuine Christianity!
Of course the funniest thing is that these same fundie Protestants belong to churches which are lineal descendants of Nonconformist (Puritan, in the colonies) sects which, once upon a time, excoriated Christmas as a Popish / Pagan abomination (and in New England, actually forbade its observance.)
NonProphet: How do you decide whether to celebrate Newtonmas or Decemberween?
Dale Stanbrough: A lot of fundies of all stripes seem to think that simply reciting holy books will instantly convince the unbeliever. Amazing.