#methodist church of canada

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"City Honeycombed With Gambling Is Pastor's Statement," Windsor Record. February 17, 1913. Page 1. ---- Rev. F. W. Hollinrake, Methodist Clergyman, Adds That He Believes Police Know About It. ---- DECLARES SOME CIGAR STORES MERLLY BLUFFS ---- Alleged That Officers Tip Off Proprietors When "Chief is on the Beat" - Secret Spring Used. ---- "Windsor is honeycombed with gambling and I believe the police know about it." This was the concluding remark made by the Rev. F.. W. Hollinrake of the Central Methodist church at the Sunday evening service in discussing the gambling evil, which he states, exists in this city.

In his sermon he termed gambling a source of so-called pleasure for which the participants received no gain for what they paid. He termed the gambler a leach, a blood-sucker and a thief in every sense of the word and said although it was very hard to detect, it seemed to go on unmolested, with the proprietor pocketing his ill-gotten gains.

He read an article from a Toronto paper, in which in an interview a reporter of that paper had with the father of a young man who had been convicted and fined for being a common gambler, the man said that his son had got his start in a small cigar store or pool room opposite the paper office in Toronto.

"Change the towns and it sounds mighty like Windsor," remarked the pastor.

The interview further stated that in Toronto the pool rooms and cigar stores were the greatest offenders. Here again the pastor remarked it sounded like Windsor.

Police Powerless He stated that there were men in their graves today who would be living and following their regular line of occupation, were it not for these gambling joints. He said that in many homes in Windsor there were widows weeping, children going without clothing and fire all because the police could not stop the practice.

"I am told that there are places in this city where a man who has just received his weekly or fortnightly or monthly pay envelope and goes into it and when he comes out his money is gone. He is forced to go home to a broken-hearted wife and mother, waiting for this money to buy the children clothing, pay the grocery bill or pay the rent of the house that sheltered them.

"The proprietors of these places will ride to their beautiful home in their automobiles. There is no sign of want. The money that they асcumulate through the gambling curse should be going to help some family where the father has lost it by playing poker or some other game.

Are Gifts Received? "I have been informed that policemen go into cigar stores and ask for fifty cents worth of cigars, and after laying their money on the showcase, a bluff is made at the cash register and the money is handed back to them. These policemen, if they wanted to, could look through an open door and see the gambling tables and other paraphernalia in the rooms for the use of the gamblers, but they don't do it for some reason.

"Some places that sell cigars are merely bluffs. The amount of business they do would not give returns enough to pay the salary of the clerk who is employed. I am further informed that a policeman will be in one of these places and will say to the clerk or proprietor, 'Keep quiet tonight, the chief is on the beat.

"If I were to go around to one of these places a spring would be touch- ed behind the counter, and all the men would disappear into another room and the place would take on the appearance of a place in mourning."

Take Only Big Bets. The pastor told the congregation that in the city there existed places where books were kept where a man could go in and play any horse he liked at any of the different race tracks in the country. He referred to one as a rich man's place where the man with the little bet need not seek admittance. Only the man with a bet from $100 to $1000 need apply.

He stated that some of these places in their efforts to keep the game going, they went so far as to furnish lunches to the players, so that they would not have to go out to eat. An article from a Cleveland paper was read in which the chief of police of that city had ordered all gamblers out of the city and a large number of them moved away. Those who remained in the city were raided and all their tables and other devices. were broken up.

"Could not the chief of police in this city do the same?" asked the pastor.

Mr. Hollinrake stated that in the city at almost every cigar store, men were allowed to shake dice for cigars every day except Sunday. He was informed that one place was kept going on the Sabbath as well as week days. He told of a man who had conducted a place in Windsor for over fifteen years and had been raided only once. He said he was informed that some of the places were protected and the man who told him said the police force was "rotten".

Mr. Hollinrake said he asked the man, "What about the commission?" "They are the same," replied the man.

Distributes the Blame. He stated that he did not blame the police altogether, saying that if mothers and fathers of children children would stay at home and teach their children something about the way they should live instead of expecting a public or Sunday school teacher to do it, conditions could be bettered.

"In conclusion," he said, "let some of the clubs, societies and influential business men of the city be brave enough to start a movement to run these places out of the city and the police, maybe, will be brave enough do their duty. Back up the policeman in what he does while exercising his duties, and Windsor will not be honeycombed with gambling, which I believe it is."

Mr. Hollingrake stated he secured h's information from a man who had been in the gambling business but had reformed.

[doueverwonder]

Uhh idk why I’m thinking about this but; face family church habits perhaps.

France - more than once every other month but less than every week. I actually think he kinda stopped believing in God after ww2 but almost has to go out of habit or he Feels Wrong.

America - goes the most no doubt in my mind about it, maybe not every Sunday but at least at a Bible study or something of the sort every week. I can never decide denomination for him. Definitely Protestant probably Baptist or Methodist, but I could also see him being Episcopalian, Lutheran, or even Dutch Reformed idk.

Canada - what my mom would call Catholic Lite, he goes for Easter and Christmas, occasionally for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Every decade or so he feels real guilty about something and goes every day of Holy Week; hasn’t been to confession in at least 30 years. Goes to mass with Molly sometimes bc no one else in the family is Catholic

England - one of those people who calls himself religious and will tell you he’s Anglican but actually hasn’t stepped foot in a church in decades. The opposite of Francis, believes in God doesn’t see the point in going to see him smh.

[sshannonauthor]

Good evening, riders and slayers. I’m so happy to announce that I’ll be touring in person in 2023, to celebrate the publication of A Day of Fallen Night, the standalone prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree.   As well as making several UK stops, I’m really excited to be returning to the US and Canada for the first time in six years. The tour begins on Friday 24 February, with wonderful Saara El-Arifi chairing a launch event in London. Tickets go on sale on 11 November 2022 at 00:00 (GMT). Everyone who chooses the ticket + book option will receive an exclusive dragon pin.

