I had not realized how completely and utterly ridiculous this Episcopal Bishop Catherine Roskam was until a priest friend reminded me that she was the force behind the "Hip-Hop Eucharist" a few years back. Excerpt:
Picture this: an altar; an earth-shattering sound system; people of all ages "jamming to the groove"; and an Episcopal bishop rapping and feeling the beat. It's the revolutionary liturgical outreach unfolding in the Bronx and it's taking religion to the streets in the language of today -- Hip Hop!"My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up -- keep your head up, holla back, and go forth and tell like it is." With this proclamation, Bishop Suffragan Cathy Roskam of New York sent people on their way at the Bronx's third Hip Hop Mass, held Friday, July 2 at Trinity Church of Morrisania.
Is there anything quite as excruciating as an elderly white lady trying to be hip? But wait, there's more! Here is the 23rd Psalm, as adapted for that liturgy:
The 23rd PsalmThe Lord is all that, I need
For nothing
He allows me to chill.
He keeps me from being heated
And allows me to breathe easy.
He guides my life so that
I can represent and give
Shouts out in his Name.
And even though I walk through
The Hood of death,
I don't back down
For you have my back.
The fact that you have me covered
Allows me to chill.
He provides me with back-up
In front of my player-haters
And I know that I am a baler
And life will be phat
I fall back in the Lord's crib
For the rest of my life
And the African Anglicans, who actually are serious Christians, are supposed to look to La Roskam as a guide? This is one reason why TEC is withering on the vine, while Anglicanism in Africa is bearing great fruit.
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The Rt. Rev. Roskum is a wonderful woman, someone we New Yorkers are proud to have as our bishop. She has class and she has a sense of humor.
Ah yes, the two needful things that Christ died for -- class and a sense of humor.
Episcopal orders are invalid, not to mention female "bishops".
I'd rather have a bishop who does rap than a bishop that hides child rapists in our parishes any day.
Better do some research. The Episcopal church has had its own share of scandals.
Speaking as as former Episcopalian ....
I made an effort to "do" Catholicism. The priest supervising my spiritual formation seemed to encourage a faith that was more childish than childlike, so, like many others, I then tried the Episcopal Church.
But I left it forever two years ago Pentecost. As the priest, last year elevated to bishop, consecrated the host, the same-sex couple seated directly in front of me opened buttons and zippers and caressed each other, intimate parts quite visible. I left the service, and when I made an appointment to see the vicar later to express my concerns, I was told in no uncertain terms that if I could not dialog (that is, if I could not allow for the possibility that homosexual sex in front of the entire congregation was equivalent to the Eucharist, as it might well be in some wiccan traditions), I had no place in that parish or the Episcopal church as a whole. I decided that was OK by me.
So give me Psalm 23 in ebonics any day, if the Right Reverend at least insists zippers stay zipped.
So much to say...so little space....
I'll bet whatever rapping this Episcopal bishop does comes off far better than the "Christian rock" performances that occur weekly at your local Baptist church. And I submit rapping is far more innocuous than the child molestations that apparently occur rather frequently at your local Catholic parish. Touche...
Rod, your obsession with the split in the Anglican church comes off as schadenfraude, and, frankly rather desperate, given the enormous problems your churches of choice have faced. There is a huge cultural divide between the African Anglicans and the Western churches. I'm willing to wager the parishoners of First Baptist of X have far more in common culturally, intellectually, even doctrinally with Bishop Spong than with these African Bishops.
There is so much work to be done in the world, and here we are, like children, splitting hairs over words.
Rich: And I submit rapping is far more innocuous than the child molestations that apparently occur rather frequently at your local Catholic parish...
Another esthete of the subtlest discernement. Another brilliant "rap or rape" dichotomist. Would that the Fathers, the Apostles, and Christ Himself had been gifted with such trenchant insight.
But how can one deny the cacophony and solecisms of ghetto doggerel to a "church" that sacramentalizes buggery? All homoerotic acts are disordered; they are in fact rape, the result of aberrant concupiscence arising in a morally diseased will. Such a will can no more give free consent than the cannibal's next victim can consent to the evening's entrée.
Both the Orthodox and Roman Catholics condemn the molestation of children; is it not a mere matter of time before the buggery-boosting Episcopalians sacramentalize pederasty, most probably with a new liturgy to follow first "communion."? On what basis can such a step be denounced? The Fathers? Their obsolete writings are hurtful. Burn them. The Apostles? Their preaching reflects a vanished culture. Martyr them again. Christ Himself? His very existence may be a myth. Crucify him again.
Rod, your obsession with the split in the Anglican church comes off as schadenfraude
Rod is more than capable of defending himself, but your charge of schadenfrede he has in the past specifically refuted. Is it schadenfreude to be astonished at the headlong rush to ruination of a church whose hierarchs gambol gaily about the bathhouse of Belial? I suspect that Rowan Williams may find his way to the narthex of either Rome or Constantinople, Spong and Shori to the very apse of Hell.
I'm willing to wager the parishoners of First Baptist of X have far more in common culturally, intellectually, even doctrinally with Bishop Spong than with these African Bishops.
Spong has doctrine? Of the non-Chalcedonian variety, I would venture. Perhaps: bugger unto others as thou wouldst be buggered unto?
There is so much work to be done in the world, and here we are, like children, splitting hairs over words.
Children do not split hairs. Sanctimonious adults do.
If the First Baptist of X and Spong have so much in common, why is the Episcopal Church so white?
Seriously, it's about as diverse as New Hampshire or Vermont. The KKK has more members of color.
The Anglican communion will never disappear. So long as there are upscale ex-Baptists and Pentecostals and divorced/gay ex-Catholics, there will always be an Episcopal church.
It's like the old Soviet joke: "You only have old women in this church. What happens in 15 years whey they're all dead?" "There will be another generation of old women."
Same thing with disestablishment of the Church of England. Nobody's interested enough to take the time to write the law doing it and it's become an innocous, English-speaking version of Shinto: good for hatchings, matchings and dispatchings, pretty ceremonies that nobody would dream of being tacky enough to ask that anyone there actually believe.
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