The Anglican Church’s Gaydar

St Matthew-in-the-City church in Auckland, New Zealand always comes up with funny, gay-friendly ad campaigns — seriously: check them out here.

Their latest is no exception:

Before you all start making jokes about gay priests and Anglican-on-Anglican action, understand what the purpose of the billboard is:

St Matthew-in-the-City put up a billboard outside its central Auckland church yesterday, designed to call attention to what it said was discrimination by the Anglican Church.

…

St Matthew’s vicar Glynn Cardy said New Zealand’s Anglican bishops refused to ordain anybody who was openly gay or lesbian and in a committed relationship. “We see this as an issue of discrimination that harms not only the gay and lesbian community, but society and ultimately the church as well.”

St Matthew’s associate priest Clay Nelson said it was incredible that the church could still argue sexual orientation was a choice.

“It appears justice is being held hostage by ignorance. We call on the bishops to enlighten the church and end this discrimination.”

You know, if they only stopped believing in all the superstitious nonsense contained in the Bible, I would support them whole-heartedly. But I suppose there’s something to be said about being a lesser evil, better than the typical Christian alternatives.

But they’re still wrong when it comes to belief in a god. Too bad, because everything else they seem to support sounds great.

(Thanks to Sam for the link!)

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Ron in Houston

You might be surprised how little of the Bible they believe is literally true.
Korinthian

I’m not surprised that they’re encouraging priests-to-be to lie about their sexuality.

Those ten commandments aren’t *that* important if there’s bigotry to dish out.
mike

I like that they are blunting christianity in order to continue. I welcome the day when being christian means that they just believe in jesus and nothing more; no gay bashing, women hating, moral legislating, or bigotry extolling.
Sackbut

I know that the issue seems to them to hinge on whether sexual orientation is a choice, but it really shouldn’t. That’s a private matter involving consenting adults. They shouldn’t care whether two men have anal sex, any more than they should care whether a man and a woman have anal sex. Nor should they care whether two people in a committed relationship have sex at all.
sailor

Why are Episcopalians hopeless at chess?

They cannot tell a queen from a bishop.
Charles Black

This is one of the rare times I hope the Anglican church can still discriminate against gay people.
So that people will reject their hateful message of bigotry.
Robster

The touted nonsense of christianity seems to be able to be moulded to reflect any particular point of view. The godbots are starting to realise that their bigoted, hateful ways are a real turn off for most. This mob in NZ are dressing up the dross to 1)invoke interest 2)seem more “cool” and open 3)to get more paying bums on the pews. It’s not because they’re nice or inclusive, their belief system is under threat, so anything that halts the slide is going to be embraced.
Clay Nelson

Check out what we preach and write about, not just our billboards. You will discover that both Glynn and I are nontheist Christians. No superstitious beliefs required to be a worshipper at St Matthew’s. In fact superstitious beliefs are regularly challenged. Science is not the enemy of faith, which is about action not a belief system.

Thanks for helping to further the debate.
Rike D.

Maybe this is not the place to ask, but what is a “nontheist Christian”?
K Patterson

I’m going to take a stab and guess that it’s someone who focuses on what was supposedly the philosophy of Jesus and doesn’t buy into the superstitious elements. (Much like The Jefferson Bible.)

I’ve observed at several Episcopal/Anglican churches and one in particular really focuses on what Jesus said and did when he was (allegedly) alive and not so much on the being nailed to a tree part. And no one ever got a verbal beating just for being born human.
Leah

Hurray!!!! I’m Anglican/Episcopalian–a quite wonderful church (at least the one I attend). Personally I consider myself a Christian in the sense that I follow the life of Yeshua, as a moral, ethical, and progressive thinking human being who was so merciful AND just, honest AND compassionate, that he came as close to being “God” or “like God” as a human can get. And as for my church, they DO focus much more on the life of Christ and his compassion, his mercy, his justice, his kindness, and less on the Pauline bs.
hoverfrog

Isn’t it strange that they have to speak out against church attitudes in order to do something that is nothing more than basic human decency to one another.
Erp

The churches aren’t the only institution whose attitudes need to change. I’m a bit surprised the NZ Anglican church is so conservative on the gays/lesbians in the priesthood given that the US Episcopal church generally has no problem.

BTW it looks like someone has vandalized the billboard by tearing off the cross.
Ian

There were once two men sitting in a cotton field when one of them noticed a couple of weevils climbing the same stalk, one skinny one and the other one well fed. One of the men noticed that the skinny one appeared to have the word ‘atheist’ on its back the other one ‘Xtian’, and they decided to have a bet on which would be the first to reach the top.

One of the men demanded that he should have the skinny one and the other agreed.

To begin with the well fed weevil raced away but as it got higher it began to run out of steam and eventually the skinny one, the atheist weevil, pipped it at the post.

The man who had bet on the atheist weevil shouted ‘I knew it, I knew mine would win’, and said ‘you should alway bet on the lesser of the two weevils’!!

And with that ladies and gentlemen I will take my leave and go and hide ;o)