Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity

Majority of Ontarians favour gay-straight alliances and oppose Catholic school funding, poll finds

MurrayWilson — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:22:56 +0000

By Robert Benzie, 16 May 2012, Toronto Star

queeringthechurch.com

Ontarians favour the right of students to form gay-straight alliance clubs in Catholic schools by a margin of almost two to one, a new poll suggests.

The Forum Research survey also found more than half of Ontario residents — 53 per cent — oppose the public funding of Catholic schools with 40 per cent supportive and 6 per cent unsure.

As the issue of gay-straight alliances dominates debate around new anti-bullying legislation, the poll concluded people are accepting of the anti-homophobia clubs designed to promote tolerance.

Fifty-one per cent agreed that students in publicly funded Catholic schools should be allowed to form clubs under that sometimes contentious name with 28 per cent opposed and 21 per cent undecided.

“Now that people are more familiar with them, there’s more support for them,” Forum president Lorne Bozinoff told the Star on Tuesday.

Forum’s interactive voice response telephone survey of 1,072 Ontarians was conducted Monday.

Bozinoff said it is difficult to say whether high-profile opposition to gay-straight alliances from some Catholic educators has had an impact on support for public funding of the religious schools, which is enshrined in the constitution.

“This is a killer issue in Ontario,” he said of separate school funding. “No one politically is going to go anywhere near this. It’s explosive and uncontrollable.”

Premier Dalton McGuinty, whose opposition to a Progressive Conservative scheme to extend funding to other faith-based schools helped his Liberals win the 2007 election, said he’s “confident” the controversy can be resolved.

“It’s really important that when our kids go to school that they are welcomed there, that they are supported there, that they are accepted for who they are and that they be able to establish these gay-straight alliances, the student-support groups, call them whatever name that you want,” McGuinty told reporters at a St. Clair Ave. West seniors’ home Tuesday.

While Catholic teachers have generally been supportive of the alliances, trustees and many parents have opposed them as not being in accordance with church teachings.

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Coming Out As a Heretic

MurrayWilson — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:56:33 +0000

Not religious, not spiritual, not atheist—what’s left?

By KATE BLANCHARD, 10 May 2012, Religion Dispatches

Heresy has not always been a good option
I could very much relate to the recent NPR story about a Christian minister losing her faith. Like her, I once counted myself among the über-faithful but then “fell away” in my twenties. Despite marrying a clergyman and spending lots of time in theological school, I never made it back to the one true way.

But there is a major difference in my story and this minister’s story, which is that she has embraced the name “atheist,” while I cannot bring myself to do so.

This reluctance is not because I have anything obvious to lose. Being an atheist would not cause any new familial strife; and unlike the pastorate, my career does not demand any particular religious orthodoxy. The major issue for me is an aversion to militant secularism, akin to some people’s aversion to “organized religion.” The new atheism, of the sort that has celebrities, conventions, media outlets, or protest marches, is not simply about doubting the existence of traditional deities. It is more often about intellectual elitism, and sometimes even outright racism toward people whom Christopher Hitchens referred to as “semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions.” Orthodox secularism, it seems, is about feeling superior to those poor, deluded souls who still cling to religion—that weird little psycho-social appendix left over from some earlier stage in human evolution.

Other common categories don’t seem to fit well either. The ever-popular “spiritual but not religious” implies a particular type of interior life—one grounded in emotion and experience more than cognition. A Jewish friend of mine calls herself “religious but not spiritual,” but this doesn’t seem to work as well in a Protestant framework, where individual faith is emphasized over ethnicity or outward traditions. The “Emerging Church” is a possible refuge, but it still strikes me as vaguely imperialistic; and try as I might, I simply don’t see myself among the so-called “rise of the nones.”

Thus, for folks who are unorthodox but aren’t atheists, who care about metaphysics but who aren’t mystics, perhaps the good old-fashioned term “heretic” will satisfy. The kind of heresy I’m talking about here is what Thomas Aquinas defined as “restricting belief to certain points of Christ’s doctrine [as determined by the Roman Catholic hierarchy] selected and fashioned at pleasure.” (I would question only the implication that heretics are unique in “selecting and fashioning” their beliefs “at pleasure.”)

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Game Over for the Climate

MurrayWilson — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:52:49 +0000

JAMES HANSEN | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR |New York Times | May 10, 2012

James Hansen directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is the author of “Storms of My Grandchildren.”

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

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Changes to immigration policy will affect nearly all aspects of Canadian life

MurrayWilson — Thu, 10 May 2012 01:51:40 +0000

By RATNA OMIDVAR | The Globe and Mail | May. 09, 2012

This is part of The Immigrant Answer –The Globe’s series on the future of immigration in Canada. Read the original story here.

