Burqa Example Over-the-Top?

So I've already had an email from a friend this morning about my "burqa" post (see the post below, "Our Time Has Come"). My friend won't leave comments on my site, but she does email me about it-- I dunno-- saying this: "Burkas? Isn't that just a bit over-the-top? No one wants to put you in a burka, and what's wrong with hearing from the Muslim community for once?"

Well, a couple of things, and I don't mean to pick on "Bernadette" here. Your second point first. "[H]earing from the Muslim community for once?" EXCELLENT point. When do we ever hear from the Muslim community, when do we ever hear them come out and disavow radical, extremist Islam? Are there "moderate" voices in Islam? Not that we've heard from, not that I recall.

And then your first point, that I'm being over-the-top with my burqa example; you contend that Muslims simply want to co-exist, they certainly don't want to change our society, they don't want to put "me" in a burqa.. Maybe, but I use the burqa deliberately, because it is so very extreme to our Western sensibilities, to make a point. Over-the-top is it? Well, here's a photo to consider:

This is something known as the "clown eucharist." Really? Because that's exactly what it looks like. It's beyond the scope of this post (and maybe also beyond my understanding) for me to explain it here.

However, I can explain this photo, our Episcopal "technicolor" Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts-Schori, head of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Well, I say "our," but that's not accurate, since after being a life-long Episcopalian, I am no longer, as of the past two years, a member of the Episcopal Church.

Presiding Bishop Jefferts-Schori, by the way, doesn't simply enjoy showing off colorful vestments. No, think "political" when you see that rainbow headgear--like maybe the rainbow flag standing for Gay and Lesbian rights. The rainbow flag was dreamed up fifty years ago by the self-described "Gay Besty Ross," Gilbert Baker of San Francisco. Why does the Episcopal Presiding Bishop feel she needs to make a political statement with her vestments? Because politics is more important to her than religion. Or maybe for her politics is religion--I don't know.

Katharine Jefferts-Schori would make a fine Unitarian (no offense meant to Unitarians), but she makes a lousy Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA). She and her followers have remade the Episcopal Church in the USA into something I don't recognize. She has done it, in part, by denying the central articles of our faith--saying, for example, that the incarnation is "nonsense," the resurrection of Jesus is a "fiction," the understanding of the cross is a "barbarous idea," the Bible is "pure propaganda," and on and on. She encourages the thinking that our creeds are nothing but "poetry," and if you stand in church, reciting the creed, and want to cross your fingers behind your back while you do it, I'm sure that would be fine with her because she's probably doing the same thing. She has split the Church in two and driven away thousands of people like me. She is in the process of suing individual parishes throughout the United States, and bankrupting them in the process. What she doesn't seem to "get" (or hell, maybe she does) is that she's bankrupting, or bringing down, the Episcopal Church.

The entire Jefferts-Schori regime is a nightmare. She is a modern-day heretic. The things that she's done to the Church simply can't have happened--but they have. Yet Jefferts-Schori didn't destroy the Episcopal Church by herself. I did this to my church. And the people who sat in the pews with me over the last 40 years did this to our church. We lost our church incrementally, piece by piece, small (and sometimes not-so-small) step by small step. We didn't speak up when we should have. We were "nice," we wanted to get along and be "inclusive." We were infected with the culture's PC nonsense. And we lost our church.

So is my burqa example over-the-top? Probably. I certainly hope so. But I use it to make a point: I have no intention of losing my country the same way I lost my church. Ask France if that can happen. Let's pay attention, to the small steps, to the big ones--let's wake up and educate ourselves to what is going on, right in front of our eyes. Bad things can happen. Bad things do happen. Ask the Jews.

Not Yet!