UK

Friday 24 February – Waterstones Piccadilly, St James’ Church, with Saara El-Arifi – book here

Saturday 25 February – Waterstones Liverpool with Jennifer Saint – book here

Monday 27 February – Waterstones Norwich, Blackfriars Hall, with Tasha Suri – book here

Friday 10 March – Waterstones Bristol (Galleries), with Natasha Pulley – book here

Saturday 11 March – Falmouth Booksellers, Falmouth Methodist Church – book here

Tuesday 14 March – Waterstones Nottingham – book here

Wednesday 15 March – Waterstones Leeds – book here

Thursday 16 March – Topping St Andrews, St Andrews Episcopal Church – book here

Friday 17 March – Topping Edinburgh, Greenside Church – book here

Monday 20 March – Waterstones Birmingham, The Glee Club – book here

Wednesday 22 March – Topping Ely, Hayward Theatre – link to come

Friday 31 March – City Books, Ropetackle Arts Centre, Hove – link to come

US & CANADA 

Wednesday 1 March – Barnes & Noble, Union Square, New York City – link to come

Thursday 2 March – Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN – book here

Friday 3 March – The Novel Neighbor Bookstore, St. Louis, MO – book here 

Saturday 4 March – Tucson Festival of Books, AZ – link to come

Sunday 5 March – Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA – link to come

Monday 6 March – Indigo, Metrotown, Vancouver, Canada – link to come

[alliluyevas]

i was mildly surprised to find out that there were still methodists around but in my defence they all got conglomerated into the united church of canada back in the 20s around here.

oh wow that is so interesting! i had no idea!

[destielshippingnews]

Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 2x13 Houses of the Holy

The thirty fifth episode of Supernatural is a spiritual successor to 1x12 Faith, and like that episode deals with religious belief and faith, particularly as it pertains to Christianity. The show is set in a country which is not only majority Christian, but which takes its Christianity extremely seriously. Britain is relatively close to America and Canada in terms of culture, but there are significant, fundamental differences on both sides of the Atlantic, and one of these is the attitude to religion. Please allow me what may seem like a slight side-track, I promise it is relevant.

There is a saying which goes something like ‘The president of America cannot be elected without God, and the Prime Minister of Britain cannot be elected with God’. What this means is that religion is generally not especially welcome in the upper echelons of administration and governance in Britain, whereas it is imperative in American governance. Americans seem to insist upon religion in every aspect of their lives, whereas the general attitude in Britain (and northern Europe, though Finland is surprisingly religious) is that it is something to be kept to yourself. Of course we have Jewish and Muslim enclaves where religion is omnipresent, and the islands of Lewis and Harris in the Scottish Outer Hebrides still insist on observing Sunday as a sabbath day, but mostly this is an exception to the rule.

One of the reasons for this is that the church in Britain (excluding the Mormon church and Jehovah’s Witnesses) is by and large a state-run organisation. The Head of State in Britain is the head of the church (Church of England), and without getting into niceties of Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans, or Hillsong, it is generally seen as being a dull, dreary part of the establishment. There is no money to be made in the church business in Britain, because it is not a business. Vicars and priests are generally amicable, unthreatening, and jovial types. They generally do not have much official power or influence, and in my experience at least there is very little in the way of fire and brimstone. The church is largely seen as a harmless institution which is nice to have around but is not especially important in the majority of people’s lives. Many will say they believe in something, or that this can’t be all there is, but when questioned about belief in Jesus or the God of the Bible, they will not believe in them. Britain is de facto agnostic.

This is a stark contrast to the American and Canadian experience where the population is de facto theist, in the main various varieties of Christian. They have religion shoved down their throat by way of televangelism, daily pledges to the flag and God, giant crucifixes by the roadside, and whatever else my wacky friends like to get up to over there. Whereas most people in Britain will not give a hoot if somebody is atheist, Americans and Canadians seem deeply unsettled by people who do not believe in a god. American Christians seem more comfortable with Hindus, Jews, and Muslims than they do with atheists because at least the ‘infidels’ believe in something. Atheists have no god, and thereby no morals. Strangely, they also think us edgelords, as if the only reason a person could have for not believing in the Christian god is trying to be edgy.

One reason for Christianity being more forceful in America and Canada is that it is not regulated as it is in Britain. Other than Hillsong, there is nothing like the rock concert experience of arena-sized churches with celebrity pastors and priests which seem so beloved of my Trans-Atlantic cousins. There are regular, humble chapels and churches across the pond, but because it can be run like a business, many exploit that opportunity for financial gain, whence dramatic fire-and-brimstone sermons in amphitheatre churches set up like a Céline Dion show. Sermons are shows and Christianity is a product to be sold.

(I do have first-hand experience of Céline Dion concerts, by the way. And I will not apologise for loving that woman, not to you, not to anyone.)

Bringing this back to Supernatural, I commented in my analysis of 1x12 Faith that Dean’s views on good, evil, God, and the afterlife would not be noteworthy in a British television show. More noteworthy would be somebody taking religion or spirituality seriously, as Sam does in this episode. Because I have a good idea (though no first-hand experience) of what things are like in America and Canada, 2x13 Houses of the Holy missed the mark with me. It induced much eye-rolling as it was sometimes so painfully American in its parochial attitudes to religion.

Before getting into detail on that, a brief summary for those who might have forgotten: Dean and Sam investigate a case involving people who claim to have been visited by an angel who told them to kill certain people it deemed evildoers. Sam is convinced that it is an angel manipulating events, whereas Dean is the Scully in this situation, adamant that it is a ghost or something similar rather than an angel. Events and interviews lead Dean and Sam to a Catholic church and the eventual discovery that it was the recently-departed Father Gregory’s ghost telling the people to kill the evildoers, not an angel. This deflates Sam, who had been hoping for proof angels exist so he could hope for salvation for himself (because of his Azazel problems). Dean, however, who had been the sceptic all along, sees a man ghost!Gregory had marked out for death die in a freak accident and has what appears to be a religious conversion.

