Just when you thought you the Anglicans and Lutherans had run out of impossibly wacky ideas they surprise you with a new one.
Here is a link to a blog by Rev Nadia Bolz Weber--an 'emergent' Lutheran pastor of a little tribe called by the name of the House of All Sinners and Saints.
It tells us about a Lutheran-Episcopalian naming ceremony for a transgendered person. There is a little ritual in which Asher (who used to be Mary) affirms his former person and takes a new name. The "new name" thing is interesting because the liturgist weaves in the new names given to Abram, Simon Peter etc.
Effectively this is a sort of parody of baptism as well, in which the child is ceremonially named.
Comments anyone?
Comments anyone?
ReplyDeleteWell, would it uncharitable of me to say that they're all &^%$ing nuts?
Where is someone going to finally draw the line?
ReplyDeleteI often wonder what Luther, Calvin, Knox & Cramner would think if they saw where their churches were today.
ReplyDeleteAll these years I've felt like a reptile trapped in a human body. I really am an iguana. Call me "Iggy". And, while we're at it, I demand to be re-baptized as Iggy and have my driver's license changed from "human" to read "lizard".
ReplyDeleteSo what if my DNA remains human. It's what I call myself that defines me.
Sheesh - what next, eh?
Historically speaking, the Reformers started this ball rolling when they broadly rejected everything taught by the greater Church before them and put it on each individual to go with his own opinion (as long as a rhetorical justification could be made).
ReplyDeleteWhen I left my lifelong Lutheran Church (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in 1998 it was because I was looking for the original church, for depth and serious spirituality. I thought the Lutheran Church had become a version of "Christianity Light". At that time I never could have imagined that it would descend into the liberal, anything goes mess it is now. In 1998 I converted to the Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church in America OCA) and have never looked back since. Praise God there are still traditional Catholics and the Orthodox to preserve the dignity of worship and "orthodox" doctrine.
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing less than utter madness. I left the Episcopal Church and converted to Catholicism precisely due to the radical shift toward apostasy and heresy as evidenced by these so-called "liturgies". Even though my parish was still reasonably orthodox at the time, the denominational leadership was hinting at a move toward this kind of garbage. It will only get worse. Why any true Christian would remain there is beyond me.
ReplyDeleteI wish it were possible to go back in time, snatch up Martin Luther and Henry VIII, let them see this, and then send them back to their own proper times. It would surely give them pause; they would both be appalled.
ReplyDelete@Wendell -- that's been done already. Maybe not with church trappings, but with plastic surgery and tattoos.
Beyond parody
ReplyDelete