The Canadian immigration landscape is shifting beneath our feet. When the dust settles, where will Canada be?

Some of the proposed changes, such as dealing with the backlog, are long overdue. Other changes may also be necessary. They will nevertheless have a series of unintended consequences for the makeup of Canada’s immigrant population and its ethnic diversity. It is these consequences that we should be concerned about.

Recently, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has spoken highly of the Australian immigration model with its strict language requirements. High levels of language proficiency are a requirement in our labour market. But raising the bar on language competency may trigger an increase in immigration from English-speaking countries – Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand – at the cost of immigrants from emerging economic superpowers such as China, India, Russia and Brazil.

Add to this administrative changes such as the closing of visa offices in Bangladesh, Iran and elsewhere and we will begin to see a shift in source countries. Recent media reports show that the numbers of immigrants applying for permanent residence from China, India, the Philippines and Pakistan fell drastically in 2011 – perhaps in response to changes made to our immigrant selection system in the last year.

What implications will these changes have for Canada’s future? One unintended consequence relates to the success of second-generation immigrants. Research shows that the children of immigrants have higher rates of postsecondary education than those of non-immigrant Canadians. What’s more, those born to parents from Africa, China and other Asian countries attend university and college at far higher rates than both non-immigrant Canadians and those born to immigrants from anglosphere countries.

The changes are coming at a furious pace on an almost daily basis. By seeking to eliminate the backlog by expunging those waiting in the queue, we choose efficiency over fairness. By moving to “super visas” and away from permanent residence for our immigrants’ parents and grandparents, we choose transience over inclusion. When employers select workers who will become future citizens with little guidance, we choose head-hunting over nation-building. When we raise the bar on language, we choose homogeneity over diversity. By streamlining the refugee adjudication process, we may well be choosing efficiency over human rights. Finally, when we say to employers, “Pay temporary foreign workers less than you might pay Canadians,” we choose exploitation over fairness.

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When Religious Leaders Lose Their Faith

MurrayWilson — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:42:00 +0000

Teresa MacBain was pastor of a United Methodist church. In March, she made a confession: She is now an atheist. MacBain, NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty and Jerry DeWitt, executive director of Recovering from Religion talk about how losing faith changes lives and communities.

NEAL CONAN, HOST, National Public Radio (NPR), May 7, 2012

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I’m Neal Conan in Washington. Teresa MacBain grew up in church, the daughter of a pastor. She says she felt the call of God at the age of six and became a pastor herself nine years ago at a United Methodist church in Florida.

Along the way, she asked herself questions, questions she believed would strengthen her faith but which came to undermine it. In what she describes as a eureka moment, she realized she was an atheist. Since then, her life has changed drastically. In losing her faith, she also lost friends, a community, a once cherished relationship and of course her job.

If you were a leader in your religious community, clergy or laity, and you lost your faith, what happened to you? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. That’s at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

You may have heard this story last week on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, our religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty joins us in just a moment. But the subject of her story, Teresa MacBain, joins us now from member station WFSU in Tallahassee, until just over a month ago the pastor of Lake Johnson United Methodist Church. Nice to have you with us today.

TERESA MACBAIN: Thank you, nice to be with you, Neal.

CONAN: And that eureka moment, if I’m not intruding too much, when was that exactly, and what were you doing?

MACBAIN: It’s really hard to put a finger on it because the struggle, at least for me in my own experience, was I kept vacillating back and forth. Even after I felt that I no longer believed, my mind tried to convince me that if I just worked hard enough or just pressed through that I would come out on the side, you know, the side of faith.

Probably, I guess last fall, I really began to understand that that wasn’t going to happen and that I needed to find a way as quickly as possible to exit the ministry.

CONAN: And then you’re dealing – leading a double life in a sense.

MACBAIN: Exactly, every day, every week.

CONAN: And eventually you make the decision to come clean, but I think some people had questions about why you didn’t discuss this with the congregation, with the leaders there before you went public.

MACBAIN: Well, so that’s a tricky situation, and honestly, if you’ve not been in that situation – I don’t think there’s really any clear answer as to which way to go with it. I did send some emails, a phone call here or there, trying to set something up, but, you know, think about it.

Here’s a scenario for you: You call in a member of your congregation and say I need to talk to you, I’m your pastor, I’m your spiritual leader, you’ve entrusted your life to me, and oh, by the way, I don’t believe anymore. Now how would that really work out? And I just couldn’t find a way within myself to make that work.

CONAN: And I’m sorry to press on this, but a letter of resignation?

MACBAIN: Yeah, I did actually send in something that – and I don’t mean to speak ill of anyone else, but I did send in some paperwork before I came out officially that was not made public.