Religious people in America do not apologise for their beliefs, so I will not apologise for my lack thereof, nor for pulling apart the religious or spiritual aspects of this episode. I am an atheist, by which I mean I do not believe a god, gods, or similar deity exists. There is no ideology, moral framework, or spiritual leader in atheism, any more than there is a moral framework or ideology behind not believing in Lugus, Thor, or Veles. Most people are atheists about most of the gods who have ever existed in religions: some of us just go one god further. I am also agnostic, whereby I mean I do not know whether god exists or does not. I cannot say whether God exists or does not, but I do not believe s/he does, and the more time passes, the better able scientific consensus is to explain how things came to be without needing to fill in the gaps of our knowledge with a deity.

Back to the episode: an undertone of a righteousness, a respectability, or a nobility to spiritual belief runs through this episode, and in spite of Britain’s de facto agnosticism, it is a sentiment I am well-acquainted with. This is most clear in the presentation of Sam’s ‘faith’ and his earnest confession to Dean that he does pray every day and has done so for a long time.

By that, I do not mean to say religious believers should be mocked for being religious. If religion helps people deal with being cursed to spend up to five decades in a malfunctioning, slowly-decaying meat suit while watching everybody and everything they love deteriorate under the inexorable grind of entropy, then do it. It if gives you peace, wonderful. I am not interested in taking that away. One of my oldest and dearest friends is an Evangelical Lutheran who I do not believe will ever apostatise into atheism, and I do not care. Two of my friends are heathens, mostly a mix of Buddhism and Ásatru, while yet another is a chaos witch. This does not mean anything to me and makes no difference whatsoever in my relationships with them. I think one of the reasons I enjoy being around my evangelical friend is that his belief seems to be an anchor keeping him stable, and that calm is infectious.

What I do take issue with is the claim that religious or spiritual belief is honourable in itself, perhaps even something to be aspired to, a sign of wisdom. As comforting as it is for people to have their belief, I see it as just a crutch. I take the person seriously, but the belief itself is nothing noble

The discussion of belief leads naturally onto another aspect of the episode which caused chagrin was the myopic nature of Sam’s insistence in angels accompanied by Dean’s claim he saw ‘God’s will’. This is related to another issue I have discussed elsewhere which is the show’s insistence of Abrahamic mythology being the underlying truth behind everything and the superior force in the Superverse. It is certainly colonial in tone, especially in episodes such as 5x19 Hammer of the Gods (another episode which proves Kripke read far too much Neil bloody Gaiman). I am gobsmacked that a show which began with American folklore, urban legends, and ghosts eventually went on a 12-year side-track involving Abrahamic angels, the Christian Heaven and Hell, and a version of the Christian God. Other people seem to love it, and Cas is probably my second favourite character in the show, but it tried my patience on many an occasion. Especially Lucifer: never would I have thought it possible to strip Satan of all presence and threat and leave me thinking ‘Oh, this guy again -_- ‘ every time he was on screen.

Returning to angels, the episode made it clear that we were to interpret angels in a Christian context, but what it did not make clear was why. It is understandable that the ex-prostitute and the drunk guy believed ghost!Gregory was a Christian angel, but that implies the viewer is supposed to also interpret the ‘angel’ as being related to Christianity and Jehovah. Even Dean’s ‘God’s will’ thing at the end reinforced this point, but I want to know why Dean and Sam who have encountered demons, monsters, deities, and other creatures from diverse religions and mythologies both extant and extinct would instantly jump to the conclusion that the Christian explanation is the right one. ‘Angels’ have equivalents in Norse ljósalfar (light-elves, a chief source of inspiration for Tolkien’s elves) for example, or the Irish aos sí (pronounced: uhs shee) and the Scots Gaelic sith (pronounced: shee). Benevolent creatures of light are not exclusive to Abrahamic mythology, and even they came from Zoroastrianism.

For ‘God’s will’ to be behind this is too much of a forced conclusion which felt utterly fake, convenient, and pandering to an American audience’s sentiments when Dean especially should know that no one mythology should be privileged over the other. And why should he be so deeply shaken by one freak accident? If it was ‘God’s will’ that speared the would-be-rapist with a metal pole, why was it not God’s will that he not try to rape the woman in the first place? Or, if God is so omnipotent, why could he not have simply killed him in his sleep, or not made him a rapist in the first place? It is logic like a rusty bucket to claim a bad person getting his comeuppance is God’s will when the same logic can be used to say it was God’s will the person did bad things to begin with. Where was God’ when the university students were locked in the basement, killed, then buried? Where was God when the paedo was doing paedo things? This is simply confirmation bias and I am not buying it. I can buy somebody like Dean being agnostic or deistic because believing religion and religious explanations are nonsense does not equate to atheism or a lack of spirituality. What I could not buy was Dean’s ready jump to ‘God’s will’ as the explanation.

Dean, I love you to bits, but that was clearly Sera Gamble speaking, not you.

Moving on before the Bible Belt catches wind of me, one thing I did like about this episode was Jensen’s performance. He is religious, though precisely what kind of Christian and to what degree is really none of my business, but he occasionally wears a crucifix necklace and raised money for a Christian youth organisation in Texas when he appeared on Wheel of Fortune in 1998.

He never seems to talk about it publicly, he does not seem to believe supernatural stuff actually exists, and it does not seem to have turned him into a middle class white-skinned American conservative, though I expect his religious belief is one of the reasons certain people insist he is a homophobe. The reason I brought this up is because his portrayal of Dean as a sceptic and agnostic/atheist for both this episode and 1x12 Faith felt completely accurate and believable. He did not comically exaggerate or straw man anything, which was laudable given the American context.

That said, a closer reading of the episode reveals that Dean’s scepticism is perhaps not as genuine as it might seem (another point of contention I have with the script). After Sam has his close encounter of the third kind in the church’s crypt, he and Dean have a conversation which leads to Dean discussing the fact Mary believed in angels and said ‘Angels are watching over you’ when she put him to bed. In fact, it was the last thing she said to him before she died. Dean therefore cannot believe in the existence of good because Mary did and it availed her nothing: the angels she claimed were watching over them did not save her or her children.

On the one hand, this can be read straight: Dean has only ever seen evil and as a result cannot see good. In my analysis of 1x12 Faith I discussed Interview with the Vampire and Louis’s younger brother Paul who claimed God was talking to him. Nobody believed him, but rather everybody including the priest believed the Devil was speaking to Paul, which indirectly lead to Paul’s untimely death. When we see evil everyday but so little good, it feels almost impossible to believe in good.

