Friday, September 20, 2019

Doofus Of The Day #1,054


Today's award goes to the faculty and students who took part in this nonsense.  Speaking as a Christian pastor, it's enough to make me cross (you should pardon the expression).

Students at Union Theological Seminary in New York City were instructed to confess to potted plants as an "expression of worship" and as a "liturgical response to our climate crisis."

Many online mocked a tweet from the seminary affiliated with Columbia University for celebrating the unusual chapel service where students of the cloth "held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor," asking: "What do you confess to the plants in your life?"

. . .

Cláudio Carvalhaes, Union Theological associate professor of worship who encouraged students to skip classes Friday for the global climate strike, put on the chapel for his “Extractivism: A Ritual/Liturgical Response" class, just one way he says he has helped "create rituals to mourn the earth."

There's more at the link.

Y'know, I could understand this in a non-denominational, non-Christian setting, where anything goes.  However, as far as I know, Union is a college teaching Christian theology, albeit of the liberal variety.  Wikipedia notes:

In the 20th century, Union became a center of liberal Christianity. It served as the birthplace of the Black theology, womanist theology, and other theological movements.

Is the list now to include horticultural hermeneutics?  I suppose it could, if the faculty are up to fertilizer . . .




Peter

10 comments:

joekr said...

https://babylonbee.com/news/disaster-at-union-seminary-as-giant-angry-carnivorous-plant-does-not-accept-students-apologies

Jim said...

Joekr beat me to the Babylon Bee story. I will. of course, check with Snopes to make sure that it isn't fake news.

C. S. P. Schofield said...

Oh, I don't know...since these students obviously have the intellectual capacity of potted plants, I think their (phantasmagorically stupid) mistake is understandable.

John Cunningham said...

Why do vegetarians gleefully celebrate their ruthless genocide of innocent carrots and broccoli? Why do vegans not realize that God wants us to eat animals? Why else did He build them from meat?

Scott M. said...

I think Peter might have a plethora of Doofuses to choose from after today, depending on how the 'Storm Area 51' event turns out.

binky said...

Whats next? The Golden calf?
Paul in Texas

Beans said...

Liberal Christianity, otherwise known as socialist christianity, is as insane and deadly as radical islam.

Sure, there aren't too many liberal christians running around with clothes by DuPont, but the LC policies are just as, if not more, deadly to humanity as islam. Death by loss of one's soul is a horrible way to die, yet LC seems to teach the lessons of The Morningstar, rather than the lessons of God.

Wish this world was a fiction book. I might actually enjoy the deaths of all the characters. Unfortunately, this is real life, and the deaths of billions and the following loss of souls that is coming because of these idjits is frightening.

Jesus was liberal, a classic liberal, not the modern 'liberal' which is radical leftist. He taught pretty much a lasse-faire type of worship. Be kind, mellow out, just go with the flow, don't be a male reproductive unit. Not saying he didn't also teach harsh limits to liberalism, like 'sell your cloak to buy a sword' and other limits.

So, well, yeah. I have said for years that I didn't leave the Church, the Church left me. I still travel with God. I don't know, but suspect that these people travel with someone who isn't God.

Silent Draco said...

Is Union now the Little Seminary of Horrors?

"CONFESS TO ME, SEYMOUR!"

Sure sounds like plant food to me, but I've bean wrong before. It's hard to parsnip.

McChuck said...

That's not Christianity. The Churchians have taken over almost every branch of the faith.

Beans - Islam is not insane. Their "radicals" are merely the most faithful and true to the clearly written commands of their god Allah. They may be evil (to our sensibilities, not theirs), they may be stupid (as so many people are), but they are most certainly not insane.

Tregonsee said...

The liberal seminaries went off the rails long ago (like mid 50's). Union was at the leading edge of this. Fellow travelers include Andover Newton (now Part of Yale Divinity, they couldn't keep their campus open), Bangor TheoligicaL Seminary and Episcopal Divinity School Cambridge (now closed and rolled into Union same Issue as Andover Newton). Harvard Divinity has been off the rails since the mid 19th century being big supporters of the Unitarian model which goes back to an ancient heresy. At any of these schools you will be hard pressed to find anyone that accepts that Jesus the Christ is part of the Trinity, That He is divine and the only means to salvation let alone any other statements of the early creeds lice the Nicene. Heck alot of them deny the Jesus was an historical person.Given that it is not too surprising that have wandered into idolatry. As noted two here in the east of Massachusetts (Andover Newton and EDS) have folded, basically they got almost no applications, and the liberal church denominations they serve (UCC, ABC, Most Northeastern Episcopalians) have been closing their doors at a striking rate.
There's old joke (slighty modified for the modern state)
Q: What do you get when you cross a Liberal pastor and a Fuller Brush Salesman?
A: Someone that goes door to door for no apparent reason.