CONAN: Oh, so there was some communication there, and so – when – but really, the majority of your flock was utterly surprised.

MACBAIN: Yeah, they were not told. There were only a couple of people that actually knew, and I didn’t know that until after the fact, and I really regret that. I can only imagine how betrayed and how blindsided they felt when they saw the video or heard the news.

CONAN: And have you spoken with any of them?

MACBAIN: I have. There were three ladies who came to me and physically spoke to me, and they were – they didn’t understand. They were confused. They wanted answers, which I gladly talked to them and shared, and the conversations ended with them saying, you know, we love you, we’ve always loved you, we miss you, we wish this hadn’t happened, but that doesn’t change the relationship.

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Father pulls son from Nova Scotia school over Jesus T-shirt controversy

MurrayWilson — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:13:39 +0000

By MICHAEL TUTTON | May 7, 2012 | Globe and Mail

William Swinimer returned to school Monday wearing the same T-shirt that led to his suspension and aroused a debate on religious freedom, but was abruptly pulled from class by his Bible-waving father who said his son would not take part in a discussion on tolerance.

“I walk in love, but today I am angry,” John Swinimer said outside Forest Heights Community School in Chester Basin. “The flower of Christianity can never bloom here.”

His 19-year-old son was suspended last week after he refused to abide by a principal’s request to stop wearing a bright yellow shirt bearing the message, “Life is wasted without Jesus.”

He said he wouldn’t allow William to participate in discussions about freedom of expression and religious tolerance that provincial Education Department officials were hosting inside the school.

“He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic — good old fashioned academics,” Mr. Swinimer said, waving a copy of the New Testament.

“When they’re having forums, when they’re having other extra-curricular activities, he will not attend that school.”

Nancy Pynch-Worthylake, the superintendent for the South Shore Regional School Board, said it was unfortunate the Grade 12 student was yanked from school.

“We’re very disappointed that William is not here to work with the other students and the facilitators that we have today so that we can move forward,” Ms. Pynch-Worthylake said.

“We’ve been trying to reach out to him since last week and during the weekend, so that’s a big disappointment to us.”

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The People’s Bishop

MurrayWilson — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:17:59 +0000

“‘You can’t sit anymore in churches listening to stodgy liturgies. They put you to sleep. Most of these churches are museums with floorshows. They are a caricature of what Jesus intended. Jesus would be turning over the money-changing tables in their vestibules. Those in the church may be good-hearted and even well-meaning, but they are ignoring the urgent, beckoning call to engage with the world.’”

07 May 2012, By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard is detained by police, December 17, 2011. (Photo: Ozier Muhammad / The New York Times)
Retired Episcopal Bishop George Packard was arrested in Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza in New York City on Tuesday night as he participated in the May 1 Occupy demonstrations. He and 15 other military veterans were taken into custody after they linked arms to hold the plaza against a police attempt to clear it. There were protesters behind them who, perhaps because of confusion, perhaps because of miscommunication or perhaps they were unwilling to risk arrest, melted into the urban landscape. But those in the thin line from Veterans for Peace, of which the bishop is a member, stood their ground. They were handcuffed, herded into a paddy wagon and taken to jail.
It was Packard’s second arrest as part of the Occupy protests. Last Dec. 17 he was arrested when he leapt over a fence in his flowing bishop’s robe to spearhead an attempt to occupy a vacant lot owned by Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. The December action by the Occupy movement was a response to the New York City Police Department’s storming and eradication of the encampment in Zuccotti Park. Packard will appear in court in June to face the trespassing charge that resulted. Now, because of this second arrest, he faces the possibility of three months in jail.
Packard’s moral and intellectual courage stands in stark contrast with the timidity of nearly all clergy and congregants in all of our major religious institutions. Religious leaders, in churches, synagogues and mosques, at best voice pious and empty platitudes about justice or carry out nominal acts of charity aimed at those bearing the weight of resistance in the streets. And Packard’s arrests serve as a reminder of the price that we—especially those who claim to be informed by the message of the Christian Gospel—must be willing to pay to defy the destruction visited on us all by the corporate state. He is one of the few clergy members who dare to bear a genuine Christian witness in an age that cries out in anguish for moral guidance.

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Does temporary foreign workers program create second class of labourers?

MurrayWilson — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:29:46 +0000

NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE | Globe and Mail | May. 06, 2012

Yessy Byl spent five years dealing with temporary foreign workers and heard first hand stories of neglect and mistreatment. Many of the workers wouldn't make a formal complaint for fear they'd be fired just for speaking out. Jason Franson for The Globe and Mail
Five years of dealing with temporary foreign workers affected Yessy Byl in a way she did not expect. There were the stories, from the more than 1,000 people she spoke with in her job as a labour advocate, of neglect and mistreatment – overtime not paid, commitments not honoured, hefty “hiring fees” deducted from weekly cheques. And yet many of them wouldn’t make a formal complaint for fear they’d be fired just for speaking out.