However, a reason for Dean’s agnosticism, atheism, or whatever it may be in this episode could also be understood as the patronising straw man so beloved of anti-atheists, that being we are atheists because we hate God due to personal tragedy and trauma. For a perfect example of this, see the Christian propaganda film God is Not Dead, wherein the man who played Hercules in the 1990s plays an atheist professor of philosophy who bullies his theist students. When eventually questioned by a student as to ‘Why do you hate God?’, his response is the cringe-inducing ‘Because he took everything from me!’ whereby he is alluding to the death of his wife and child in an accident.

But worry ye not, Dear Reader, for the tale indeed has a happy ending: the professor is run over at the end of the film, and as he lies dying on the tarmac while nobody thinks to call an ambulance, he professes the existence of God and converts to Christianity.

Likewise, the presentation of Dean’s agnosticism and probable atheism is the result of his anger, bereavement, and a probable animosity towards forces of good for abandoning, failing, and betraying him and Mary. This is not presented unsympathetically or as a caricature: Dean has very good reason to be angry at the angels he will later learn exist, and anybody who has been through what he has would be hard-pressed to believe in good. However, Dean’s own words lead to the conclusion that part of his refusal to believe is that it would be too painful to believe that good exists, yet suffered him to endure everything he went through after and including Mary’s immolation.

Mary’s death for Dean is the equivalent of Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden: he can never go back to the paradise of somebody who loved him unconditionally. It is much easier to believe that it was all just chaotic evil which wrested him from that life into a life of abuse, violence, fear, and the certainty of dying young and bloody. Because if something good let that happen, Dean will have to face the ocean of seething, bubbling fury such a revelation might unleash.

As will be seen later in the show, Dean is scared of his anger. Far be it from me to psychoanalyse people, but this is likely a result of his lifelong abasement of his self and desires for other people, as well as his internalisation of his own disposability and inferiority. Other people have a right to be angry and to express it, but not Dean. He is not worthy to be angry at others: all he is worthy of being the object of other people’s ire. But it has to come out somehow and sometime… Which is why Dean should have been the main antagonist at some point. Not for the first time and not for the last time I have three words in mind: Such potential, Supernatural.

To bring this back to the point I was trying to make, there is the potential to interpret Dean’s claimed atheism or agnosticism as being like God is not Dead: that it is really merely anger at God for injustices experienced, or an unwillingness to believe in God in order to keep living in sin without consequences. Given Dean’s bullshit conversion at the end of the episodes after a freak accident, I think this might have been what the takeaway was supposed to be.

Allhamdulillah Dean’s conversion is very short-lived. Why does Sera Gamble make me cringe so hard? That reminds me, 2x17 Heart is fast approaching. Beam me up, Scotty…

After very nearly 3,000 words spent on that, it is time to change the topic of discussion slightly to the show’s in-world mythology. Ghost!Gregory was no angel, and unless I am very much mistaken there is no lore within Christian scripture claiming humans become angels upon death, though such beliefs have become widespread among Christians and western cultures in general. That said, ghost!Gregory was himself convinced God was speaking to him, which raises the question of whether or not an angel or even God was indeed communicating with him. Father Reynolds claims murdering is antithetical to God, so it could not possibly be God or an angel speaking to ghost!Gregory, but I think the Canaanites might have something to say on that count, due to God giving their land to the Israelites and permitting the Israelites to enact genocide upon them.

That aside, a lot of attention is drawn to Archangel Michael in this episode, and Paula R. Stiles even likened the metal pole which skewered the would-be rapist to Michael’s spear (read here). I doubt it, but to each his own. It is interesting to think that Michael would be circling Dean so closely this early in the show, and as Paula R. Stiles also pointed out, Dean is shot in such a way in the church that he appears powerful, otherworldly, and supernatural.

She almost made a comment on Michael having a flaming sword, implying the sword itself has power and by extension that Dean is somehow supernaturally powerful in some way. Unfortunately this never amounted to much in the show, with Dean’s supernatural influence being more passive than active. However, he is flaming like the Hindenburg, and nobody can convince me otherwise.

Moving on…

I have heretofore neglected to discuss Sam in much detail, in part because I am aware some readers may find my constant excoriation of Sam wearisome. It is hard for me to see him as much of a character when he is so blatantly Kripke’s self-insert Mary Sue. Whereas I can write reams of text on almost any aspect of Dean, Sam simply has not been allowed to be messy, wrong, or especially complicated hitherto, meaning there is precious little for me to sink my teeth into. This is no real fault of Jared’s, as his acting thus far has been passable and nothing he has done has yet made me think ‘That there is a man acting’. Neither though has be done anything of particular interest with his acting choices, though this is likely mostly down to the writing. One of the big issues with the writing for Sam in series two is that the viewer is supposed to believe Sam is falling under the influence of Azazel’s demonic taint (mind out of the gutters, ladies and gentlemen!), but nothing has happened yet to justify such a fear. Dean’s behaviour in 2x03 Bloodlust and 2x04 Children shouldn’t Play with Dead Things gave cause for concern, and 2x09 Croatoan could have been the turning point for Dean, but nothing comparable has happened to Sam yet, nor will it do for the rest of series 2. Consequently, I do not know why I should care about Sam thinking he is a freak and wanting to be saved when I have not seen any evidence – direct or otherwise – to seriously suggest he needs saving. If anything, Dean is the one on the way to becoming a monster, not Sam, and this is a major flaw in the writing. We are told one thing, but shown another whilst being expected to pay more attention to what we are told.

Accordingly, Sam’s insistence that angels be behind the murdered bad people does not have any of the gravitas it should. Sam wanted to believe in angels because if he believes in good, then he can believe that he can be saved from Azazel’s taint (see above RE: gutters), but what exactly does he need to be saved from? He has not murdered or come close to murdering anybody, he has not exhibited any strange powers other than premonitions and one instance of telekinesis, and his sanity and grasp on reality seem intact and sound. The only worrisome thing relating to him is his teenage immaturity and his parochialism. As a result, in this episode he comes off as more irritating and arch than desperate and despairing. He is weirdly offended and myopic when Dean will not believe in angels, and makes embarrassing leaps of logic to come to the conclusion that angels and only angels can possibly be behind the murders. He is so see-through I wonder how anybody can think he is the brains of the outfit. Surely somebody such as he should be aware of what the God of the Gaps is, and should instantly recognise that his own argumentation amounts to Angel of the Gaps.

