IRD: 2005 Outrageous Quotes of the Week
Charles Hohenstein
http://www.ird-renew.org/site/pp.asp?c==fvKVLfMVIsG&b=59011
2005 Outrageous Quotes of the Week
August 18, 2005
Week of August 14 - 20
"The Episcopal Church is a questioning community. ... It also is a
church which has lived with open-ended questions. It doesn't need to
reduce things to absolutes. We can deal with shades of gray, we can
deal with paradox and ambiguity without feeling that we are being
unfaithful."
- The Most Rev. Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal
Church USA, responding to a question from a reporter on what he would
like people to know about the Episcopal Church.
______________________________
Week of August 7 - 13
"We Asian Christians would no longer see the other as the mortal
enemy, or as the unsaved doomed for hell, or as the poor heathen to
convert. We would instead look at them as brothers, sisters, partners,
whom God also loves, to whom God has also revealed truths, from whom
we can learn about life, living and relating, and in whom we can also
find the image of God."
- Hope S. Antone, executive secretary for Faith, Mission and Unity of
the Christian Conference of Asia, in a press release of the World
Council of Churches, announcing the International Day of Prayer for
Peace on September 21.
______________________________
Week of July 31 - August 6
"Mary of Nazareth was unmarried when she chose to have her child,
Jesus. She dedicated her choice and her child to a radical
overthrowing of the conventional order."
- Rev. Nancy Rockwell, a United Church of Christ minister, writing in
the National Coalition for Reproductive Choice pamphlet, "How Good
Women Make Wise Choices." The article later declares that "[her]
moral and..sexual decisions were not clearly right or wrong.
______________________________
Week of July 24 - 30
The Conference on Spiritual Activism in Berkeley, CA (July 20-23)
began with a "visualization exercise" where participants were
encouraged to "remember the Sacred, however you envision it." Among
the wide range of personages invoked were the archangels, Adam and
Eve, various Hindu deities, Socrates and Aristotle, Moses and Jesus,
Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Leonardo DaVinci, White Buffalo Woman (a
figure in Sioux mythology), anthropologist Jane Goodall,
environmentalist Rachel Carson, Gandhi, Anne Frank, Mother Theresa,
and the Dalai Lama.
______________________________
Week of July 17 - 23
A June, 2005, National Council of Churches (NCC) fundraising letter
(signed by NCC General Secretary Robert Edgar) implies that if IRD got
its way, "gleaning for the poor on private farms after harvesting
would be encouraged." According to Edgar, IRD would also eliminate
minimum wage law, social security, government regulation, public
education and welfare.
___________________________
Week of July 10 - 16
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a liberal group within the
Southern Baptist convention, has altered its constitution so that it
no longer specifically refers to "Jesus Christ" by name. The first
sentence of the constitution originally read, "...to bring together
Baptists who desire to call out God's gifts in each person in order
that the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be spread throughout the world in
glad obedience to the Great Commission." The new first sentence
adopted at the fellowship's annual meeting reads, "...to serve
Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given
mission."
______________________________
Week of July 3 - 9
"The bicycle is symbolic of an ecologically responsible lifestyle, so
when we're blessing the bicycle, we're acknowledging that cyclists
have made a conscious choice to live in an ecologically responsible way."
- Rev. Paul Borthistle, an Anglican Priest in Vancouver, British
Columbia. Borthistle took part in a ceremony on the steps of Christ
Church Cathedral in Vancouver where bicycles were "blessed" by the
application of WD-40 lubricant to the bike chain. Riders were blessed
by an application of suncreen on their noses. The blessing ceremony
included a collective ringing of bicycle bells to "sanctify and
promote" bike riding as an ecological choice.
______________________________
Week of June 26 - July 2
"John Paul II prepared a five-year plan, on the eve of the third
millennium, Christianize the world. His address in 1995 was based on
the assumption that by the year 2000, the entire world would be
Christianized. Since the plan was not accomplished, the World Council
of Churches assigned this mission to the US in January 2001, since the
US is the world's unrivaled military power. They named the decade
between 2001-2010 "the age of eradicating evil" - "evil" referring to
Islam and Muslims."