It left her deflated and disillusioned. “My faith in this country has been badly shaken,” she says. “I have to remind myself: There are some good employers.”

For Ms. Byl, and many other critics, Canada’s growing numbers of temporary foreign workers have raised important questions about the kind of country we are becoming, and how a nation that has long welcomed immigrants is establishing a burgeoning second class of labour, devoid of many of the rights to democratic participation and workplace choice other Canadians enjoy.

As Canadian employers struggle to address a burgeoning labour shortage, temporary foreign workers have become a pillar of the economy – there are now more than 300,000 here, triple the number a decade ago. Visiting workers once associated with harvest time in Canada’s orchards and tobacco fields now turn up everywhere from fast-food chains and abattoirs to the Alberta oil sands.

Anticipating another surge in demand, the Harper government has, in the past few weeks, formalized a series of changes to speed up the program. Now able to bring in people with just 10 days notice and to pay them 15-per-cent less than a Canadian would earn, employers have responded with joy. They still must prove they can’t fill a job any other way, but others see deeper significance in the trend and are holding their breath.

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Methodists Vote to Keep Homosexuality “Incompatible”

MurrayWilson — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:10:36 +0000

by CANDACE CHELLEW-HODGE, May 3, 2012, Religion Dispatches

lansingunited.org
The United Methodist Church voted today to keep intact its section in the Book of Discipline that call homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching” and sanctions only heterosexual marriage. New wording would have removed those passages.

The vote came after a debate that became contentious when one African delegate compared homosexuality to bestiality and declared that God would not create humans as gay or lesbian.

During the vote, supporters of the petition to change the Book of Discipline stood at the edges of the convention floor, or the “bar” as the church calls it. As the debate continued, many delegates moved from their seats to join the members on the margins to show their solidarity. In the end the petition failed to pass.

When the conference reconvened after a break, those who supported the petition remained in the hall, singing as business began again. The presiding bishop, Michael Coyner of the Indiana Conference, shut down the meeting, calling the LGBT advocates a “security concern.”

The morning’s vote and actions by the bishop were a disappointment to David Braden, the director of development for the Reconciling Ministries Network, which works for the full inclusion of LGBT people into the UMC:

“We grieve that the United Methodist Church really had the opportunity to live into inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ and live into its tagline of Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds and extend its welcome to LGBT people and unfortunately, chose not to do that. We grieve that UMC continues to harm and discrimination against LGBT people. We’re already here in the United Methodist Church and we will continue to be that shining light on top of the hill to show the world what it means to be UMC, and that is to welcome all people.”

Even if this petition failed, said Daniel Viana, a Brazilian-born music minister at a small conservative Hispanic UMC in Chicago, the presence of LGBT people and their allies at the convention is a strong witness to just how active the LGBT community already is in the church.

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Family Battle Offers Look Inside Lavish TV Ministry

MurrayWilson — Sun, 06 May 2012 02:32:37 +0000

By ERIK ECKHOLM, Published: May 4, 2012, New York Times

The Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Fla., is part of the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s operations. - Brian Blanco for The New York Times
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — For 39 years, the Trinity Broadcasting Network has urged viewers to give generously and reap the Lord’s bounty in return.

The prosperity gospel preached by Paul and Janice Crouch, who built a single station into the world’s largest Christian television network, has worked out well for them.

Mr. and Mrs. Crouch have his-and-her mansions one street apart in a gated community here, provided by the network using viewer donations and tax-free earnings. But Mrs. Crouch, 74, rarely sleeps in the $5.6 million house with tennis court and pool. She mostly lives in a large company house near Orlando, Fla., where she runs a side business, the Holy Land Experience theme park. Mr. Crouch, 78, has an adjacent home there too, but rarely visits. Its occupant is often a security guard who doubles as Mrs. Crouch’s chauffeur.

The twin sets of luxury homes only hint at the high living enjoyed by the Crouches, inspirational television personalities whose multitudes of stations and satellite signals reach millions of worshipers across the globe. Almost since they started in the 1970s, the couple have been criticized for secrecy about their use of donations, which totaled $93 million in 2010.

Now, after an upheaval with Shakespearean echoes, one son in this first family of televangelism has ousted the other to become the heir apparent. A granddaughter, who was in charge of TBN’s finances, has gone public with the most detailed allegations of financial improprieties yet, which TBN has denied, saying its practices were audited and legal.

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