To be frank, he is almost as cringy as his performative bereavement and behaviour-policing in 2x02 Everybody Loves a Clown. If this is Kripke’s self-insert, my question is ‘why’? Given some of his cringe-inducing, eye-roll statements regarding Soldier Boy and ‘toxic masculinity’ on The Boys (a show where almost everybody who dies a horrible, on-screen death is a man; where men are victims of sexualised violence on-screen and the audience is supposed to laugh at it; and where episode 3x01 Payback began with a gay/bi man dying a graphic, bloody death in a way related explicitly to sex) I get serious I’m not like other boys, pick me vibes.

And I am not going to forgive him for getting Jensen to unironically use the term ‘toxic masculinity’, either. (For those of you who do not know why I object to the term ‘toxic masculinity’, please read my post Deancrits, Don't @ Me. Long story short: 'toxic masculinity' is the 2010s equivalent of 'female hysteria'.)

Given the fact that the writers of The Boys thought it appropriate to not only kill one of the only confirmed gay/bi men on the show in a way explicitly related to same-sex intercourse in an episode aired on the first day of Pride Month 2022, I think there is another kind of toxicity in the writers’ room of The Boys which needs to be addressed.

(The scene below involves a lot of blood and guts, so be warned.)

Returning to the subject of Sam, I wonder where Sam from 2x07 The Usual Suspects has gone. Every other Sam is either pissy, whiny, self-centred, irritating, or a combination of all four and I do not like having to dislike a character like this constantly. Xander in Buffy definitely has his vexatious moments, but at least he has the excuse of being a stupid teenager for the first few series of the show. All Sam has is being forced into a situation not of his choosing and being forced to spend time with a brother whom he resents. That resentment came across loud and clear with him being pissy at Dean enjoying the vibrating beds. I have commented many a time on Sam not letting Dean have his fun, and while I may be projecting a bit (is not all interpretation influenced by projection?) I have made it clear it looks a lot like efforts at control through shame, disapproval, and anger. (Such tactics, by the way, were so beloved of John, as evidenced in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood.) It would have been so easy for Sam to just let Dean have his fun on the bed, and to go to the vending machines if the sight of somebody enjoying himself had bothered him so much.

Speaking of exhaustion, I believe I have exhausted all I have to say on the subject of this episode. It tried to do something, but the writer’s bias was a bit too obvious and – dare I say? – American mainstream, a little bit like once you know Stephanie Meyer is Mormon, you can only view Twilight in a certain light. This is ironic, given Sera Gamble is a Jewish witch, but whatever. She also writes ‘Gothic erotica’, which should not surprise me given 2x17 Heart. I am not looking forward to watching and discussing that soap opera.

[firstumcschenectady]

“Our Prayer” based on Psalm 71:1-6, Matthew 6:9-13

In June, after we celebrated the life of Walter Grattidge, I was walking through the sanctuary with the intention of putting my microphone away. Three people were in the sanctuary, seemingly admiring the stained glass, which was a little unusual because Dottie Gallo's cooking creations were available at that time in Fellowship Hall.

I believe I said something incredibly profound, like “I'm putting my mic away, but while I'm here, can I help you with anything?” The answer was unexpected.

The three people turned out to be a mother, a daughter, and the daughter's husband. The mother was raised in this church, and was a teenager in the 1940s when Rev. Dr. Lee Adkins Sr. was pastor here. I've heard wonderful things about the ministry of Rev. Dr. Adkins Sr., but the story she told was the best one yet:

She was a curious and thoughtful young person, and she struggled with the stories she heard in Sunday School and how she was taught to interpret them. In her frustration, she went to Rev. Adkins to ask him some pointed questions. (Already, I'm loving this story – right? She's feisty, she's good at Biblical interpretation, and she has access to the Sr. Pastor as she should.)

She named her concerns, and in response he ask her to listen to a story. His story was this:

When he was a young man he was struggling to decide what to do with his life. One day, he was hiking, and when he got to the top of a mountain, and the sky opened up before him, he saw written in the clouds “Preach,” and he knew his life's work.

He then told her to go home, think about his story, and come back in a week or two and explain it to him. She did. She thought long and hard about it. When she returned she said to him, “I do not believe that the clouds actually said 'preach.' I think you were moved by the beauty and sense of awe around you, and you found within yourself clarity on your life's work, and the best way you can communicate that is to say that the clouds spelled out 'preach.'”

Now -get this – this is my favorite part. He said, “OK, go home and think about it for another week or two and come back again.” Now, she said that she was really wanting to give the “right” answer and it was quite distressing to be sent away to try again. But she did, and when she came back said to him, “I stand by my answer.” And he smiled and said, “good.”

He affirmed her capacity to think, to interpret, to use her reason, and in doing so gave her ways to approach the Bible and the world.

She said that she was taking her family on a tour of her life, and they were in Schenectady so she could show them the church. (They live in Western Canada I think.) The following day we were having our combined Pride services, and they'd known about that and just walked by hoping to get in. Her family had left Schenectady soon after the story she told me, her father's job changed. But for her that conversation with her pastor opened up the world. She is now a great-grandmother, and she talked about being formed by that permission to be curious and reasonable, and how in her family there are now 4 generations of people who are who they are because she was given permission to THINK about her faith by her pastor.

I've been holding this story (not perfectly, sometimes it slips out because it is so good), but holding it for preaching for this day. Because when we think about Homecoming and what it means to come home to this church, I think that story has some pretty central themes about who this church has been and who this church is.

This is a place where faith and reason are welcome together. This is a place where curiosity is welcome. This is a place where people know that the Bible's truths are often shared in metaphor. This is a place that seeks to form people with permission giving, rather than limitations.