- Egyptian Historian Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz, speaking on Saudi Iqra TV on
May 26, 2005. The entire transcript of the interview is available at
www.memri.org
______________________________
Week of June 12 - 18
"I have wondered specifically about the Supreme Court in the case of
Bush vs. Gore where, astonishingly, I believe the majority--five out
of nine justices--were engaged in an evil act. And I wonder how that
could happen without Satan hanging around." (more)
- M. Scott Peck, author of the popular book The Road Less Traveled and
a new book, Glimpses of the Devil. He was quoted by Salon.com
______________________________
Week of June 5 - 11
"I believe this cathedral is called to be a major voice of a faith
that is firm at the center and soft at the edges...a faith that
embraces ambiguity, that honors other faiths...a faith that insists
that Christ's values be embodied in the social order."
- The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd, the new dean of Washington National
Cathedral, speaking during his homily at his installation service on
Saturday (April 23). He was quoted by The Washington Post.
______________________________
Week of May 22 - 28
"He (Pope Benedict XVI) is perhaps the biggest homophobe in Europe.
We couldn't have had worse news. This man is taking us back to the
days of the Inquisition."
- Rev. Mel White, Founder and Executive Director of Soulforce, a
homosexual lobby group. Rev. White is a minister in the Universal
Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches (UFMCC).
___________________________
Week of May 15 - 21
"We have always seen the Pope, and will always see him, as a friend
who was concerned for the poor, who fought neo-liberalism and strove
for peace."
- Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque on the death of Pope John
Paul II
_______________________________
Week of May 8 - 14
"What we need--and we aren't seeing--is a firm stand by moderates
against religious extremismŠ. America isn't yet a place where liberal
politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line,
fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the
growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here."
- New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman
______________________________
Week of May 1 - 7
"'Christocentric' persons are not content to be saved in themselves,
and to allow other individuals the right to a different pathway. Their
salvation depends on the damnation of those who are not saved by grace
through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Their one true faith
automatically divides people into superior and inferior in-groups and
out-groups-and sets the psychic stage for evangelizing and domination
'in Jesus name,' or in the name of 'freedom.' A super religion
displaying tendencies similar to Hitler's super race with its fascist
ideology of superiority."
- Rev. William E. Alberts, United Methodist/Unitarian Universalist
minister, hospital chaplain, and columnist
______________________________
Week of April 10 - 16
"In Pakistan, the United States is deeply concerned with the
madrassahs, that is, the private fundamentalist Islamist schools. Here
we have so-called Christian academies and home schooling, our own form
of madrassahs."
- Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the United Methodist Church
General Board of Church and Society
______________________________
Week of March 13 - 19
"Of all the promises that God made, perhaps the most lamentable in its
failure is the promise to Abraham: 'In you all the families of the
earth shall be blessed.' A more accurate prediction would have been:
'Shared ancestry won't prevent your claimants from waging endless war
on each other and cursing the lands they occupy.'"
- Episcopal Priest and Syndicated Columnist Tom Ehrich
______________________________
Week of February 20 - 26
"Dealing with the right-wing's religious/political lifestyle and its
evangelistic agenda is like dealing with an alcoholic or hard drug
user.... Like all addictions, when right-wing religion dominates one's
life obsessively, it tells people how to feel rather than getting in
touch with their real problems. It also prevents the addicts from
understanding the harm they are doing to those around them."
- Dr. Robert N. Minor, Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of Kansas. Dr. Minor is the founder of the "Fairness
Project," and author of a syndicated column on religion.
______________________________
Week of January 9 - 15
"While dominant society has embraced a binary gender system
(male-female), Ms. Mouse believes this is only a construction. Gender
is a fluid and mutable category, open to a range of emotion and
identity. We cross the boundaries of the traditoinal binary gender
system all the time in our daily lives. In short, Ms. Mouse is a
transgendered mouse. She believes that what you look like to others
doesn't matter, it's how you identify that counts."
- "Chapelle (nee Chap) Mouse" - a transgendered puppet used to promote
chapel activities at Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, MA). Ms.
Mouse "came out" in a column in Common Fare: The Newsletter of the
Episcopal Divinity School, where she was promoting the upcoming Queer
Week at the school.
--
Charles Hohenstein
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