Which gets me to a second central piece of how I know you, First Schenectady United Methodist Church. Some years ago now when asking parents about what color blanket they wanted for their baby's baptism, their response was “We'd like a rainbow blanket, because we want our child to know they will be loved as whoever they are.” I completely copied them when it was my turn ;)

One of the many joys of being the pastor here has been the chance to get to know people who were raised in this church as I have worked with them to prepare the Celebrations of Life for their parents. I know of any stories of the church's children of the 20th century being wrapped in rainbow. However, as I've gotten to know those who were raised in the church, I've been astounded to find some deep similarities.

The men who were raised in this church are unusually kind, considerate, empathetic, gentle, and thoughtful. The women who were raised in this church are usually self-assured and able to be appropriately assertive. Let's be honest, those things both break gendered stereotypes, but fit the fullness of the human experience. This church raised people with the space to be the best and most authentic version of who they were, and made space and capacity to reject the norms of society that put people into boxes.

I was able to put my finger on what was so extraordinary several years ago now, and it has been really fun to see my theory confirmed over and over again since.

Dear ones, the impact of this church in the world is HUGE – even if all we count is how the people raised in this church were given the love, space, and capacity to become fully themselves. This church has been a counter-cultural force for good for a VERY LONG TIME.

This church has been doing God's work for a long time.

Thank God.

And thank you.

I have been reminded this week of how beautiful and delightful this world really is. And it is beautiful even while it is broken. The beautiful and the broken are simply both true.

As people of faith, we are given the great gift of being reflective about how we respond to the world. So much of what we do together is reflecting on what is good, what is God, and how we can respond. We have the chance to think about, and practice, centering down with God, centering down to relationships, centering down to simply enjoy the goodness of life – and then using the energy we have gathered in the centering down to seek justice for God's people. Isn't that a wonderful thing to get to do??

The Lord's Prayer is full of layers of meaning, has been examined with rich study, and there are translations of it that make my heart stir. We can't get into most of that in an even vaguely reasonable time frame, so I just want to focus today on the last line in our reading, “and do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from that which is evil.” The rescue is sometimes deliverance, and deliverance is interesting in the Bible because it is the original meaning of salvation. As Dr. Gafney says, “Salvation in the Hebrew Bible is physical and material deliverance or rescue of an individual or community from enemies.”1

The rescue that we need, the deliverance that we need, changes with time, changes with the communities we live in, changes with our own needs. But the reason this prayer still resonates all these years later in all kinds of different places is that a need for rescue is a pretty common human experience.

Yolanda Norton translates that line as “separate us from the temptation of empire and deliver us into community.”2

Thank God that God HAS delivered us, into community, into THIS community, beautiful and broken as this one is, it helps us be a part of rescuing the world. Thank God. Amen

1Wilda Gafney, A Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), 284.

2Gafney, 285

Rev. Sara E. Baron  First United Methodist Church of Schenectady  603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305  Pronouns: she/her/hers  http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 17, 2023

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Today in Christian History

Today is Saturday, September 2nd, 2023. It is the 245th day of the year (246th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 120 days remain until the end of the year.

459: Death of Simeon Stylites, who lived atop a sixty-foot pillar for thirty-six years.

1192: The Third Crusade ends when Richard Lionheart (pictured above) and Saladin sign an agreement which allows Christians access to the holy city.

1578: The first Anglican worship service held in Canada is led by Rev. Robert Wolfall at Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island around this date. The service is commemorated on the third of September.

1758: William Romaine preaches a sermon on justification at St. Paul’s Cathedral. He is a notable evangelical within the Anglican tradition.

1784: In Bristol, England, Wesley ordains Thomas Coke to be superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. Wesley has tried in vain for years to get the Church of England to ordain bishops for the Methodists.

1792: A Parisian mob slaughters twenty-five Roman Catholic priests as counter-revolutionaries, beginning a week of “September Massacres” in which 225 priests and hundreds of other people will die.

1821: Death of Brindabun, an Asian Indian gospel preacher, known for his recitation of Scriptures and powerful prayers.

1842: Death of John Ireland, Dean of Westminster. As a public figure he carried the crown at the coronations of English kings George IV and William IV. He published apologetic works and a defence for the remarriage of divorced people. Well-to-do, he expended large sums on charity.

1857: Francois Coillard sails for Cape Town on the Trafalger. A man of sweet disposition, he gives up scholarly pursuits to win Africans to Christ and will perform such brave feats as risking a hail of bullets to plead for the lives of Christians.

1973: Death of J. R. R. Tolkien, a linguist, novelist, and devout Catholic. He had helped lead C. S. Lewis to Christ and was a member of the literary club The Inklings. Among his writings were the fantasy favorites The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

1979: Xie Songsan offers the welcome and benediction for the re-opening ceremony at Moore Memorial Church, Shanghai. It had been closed earlier by Chinese communists who interrogated, beat, and imprisoned Xie. The service is presided over by Sun Yanli, another pastor who had suffered brutal treatment from the Communists.

[rainbowsag52]

Cherie French - Quora

Cherie French

806 followers

4 following

As a Canadian working in the SFBA as a RN I was shocked to see African Methodist churches, and various other churches similar. I had just finished a contract in Louisville KY where they still had much separation by race, and class in their churches. I would do soloist/song leader work in various churches, various faiths. So in California dating a biracial hospital administrator I asked him, and he said all races could attend, but the styles of worship were either “ black” or “ traditional”. He preferred a traditional church after growing up in Ghana, as did I from Canada. The black churches were much louder, emotional, and longer in service than I was used to. Growing up in Toronto we worshipped with people of all races from many countries, and all were welcome. Currently my childhood church has a pastor from Barbados leading it.

[whitepolaris]

Missing: Massive Meteorites

Long ago, the people of the sky wanted to help the people of the Earth, so one of them, Tomanowos, left the sky and fell to Earth. When he touched the ground, he became a rock-a shiny, very heavy, and honeycombed rock with many holes in which water collected. The Clackamas people recognized Tomanowos's power and sent their young men to him to wash in the rainwater that collected in his holes to purify themselves and help them catch more game. Tomanowos turned out to be an iron-nickel meteorite-a massive iron-nickel meteorite.

Over time, diminished by white men's disease, the Clackamas who remained were moved to the Grand Ronde Reservation. The settlement near Tomanowos became the town of West Linn. In 1902 Ellis Hughes was wandering around the unused lands adjoining his property. He noticed a large, rounded rock half buried in the ground. He hit it with another rock and was rewarded with a metallic ping. He recognized the rock as a meteorite, but was amazed at its size; it was ten feet high, nearly seven feet long, and more than four feet wide. He learned that it weighed more than fifteen tons.

Hughes figured that a meteorite that size would be valuable, if only as a curiosity, but it was located on land belonging to the Oregon Iron and Steel Company. Working at night, with the help of his son, Hughes levered the meteorite out of its hole and onto his land over a three-month period. He accomplished that by using a pulley system powered by a horse.

Hughes claimed to have "discovered" the meteorite and charged tourists twenty-five cents apiece to look at it. He tried selling the meteorite, but his first potential buyer was the lawyer for Oregon Iron and Steel, who offered Hughes $50 for it. Hughes refused, and the steel company sued him for ownership and won. The company put the Willamette Meteorite on display at the Lewis and Clerk Exposition in Portland.

In 1905, Oregon Iron and Steel sold it for $26,000 to a private party, who then donated it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where it still resides. The Willamette Meteorite is the largest meteorite of its type discovered in the Untied States, and the Sixth largest in the world. Its rounded shape probably formed when it came through the atmosphere to Earth. That high-speed entry probably melted away softer parts of the meteor, creating the deep pits. Over time, weather and rust deepened and smoothed those pits. Geologists believe that the meteor actually fell somewhere between the southern Canada and Idaho, and the Missoula floods brought it to modern-day Oregon.

At the end of the 1990s, the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, who included the descendants of the Clackamas, demanded that the American Museum of Natural History return the meteorite to them as a sacred object. The museum refused, but in 2000, the tribe and museum signed as agreement whereby the Native Americans can perform ceremonies at the meteorite every year, and if the museum no longer wants it for research or for display, they will give it to the Grand Ronde. There are two replicas of the Willamette Meteorite, one at the University of Oregon campus and the other at the Willamette Methodist Church in West Linn.

[yhwhrulz]

Morning and Evening with A.W. Tozer Devotional for July 4

Tozer in the Morning Our Grit and God's Grace

I am cheered to know so many of you are with me on this. We are going to go to the New Testament and be Bible Christians. We are going to sell out to God and not the devil. We are going to pray more, read our Bible more and attend prayer meeting more. We are going to give more and break bad habits by the power of God. We are going to become Christians after God's heart. We are going to be protesters in an hour when the smooth, sickly, slippery, rotten, backslidden, degenerate, apostate Christianity is accepted. We are going to stand for God, to act like simple Protestant Christians, to act like our Presbyterian Scottish forebears, to act like our English Methodist forebears, to act like the dear old Baptist who broke the ice in the creek and baptized people in the freezing water. They had a saying in those days, "Nobody ever caught a cold getting baptized in the ice." God Almighty saw to it that nobody ever died of pneumonia. Those Protestant forebears made the se two nations, the United States and Canada. They made this continent. Are we going to be descendants of which they should be ashamed? Or are we going to say, "Lead on, we are following. You followed Jesus Christ, and we are following you." John Thomas was a dear old Welsh preacher I used to hear. While he preached he would raise his hands and say, "You supply the grit and God will supply the grace." He was right. You've got the grit; God has the grace.

Tozer in the Evening Living With Eternity's Values In View

The spiritual man habitually makes eternity-judgments instead of time-judgments. By faith he rises above the tug of earth and the flow of time and learns to think and feel as one who has already left the world and gone to join the innumerable company of angels and the general assembly and Church of the First-born which are written in heaven. Such a man would rather be useful than famous and would rather serve than be served. And all this must be by the operation of the Holy Spirit within him. No man can become spiritual by himself. Only the free Spirit can make a man spiritual.

Copyright Statement This material is considered in the public domain.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.17 (after 1930)

1930 – U.S. President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act into law. 1932 – Bonus Army: Around a thousand World War I veterans amass at the United States Capitol as the U.S. Senate considers a bill that would give them certain benefits. 1933 – Union Station massacre: In Kansas City, Missouri, four FBI agents and captured fugitive Frank Nash are gunned down by gangsters attempting to free Nash. 1939 – Last public guillotining in France: Eugen Weidmann, a convicted murderer, is executed in Versailles outside the Saint-Pierre prison. 1940 – World War II: RMS Lancastria is attacked and sunk by the Luftwaffe near Saint-Nazaire, France. At least 3,000 are killed in Britain's worst maritime disaster. 1940 – World War II: The British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces. 1940 – The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union. 1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic. 1948 – United Airlines Flight 624, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, killing all 43 people on board. 1952 – Guatemala passes Decree 900, ordering the redistribution of uncultivated land. 1953 – Cold War: East Germany Workers Uprising: In East Germany, the Soviet Union orders a division of troops into East Berlin to quell a rebellion. 1958 – The Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing, in the process of being built to connect Vancouver and North Vancouver (Canada), collapses into the Burrard Inlet killing 18 ironworkers and injuring others. 1960 – The Nez Perce tribe is awarded $4 million for 7 million acres (28,000 km2) of land undervalued at four cents/acre in the 1863 treaty. 1963 – The United States Supreme Court rules 8–1 in Abington School District v. Schempp against requiring the reciting of Bible verses and the Lord's Prayer in public schools. 1963 – A day after South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm announced the Joint Communiqué to end the Buddhist crisis, a riot involving around 2,000 people breaks out. One person is killed. 1967 – Nuclear weapons testing: China announces a successful test of its first thermonuclear weapon. 1971 – U.S. President Richard Nixon in a televised press conference called drug abuse "America's public enemy number one", starting the War on drugs. 1972 – Watergate scandal: Five White House operatives are arrested for burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee during an attempt by members of the administration of President Richard M. Nixon to illegally wiretap the political opposition as part of a broader campaign to subvert the democratic process. 1985 – Space Shuttle program: STS-51-G mission: Space Shuttle Discovery launches carrying Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the first Arab and first Muslim in space, as a payload specialist. 1987 – With the death of the last individual of the species, the dusky seaside sparrow becomes extinct. 1989 – Interflug Flight 102 crashes during a rejected takeoff from Berlin Schönefeld Airport, killing 21 people. 1991 – Apartheid: The South African Parliament repeals the Population Registration Act which required racial classification of all South Africans at birth. 1992 – A "joint understanding" agreement on arms reduction is signed by U.S. President George Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (this would be later codified in START II). 1994 – Following a televised low-speed highway chase, O. J. Simpson is arrested for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. 2015 – Nine people are killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. 2017 – A series of wildfires in central Portugal kill at least 64 people and injure 204 others. 2021 – Juneteenth National Independence Day, was signed into law by President Joe Biden, to become the first federal holiday established since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"INTEREST IS REVIVED IN OAKVILLE NEGRO CHURCH," Toronto Star. April 10, 1934. Page 4. --- With only two members of its small congregation employed, the African Methodist Episcopal church at Oakville is having a hard struggle for existence, but the pastor. Rev. C. P. Jones who took charge last fall. sees signs of a spiritual revival in his flock. The photographs above show: (1) Mrs. Lillie A. P. Jones, wife of the pastor, and superintendent of the Sunday school; (2) the A.M.E. church in the west end of Oakville: (3) Rev. C. P. Jones (4) and (5) are Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Adams. 83 and 87 years old. respectively, who are the oldest members of the church Mrs. Adams father. Rev. W. J. Butler, was one of the early pastors of the church, and Mr. Adams father was one of the founders.

[blogkennethratcliffeposts]

Sidney E. Cox

Sidney E. Cox (1887–1975) was a prolific Psalm author and composer. Originally from England, he moved to Canada in 1907. After joining the Methodist church in 1908, he later converted to the Salvation Army, where he served until 1944, eventually becoming a Major. Following his time with the Salvation Army, Cox focused on evangelical revival work. Throughout his life, he authored or composed…

[lboogie1906]

The African Methodist Episcopal Church grew out of the Free African Society which Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and others established in Philadelphia in 1787. When officials at St. George’s MEC pulled Blacks off their knees while praying, FAS members discovered just how far American Methodists would go to enforce racial discrimination against African Americans. He led a small group who resolved to remain Methodists. In 1794 Bethel AME was dedicated with Allen as pastor. To establish Bethel’s independence from interfering white Methodists, Allen, a former Delaware enslaved, successfully sued in the Pennsylvania courts in 1807 and 1815 for the right of his congregation to exist as an independent institution. Because Black Methodists in other Middle Atlantic communities encountered racism and desired religious autonomy, Allen called them to meet in Philadelphia to form the AME denomination.

The spread of the AMEC before the Civil War was restricted to the Northeast and Midwest. Major congregations were established in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, DC, Cincinnati, Chicago, Detroit, and other large Blacksmith’s Shop cities. The slave states of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, and, South Carolina, became locations for AME congregations. The denomination reached the Pacific Coast in the early 1850s with churches in Stockton, Sacramento, San Francisco, and other places in California. Bishop Morris Brown established the Canada Annual Conference.

In 1880 AME membership reached 400,000 because of its spread below the Mason-Dixon line. Bishop Henry M. Turner pushed African Methodism across the Atlantic into Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1891 and into South Africa in 1896, the AME laid claim to adherents on two continents.

Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett reminded the audience of the presence of Blacks in the formation of Christianity. Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner wrote in 1895 in The Color of Solomon – What? that biblical scholars wrongly portrayed the son of David as a white man.

The AMEC has membership in twenty Episcopal Districts in thirty-nine countries on five continents. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[singeratlarge]

HAPPY EASTER + SUNDAY MUSIC VIDEO MATINEE: “Oh Happy Day” live in San Francisco 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDnnwsokOPE

 —The happy soul of our performance surpasses the technical limitations of the video (not to mention my wonky microphone stand). Everyone was singing and playing in earnest that Sunday Morning when I joined the Temple United Methodist Church Choir to sing this song.

It’s an extension of an 18th century hymn by Phillip Doddridge and is based on Acts 8:35. Over time other writers embellished it with more parts and it was sung mainly at baptismal and confirmation ceremonies in the UK and USA. Edwin Hawkins did his update in 1967 and they played it repeatedly at the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley CA. In 1969 Hawkins took the church group and made a small budget recording of it on a custom label, with Dorothy Combs Morrison on co-lead vocals. Their modest production is lo-fi by today’s standards but—lo and behold—the track became a surprise international hit. It reached #4 in the USA, #2 in the UK, Canada, and Ireland, and #1 in France, Germany, and The Netherlands. 

Hawkins’s version has appeared in upwards to 20 movie soundtracks and has been covered countless times. It was included on the RIAA Songs of the Century and won Hawkins a Grammy in 1970. George Harrison stated the song was a primary inspiration for “My Sweet Lord.” Meanwhile, enjoy our modest take on it:

#happyday #EdwinHawkins #TempledUnitedMethodist #choir #PhillipDoddridge #Acts235 #EphesianChurchofGodinChrist #Berkeley #California #DorothyCombsMorrison #GeorgeHarrison #MySweetLord #Grammy #singersongwriter #JohnnyJBlair #SingeratLarge #SanFrancisco #piano

[rhianna]

The old priest of Mount Omei ; Chinese superstitions [electronic resource] / by James R. Cox.

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Cite thisExport citation fileMain AuthorCox, James R., 1876-1955.Language(s)English PublishedToronto : Methodist Church, [1905?] SubjectsLao Ho Shang. Lao Ho Shang. Methodist Church in Canada >  Methodist Church in Canada / Missions > Methodist Church in Canada / Missions / Chine. Methodist Church in Canada >  Methodist Church in Canada / Missions > Methodist Church in Canada / Missions / China. Superstitions >  Superstitions / Chine. Superstition >  Superstition / China. NoteCover title. ISBN0665722788